Scary Stories — Joker

The narrator, Mark, has known Russell Alison since high school and describes him as the best person he's ever known—and also the unluckiest. Russ's mother abandoned him as a baby, his father was a distant alcoholic, and over the course of two years, Russ lost his father to a heart attack, discovered his girlfriend Stephanie was pregnant by another man, married her anyway, got laid off from his job at a meat processing plant, and then watched Stephanie die in a car crash that threw her through the windshield and thirty feet into scrub grass. Mark became godparent to their daughter Carmen, and after Stephanie's death, he watched Russ grow haunted, barely eating or sleeping, sitting in corners waiting for the next bad thing.

Then Russ called Mark with something like excitement in his voice for the first time in months.

The Box

When Mark arrived, Russ showed him a rusty metal box about the size of a cash box, with no visible latch or seam, only a dark slot at the top. Above the slot was an image of a devil wearing clown makeup, one clawed hand gesturing toward red lettering that read "The Joke Is Wild." Russ said it was an old card game he'd found while making deliveries. He insisted Mark try it immediately, growing almost tearful when Mark hesitated.