Envy of Angels by Matt Wallace

Author:Matt Wallace [Wallace, Matt]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Humour, Contemporary, Science Fiction
Goodreads: 25819511
Publisher: Tor.com
Published: 2015-10-19T11:00:00+00:00

PART III

INTO THE CLOWN’S MOUTH

GUIDED TOUR

Their tour guide is the apotheosis of all tour guides.

Ritter, Cindy, and Hara are dressed like tourists. Ritter and Cindy, a teenager’s backpack strapped to her shoulders, both wear Henley’s T-shirts while Hara is decked out in resort wear because there was no article of clothing in the gift shop that would fit him. They’ve mixed in with about twenty other fast-food enthusiasts (or just easily impressed road trippers) eager for a peek behind the scenes of the restaurant chain at which they’ve grown up polluting their bodies.

The lobby of the Henley Corporation’s main corporate offices is clean, modern, opulent, and more or less exactly what you’d expect of a corporate lobby. Its only outstanding feature is a fifty-foot tableau draped from the ceiling. All the beloved characters from the Henley’s mythos are painted together on it, smiling down upon all their friends who’ve come to visit Circus Farm.

There’s Monsieur Udders, the beret-wearing cow who was created after Henley’s added beef to their formerly all-chicken menu of proteins. There’s Postman Potatohead, the most literally interpreted of Henley’s characters with his vintage mail carrier’s uniform and roasted red cranium.

They’re all grouped around one of the most famous clowns in history, Redman Britches, resplendent in his silver-and-crimson costume. Britches is cradling Mrs. Henley herself, the plump and venerable chicken who was the progenitor of it all. Her eggs and chicks were the first items served when there was no Henley’s, only a rickety roadside stand manned by the real Redman Britches.

Mrs. Henley wears her trademark pink-and-silver ruffled collar and colored face buttons. She doesn’t smile, because none of the original artists could render a realistic chicken smiling without it looking horrifying, especially to children.

The group’s tour guide, bright and bubbly with a blond perm that might’ve just stepped from a time machine, walks backward with perfect poise.

“Everyone is of course familiar with the animated versions of the Circus Farm family,” she announces. “Whether you remember them from any of over four thousand commercials through the decades, any one of the five incarnations of the Henley’s Saturday-morning cartoon, or from the related comic books, video games, and our recently launched Circus Farm education app.”

“Jesus,” Cindy mutters.

“You’re riveted,” Ritter informs her.

“Right.”

“What not everyone knows is Redman Britches was in fact a real clown in the 1930s, and Missus Henley was also not only a real chicken, but his star attraction. He fashioned her a costume and trained her to dance to entertain the local children in towns throughout the American South.”

As she talks, the tour guide leads them out of the main lobby and down a broad corridor that branches off through marble awnings into common areas and services for the staff, including an in-house Starbucks.

“Britches the Clown also used Missus Henley as his primary food source. Using her eggs and cooking in a small Georgia shack, almost exclusively for himself, he created the recipes that eventually led to the earliest versions of the Henley’s menu items we have all enjoyed for over eighty years.

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