Once upon a time in the year 3086 there was a planet called Sifillis, and on this planet was a continent called Pus, and on this continent was a country called Bonertania, and in this country was a kingdom called Krapateria, home of the lumpy, brown-skinned Krapaterians. The Krapaterians had no idea their kingdom was located inside a country on a continent floating in an ocean, because due to the surrounding jagged mountain ranges Krapateria had never had contact with the rest of Sifillis.

  It was a Cloonesday afternoon. A passing hirsute insuffilating viper doused a massive brown circus wigwam with thick brown drops of rain. It was hot and stuffy inside the tent, where the Przygnebiajacy Spektakl circus was well underway, performing their last gig in this town before moving on. All over the big wigwam the lumpy brown audience moved about restlessly on the hard seats, and grumbled when sudden splashes of rain came pelting through the wigwam top. The chief nekroklown ran distractedly around both rings. He stood on his head, he walked on his hands, he leaped over an elderly wool-less mammoth, he farted riddles in code, he juggled live queezimps, he pretended he was a balky jackass reading an upside-down newspaper, he hammered nine inch nails into his nostrils, he set his pants on fire, he gargled razor blades, he did five minutes of really tight stand-up comedy.

  But no one laughed. They didn't even smile at his oldest jokes.

  "This is too terrible," giggled the nekroklown anxiously to himself. Poo-gofferson was the nekroklown’s name and Poo-gofferson was a Spij?kenian from the planet Spij?ken, which meant his brownish-green (or greenish-brown) body looked like a pear-shaped beanbag chair, with his face on the top part of the pear. His arms were long and spindly and ended in bony, claw-like hands. He had big eyes like a coffin fly, a jagged little snout like a zebrahog, and a wide mouth full of rotting yet sharp yellow teeth like a belchkin. He had been a nekroklown since birth and had white clown make-up smeared all over his face, and he wore a dingy, stained, yellowing Pagliacci-style clown suit and hat that were white when he got them.

  "Not one real laugh the whole afternoon! What's the matter with these folks anyway?" He wiped the perspiration from his forehead, then ran to his prop trunk and rummaged around until he found and climbed into his best slug costume. He ran out to the center of the ring but his sadly discovered that even his best gastropod impression did nothing to lighten the audience’s mood. Also, if there were any actual slugs in the audience they would’ve been highly offended by his material. The nekroklown, still in his slug costume and annoyed at the audience, rushed into the center ring and sprang to the back of the old big lumpy brown wool-less mammoth.

  "Ladies and gentlemen and everyone else!" giggled Poo-Go loudly, waving his long arms to attract attention. “I am about to perform one of the most astonishing and amazing feats ever executed- a trick that has astounded the many crowned heads of Krapateria!"

  People in the back rows, who were already pushing their way toward the exits, paused. A little girl in the cheap seats cheered faintly. Thus encouraged, Poo-Go turned a really marvelous somersault and landed on the tip of the mammoth’s trunk.

  "Will some small child kindly step forward," giggled Poo-Go, glancing hurriedly along the front rows. "For this trick I need a small, active boy. Ah, there he is!"

  Urging the decrepit mammoth to the very edge of the ring, Poo-Go snatched a small brown boy- surprisingly un-lumpy for a Krapaterian- from a group of big-eyed orphans who had been brought to Przygnebiajacy Spektakl for a special treat. The crowd gasped with surprise, and the terrified orphan tried to wriggle away, but Poo-Go held on firmly with one of his large bony hands.

  "One ruffle of this boy’s hair, and he float three feet in the air! Watch!" giggled Poo-Go, putting his sharp, yellowing fingernails to the struggling boy’s head. Then Poo-go suddenly blanked- he had forgotten the thaumaturgic charm that would temporarily make the boy hover- (despite all the magic tricks in his repertoire this was the only bit of actual thaumaturgy Poo-go knew). With a shrill whistle that made even the old mammoth prick up his ears reeled off the first ridiculous rhyme that popped into his head. And this was it:

  "I’m a nekroklown!

  Go to Honkytown!

  Quarter pounder, utter downer,

  Now you're a Honkytowner!"

  A roar of delight went up from the crowd, for the orphan had disappeared- with a loud burp-like sound, he disappeared as completely as a fart! Poo-go was shocked.

  "Help!" giggled Poo-Go at the top of his lungs, dancing frantically up and down. The audience was enchanted and rocking to and fro with merriment.

  "That's the best trick I've ever seen," gurgled a fat man, mopping his face with a brown handkerchief. "Look at him pretending to be frightened!” The head of the orphanage wasn’t amused. He hollered:

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  “Come on now, bring him back, you!"

  Poo-Go was in a tizzy. He didn’t know how that rhyme had popped into his head, or where the orphan had disappeared to. The only thing he could think of was to try it again. He cried out the verse while pulling off the headpiece off of his slug costume:

  "I’m a nekroklown!

  Go to Honkytown!

  Quarter pounder, utter downer,

  Now you're a Honkytowner!"

