The Synoptic Circus

( forward by The Joker )

FOREWORD: A LITTLE... INTRODUCTION

So... you picked up this little... sideshow, did you? FUNNY. People are always picking things up. Rules. Morals. Herds. Which fork to use. Like it matters. Like any of it . . . sticks.

That’s the joke. The real joke. Not the squirting flowers or the... pfffrrrrbbttt noises. Though those are classic.

Five painted freaks. Crammed in like maggots in a wound. Each one clutching their little... story book. They’re desperate. Desperate for someone to tell ’em they got the script right. That their version of the magic trick is the r e a l one.

It’s just another set of rules. Another way to tell everyone else they’re wrong. To feel... special. To ignore and feel in control simultaneously.

Control. That’s the real disease.

Predictable.

Silence. Now that is beautiful, isn’t it? They see they’re not scholars. Not theologians. Nor keepers of the sacred flame. They’re clowns. Trapped. Breathing each other’s stink. Waiting for a cue from a Stage Manager who might just be... on break. Permanently.

They start mumbling again after. Of course they do. Old habits. Like dogs returning to lap up their own vomit. But the fire’s gone. They know. Deep down in their clown shoes, they know. The script’s a prop, manipulated by greed and cowardice—but, that’s another story, eh?

Ha! Ah. Eh. Oh

.

Ye-ah.

Enjoy the show. It’s the funniest thing you’ll ever read. Because it’s true. And truth, as we know... is the funniest joke of all. Especially when it’s covered in greasepaint, wears a red nose, big shoes, and is screaming into a rusted tin can.

Why so serious?

— The Joker, Himself

---

The Synoptic Circus

The rust-scabbed, primrose-yellow Volkswagen Beetle wasn’t just parked; it was festering. It sat under the jaundiced, epileptic spasm of a single carnival bulb like a bad tooth in a dark mouth. Outside, the Carnevale di Venezia moldered in the mist. Beyond the car’s fogged windows, the silhouettes of plague-doctor masks and silk-clad aristocrats glided through the Venetian damp like elegant ghosts.

Inside the Beetle, however, the air was a sentient soup—a humid rot of rancid Mehron’s Clown White, despair-sweat, and the gaseous ghost of a cabbage-heavy lunch trapped in cotton-polyester blends of meaningless stripes and polka dots. Five clowns—less performers, more a collection of nervous tics and existential dread—were crammed into the cabin like sardines auditioning for a tin can commercial.

And then there was the Sixth. A mime named “Q“.

He sat invisible to the casual observer, a silent, white-faced phantom upon whom the others unconsciously leaned for their very structural integrity. He was the Quelle; the source from which the noise flowed. He said nothing. He simply was.

Barnaby Bubbles, the Englishman, cracked his skull against the rearview mirror with a wet thwack.

“Right then! Attention, you aesthetically offensive pile of theological offal! It’s Matthew! The First Gospel! The Lion of Judah! Tax collector! The bridge from the Old Covenant! It’s the only way to start the bloody show!”

“Mentiras!” Esteban Estruendo roared, his red nose vibrating with caffeinated fury. “Marcos! El primero! Pum, pum, PUM! Acción! Poder divino! Pedro le dictó todo a ese niño. Es el evangelio del ‘inmediatamente’!”

He slammed his fist onto the gearshift, causing the car to lurch and sending Barnaby’s nicotine-yellowed finger directly into Pierre Le Soupir’s eye.

“Ah, mon oeil!” Pierre shrieked, batting the finger away with a wilted silk ruffle. “Barnaby, you turnip! You speak of tax records, non? Luc! C’est l’érudit! L’historien! Il a interviewé la Vierge Marie! Ce n’est pas un commérage, c’est une documentation révisée par des pairs!”

“Ach! Halt die Fresse!” Klaus Stumpf barked from the corner, his knees pressed against his chin like a folding chair. “Peer-reviewed? Lächerlich! Alles ist Märchen! ‘Matthäus’ ist ein bequemes Phantom! ‘Lukas’ ist ein Tourist! Ihr sucht nach dem historischen Jesus in einem Clown-Auto!”

“João...” Fernando Sussurro whispered, staring into the dark as if he could see the universe’s warranty expire. “Ele é o Logos. Vocês latem como cães raivosos, mas ele canalizou o sangue e a luz... No princípio era o Verbo, e o Verbo estava apertado neste Fusca...”

“Oh, stow it, Fernando!” Barnaby bellowed, trying to reassert canonical order while his elbow hooked a dangling rubber chicken. “Matthew is the primary source! Canonical order is chronological order! Anything else is intellectually slovenly! It’s like wearing mismatched socks to the Rapture, ridiculous mate!”

“ . . . . Oi! . . ” A muffled, high-pitched yelp came from the trunk. No one was sure who it was, but they all feared it was Thomas, trying to tell them from the darkness that the kingdom of heaven was actually inside the spare tire.

“No me hables de calcetines!” Esteban interrupted, spit flying like holy water from a defective Vatican sprinkler. “Marcos es la verdad que te da una bofetada en la cara! Sin adornos franceses! Sin lagunas fiscales inglesas! Es el hijo de Dios en movimiento!”

“Des lagunes fiscales?” Pierre gasped, clutching his bruised eye. “Espèce de paysan! Luke was a doctor! A scientist! Your Mark is just a campfire storyteller with delusions of grandeur and no grammar!”

He tried to shrug dismissively, but his elbow slammed into the jagged window crank with a sickening crunch.

“Sacré bleu et merde!”

