One day Heather was walking around a christian music festival with her loving brothers and their charming friends. While she was meandering along, a clown wearing glasses came up to her. Now we all know that clowns are scary creatures—quite frightening with their painted faces and strange clothes—and Heather was quite taken aback.

At this Heather ran screaming through the crowds yelling, “The clown’s coming to get me. The clown’s going to get me!”

A bit startled by this, the clown followed her saying, “I just want to give you a balloon.”

Eventually, Heather reached one of her loving brother’s charming friends, who stopped her and tried to calm her down a little. Meanwhile another of her brother’s charming friends stopped the clown and said “Excuse me sir, but what’s causing all this commotion.”

Faced with such galantry and kindness, and overwhelmed with the recent events, Heather fainted in the arms of her brother’s charming friend. Meantime, the clown explained himself: “I’m terribly sorry to be the cause of such a hullabaloo. I just wanted to give the young lady a balloon. I apologise if I startled her, but it’s not easy being a clown you know.”

The charming young friend was quite understanding. “Our Heather’s a bit of an excitable girl you see. Something gets her all emotional and then it’s nothing but throwing knives, poisoning the house guests, nailing teddy bears to the door and writing in blood on the walls—you know how it is.”

As a gesture of good-will, they tied a balloon around Heather’s wrist and took her home. However, for the next few days, she was afflicted by terrible nightmares of a clown leering at her. After one such incident, she came downstairs for breakfast, and her mother looked at her with a puzzled expression.

“You look terribly pale this morning Heather, except around your lips and eyes, are you feeling well?“asked Heather’s kind mother. Heather looked in a mirror, then fell to the floor screaming “I’m turning into a clown!”

In a moment of most unusual composure, Heather calmed down enough to run upstairs and shut herself up in her room to cry. Suddenly, out of the shaddows, the clown with glasses appeared. “What seems to be the trouble young lady? Perhaps I may be of assistance?”

Heather flew at him, intending to claw his eyes out, yelling “This is your doing. You’re turning me into a clown!”

The clown seemed very calm about having a marginally insane girl rushing at him, trying to claw his eyes out. At the last moment, he performed some incredibly complex judo manouvre which ended up with Heather lying flat on her bed with her arms pinned underneath her.

The clown apologised, “I’m terribly sorry to have to do that, but I’m not the one who is turning you into a clown. You see, I was once a normal human being like yourself, but the evil Clowns turned me into one of their own kind. Now I am doomed to walk the earth looking like this. They are very sinister and have the ability to look almost like normal human beings.”

“How can I stop this?“asked Heather desperately.

“You have the power in the balloon I gave you,“replied the clown, “just rub the balloon and say to yourself three times ‘I don’t want to be a clown.’ It’s too late for me, but your disease is not too far advanced, we should be able to reverse the process.”

Heather did as instructed, and the colour began to return to her face. “But I don’t know any evil clowns,“said Heather, “what would they want with me?”

“Ah, but you have a poster of them on your wall,“replied the clown, pointing at a poster of Hanson “Do you not worship them?”

“But that poster’s only for throwing knives and darts at,“said Heather. “I hate Hanson.”

“Yes, but hate is what they feed on,“replied the clown, “and they must have decided to make you one of their own. You must learn to forgive them for filling the world with such horrible music, or you will once again begin the transformation. I was once a human like you, and I hated the evil clowns with all my heart, then they came for me, and it was too late.”

The clown left, and Heather’s life returned to normal, until one night as she was sleeping with the balloon in her arms, she wispered three times “I want to be a turtle.”

It took her intelligent, loving brothers a little while to figure out what had happened, and then it was almost a year before they managed to find the clown with glasses again. During that time, Heather was quite happy eating algae and water plants. Being a turtle, not much bothered her. It was almost a dissapoint ment for her brothers to have her back as a sister, as they had grown quite fond of having her as a pet. Almost, but not quite, they were too loving for that.

THE END.