Clownish Fate

"Baloney!" cried the clown. "I'm telling you, thanks to Stephen King, all the children in the audience were terrified of your antics. One even called 911 before I could stop them!" His boss sighed as he rubbed his bald head. "Look, I'm sorry Danny. You're fired."

Danny walked out or the office infuriated by his boss's weakness to public pressure. "Always got your back", Danny mumbles as he heads home. Still fuming, he reached in the closet, top shelf, pulled out a suitcase and dusted off his old sniper rifle. Trouble is brewing..

Time warped and cracked, as though some unseen force is mixing up tenses. Danny’s mind reeled as he struggled to keep hold of the sniper rifle he had just grabbed. But what was just the past suddenly snapped back to the present, and now Danny’s rifle is missing. He isn’t in his

Army uniform any longer. No, he’s in the intramural soccer team uniform instead. But he’s holding a baseball catcher’s mitt and a hockey puck.

What kind of messed-up sports mashup was this? This had to be a dream. I squeezed my eyes shut and shook my head. When I blinked my eyes open once more, he was wearing a turtleneck and jeans, and he held out a bouquet of flowers to me. “Let’s try to work this out,” he said. But I

knew it wouldn’t work. It couldn’t work. Not after everything he’s done.

I had no choice but to accept the situation. I resolved to make my peace with it and moved on. Over the following weeks I felt a great weight lifted from my conscience, a renewed energy. Finally, I now had the opportunity to pursue my one true desire,

bungee jumping naked over an active volcano!