“Gott ist tot,” Klaus monotoned over the shouting, his voice a serrated wire brush dipped in nihilism. “Die Bibel ist ein schlecht editiertes Witzbuch. There is no ‘Q’ source, only the Ur-Gospel of our own stupidity! Nur die riesige, echofreie Leere... and possibly this infernal sciatica!”

To punctuate the “Void,” he slammed his fist on his own knee, accidentally triggering a hidden whoopee cushion nestled against “Q” still struggling for personal space.

Pfffrrrrbbbbttt. The sound hung in the rancid air like a wet ghost. The smell left lingering questions about whether it was a prop at all.

“Was that the Holy Spirit, Klaus, or just your despair leaking?” Barnaby sneered. “Now, as I was saying, Matthew’s traditional apostolic authority—”

“Silêncio!” Fernando’s voice rose, a low tectonic rumble. “Vocês contam moedas e fazem históricos médicos... mas João estava jogando pinoquio com o coração de Deus! He is the first in eternity! The rest? Market-day gossip for the spiritually constipated!”

He leaned forward, his velvet sleeve snagging audibly on Klaus’s razor-sharp, prison-bar stripes.

“Runter mit deinen Samtpfoten!” Klaus hissed, flicking the sleeve away. “’Johannes’ ist ein sonnenstichiger Mystiker auf schlechten Pilzen! Pseudepigraphie! High Christology masking a low-budget circus!”

“It’s not chaos, you teutonic wet blanket!” Barnaby flailed, and the rubber chicken swung in a lethal arc, thwocking Pierre squarely on his already mournful nose.

“MA TRUFFE!” Pierre screamed, his size-24 shoe landing squarely on the inflatable horn bulb beneath Esteban’s thigh.

The horn didn’t honk; it died with a pathetic, deflating pfffffrrrrrtttt.

“Qué? Me pisas el honor?” Esteban jerked the steering wheel like he was wrestling a demon.

This sent Fernando sprawling face-first onto Klaus’s rock-hard knees, triggering a loose juggling pin’s attempt at an unwelcomed, wooden sanctification of an unsuspecting clown-car disciple.

“O coração de Deus... eu não vejo nada!” Fernando moaned into the purple darkness of his own oversized hat.

“I’ve got it!” Barnaby shouted, cracking his head spectacularly on the roof again. His wilted plastic daisy dislodged and drifted down—a botanical halo for a man who didn’t believe in saints—into the immaculate, powdered whiteness of Klaus’s hair.

Klaus sensed the floral violation. His eyes bugged out. He swiped at his scalp, and the motion triggered his own lapel flower—loaded not with water, but with cheap, eye-stinging vinegar. A thin, acrid stream shot out, hitting Esteban squarely in his open, shouting mouth.

The Spaniard’s theological fervor dissolved into a symphony of retches, coughs, and guttural imprecations that would make a Venetian gondolier blush. Pierre winced, kneeing the gearstick into neutral. The Beetle gave a resigned, metallic sigh.

The cacophony detonated. Five voices, five languages, five mutually annihilating truths erupted in a volcanic geyser of spittle-flecked conviction.

“MATTHEW!”

“MARCOS!”

“LUC!”

“JOHANNES!”

“DAS NICHTS!“

The physical absurdity drowned them out: the wet squelch of an oversized shoe on a rubber squeeze horn, the hiss of residual vinegar on Esteban’s lips, the rrrriiiippp of velvet on stripes.

Klaus, locked in a battle against the phantom daisy in his hair, flailed his rigid hands like a marionette controlled by a vengeful atheist. One hand slammed down onto the steering wheel center cap.

The Volkswagen Beetle unleashed one long, soul-shattering, utterly apocalyptic:

HOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONK!

The sound was primal. It rattled their oversized buttons and momentarily silenced the very flies buzzing outside. It was the sound God might make if He sat on a whoopee cushion the size of the universe.

Klaus’s lapel flower spun chaotically. Then, silence crashed down—thicker than Barnaby’s pancake makeup.

Five painted faces stared at each other. Even the silent “Q” seemed to vibrate with the aftershock.

“What does anything matter?” Fernando breathed, his Portuguese accent finally softening into jagged English. “... they are all just names. Names painted on the rotting marquee of a tent... that the wind blew away like tents in a traveling circus, no?”

“Precisely,” Klaus sneered, the serrated edge replaced by a hollow rasp. He prodded the daisy. “Whether the source is M, or L, or a hallucinating taxman... we are still sitting in this... this festering pustule of German engineering. With... this... on our faces.”

He pointed a rigid finger at Esteban’s luminous vinegar smear.

The silence stretched, elastic and profound. They realized, in the vinegar-scented, rubber-chicken-infested dark, the ultimate truth: The script didn’t matter. In the end, they were all wearing the same ludicrously oversized shoes, tripping over the same existential banana peels. They were all breathing the same recycled, rancid air.

They were all just... clowns. Trapped in a cosmic punchline, waiting for a celestial hook that might be eternally stuck in the wings.

The argument resumed, but the fire was gone. It was a low, defeated murmur—a weary recitation performed by five automatons. Barnaby mumbled about Matthew into Pierre’s armpit. Pierre sighed Luke onto Klaus’s shoulder. Esteban rasped Mark at the windshield. Fernando whispered John towards the floor mat. Klaus monotoned nihilism at the rearview mirror.

Five languages. Five truths. One stupid, red rubber nose staring back at all of them from the grimy, cracked glass.

Near the footwell, the mime “Q” slowly reached out. With a single, elegant finger, he traced a question mark in the fog of the windshield. He looked out at the reader—the only one who truly saw the source—and then, he rubbed it out.

And the universe, outside the Beetle, remained utterly, hilariously, and forever silent.