Chapter Text
The man who raised the boy before Bobo was a mere distant memory: an imposing figure that he recalls more as a fist and a hand than a face. He remembers his voice (gruff and coarse with words Bobo would scar him for saying) and he remembers how he made him feel (scared, mostly) … but not much else; few other impressions survived the dark murky waters of his bad memories…
But a father was a father still, and what are fathers for if not to teach a lesson?
And his father taught him many things, even when he did not try to.
He learned how to stay fed, and alive,
and he learned that the best way to do that was to take— from others.
His father would remind the boy that even his own mother didn’t care to save him, to stick around for him, so why would anybody else? From this, the boy learned not to expect, and not to complain…
And then his father concluded the lesson of surviving in a harsh world—— with one swift and final act:
Leaving.
Leaving the boy to fend for himself– the greatest test in his lessons of sufficiency yet...
Like any good father, he passed on what he knew to his son…
And Jagger may not have ever gone to school, but he was a good student.
Bobo told Chatterbox that when he found him, and brought him into his home, he didn’t know much about children. “I thought to myself, ‘I raised hundreds of chickens and goats in my time. How much trouble could one boy be?’”
… And then Bobo would scoff, and tell Chatterbox just how much trouble he really was: the angry, ungrateful little monster he was when he found him, a brat who scorned Bobo’s kindness and generosity.
The boy proved much more difficult to train than dogs and livestock. Bobo would watch as the foolish boy would made a mistake and hurt himself– thinking it would teach the boy a valuable lesson, like a hand to a hot stove … but for Chatterbox, pain was a learned consequence of being born— he was used to it— so the pain never stopped him for long; he would get right back up and do the dumb thing again, if it so pleased him…
Fear, Bobo learned, was the way to control him. So he used threats and kennels and bright blinding lights, and taught him like fathers do: to listen to his words, above all. (“Everyone would hate you; they’ll kill you, if they knew what we– you– really are…”) Never trust anyone. Never let his guard down. Protect the family… that’s why you always have to be the watchful predator, never the prey...
Then he would laugh and say Chatterbox made easy prey— like a dull-witted lamb frolicking into its own slaughter. It was much safer for him to be alone, he said; Bobo kept him that way for his own good. He was a danger to himself, and others, not fit to play and learn with the other children…
Only Bobo.
Not even Travis and Giblets liked him! That’s what Bobo would say...
Bobo had to train him–
To fix him, with the cages, and the lights…
Only then did he make a friend– because of Bobo’s help…
That’s why Chatterbox had to be grateful to him.
And even when Bobo wasn’t teaching him, training him, Chatterbox learned still, merely by watching. His brown eyes followed the older man’s every move, observing…
Chatterbox watched on the day that Bobo brings big, heavy tanks onto the farm. Chatterbox knows a thing or two about them; Bobo always told the boys not to play around them, or else they’d get burned. (But Giblets and Chatterbox didn’t really listen; they still enjoyed a game of ‘kick the can’ anytime Bobo wasn’t watching…) They threw rocks from a distance, waiting for the day it exploded, like fireworks…
But today, Bobo brings the fire-starters into the house. A new, strange piece of furniture…
Chatterbox almost questions why, but questioning things was a quick way to get in trouble. He learned that from both his fathers.
So Chatterbox doesn’t ask why.
Bobo needs help moving them into the basement, so he just listens; he does it, without asking the obvious. Chatterbox doesn’t mind it much, because he gets to help Bobo. Bobo needs him, for this. He can’t do it alone, and who else can he trust with such a task?
Only Chatterbox.
“Why am I doing this, Chatterbox?” The man voices droned coldly, challenging his student, testing his knowledge.
Chatterbox was surprised Bobo sought his opinion. He’s afraid to answer (to answer incorrectly), but he knows if he doesn’t respond, he’ll be punished for insolence anyway, so it’s a lose-lose. He ventures a guess. “You… Bobo doesn’t want to let the people see…” He pants while they carry the tanks down the stairs, “ — see what he has inside the Funhouse. So if they get too close… kaboom!” He guesses his best guess.
Bobo spat a sound of disgust. “No! I don’t care what people see.”
“Oh,” Chatterbox winced–
“It’s about what they take.”
Chatterbox made a sound of understand (even though he doesn’t really understand), and they struggle with the tank until they reach the bottom step. The large tin hit the ground loudly, and Bobo took a long swig out of a beer bottle in the basement, and wiped sweat off his brow with a big fist.
Chatterbox considers Bobo’s words. It was true that Bobo did not do much to hide what they did. Much of it was in plain sight: blood drops stained the kitchen, and cages line the basement floor. (Yes, every rough farmhouse had seen its share of butchery and slaughter, but the funhouse had an unmistakable darkness that felt more than practical.) The evidence was everywhere: in the fridge, in the sink where bloody knives lay to dry, and even in Bobo’s loud boasts. It was true: Bobo did not hide, and he didn’t like when Chatterbox did either... (Bobo was not very good at hide and seek; Chatterbox was.)
It was a difference between them that Bobo wanted to break– a flaw he had not yet found the antidote for. The boy was still a runner, and a hider. A coward, as Bobo called it, and Chatterbox didn’t like to be called no cow… but he could not break the habit: when he was scared, he ran, and he hid. He always got in worse trouble for it, but he couldn’t stop. That’s why you’re stupid, he tells himself. That’s why Chatterbox gets hurt!
