Page 46 - Unlikely Stories 4

The Magic Clown

“Lava lamp,” mused Ann, running through her mental inventory of
conjuring tricks and optical illusions. “I don’t recall them in anyone’s
act.”
Riga laughed, a diminuendo of nasal barking.
“Let me repeat: I was not in the slightest bit interested in magic. I
wasn’t one of those kids who hang around novelty shops, picking up
cheap shrink-wrapped tricks and taking them home to practice after
school. That would have been too much like work. No, I got the lamp
purely for amusement. But when I got home and took a good look at
it, I realized that I had probably been cheated—even at two dollars!
The thing was not a standard factory-assembled mass-produced item:
someone had put it together from spare parts, probably a guy who
picks up pieces of junk and tinkers until he can come with some kind
of hybrid gadget that sort of looks like a real commercial product.
Well, all I wanted to do was see it work, so I replaced the cord, put in
a new light bulb, dusted it off, set it on my kitchen table and plugged it
in.”
He paused. Dramatic effect? wondered Ann. Or just another
memory lapse? “And then what happened?” she uttered mock-
breathlessly.
“At first not much. The bulb slowly started heating up the heavier
goo at the bottom. As I remembered from the lava lamps that I had
seen years before, it began stirring like a living creature, an amoeba
swaying to and fro before it finally developed the strength to break
away from a surface getting increasingly hot. But instead of coming
off the bottom one blob at a time, the whole thing suddenly lifted up
and headed for the top of the glass container. Must be the result of
improperly calculating the relative densities of the fluids, I thought,
and reached out to unplug it. I was too late: instead of decelerating as
it ascended and cooled off, the stuff—which was fluorescent green, by
the way—was going so fast it hit the top of the lamp with enough
force to knock it off. Oh, no, I thought: now I have a big mess to
clean up, and right on the kitchen table! But I was wrong. Very
wrong.”
Tony Riga slumped, his recitation interrupted by a lapse into
rumination. Ann noticed the telltale skin discoloration around the
eyelids of a person with years of greasepaint application and removal.

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