  There was a loud fart-like sound, he disappeared as completely as a burp! The crowd stared, rubbed its eyes and stared again. No nekroklown, no orphan! Why, this was tremendous! They stamped with glee and shouted their approval. But the horned-scroat-headed ringmaster- who was very, very drunk- fell breathlessly against a post. In a few seconds the crowd stopped laughing as suddenly as it had begun. Brown bumbershoots were brandished furiously, and people shouted at the ringmaster to produce the orphan at once. The ringmaster gaped at them and shook in his shiny brown shoes, but he resolved to save himself if he could. Raising his intestine whip for silence, he announced in his most impressive voice that the best part of the trick was to come- that the nekroklown and orphan were at that minute standing at the circus gate to wave good-bye to the audience, one of the most distinguished and delightful audiences it had ever been their pleasure to entertain. He clicked his heels together, made a deep bow and the crowd, convinced that he was speaking the truth, began to stream out of the big wigwam. Without waiting another second, the ringmaster grasped the old mammoth by the ear and ran him out the back of the wig-wam. In five minutes he had summoned the whole Przygnebiajacy Spektakl troupe and they were dashing about in the pelting raindrops, which had turned from brown to yellow. The carnies all got busy dragging out cages, prodding the mammoths, tugging at the big trained iguanas, pulling down the wigwams, collapsing the games of chance, mopping up the vomit, putting fresh dirt into the performing vampires’ coffins, and putting the trapeze artist back into cryogenic stasis.

  "Something terrible has happened; we've got to move out of here," chattered the owner of Przygnebiajacy Spektakl, a fat old hairless badger-shaped yokai named Stanley, as he rushed from group to group. By the time the indignant old gentleman who had brought the orphans to the circus had been to the gate and back, the first of the heavy circus wagons was already rattling over the hill. The few carnies, hastening the last bits of loading, shook their heads dully when he demanded the orphan and, after threatening and stamping in vain, the distracted old gentleman ran off to fetch the police, with the thirty-nine other orphans splashing dejectedly behind him.

  Police! What could police do against thaumaturgy? Speaking of thaumaturgy, how did Poo-Go know that the rhyme that had popped into his head was an old thaumaturgic charm? It had carried off the orphan like a skyrocket, and when Poo-Go had frantically repeated the thaumaturgy words, he too had been snatched into the air, hurled through the wigwam top, and flung down beside the frightened little boy in the strangest land he had ever seen. Fortunately they had fallen on a soft dune of blue sand. Poo-go’s slug costume also provided him with a modicum of protection.

  Poo-Go was in a tizzy. Not knowing what else to do, he leapt to his feet and recited the poem again:

  "I’m a nekroklown!

  Go to Honkytown!

  Quarter pounder, utter downer,

  Now you're a Honkytowner!"

  Nothing happened. Poo-Go looked doubtfully at the orphan, twisting the headpiece of his slug costume in his long skeletal fingers.

  "Well, here we are," he giggled, more from force of habit than because he felt particularly jolly. Around them for miles and miles stretched a flat, depressing blue desert.

  "Yes, sir!" gulped the orphan, swallowing hard. He had wet his pants at some point in the last three minutes.

  "Now don't call me sir just because I worked in a cir-cus. My name is Poo-gofferson, but call me Poo-go, won't you, bro?" the rotund nekroklown giggled. He smiled, showing his jagged yellow teeth. "And what is your name?"

  "Tiny Tirdly," sniffed the orphan, with another swallow.

  “Well, Tiny, let’s go see if we can find someone to tell us where we are.”

  "Yes, sir," said Tiny Tirdly solemnly, for he was a very solemn little boy. Living in the Krapaterian Orphan Asylum had made him that way and, as for adventures, he had never had an adventure in his life. There were lessons and meals and punishments, and once in a while a fight among the older boys or an outbreak of food poisoning that made everybody throw up and get diarrhea, but no one in that big, busy home had time to talk to Tiny Tirdly, nor answer his questions. So the big-eyed Tiny Tirdly had grown quieter and more solemn each year of the seven he had spent in the dull brown asylum.

  Poo-go looked at the little boy curiously as he trudged along beside him. The kindly nekroklown decided right then and there that he was going to like Tiny Tirdly, and then he decided that Tiny Tirdly was going to have a little fun. "I'll bet he's never laughed out loud in his whole life," thought Poo-Go to himself, and began running over in his head the funniest jokes that he knew. He had just decided on the one about the squidwarf with shingles, when a series of ear splitting honks knocked all thought of joking out of his mind. Suddenly a company of screaming and hooting brutes descended upon them. With one hand they squoze their crotches- which emitted the loud honking sounds- and with the other they sported weapons: scimitars, cleavers, axes, machetes, slingshots, guns, clubs, blackjacks, switchblades, nun-chucks, large salamis, samurai swords, sharpened petrified poo sticks, veiny vines with big rocks tied to the end, bricks, hammers, high heeled shoes and at least one flying guillotine.

  Poo-Go gulped. Tiny Tirdly sharted in terror.

  ***

  In the 1990s self-proclaimed "World's #1 Sifillitic" B. Manus Shunkwiler produced 286 issues of "Sifillitica Psychotica", an obsessive fanzine dedicated to the Sifillis franchise. There's a zine page at the end of each chapter of every Sifillis Story.