“You never let nobody into this house unless it’s to take from them,” Bobo continued to ramble on, his speech slightly slurred by the juice he drank in heavy consumption. “‘Cause if you let anybody in, they’ll take from us. You understand, boy?”
“Yes!” Chatterbox barked his understanding.
But he still didn’t really understand…
What was there to take from this place? They had nothing… except each other.
“We blow it up so they can’t take a thing from us!” Bobo emphatically insists.
“Yes… Chatterbox understands,” he agreed (lying.) He looked at the man swaying slightly in his spot, heaving.
He didn’t look well. He looked sickly, and tired.
Sometimes the drink made him do that…
“But… a fire… won’t it hurt Bobo, too? And– and the Funhouse?” Chatterbox asked, in concern. Those were the two things he’d been told to never disrespect!
“That doesn't matter, you little fool!” Bobo spat in a sudden fit of anger, swinging a fist in the air– not at Chatterbox, just in a wild sort of rage. “If you let them in, they’ll take everything! We’ll be ruined… no…” He began to ramble, his words slippery. “If they get in, we take everyone down with us…” Bobo glared into the child’s eyes, still too tainted by the naive ignorance of youth to comprehend. “They’ll take you from here– you understand that, boy? Those sons of bitches would take everything I have. You’d be gone, too.”
Chatterbox’s eyes went wide behind the mask, a deathly cold chill filling him, and freezing him to the spot.
It was not fear that paralyzes him, though. He know the feeling of ‘fear’ well, and he knows this isn’t it. It was something else…
He’d be gone…
They’d take him away…
From Bobo…
From the cages,
and the games…
. . . was it ‘hope’ he was feeling?
“And Giblets?” He softly whispered.
“You’d never see the little idiot again,” Bobo waved off the question.
“Oh,” Chatterbox sadly replied, with a broken heart.
And just like that, the feeling he couldn’t name went away.
Back to the same old nothing...
( hopelessness.
Nobody was coming to save him; just like his father had always said...
Nobody cares... )
“Chatterbox won’t let them!” He supported Bobo, emphatically. “Chatterbox won’t let anybody in!”
“Good,” Bobo grinned underneath his mask, and Chatterbox beamed under the rare light of Bobo’s approval. “So if anyone tries to take the Funhouse, what do we do?”
“Kill ‘em!”
“That’s right,” Bobo laughed heartily at the quick answer. “Good clown.”
The boy always was a good student, in his own way…
A man came by one day, dressed like Bobo. Like a clown. He came with a painted face (Bobo scoffed at that), with a red nose attached. Bobo and the man talked for a long time, and the stranger stared at him with observant eyes.
Sad eyes.
And Chatterbox just blinks.
“What do you want, mister?!” He spat at the stranger.
“Nothing I can find here,” he sadly answered– which pissed the little clown off, because he didn’t understand it.
“What the yuck is he talking about?” He asked, when the man got in his car to drive away.
Bobo spat on the ground, and watched him drive away. "Some dumb yuck from the city. He’s looking for a clown to save him– to save everybody... said the worlds too ‘cold’ and it aint funny any more… Idiot. Can you believe that? I’m still laughing,” Bobo scoffed. Just recently, he had laughed a lot: when he made the boys chase a man around the Funhouse with hot cattle prods. He laughed harder when the man tripped down the stairs, splattering his brains all over the Funhouse floor. “Ain’t nobody worth saving anyway,” he sneered.
“Yeah!” The little clown laughed along with him, although he didn’t really understand. “Idiot!”
Bobo looked over at his protege.
Obedient, like a dog... and he feels proud of what he's done.
It would be a damn shame to lose it...
“He was real interested in you and Giblets, boy. ‘Said he knows a bunch of clowns, and we don’t gotta be out here on our own.” Bobo spat on the ground, clearly not happy about it.
“Really?” The boy was excited. He wonders if there’s any other clowns his age– Giblets’ age…
“Well, he’s fucking wrong!” Bobo roared-- putting Chatterbox back into his place.
“Wha–?!”
“He doesn’t like what we do around here. He said it ain’t clownlike.”
“But– that’s bull yuck! You're the biggest clown Chatterbox knows, Bobo!”
“That’s why we gotta kill ‘im, if we ever see his sorry facepaint ass again.” Bobo looked down at his most enthusiastic helper: the little clown with a bright white plastic mask, still too new to the world to be sullied, yet...
Bobo doesn’t care for him… but he does need him. Bobo is starting to understand that.
“If you ever see him again, kill him, Chatterbox,” he repeats.
“Chatterbox will!” He’s awake with a burst of energy, excited to be given a task.
And a fun one, at that!
“And tell Giblets the same. I don’t want no other clowns skulking around here! They may be a clown, but they ain’t one of us. I’m your only family, you hear me?”
“We’re a family?” The little clown asked– emotions that Bobo hates to hear teeming in his shaky voice.
… but he knows not to crush them-- not this time. No, he lets it linger: the feeling of ‘belonging’ that the stupid boy feels from just a word.
A word he’s probably never heard before...
A lie.
But Bobo smiles.
Fear, and family…
They’re the keys to making the boy do whatever he wants.
“That’s right. The clown family,” Bobo says, and leads the boy back inside. “And this is our home. And we'll do anything to protect it, ain't that right?”
"Yucking right!" The little clown echoes. "Anything to protect it."