🤡 Greebee

by Sean MacKendrick

After her graduation party, when the house was empty again, Mika’s parents gave her a severed clown head. Mr. Kovacs said, “His name is Greebee.”

Mika sat on the couch, surrounded by the remnants of the party with this strange clown head in her lap. It twisted in her grip, moaning. White grease paint from his face smudged her pants. “Thank you,” she said. “What do I do with it?”

“You don’t do anything,” Mrs. Kovacs said. “He’s not a toy, he’s a companion. He’s part of the family. Has been for a while.”

Greebee was old, not quite mummified, but dry and stiff and bony. The red around his mouth flaked into her lap as his mouth opened and closed, opened and closed.  

“Thank you,” Mika said again, unsure what else to say.

Greebee sat on a shelf, watching Mika sort her clothes while emitting small sounds somewhere between laughs and coughs. His eyes bulged comically.

“I don’t know where I’m going to put you.” Mika laid her favorite shirt on top of the take pile. “The dorm rooms aren’t very big. I won’t have much space.” She considered an old sweatshirt before adding it to the larger leave pile.

“I’m not sure why my family has you, to be honest.” The sounds from Greebee grew higher in pitch and volume. “Maybe you could stay out of sight?”

Mika picked up an old jacket and draped it over the severed head. The clown head let out a shriek that pierced Mika’s own skull. She pulled the jacket away. “OK, forget it. Just stop, already. You’re free, see?”

Greebee’s scream continued, unabated.

Jackson’s wide beaming face startled Mika as she hurried from her room pulling at the tangles in her hair. “Hey there, Mika, how’s it going?”

“Hi, Jack. Just running late for class, as usual.” Jackson either missed or ignored the hint slowly nodding as he leaned against the wall.

“Yeah, I hear ya. Looking pretty tired there,” he said as Mika stifled a yawn. “Not sleeping great? Your mime head keeping you up?”

“He’s not a mime, he’s a classic whiteface clown. Like Ronald McDonald.” Mika checked the time on her phone in as obvious a fashion as she could manage.

Jackson nodded. “Well, sure, I guess he wouldn’t be a mime. Mimes are silent, aren’t they? Your guy is anything but. I hear your roommate requested a transfer.”

Mika had nothing to say.

“Yeah,” Jackson sighed. “I guess the screaming keeps her up at night. Keeps a few people up on this floor. With these walls you can hear just about everything happening around here.”

Mika squeezed past Jackson’s bulk and jogged towards the stairs. “I’ll get him under control,” she said over her shoulder. “Promise.”

Mika placed a heavy ceramic bowl on the table in front of her grandmother. “Would you like some cucumber salad, Nagyi?” 

Decades of practice had honed Grandma Kovacs’ ability to convey judgment with ruthless efficiency. She could disapprove with a sharp blink or by exhaling through her nose in a certain way. She peered into the salad bowl and said nothing, but the tilt of her head spoke loud enough.

Mrs. Kovacs set a platter of stuffed cabbage rolls next to the salad. To Mika she said, “I’ve got the other dishes handled. Why don’t you go study until lunch is ready?”

“It’s Thanksgiving, I’m not going to study on Thanksgiving.” Mika regretted mentioning her academic struggles. She assumed everyone complained about the difficulty of university life when they went home, and that everyone’s parents took it in stride without trying to fix it.

“I always studied on break,” Mr. Kovacs said as he passed through the dining room to grab an olive. “I studied whenever I could.”

Mika straightened the chairs, just for something to do. “I’ll study after we eat. I promise.”

“You’ll nap after we eat,” Mrs. Kovacs said. “You and your father always fall asleep after.”

Mika said, “I wish. I’d love to sleep. Greebee won’t let me. He keeps me up every night. Can I leave him here, just until I finish the semester?”

“No,” Mrs. Kovacs said. “He’s yours to take care of. We took care of him for long enough.”

“I really don’t remember him being around when I was younger.”

“He was.” Mr. Kovacs spat an olive pit into his palm. “Greebee has been in the family for generations. You were too busy playing to notice, is all.”

“But where did he even come from? Why do we have him in the first place?”

Grandma Kovacs turned to face Mika. “In my time, we did not talk about such things,” she rasped. “And children did not ask so many questions.”

“I’m not a child,” Mika muttered. Grandma Kovacs exhaled through her nose.

A crunch woke Mika in the middle of the night. She listened for a moment but couldn’t hear anything or quite remember what the sound had been, so she closed her eyes again. 

Soon something tugged on her blanket and pulled Mika out of her half-asleep state. She turned her side lamp on just in time to watch Greebee scream into her face.

Teeth marks gouged the floor between the bed and the closet where Mika tried to muffle the head under multiple blankets. A large hole had been chewed through the bottom of the closet door. White and red grease paint smeared the floor, the nightstand, and Mika’s pillows.

 “You still have that thing?” Eric nodded to Greebee, who sat in the corner watching the old friends reconnect.

Mika yawned hard enough to make her eyes water. “What do you mean, still? My parents just gave him to me at graduation.”

“Yeah, but it was always there. Around. It used to scare me as a kid whenever I came over.”

 “He was?” Greebee rocked back and forth, smiling. He hummed a tuneless song. “I don’t remember that. You didn’t say anything when we were kids.”

“I don’t know…” Eric said, “I guess I didn’t want to be rude.”

Boxes stacked high on Mika’s childhood bed. “You can move those,” Mr. Kovacs said. He didn’t look at her as she lugged in her boxes. “If you want help tomorrow, we can look for jobs together.”

Mika wiped the dust from her eyes. “Just part time. I’m going to study hard and get new scholarships so I can get back in. Or I’ll apply to other schools this summer.”

Mr. Kovacs nodded. “OK. Part time.”

“Hey, Dad? I’m sorry. I’m going to do better.”

“I know you are.”

“I love you, Dad.”

Mr. Kovacs said, “I love you, too.” He closed the door behind him.

One of the boxes thumped and shivered. Mika pulled out Greebee’s withered face. He opened his mouth and howled. Mika took him in both hands, held him by his greasy curly hair and shook him violently. She screamed back.

Greebee grew still. For the first time in a long while, he watched her in silence, his expression confused and curious. Mika sobbed until she choked, and tried to find the strength to stop crying even though she just wanted to lay down and sleep and not be strong about anything. She and the clown head stared at each other, Greebee not making a sound.

As soon as she caught her breath, though, he started wailing again.