"Ughh..." Leonard said. "Ok, grab the door and come in." He advised, letting his foot go from holding the door for Shawn because Rex had moved forward with impatience.

"OK. Rex is always impatient when we get home. He likes to eat, don't you boy? Good boy! Good boy!" Leonard said, patting the dog's head. Rex didn't seem to pay Leonard any attention and instead pushed his head forward, craning it and dragging Leonard along. Madonna's Like A Prayer continued to play, emanating from the stereo although by all accounts it didn't seem like anyone was home.

Shawn slipped inside the door, making sure to close it behind him so that Rex didn't immediately escape. "Wow, he really is hungry!" He's polite enough not to mention the q-tip or the blaring music.

"Leonard!! Did you let that fuckin' Dog out again? What did I say?" yelled a woman's voice from somewhere in the interior of the house.

"No Mom! The Dog is right here." Leonard said, letting Rex go and then sweeping his foot over a pile of dirty clothes that had been left on the floor in the hallway, clearing it out of the way so that Shawn and he could pass.

Shawn walked past the cleared clothes and continued to trail after Leonard. He wondered where they were going.

Leonard opened a door and Shawn could tell right away it was a boy's room. There was a big poster of an Army soldier with a caption that read 'Be All that You Can Be' hanging over a bed with the sheets tossed and pulled in every direction.

Large swathes of clothing was strewn across the floor. The shades were pulled down low and there was a must smell in the air, like the room hadn't been cleaned in a long while.

"This is my room!" Leonard announced with joy. "You can sit on the bed if you want."

Shawn was briefly reminded of his own room, at least in terms of smell. But this room wasn't nearly as bad, and unlike his room, it looked like Leonard had fun playing in here. He sat down on the bed and looked around at his surrounding. "You're got a really cool room!"

Leonard gave Shawn a brief smile. "Yeah, it's pretty fun. It's kind of a bummer though, you know? My Dad is really kind of....mean." The last word came out in a soft way, like he was afraid of being heard.

"Hey, do you like to draw?"

Shawn brightened up a bit. "I like drawing a lot! I just only get a chance to do it for school stuff." He did have a bit of talent for drawing, he'd discovered - he just didn't really get to practice it the same way he did his acting.

"What do you draw? Do you want to look through my drawing book? Whenever I get up from a dream, I draw it. Draw whatever I can remember."

Shawn nodded. "I'd love to see your drawings. I mostly just draw what the teacher tells me to...sometimes I draw people I know."
This message was last edited by the player at 01:07, Sat 04 Jan 2020.

"OK." Leonard said. "Let me go get them." Leonard got up and walked out of the room for a second.

Just then, Shawn saw, amid the mess, that there was something shiny in Leonard's closet. It wasn't glowing in the depths there, but rather reflecting the light.

Curious, Shawn stood up and walked over to the closet, leaning in for a closer look at whatever shiny thing might be in there.

Shawn made his way to the closet just as Leonard entered the room.

"I found the..." Leonard said. Then he rushed over towards the closet, nearly tripping over his clothing that was on the floor. He shut the closet door before Shawn could get there.

"Ummm....I have the drawings!" He said, holding up a the papers, back against the closet door's opening and pushing it shut with his butt. He gave Shawn a look like he didn't want him to see what was in there.

Shawn was a little embarrassed at being caught snooping, so he just acted like it hadn't happened. Instead, he went over to Leonard to take a look at the papers in his arms. "Oh, can I see the drawings?"

"Like I said. I draw what's in my dreams. Here. Here's what I dremt of last night. Huh-huh." Leonard said, handing Shawn a drawing that was a faded piece of paper with light, faded scratch marks that made out the drawing.

Shawn felt his heart skip a beat, but tried to calm himself by remembering that not everyone had the same history of clowns as he did. Instead, he grinned at Leonard to hide his worry. "That's a cool clown drawing. What'd he do in your dream?"

"I dunno." Leonard shrugged. "I don't really remember. I mean, I think if you told me...errr...asked me, yeah. Like right when I woke up. But its just that sometimes I forget about the dreams I have. That's why I draw them. My friend Ned told me to draw them. He said I was good at drawing. So that's why I draw my dreams as soon as I wake up."

Leonard frowned. "But now I don't have any paper left. And Mom won't buy me any."

Then Leonard smiled. "Do you want to see more?"

Shawn thought back to the last person he knew who had dreams connected to the Circus - it had been Ralph, and it made him wonder if they had the same causes. "I sometimes dream about clowns - you ever have a dream where you put on face paint and you are the clown?" He remembered that jar of face paint he'd stolen from the Circus, the one the clowns had used on Ralph to make him a little weird; and how Shawn had sold it to Crowley. Maybe that had happened to Leonard? It felt like it was years ago, but he couldn't look away from the opportunity to learn more about what sort of horrors might be coming from the Circus in the future.

He matched Leonard's smile. "I'd love to see more!"
This message was last edited by the player at 02:40, Sat 11 Jan 2020.

“Alright, I think I’ve thought about that but I don’t remember if I specifically dreamed about the face paint or if it’s just that clowns, you know, they wear most face paint. I don’t know.”

He shuffled through the papers looking to show Shawn another of his drawings. “Maybe if you tell me some other detail, I’ll remember.”

Shawn shrugged noncommittally, though inwardly he was trying to remember details from Ralph's experiences that weren't suspiciously specific but also memorable enough to help Leonard remember. "I dunno, I just kinda remember someone putting the face paint on me, and then I felt bad for some reason. It was a weird dream that stuck in my head for some reason." He stepped closer to Leonard to take a look at his other drawings.

"I don't remember what I really wrote there. I guess I was tired. Kind of a story I think." Leonard flipped to the next page

"Once upon a time there was a si-a circus that had a lot of clowns. One day a clown was given three balls. It was fun for the clown, but was not fun for the big clown. 'I have a wig,' said the big clown. 'I have a wig too'." Shawn read the story out loud, wanting to see if it would jog Leonard's memory. It was innocent so far, but Shawn still didn't trust in the idea of a 'normal' dream about a circus. Not in this neighborhood.

"Oh yeah!" Leonard said. "I think it's coming back to me. I remember that!" He sat straight on the bed. "a clown with a wig..." Leonard mumbled under his breath as if thinking about it and trying to grasp at the faint memories, bring them back to the forefront of his mind.

"Read the next page!" Leonard said, all excited. Then his face frowned. "I mean, if you can. I scribbled it down. I'm sorry, my pencil was all faded. I'm so stupid! Stupid!!!" he said in what sounded like genuine self-disgust, hitting his forehead with the palm of his hand.

"You're not stupid, Leonard. It's amazing you're remembering this much." Shawn squinted at the page for a moment, and his lips moved silently as he unpacked what Leonard's writing said. "Two clowns went to see what was happening. 'What are you two doing?' said the two clowns at the same time. 'He is juggling,' said the big...I bet you meant the big clown, there. But you did a really good job writing this down."