Ruffling the many rows of poofy fabric on her multicolored skirt, Stella steadied herself. For someone so short in stature, Stella felt like a giant before the crowd. That was, of course, a feeling resulted from standing on only the tallest of stilts in each performance the clown put on. "Right now," she thought with great seriousness, "I can go where no preformer has gone before." Thinking of the endless nights spent practicing, Stella steadied herself once more.
"Folks, prepare yourselves to be AMAZED!" She announced with flare (the flare being the way she flourished the two chainsaws out from their hidden position behind her back. Even she wondered, as its steel glinted in the sun, how they hadn't noticed it). Beginning to rev the chainsaws on, she waited for the 'oohs' and 'aahs,' but heard nothing but a stunned slience. That is NOT the reaction any clown wants. Booing is better than silence, at least you invoked a reaction, or that was her philosophy anyways.
Although her internal dialog screamed and cried for what she though to be the ongoing disaster, she began her trick. Tossing around and around the chainsaws with great skill, she walked in circles on her tall stilts. "Now this will blow them away!" She thought, confidence restoring.
But just as she regained that clown like confidence, she heard it... That terrible sound. The sound of a heckler from the audience. Now Stella knew any preformer must be prepared for hecklers, but she thought it was quite insulting to be heckled as a preforming clown. After all, clowns are meant to heckle the audience! The blonde didn't process the words shouted at first, not until after the laughter rose from the audience.
"HEY, DON'T YOU NEED AT LEAST THREE TO CONSIDER IT JUGGLING?" The man had shouted.
The world felt as if it was collapsing around her. Looking around desperately she found no sympathetic faces in the crowd. Truthfully, she had known this fact (she was after all, a clown) but she had expected everyone to be so impressed by the shimmer of the chainsaw blades that they wouldn't notice the missing piece of the act. "What clown can juggle THREE chainsaws?" She thought to herself. She was a clown, not a carny!
Steeling herself for the tomatoes she mentally pictured where incoming, she frowned. "If only there was some way to save this act..." That's when she suddenly struck it, 'idea gold!' Looking out into the street she searched for a passerby, she zeroed in on a passing figure.
"You!" She shouted, "you were supposed to uh... polish my chainsaw! What good is an assistant who forgets to shine- and also misplaces a clowns juggling material?" Pointing an accusatory finger at the figure now, she caught the two saws in one hand. Another silence fell over the crowd, this time their eyes fell on the passerby expectantly.
