So, for one of my scholarship essays I had to write a creative story after looking at a picture. The picture was of a rather barren field with the frame of a car sitting on the ground and a train going by in the background. The following is my story.
Seeing as (most of) my car had been stolen, I decided to take a chance and hop on the train that was passing by the outskirts of town. I was planning on leaving town anyway. What did I have to lose?
I managed to swing my small suitcase inside a box car and proceeded to jump inside it. It would be an understatement to say I was a bit shocked at what I saw. I had ended up on the train of a traveling circus. There were the usual clowns and lion tamers, trapeze artists and contortionists, and even a bearded lady. They were all very nice, except the bearded lady who was rather pretentious.
I was asked to join their traveling circus, but I was afraid I didn’t possess any sort of circus talent. The lion tamer, who was also the ring master, encouraged me to try my hand at lion taming, but I declined and told him I’d rather keep my hands. I finally decided to fulfill my lifelong dream of becoming a human cannonball.
This made the bearded lady even more resentful towards me. Not only was there another female with whom to compete, but now I was the center of attention with my new human cannonball act. While I performed and became the star of the show, the bearded lady plotted her revenge.
I was just about to blast out of the cannon; I could hear my song, “Eye of the Tiger,” playing. All of a sudden I felt the cannon being tilted up just slightly. I panicked; I desperately tried to climb out of the cannon before it fired because I knew my trajectory had been thrown off, and that meant disaster. Boom! I flew out of the cannon, but I looked back just in time to see the bearded lady give a smug smile and wave at me. However, her smile faded when I grabbed hold of the tight rope instead of flying to my doom like she had hoped.
The crowd went wild thinking it was part of the act, so I decided to go with it. She stood in shock while I very unsteadily made my way across the tight rope and down the ladder. The bearded lady regained her composure and tried to make a quick escape in the tiny clown car. Of course, a clown car is not very fast, especially not with a rather large woman in it. I grabbed the lion tamer’s whip and caught the car’s bumper with it.
The crowd was still cheering us on when she clambered out of the car and charged towards me. Unsure of what to do, I make a break back towards the tight rope hoping she was clumsier than I, or that she wouldn’t follow at all. I grabbed one of the balancing poles and made my way out into the middle of the rope. She followed suit but was much more uncomfortable on the rope. We battled with our balancing sticks for a very brief time when she lost her balance and (ironically enough) landed upside down in the cannon.
I wasted no time making my way down the ladder and proceeded to shoot her out of the cannon to her doom. The crowd, still completely oblivious to what was really happening, gave me a standing ovation. I took my bows, announced that the show was over, and thanked them for coming.
The circus people do not condone violence of any kind. Since the bearded lady was presumably dead, the punishment fell on me. When we passed back through my town they tossed me from the moving train. Being a human cannon ball, however, the impact did not hurt me. I was left right back where I started, watching the traveling circus and my newfound love of being a human cannonball leave me in its dust, with nothing left but a story that no one would ever believe.
