As we stepped into the bedroom, I immediately felt a chill run down my spine. The room was an explosion of every holiday imaginable. Christmas lights tangled with Halloween cobwebs, Easter eggs mixed in with Thanksgiving cornucopias, and a giant inflatable turkey wearing a Santa hat wedged in the corner. But what caught my eye, and made my stomach drop, was the massive, grinning clown face that loomed from the corner, illuminated by a flickering, ghostly light.
“Oh, heck no,” I whispered, taking an involuntary step back.
Topher, oblivious, wandered farther into the room, casually brushing aside a Halloween bat that had swooped down from a string of Christmas lights.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, glancing over his shoulder at me.
“That.” I pointed a shaky finger at the clown. “That thing. Why is it looking at me like that?”
Topher turned to the clown, a giant inflatable with a face painted in garish colors, its eyes wide and unblinking. A creepy smile stretched from ear to ear, and I could swear its head tilted slightly in my direction.
“It’s just a Halloween decoration,” he said, barely suppressing a grin. “You’re not seriously scared of that, are you?”
“Of course not,” I retorted, but my voice edged toward panic, betraying me.
Topher chuckled and walked over to the clown, giving it a nudge. It swayed ominously, its creepy grin never faltering. “It’s just an inflatable, Kathleen. Look, I’ll even deflate it for you.” He leaned down to find the valve, but just as he did, the clown’s mechanical arm sprang to life, raising a butcher knife in a slow, menacing motion.
“It’s armed!” I screamed, stumbling back into a pile of faux gravestones and knocking over a menorah that was somehow nestled in a bed of plastic shamrocks.
Topher burst out laughing, nearly doubling over as he watched me try to scramble away from the murderous clown. “It’s not armed, it’s automated! It’s supposed to do that!”
“That’s not helping!” I frantically waved my arms to ward off the imaginary attack. The clown’s knife-wielding hand continued its mechanical swing, and my heart pounded in my chest.
Topher, still shaking with laughter, reached over and pulled the plug on the inflatable. It hissed as it began to deflate, the knife-wielding arm sagging pathetically as the clown crumpled to the floor, landing on top of a stack of Fourth of July sparklers.
“There, see? Harmless,” he said, grinning as he turned back to me.
“Harmless?” I echoed, still trying to catch my breath. “That thing was one creepy laugh away from giving me a heart attack!”
Topher wiped a tear from his eye, clearly amused by the whole ordeal. “You’re seriously afraid of a deflating clown?”
“Clowns are bad enough,” I crossed my arms defensively. “But clowns with weapons? That’s a hard no.”
Topher’s face relaxed into a big grin. “I didn’t expect to laugh today, so thank you for that.”
“You’re welcome, I guess.” I rolled my eyes. “I take it this isn’t how your room looked when you were a kid?”
Topher shot me a dry look. “Oh, sure. Every teenage boy dreams of waking up to an inflatable Santa and a bunch of heart-shaped glitter bombs. I guess I’ve been gone so long that my mom decided to use my room for storage.”
He grimaced and nudged a stack of shamrock-covered St. Patrick’s Day hats that were somehow tangled in a mess of Fourth of July sparklers. “And here I thought my worst nightmare was getting roped into a reality dating show.”
I glanced around at the chaos. “At this rate, we’ll be lucky if we can even find the bed under all this.”
We both turned to face the bed. Or what I assumed was the bed, given that it was buried under a mountain of patriotic decorations. American flags, Uncle Sam hats, and red, white, and blue streamers were piled so high that they nearly obscured a cardboard cutout of George Washington, who somehow managed to remain upright in the chaos. His stern expression seemed to judge us for even thinking we could sleep in such a place.
Topher sighed, rubbing his temples. “All right. We need a plan. You start untangling whatever holiday monstrosity is hanging from the ceiling, and I’ll try to find the actual bed under George Washington and his army of flags.”
It soon became clear that the best way to tackle the chaos was to organize everything into boxes, one for each holiday. For about five minutes, we worked in silence, the only sounds being the rustle of tinsel and the occasional squeak from a rogue rubber bat.
After shoving a gang of Thanksgiving turkeys into a box, Topher straightened up, wiping dust off his hands like he’d just finished a major corporate deal. “You know, you’re probably way better at organizing this stuff than I am. Plus, I’ve got some work to catch up on. Maybe you should take charge here. I need to head over to my place in the Garden District. It’s got a better setup for work.”
I shot him a look that could have melted the Santa still half-inflated in the corner. My hands were full of tangled Christmas lights, and I could feel the frustration bubbling up. Of course, Captain Corporate would decide that this wasn’t the best use of his precious time. Heaven forbid he waste a minute not buried in his work.
“No way are you leaving me alone in here!” I snapped, glaring at him as he glanced longingly at his phone. “Those inflatables might decide to stage another attack, and I’m not about to face them solo.”
Inwardly, I fumed. Topher was already plotting his escape to his mansion.Must be nice to have a ‘better setup.’He probably thought he could just delegate everything to me and swoop back in when it was all neatly sorted and boxed up. But there was no way I was letting him off that easily.
Topher let out a small, annoyed sigh but quickly gave in, his shoulders slumping a bit. “Fine,” he muttered. “Guess my work can wait. But so that you know, I’ll probably need to spend most nights at my mansion until my mom gets out of the hospital. The setup there helps me stay on top of things.”
