GOD HATES HEAVY METAL: THE JESTER

My family is dead and everyone thinks I killed them—but it was the Jester, I swear.
I didn’t hurt anyone. He did. He tricked me. It was all just a joke. A bad joke.

I’m getting out tomorrow. Ten years in juvie. They say I’ve made “progress.” That I’ve “accepted responsibility.”

But they’re wrong. I didn’t kill my family. I was the victim. Preyed upon by that toy—that evil thing. 

The Jester.

It all started with a garage sale.

My mom loved them. Every weekend was a hunt—me and her, driving around, digging through other people’s junk while she called it “treasure.” I always hated it, and the kids at school tortured me over it. You haven’t lived until you’ve worn some rich kid’s cast-off Abercrombie hoodie—someone in your class—and been laughed at for it.

Then I found him.

The Jester.

I couldn’t believe it when I saw him.

There he was, sitting at the edge of a busted toy bin like he was waiting for someone—waiting for me. A genuine Jester figure, straight from the ‘70s Mego line. Not a knockoff. Not a reissue. The real thing. Straight from the comic books. 

I lifted him like I’d just unearthed buried treasure. Known as the Trickster of Terror, the Jester wasn’t just the coolest villain in the universe—he was the craziest and most dangerous.

Sure, the costume had a few faint stains, and a thin layer of dust clung to his head like a film of time—but the sculpt, the joints, the paint—intact. His crooked grin, that infamous nefarious smirk, and those wild, psychotic eyes? Perfect. Shiny, too. Glossed over like wet marbles.

Like they were watching. Like they’d been waiting for someone to notice.

The Jester—part horror show, part stand-up act, all nightmare. All mine.

I didn’t even ask my mom to buy it. I just walked over, clutching him to my chest like a prize. But the lady running the sale noticed. She looked up from folding baby clothes and froze. I swear the color drained from her face.

“That thing?” she said, wiping her hands on her jeans. “You can take it. Just... take it.”

I opened my mouth to say thanks, but she was already walking back into her house.

Mom was annoyed. “Jay, I said no more dolls,” she said, giving the Jester a sideways look as we buckled in.

“He’s not a doll,” I muttered. “He’s an action figure.”

The ride home was quiet. I held the Jester in my lap the whole way, tracing the stitching on his tiny costume, brushing specks of dust from this hat. His face was frozen in a half-laugh, half-snarl. Like he’d just heard the punchline of a joke he wasn’t supposed to tell.

That night, I put him on my shelf. He didn’t belong there. He was something else.

I couldn’t sleep. I kept looking at him in the dark. His eyes caught the moonlight like tiny orbs of glass.

I was almost asleep when I heard a laugh.

Then a whisper. Just a whisper, so soft it slid under the door of my brain without knocking.

“Wanna hear a joke?”

My eyes snapped open. My heart hammered in my chest. I sat up in bed, thinking it was Zack, my brother, messing with me again.

“Who’s there?” I whispered, barely breathing.

“Your brother,” the voice said. It had a rasp to it, like it was scraped from inside a throat too dry to speak.

“He’s gonna have a bad fall on the stairs tomorrow. Real funny, ain’t it?”

I didn’t move. I stared across the room. The Jester hadn’t moved either. But he was facing me now. I was sure I’d left him looking out the window. I closed my eyes. Then I heard him cackle.

The next morning, I couldn’t stop staring at Zack.

He slurped cereal, then flicked a spoonful of milk at me across the table. He teased me as usual and called me Garbage Pail Jay when Mom wasn’t listening.

My heart thudded like a hammer in my ears. I kept waiting.

And then it happened.

He ran up the stairs to get his backpack like he always did. Took them two at a time. But this time, his foot slipped.

I still hear the crack his neck made when he landed at my feet, a broken corpse.

I screamed. Mom screamed. She thought it was an accident. So did the cops. So did everyone.

But I knew. The Jester had told me. He did it.

That night, when I looked at the Jester, his smile seemed to widen before my eyes. Just a little. His teeth sharper. His eyes... hungrier. Then he blinked.

I turned away. Teeth clenched, eyes closed, I was frozen with dread. Then that maniacal laugh came again.

“Wanna hear another joke?”

I didn’t answer. 

“Why did the cheater cross the road?”

I whispered, “Why?”

“To get his throat slit.”

Dad was next.

He didn’t live with us anymore after Mom caught him with Donna—her best friend. But I knew where he parked his car when he visited her apartment. It was late. The Jester made me wait in the bushes, holding him up so he could see.

But in his hand now was a plastic knife that hadn’t been there before.

When Dad came out, laughing with Donna, holding her hand like he used to hold Mom’s, I watched. The Jester stepped out of the shadows, flailing the hunting knife Dad had given me for my birthday two years ago.

The Jester laughed and laughed.

The figure was back in my hand. Two bodies at my feet. I shook with fear.

I threw him to the ground and ran home.

The blood made my shoes sticky. After a shower to clean myself off, I jumped into my bed. I couldn’t sleep, replaying the horrific events of the night in my mind.

The next morning I awoke. And there he was.
The Jester was back on my shelf. Sitting upright. Looking out. His smile, even bigger now, mocking my terror.

Waiting.

Then came Mom.

He giggled. Then told me the best jokes always come in threes.

“Wanna hear another joke?”

I turned away and buried my head in my pillow.

“This one is the best joke yet. The grand finale.”

I cried. I begged him to stop.

He just grinned.

“What do you get when you mix Xanax, vodka, and a box of matches?”

“No,” I whispered.

“A pile of ash with your name on it.”

The fire spread faster than I thought. I stood in the driveway holding him, watching the house burn, listening to the screaming. Listening to him shriek with delight. His face, familiar. Terrifying.

I threw him into the fire. 

When it was over, I was alone.

They found me two days later, hiding in a drainage pipe across the street from the house where the garage sale was. The place where my nightmare began. 

I was waiting for her. The woman. She knew. That’s why she gave him to me. She cursed me.

I told the police the whole story about the Jester and the evil afflicted upon me by that woman. But they didn’t believe me.  

They questioned her about the garage sale. She swore never even gave me a toy. The Jester never moved from her bin. 

But I know what I saw. What I heard. I know what he did. To them. To me.

With every death, he changed. Just a little. A knife here. A freckle that matched Mom’s, there. A chipped tooth like Zack’s. A plastic chin, just like Dad’s. 

But by the end, the Jester looked just like me. It was my face.

That’s the part that keeps me up at night.

When I close my eyes, I see him—me—grinning.

Tomorrow, I walk free.

They say I’m better. Rehabilitated.

But sometimes, when it’s quiet, I still hear that giggle…then.

“Wanna hear a joke?”

I don’t answer anymore.

Because over the last ten years, I’ve written lots of my own jokes.

Art and story by Hal Hefner.
Produced by Catmonkey Studio