The last trick

The chill of that cell didn't come from winter, but from the void left by the monarch when he hanged his body. Every midnight, the clown rehearsed steps for whoever inhabited the rocky seat, though his little bells fell silent, frozen by an unknown fear.

The apparition didn't smile; it merely raised a transparent tooth, pointing at the empty gallows, asking for the joke that had taken his crown.

Then the clown remembered that he himself had been the executioner, dressed as a comic actor, and that when he pulled the rope taut, the king had offered him a grimace identical to the one that now hung suspended in that polluted air.

That very night, the ghost spoke for the first time: "Tell him that story again." And the comedian, opening his mouth, felt his own laryngeal passage transform into a mobile knuckle.