FLASH
Raquel lowered the camera. "Well," she said as she looked at her sister, "The mall has changed, yet again." If anything, that was an understatement. She looked at the mall around them. The floors, ceilings, and floors were a riot of colors and polka dots, stripes, and tie-dyed patterns. Circus calliope music was playing in the background. And of the mall staff, and most of the customers, were dressed like clowns. Even the latter who weren't, at least half, were wearing clown makeup or face paintings, or sporting clown noses. The stores were now selling various clown costumes, makeup, props, or novelties. The family they'd used for a test subject now consisted of a female auguste clown fully dressed, painting the faces of a cluster of 6-year-olds and a male whiteface tying balloon animals. The skanky looking teenager who'd been their first test subject was now a shabby looking hobo clown panhandling. At what had been a beauty salon, customers were going in as themselves, and coming out in full clown costume and makeup. "But at least we're back to our normal selves."
Elissa giggled. "I wouldn't say that, mi hermana."
Since they were little girls, Elissa and Raquel both loved clowns. They took several clown workshops and seminars together, and developed their personas, La Rosa and La Margarita. At first La Rosa was Elissa's character and La Margarita Raquel's. But as they kept performing together, they became so in synch with each other that sometimes they would switch costumes and personas. And now they were dressed as said personas, Raqual as La Margarita and Elissa as La Rosa.
La Rosa was a whiteface clown with simple, elegant makeup-white greasepaint covered her face, with her eyes outlined in smoky black, with lush curly black eyelashes and the eyelids shaded blue. High on her forehead were arched black eyebrows and her cheeks blushed a soft pink. A red clown smile was painted on La Rosa's lower lip that stretched halfway to her chin, and glued to the center of her face was a bright red clown nose the size of a golf ball.
La Margarita was an auguste clown with a yellowy orange complexion and white patches around her eyes and a white muzzle around her mouth. The rest of her makeup was similar to her sister but more exaggerated to show her goofier nature. Her eyelids were shaded orange, her lashes longer and curlier. The clown smile inside the muzzle was black and looked like her mouth was always open. Her clown nose was bigger than her sister's, almost as big as a peach.
True to the sisters' Latina heritage, they were both wearing traditional Mexican style folk dresses. La Rosa's was blue with white and red at the borders and covered with red rose print. In her curly blue mono style wig she had a peineta comb with a red rose over her left ear. Her sister's dress was the same style but mostly green bordered with white and yellow and daisies printed in the same color. La Margarita even had her wig in the same mono style only green and a white daisy to go with her peineta.
"You want to try again, por favor?" La Margarita asked, useing her goofy alto clown voice. "Maybe we can get the mall back to normal."
"No se, mi hermana," La Rosa answered back. "I'd kind of like to explore the mall like it is now. Who knows, maybe we can buy some things to use for our routines."