Like all 8 year olds, I treated my birthday like the most important day of the year. You go months before the day picking exactly the right classmates to give invitations to. However, this year my mom wanted to go all out. She gave me enough invitations for my entire class, making sure I knew to tell everyone their parents were allowed to come as well. Not only that but we spent hours upon hours inside of Party City grabbing any and all kinds of decorations.

I can remember not getting a good night's sleep before my party because of how excited I was. My parents woke up around 7am to start setting up for the party that day but I must have been awake at least 3 hours beforehand.

I can remember bouncing up and down as I watched the first guest pull into our driveway. Jump forward a couple hours and our house looked more like a circus. Kids from my class, their families and my family all eating, drinking, laughing. All of my friends treating me like a celebrity as they all gathered around, begging for me to open their gift first. It almost makes me nostalgic to go back and have one more birthday party as a kid...almost.

I don’t know when exactly It started. After the first slice of pizza ? Maybe after the last guest had arrived. At some point, time just began to become a haze.While I would definitely say I felt as if I was on top of the world. It felt as if at some point , something like a warmth begin to spread over me. Starting at my feet,the feeling spread until every vein in my body felt as if it was being filled with cotton. Events just seemed to happen, but I can’t recall the order in which anything transpired. It’s the reason why I can’t remember when “he”, when…”it” first appeared.

Suddenly I just remember being in front of him. My over animated cousins and friends all jumping up and down excitedly, their shouts warbled and tainted as the warmth that overcame me morphed into a bizarre feeling of euphoria. A clown almost 7 feet high; no was he taller. My eyesight succumbed to this feeling as well as everything waved and stretched like I was peering through glasses made of jelly. He towered over all the children.

Overalls, a button down shirt, a pair of oversized clown shoes, some big puffy gloves. All normal clown attire. But it wasn’t wearing bright colors. Every article of clothing he wore was pitch black. So dark that it somehow stood out…if that makes sense. Almost like his clothes were holes in reality. The thing in black danced and twirled, causing the children around him to erupt in applause. Even I was cheering, I could feel myself cheering but it also felt as if I were hearing myself yell from inside a soundproofed room, muffled and somehow foreign.

I can’t speak on how long I felt like this. Was it minutes, hours ? I remember my body walking, walking around my house. Watching everyone mingle. Every turn felt like it was towards the clown. I’d turn left and he’d be sitting at a bench, talking with an adult. I’d turn right and he’d be applauding as a young cousin of mine swung wildly at a pinata. I’d back up and I’d bump into him looking down at me, arms outstretched as if he was looking for a warm embrace.

It’s face was always hidden behind a mask. A chrome mask perfectly resembling the smile of a human. But nothing about the entity seemed human. There were no eyehole in the mask. Just two swirls cut into its surface. A brilliant light unlike anything i’ve seen since, gleamed from the swirls. Everytime I think about it I feel my hands tingle, even to this day. It was ever present anywhere I looked. Was there more than one ? Was I seeing things ? The more I moved the more off putting and nonsensical the scenes would become. One moment I was watching the clown twist balloons into animals and the next, that balloon animal would be biting away at a happy and willing kid, blood covering the animal's head. One second I’d be watching people talk, enjoying food at the party and the next they’d be stabbing food covered plastic utensils into each other, all the while smiling, even when those utensils pierced their face. No matter what I saw, the warm feeling that encompassed my body only made me feel blissful.

What I remember clearest was somehow stumbling into my house. Perhaps in a desperate escape to escape the neverending mind fog, or perhaps it was the call of something unknown. I walked into my family’s kitchen and felt the state of my confusion climax. The best way to explain this transition would be if I had been wading through a kiddie pool and suddenly dropped into a deep end.

I walked into the kitchen to see the clown in black cradling the bodies of two of my classmates. Not just their bodies but their entrails. He held both of them, one in each arm, and rocked them gently. Both had been disemboweled, their entrails wrapped around them like macabre swaddles. With the carnage in front of me I should have been afraid for my life. I should have screamed, should have ran. Instead I could only smile. It felt as if what I was seeing was the most beautiful thing I had laid my eyes on. I could only walk closer. I felt a pain spread across my face as my face moved to form a grin far wider than it was capable. My skin stretched gaunt over my face, my eyes pulled unnaturally open. Tears forming but not flowing. My eyesight faded in and out until the morbid scene in front of me disappeared.

The next thing I know, I’m hanging from a tree. I looked up and hundreds of strands of party string are around my hands, tying me to a branch. All around me, my friends and family all cheer and point at me. I look over the crowd, some covered in blood, some actively bleeding from several wounds.In front of the crowd stood my parents. My dad had his face painted in blood. My mom was smiling but where her eyes should have been were two gaping holes, leaking a thick rainbow fluid. They hug and smile at me as I feel two icy hands wrap around my neck. I feel them squeeze, tighter and tighter.

Like a shadow, the thing in black shifts into my vision , it’s hands around my neck. I can’t breathe but I stay conscious, I’m smiling, wider and wider staring into the clown's face. That chrome mask reflects my happy expression. The glow from those spirals overtaking me. I can feel myself slipping somewhere, is it my mind, and I am sliding somewhere. I feel the clowns grip tighten and tighten until it feels like my neck is the size of a pipe cleaner.

And then I’m in my room. No feeling of confusion and euphoria, just me. I’m standing in front of my window and the sun is rising. I remember everything but it feels like I’m recalling something that happened years ago. I smell breakfast, the sweet smell of bacon in the air and run downstairs to see my parents in the kitchen. The cleanest the kitchen has ever been minus the cooking ingredients scattered around the counter. My mom turns to me smiling. Her face uninjured and like it usually does. She tells me she hopes I enjoyed my party yesterday and that breakfast will be ready in just a bit. I nod but turn and run to the window overlooking our backyard.

I can see a few party streamers here and there but other than that the backyard has been completely cleared. Was it a dream ? Surely it was. But if it was all a dream, why did it all feel so real?

As I eat breakfast with my parents I ask where they got the clown from ? They look at each other then back at me. My dad exclaims that they didn’t get a clown for the party yesterday but if I want one next year I would just have to ask. My heart jumped but I tried to push everything aside and not think too far into it, but then I noticed it. A dark spot in the middle of my vision wherever I look. I wipe my eyes trying to get rid of it but it stays. I tell my mom and she makes an appointment with my eye doctor on Monday.

When we get there the doctor says I have something called solar retinopathy. Says I have a small hole burned into my retina like I’ve been staring at the sun or into a bright light. Suddenly the image of that chrome face with glowing spirals for eyes pushes itself to the forefront of my mind. I tell myself over and over that it was a dream but I know it wasn’t. From my permanently damaged vision to my two missing 8th grade classmates that were never found. The same two I’d seen that thing cradling. I know it wasn’t a dream from the injuries and scars I see on some of my friends and family that were at my party. I’d ask them where they got the scar from and they simply go blank for a minute before saying they can’t remember.

I’m 28 now and I’ve started seeing him again. It only happens on my birthdays but he’s always there. Always at the far ends of my peripheral vision but always there nonetheless. That clown in black.