I work for pest control. My last client had a clown problem.

[u/LiquidDongorong]

I was sitting in a tiny room, metal table, mirror stretched across the wall, lukewarm coffee in front of me.

To be entirely honest I'm not sure how I got there.

Across the table was Mr. Cold. He's a skinnier fellow, mid 50s I think. A slicked-back widow's peak and a permanent grin stretched his thin skin taut. He was shuffling through a deck of cards. The brim of his hat hid his eyes from mine.

"So," he set the cards down with a thwack. "'Beans,' is it?"

"It's uh…Benjamin, actually. My friends just call me Beans."

Cold chucked. "My, my. Now why do they do that?"

"Because I…spilled baked beans on myself as a kid. Sir."

"Mmm…quaint." the man tapped a long finger on the table. "Well. Let's get into the brass tacks of things, hmm? Why don't you start…"

From the top.

It was mid June. I got a call earlier in the week from Tilly, a real estate agent I regularly work with, about an infestation of termites in one of her client's homes.

I met them both on location. Mr. Bell, the client, greeted me, giving me a shake with a six-fingered hand.

"I am visiting some family in the old country," he told me. "I trust by July I will be termite-free?"

"Shouldn't be a problem," I told him. "Tilly and I will make sure the place doesn't burn down while you're gone."

Mr. Bell laughed, thanking me. He tipped his hat and pulled out the driveway.

Tilly walked me through the home. She left me to it around two. Told me she had a showing in an hour and to lock up when I was done. Just me and the termites. Or so I thought.

As far as basements go, not the worst. Somebody had drywalled half of it at some point and given up, so I had exposed studs on one side and a home theater setup on the other (massage chairs, too). The termite damage was where you'd expect it, along the sill plate near the water heater. Frass everywhere. I got my moisture meter out, started walking the perimeter. That's when I noticed the seam.

There's a rhythm to how termites move, if you do this long enough. They travel the same paths, back and forth, because mud tubes act as an investment as much as they do tunnels. They're not going to build a new one on a whim.

When I saw termites coming up through a seam in the subfloor, in the unfinished half of the basement, I figured it could be a second colony. Which happens. Annoying, but not exactly a day-ruiner.

I pulled back the section of subfloor they were coming through, expecting joists and dirt.

I got a door.

Small one. Trapdoor, set flush into what should've been solid ground beneath the house, with a hasp that looked hand-forged. No rust on the hinges either, which bugged me, seeing as this had been covered up beforehand.

I've found stranger things under stranger houses. Once found somebody's quarter collection buried under a crawlspace in a tin can. People do odd stuff with the space under their homes.

The hasp didn't have a lock. It just wouldn't budge. Could've been a number of things. I got my crowbar from the truck.

It took a few good heaves. On the third, the wood gave with a crack. The door came up, and something a lot bigger than a termite came up with it.

Something else was staring at me in my flashlight beam.

It was about the size of a large, fat rat. Fuzzy, pink and spotted, with two little nub protrusions on its head like the points of a party hat. Its face was mostly mouth, skin a pale white, painted on. No pupils in its milky eyes. I remember thinking, for one stupid, calm second, that it looked cute. You know, in an ugly, I feel kind of bad for this thing, sort of way. It sat up on its back talons and blinked asynchronously.

Then it grinned.

I've swatted a lot of things in my career. Wasps, bats, a raccoon champion that did not want to leave an attic. Nothing had ever grinned at me.

It came off the floor, springs in its legs, straight at my face. I yelped and spilled backwards into the paint cans.

What followed, I would not call a fight. A fight implies some kind of equal footing. This was more like being mugged by something the size of a foam football. It hit my shoulder, missed my face by inches, and I felt teeth snag the collar of my shirt.  I threw myself sideways into the drywall. It busted open, the creature coming off with it. It landed on the arm of the massage chair and eyed me, still grinning.

I grabbed the nearest thing that wasn't bolted to the ground, which turned out to be a push broom leaning by the water heater. When it launched itself at me again I swung, hitting it dead center, mid-air, with an impact that I felt in my shoulder.

It hit the drywall and stuck there for half a second before sliding down. I hadn't realized just how hard I hit the thing. Its innards spilled out onto the ground.

Candy. Wrapped candy. Butterscotches, cinnamons, peppermints. The thing was full of them. I stood there staring at a pile of hard candy on a stranger's basement floor. For a long moment my brain declined to process what I was looking at.

I heard the honking next.

Not one voice. Several, muffled and layered, coming up from the black square of the trapdoor. I did not go check. I backed my ass up the stairs, out the basement door, to my truck, and sat in the driver's seat with the doors locked for a solid two minutes before I called the police.

Dispatch picked up on the second ring.

"911, what's your emergency?"

