Summary: by Ken Scholes Read by Bill Bowman Discuss on our forums. For a list of all Escape Pod stories, authors and narrators, visit our sortable Wikipedia page About the Author… He sold his first story to Talebones Magazine in 2000 and won the Writers of the Future contest in 2004. His quirky, offbeat fiction continues to show up in various magazines and anthologies like Polyphony 6, Weird Tales and Clarkesworld Magazine.In 2006, his short story “Of Metal Men and Scarlet Thread and Dancing with the Sunrise” appeared in the August issue of Realms of Fantasy. Later that year, inspired by Allen Douglas’s uncanny painting of Isaak and taunted by his friends and family to finally write a novel, Ken extended that story and Lamentation was born. Lamentation is the first in a five book series from Tor Books called The Psalms of Isaak. Ken lives near Portland, Oregon, with his amazing wonder-wife Jen West Scholes and twin daughters: Elizabeth Kathleen and Rachel Ann. He invites readers to contact him through the website or through his blog. When he’s not writing, Ken loses himself in Story elsewhere or sings Paul Simon songs to his immoveable cats. About the Narrator… Bill started voice acting on the Metamor City Podcast, and has wanted to do more ever since. He spends his days working at a library, where he is in charge of all things with plugs and troubleshooting the people who use them. He spends his nights with his wife, two active children, and two overly active canines and all that goes with that. Making My Entrance Again With My Usual Flair by Ken Scholes No one ever asks a clown at the end of his life what he really wanted to be when he grew up. It’s fairly obvious. No one gets hijacked into the circus. We race to it, the smell of hotdogs leading us in, our fingers aching for the sticky pull of taffy, the electric shock of pink cotton on our tongue. Ask a lawyer and he’ll say when he was a kid he wanted to be an astronaut. Ask an accountant; he’ll say he wanted to be fireman. I am a clown. I have always wanted to be a clown. And I will die a clown if I have my way. My name is Merton D. Kamal. The Kamal comes from my father. I never met the man so I have no idea how he came by it. Mom got the Merton bit from some monk she used to read who wrote something like this: We learn humility by being humiliated often. Given how easily (and how frequently) Kamal is pronounced Camel, and given how the D just stands for D, you can see that she wanted her only child to be absolutely filled to the brim with humility. My Mom is a deeply spiritual woman. But enough about her. This is my story. “Merton,” the ringmaster and owner Rufus P. Stowell said, “it’s just not working out.” I was pushing forty. I’d lost some weight and everyone knows kids love a chubby clown. I’d also taken up drinking which didn’t go over well right before a show. So suddenly, I found myself without prospects and I turned myself towards home, riding into Seattle by bus on a cold November night. Mom met me at the bus stop. She had no business driving but she came out anyway. She was standing on the sidewalk next to the station wagon when she saw me. We hugged. “I’m glad you’re home,” she said. I lifted my bag into the back. “Thanks.” “Are you hungry?” “Not really.” We went to Denny’s anyway. Whenever my Mom wanted to talk, we went to Denny’s. It’s where she took me to tell me about boys and girls, it’s where she took me to tell me that my dog had been hit by a car. “So what are you going to do now?” She cut and speared a chunk of meatloaf, then dipped it into her mashed potatoes and gravy before raising it to her mouth. “I don’t know,” I said. “I guess I’ll fatten up, quit drinking, get back into the business.” I watched her left eyebrow twitch—a sure sign of disapproval. I hefted my double bacon cheeseburger, then paused. “Why? What do you think I should do?” She leaned forward. She brought her wrinkled hand u[...]
