A man responds to his doorbell being rung on Halloween, but finds that there is no one there. When he returns to the house, he is startled by the appearance of a clown outside his window. He runs to grab a baseball bat to defend himself with, but the clown appears behind him. Frightened, he drops the bat and cowers as the clown approaches him, brandishing a knife. Just as clown seems about to attack him, however, it disappears, and the man wakes up. It was only a dream. He washes his face, trying to clear his head, but then sees the reflection of the clown in his bathroom mirror.

My story drew from a variety of sources. The idea of a clown stalking an innocent person is derived in part from the “scary clown” sightings of 2015 and 2016, in which people dressed as clowns would stand menacingly staring at passerby. The supernatural element of determining between dream and reality makes a bit of a parallel with Stephen King’s It, and the concept of a supernatural murderous being in the form of a clown is obviously similar to the book’s Pennywise. The look of the clown himself is inspired by the Joker from DC Comics, with a few more traditional clown elements like the jester hat and clown nose thrown in to give a more original feel.