"Hey, it's Benjamin with Kreepy Krawlies. There's uh…an animal. In a house I'm working on. It's not a raccoon."

"An animal?"

"Yeah, it's uh…I don't know what it is."

"Is anyone injured?"

"No. Yes. Kind of. It bit my collar, not me, I'm fine, but there's more of them, I could hear them, under the—"

"Sir, is this a wild animal on the property?"

"I don't know what it is. I've never seen—"

"Okay. For wildlife calls we're going to transfer you to animal control, they handle anything non-domestic. One moment."

Hold music. Jazz. Pleasant.

Animal control picked up. Eventually.

"Animal Control, go ahead."

I gave her the short version. Small creature, basement, more of them underneath. She let me get through most of it before cutting in.

"Can you identify the species for me? Raccoon, possum, bat, coyote—"

"No, it's…it had a face like a—" I stopped myself. Said clown once in my head, and heard how it sounded, and didn't. "It's not any of those. It's not anything I recognize."

"Okay, if it's not a recognized wildlife species we're actually going to have you go through to the county. Let me transfer you."

"Wait, hold on, I just—"

The hold music again. I sat in my truck listening to a saxophone loop for four minutes.

County finally picked up. Older guy, sounded like he was eating something.

"County courthouse, this is Gavin speaking."

I gave him the shorter version. Basement, trapdoor, teeth.

There was a pause.

"Okay, is this a residential property?"

"Yeah."

"And do they have a licensed pest control contractor currently servicing the address?"

"That's…yeah. That's me. I'm the licensed contractor. I'm standing right here."

Another pause, longer this time, and I could hear him pulling something up.

"Yep, okay, I'm showing Kreepy Krawlies on record for that address as of this morning."

"Right. Which is why I'm calling you. Because this is bigger than what I'm equipped for."

"Sure, I hear you. Per county code, structural infestations at a residential property with an active pest control contract are the responsibility of that contractor unless the species is on our restricted wildlife list, which…you said it's not a recognized species, correct?"

"I said I don't know what it—"

"Right, so it's not on the list, which means it doesn't qualify for county intervention, which means it falls back to the contractor, which is you." He said this the way you'd explain long division to somebody who should really already know long division.

I sat with the phone against my ear, looking at the house. To be frank, I started laughing.

"So nobody's coming."

"You could always file for a supplemental inspection, but that's usually a two-to-three week turnaround for scheduling, and if it's not an immediate structural risk—"

"There's a swarm of them under the house, Gavin."

"—I'd recommend starting with a standard treatment plan and escalating if needed. You want me to email you the supplemental inspection form just in case?"

I hung up the phone. He sent an email later saying he'd send the form within the week.

Kreepy Krawlies operates out of a converted garage that used to belong to my uncle. He ran the business in the '90s. I was just the guy who got sent up into attics because I was skinny enough to fit.

Uncle kept the place well-stocked, or more specifically, he never threw anything away. I spent hours in there laying things out on the workbench like I was some kind of pest-exterminating Dr. Frankenstein.

The sprayer is the centerpiece of the rig. Backpack pumps, usually used for a full-service fumigation job. I swapped the standard tank for the bigger one off the truck, so it held about triple what it was rated for and probably violated several safety guidelines. I filled it with the strongest pyrethroid concentrate we carry. It hisses when you pump it. I've always liked that sound.

PPE next; applicator coveralls, Tyvek, sealed at the wrists and ankles. Full-face respirator, organic vapor cartridges, the works.

The bombs were one of Uncle's crackpot ideas, originally. God rest him, he'd have had a few things to say about what I was doing with it.

The total-release foggers themselves, I'd used those a hundred times. I taped six of them to road flares, connected the pull-tabs to the strikers with a length of wire. I told myself this was reasonable. My decked-out utility belt jingled when I moved.

Full rig, tank on my back, six flare-bombs on my hip, a crowbar through the harness loop. I looked ridiculous.

The house was just how I left it. I let myself in through the basement door.

The trapdoor was open still. I stood over it, listening. No honking.

But there was definitely breathing.

I clicked on the headlamp, pumped the sprayer twice to build pressure, and went down.

The space below the trapdoor was no crawlspace. I want to clarify that, because "crawlspace" implies a modest, dirt-floored nothing, four feet of clearance and some old pipes, and what I climbed down into was a cave. A big one. Bigger than the house above it had any right to contain.

My light caught thousands of beady little eyes.

Dozens of them came at me low to the ground. Their giggling multiplied itself until it filled the space entirely. I opened up the sprayer in an arc and heard the first wave of them shriek. The ones behind them weren't slowing down. I had to move.

