Fear of Clowns

In a dimly lit studio on the edge of a restless city, Lynn Blodgett channels a lifelong dread of clowns into vivid, unsettling canvases. Her paintings—grotesque, animated clown figures that seem to pulse with a life of their own—serve both as a cathartic purge and a mirror to the nightmares that haunt her: a decaying carnival clown that looms in the shadows of her sleep. As her personal life unravels, with a pending divorce and a bitter custody battle over her son Nicholas, the line between imagination and reality begins to fray, and the specters she once confined to pigment start to feel all too present.

The art world embraces her macabre vision, and at a gallery showing, Lynn catches the eye of Tuck Reed, an enigmatic entrepreneur who runs a roller‑coaster empire. Their connection is charged, a mix of curiosity and mutual fascination, as he offers a lucrative commission that promises to elevate her work beyond the confines of her studio. Their meetings are punctuated by fleeting, unsettling moments—a shirtless clown with black eyes watching from the street, a sudden, inexplicable presence on her patio—hinting that the figures she paints may be slipping beyond the canvas.

Against this backdrop of soaring ambition and personal upheaval, a new, ominous presence begins to stalk the edges of Lynn’s world. The figure, known only as Shivers, appears in fleeting glimpses, his unsettling stare and silent menace echoing the terror of her childhood nightmares. As the city’s ordinary rhythms continue—gallery openings, legal consultations, and tense family negotiations—an undercurrent of dread grows, suggesting that the terror Lynn has been trying to exorcise may be manifesting in ways she never imagined.

Last Updated: November 25, 2025 at 15:04