The Splinter
I spent last October working at what must no doubt be one of the coolest jobs ever. I was a Scare Actor at Tulley’s Farm in Sussex, during their annual Halloween festival. Started over ten years ago when the farm held an October pumpkin festival, they’ve been steadily adding new features and attractions to it every year until it became one of the finest Halloween events in the country.
And it certainly is in the country, for that matter. The audition took place on the farm itself, in a large white tent surrounded by pools of mud - a tent which in a few weeks would contain a chaotic circus themed maze, filled with strobe lights and demonic clowns.
After the audition was a training day, where we learned the skills needed for terrifying the paying public, as well as being able to thoroughly explore the basic construction of the circus maze, and the cottage attraction, which was left up all year, hidden in some small part of the shopping area of the farm which I can never quite remember the location of when I return outside of the Halloween season.
The point where I realised that this was going to be one of my favourite things I’d ever, ever done, however, took place about a week later on the rehearsal evening. Both my best friend Anthony and I had been placed in the Hayride. An old-fashioned mud track that snaked its way through the thick woods and eerie, fog-laden fields at the back of the farm, truck-driven trailers full of patrons would be driven through at night, past elaborate horror scenes, through dense tunnels of penetrating darkness and horrendous noises, and directly into the wrath of us; the actors. Oh, yes, there will be strangely mint-flavoured fake blood.
As we wandered the track by foot in the pale, evening sunlight, led by a few of the team leaders, we were able to take in the full detail of the scenes in awed hush. I don’t wish to give away any of the major parts of the attractions to those of you who’ve never been, but it was pretty-much like stepping into my imagination. Even now, ten months later, it still gives me a curious flutter of excited nerves.
For the majority of the run, I was one of the clowns in the Hayride. It’s a great role to be given, for many reasons. For one, you’ve got the most other actors around you. Two clowns on the ground, one on a net suspended in the trees, and one in a jack-in-the-box. The worst thing I found about the two other roles I played was the sensation of being alone. You’re in the darkness of the woods, perhaps in a small padded cell in a huge black tunnel, and often-times all you have to prepare yourself for the next trailer is your diminished senses of sight and sound. Whereas, as a clown, you’re in a pretty open area of woodland, with three other people to keep you company and figure out when to get into position for the next trailer.
After performing the clown a couple of times, I figured out how to get the best reactions out of the audience. A favourite technique would be to keep hunched over low and stalk the trailer while the other clown would sneak up to one side of it and jump up onto it. With everybody’s attention focused on the clown on the side of the trailer, I could jump on through the doors at the back and start moving along the length of the trailer, scaring as many people as I could individually and up close. Soon after, the second clown would join me on the main body of the trailer and we’d work together, figuring out who could be scared the most easily and taking them on at the same time. We developed an art out of those clowns.
It didn’t always go completely smoothly. As the month crept along, the weather became wetter, and the ground muddier. This lead to several nights of hellish near-drowning, fake blood being washed off, and less enthusiastic audiences. On more than one occasion I misjudged my departure from the trailer and ended up landing flat on my face in the mud. Invariably the audience would applaud and laugh, which I suppose is just another side of being a clown. If you can’t scare ‘em, you’ve got to make ‘em laugh.
Naturally, towards the end of each night, the audiences would gradually become smaller. The trailer was a rectangular shape with three benches coming down it lengthways, two on the sides and one in the middle, and a smaller bench across the width at the front, near the tractor. As the audiences dwindled, the middle bench tended to be abandoned, allowing for easier passage along the trailer. So, on one night, early in the run, with two hours to go, I came up with an idea. If I were to take a bit of a run-up when jumping onto the trailer, I could sit on the middle beam and quickly slide along it, allowing me to scare as many people as I could as fast as I could. This went seamlessly on a few tractors, and worked very well for shocking the people at the far end of the trailer, who often considered themselves to be safer than those close to the door. However, there were six trailers in circulation. Three of them were fairly new, and the wood of the benches was smooth and varnished. The other three were older. The other three were more worn.
The other three had splinters.
I jumped up onto the trailer, shouting “Peekaboo!” or some similar clown-ism. The audience gave their customary half scream, half laugh. I observed that once again, the centre bench was empty. I sat on the bench and slid along it, right to the end of it. At the end of it, while facing a small child who was heartily enjoying my antics, a splinter entered my right buttock.
I froze, my face locked in my rictus clown-grin. I believe I may have made a noise along the lines of “GLRRK!” I stood up, and made a quicker-than-usual descent from the trailer, leaving my co-clown up there to finish off.
I ran over to the area where I rested between trailers, and pulled my arm inside my polka dotted clown onesie. I found the protruding chunk of wood and removed it from my flesh, but it left a large amount of sharp wood still in there, pinching me from the inside. The second clown came over to me.
“You left that one early, what happened?”
“I… have a splinter… in my arse.”
“…your arse?”
“In. My. Arse.”
He blinked at me, unsure of whether to laugh or not. In the end, he merely said “You… you should probably try and get it out before the next trailer.”
I set to work, but there was no budging it. It was in there deep. After a little while the team leaders came by on one of their frequent check-up visits.
“Everything okay, guys?”
“Well,” I started, unsure of how to proceed. “The last trailer was fairly rough, and I seem to have gotten a splinter, in…” They stared at me. “In an unmentionable area.”
There was a moment’s silence.
“Knob or arse?”
I finished those last two hours in quiet pain, trying not to move too much or bump the affected area against anything. Thankfully the trailers weren’t too difficult. The waiting was the worst part.
For some reason, on the ride out of the woods and back to the main farm with the rest of the actors, I felt obligated to tell everyone I spoke to about the incident.
“Good night for you, then?”
“Got a splinter. In my arse. Splinter in my arse.”
“…Ouch.”
I got changed back into my civvies, all the while telling anybody who strayed too near that I had got a splinter in my arse. I think I may have become traumatised, slightly. At home, I went at it with some tweezers, and managed to extract what I thought was the worst of it. I could still feel some of it in there, but it didn’t pinch too badly, except for occasionally when I sat down on an uneven surface. I mostly forgot about it, except for when using the toilet, where it would frequently make itself known.
Months passed. Sometime in December, I was in bed, and felt a sudden twinge of pain in that familiar area. I examined it with my fingers, and found an edge of it sticking out, weeping a thin pus. I firmly grasped it between my thumb and forefinger, and pulled.
It was huge. Much, much bigger than I’d expected. It was a full inch and a half in length.
Dazed, I wrapped it in a piece of tissue so I could examine it properly in the morning. When I awoke, however, it had disappeared. The tissue remained, but the splinter had completely vanished from sight.
I wondered if there were some kind of splinter-fairy who overlooked poor souls such as I, and got ready for school, thinking of how I’d describe the ordeal to Anthony.
I’m thoroughly looking forward to returning to Tulley’s this October. However, I may have to request to be put in a less splintery indoor attraction. This clown has suffered enough.