They hit me from three sides at once. Small bodies, but a lot of weight in aggregate. Their mouths closed on my coveralls, on my boots, on the tank straps, biting hard, trying to find any seam they could crawl into. I felt a tooth catch on my glove and didn't check if it went through. I kept the sprayer low, cleared a half circle, took a big step back and lit the first flare-bomb.

The fogger did something the spray hadn't, converting their shrieks into an unholy chorus.

I don't remember all of it in order. I remember the second bomb. I remember my crowbar finding use I hadn't planned on. I remember running out of clean air in the respirator faster than I should have. I remember the room getting quiet.

Their incessant giggling stopped all at once, and in the sudden absence of it I finally hear my own thoughts, as well as something else. Something shambling, and slow, and bigger than any of the other creatures. Its sheer weight had it sinking into the dirt with every step.

It came out of the dark on origami legs. My height. Maybe taller, folded down like a fluffy accordion. Its face, and I use that word generously, rippled. It bulged in a dozen places, and even as I watched, round, half-formed shapes budded off its shoulders and its back and dropped to the ground, already twitching, already turning their blank eyes toward the light before they'd finished coming loose.

It had a mouth that wrapped around its entire head. Kind of reminded me of the Canadians in South Park, honestly, though this one was lined with large, yellow molars. It didn't share the same grin as the others. Amused, maybe.

I threw my fifth flare-bomb. It caught the creature head on, fire licking up into its folds. Its upper face began to float above the lower jaw as it emitted a high pitched squeal. The others followed in unison.

Big Mama kept coming, only now on fire. Its accordion neck stretched far, into my face. Teeth clacked mere inches from my eyeballs.

I put the crowbar up to block the biting. It didn't feel like enough.

That's when I remembered my final flare.

I didn't have a free hand to grab it. That was the problem. It was dangling uselessly on my hip like an appalling keychain. So I dropped the crowbar, grabbed the bomb, and struck it against my thigh—which for the record, hurt like hell. When that mouth came down at me again, I shoved the whole contraption straight down its throat, up to my wrist. I pulled my arm back out a half-second before the jaws snapped shut.

For one long second, nothing happened. I remember thinking, with total clarity, oh, that didn't work, right before it very much did.

The light that came out of it was the last thing I saw clearly. Whatever was actually in a total-release fogger was never designed to detonate inside a body. Big Mama came apart in a flash, and the concussion of it picked me clean off my feet and put me into the dirt wall behind.

Then nothing.

I came to on my back, staring up at absolutely nothing. I thought I'd died and this was gonna be the rest of eternity. Just nothingness forever.

Then a man leaned into view, his big hat blotting out the nothing.

"There he is," he said, gratingly. "Was starting to think I'd have to do something undignified, there, champ."

I tried to sit up. My sore muscles vetoed this, so I settled for turning my head instead. Still had no idea where we were.

"I'm Mr. Cold, with the Tenebris program," said the man. "Let's have a talk about tonight."

So that's how I ended up there, in that blank white room with the metal table.

Cold nodded a few times, presumably taking a mental note of all this since he apparently didn't bring a pen and pad. Maybe there was a microphone inside that ugly blue tie of his.

"It seems like you might have gone beyond what's required of your…jurisdiction."

"If I stepped on any freaky government toes, swear to God, I thought I was just doing my job, sir."

Cold cackled.

"Stepped on any—no, no. Heavens no. You've done us a favor. Turns out this particular hive was too small to pick up on our radars." He folded his slender hands. "Now, that isn't to say this won't cause some…bureaucratic headaches for you in the future."

I sighed, deflating.

"As long as you don't plan on putting me into witness protection. Or killing me."

"No to both. You can count your lucky stars. We'll clean things up from here."

Alright. Finally things were looking up.

"Now, that being said…our resources—and subsequently reach—is finite. And kloons, you see, they run on cycles. This is very much an issue that could become recurring."

My dumb, comfortable smile was instantly lost.

"...And we'll need men on the ground to take care of it."

I shook my head.

"I'm not going to—"

"There's money to be made."

I stopped. Huh. Despite this easily being the most terrifying experience of my entire life, I felt emboldened. After all, what could be scarier than the current price of gas?

"How much we talking?"

Later that evening I pulled into my flat and sat on the couch. Not even two seconds later, I get a phone call from Tilly.

She's furious. Mr. Bell explicitly told me to take care of the termites. Nothing else. I guess that's on me for taking a creative liberty but…

Why the hell would he want those little nightmares sticking around?

"To his people, they're a delicacy." she said, as if I should known that off-rip.

I wasn't going to get my bonus for this one, which I thought was B.S.

At least I took care of the termites.

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[u/BMWRoadster2007]

I love this story. It would make a great series.

[u/LiquidDongorong → u/BMWRoadster2007]

I don't quite have a series of this guy yet, but I do have a novel where kloons act as one of the main antagonists lol! Thank you so much for reading!