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Pogo the Clown
By
David Erlewine, Dec 24, 2008
My brother Rob lies in bed, sweating, drugged. The hospice lady listens to her iPod, smiling at him every few
minutes. Like a child, he kicks the covers off, shivers at a summer breeze, then pulls them up to his chest.
Delirious, he talks at me about clowns, basements, boys who believed.
The room smells like a trench. Mom is gone. Dad hides at work.
“Gacy,” he says, shaking his head. “Called himself Pogo the Clown, that sick fuck.”
“Pogo the Clown.” I nod. Yesterday he ranted about Ms. Parsons, his fourth-grade teacher who ridiculed him for
not grasping long division. Hearing him, you’d think such abuse just happened, not ten years ago.
“Never should have read about Pogo.” He looks at me. “Can’t get it out of my head.”
As the afternoon goes on, I become more certain that I showed him that slim serial killer book years ago.
David Erlewine is a fiction editor at DOGZPLOT. His fiction appears or is forthcoming in Pedestal,
In Posse Review, elimae, and others.
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