A Cautionary Tale of Work Pranks

Anyone who has worked within a group, will tell tales of harmless pranks, all the way to full blown shenanigans. Most office pranks consisting of hiding someone's chair, gluing a pencil to a desk or a coin to the floor. But when your work place isn't an office and your tools are not pencils, the work environment can quickly become a dangerous playground.

The circus rolled into town, taking the longer route so as to best advertise their presence. It was a small community and having a circus visit was a large deal, children stared as the trailers rolled past, tugging at their parents sleeves pleadingly. The local mayor had dutifully organized the towns only grass oval for the travelling troupe to set up, with the only proviso that they be gone before the Sunday arvo football match was scheduled.

The Flying Monkey was not your average kind of circus, (that being if you took all the worlds circuses, rated them from one to ten, added them all together and dividing them by their own number), kind of average. They were more average in the quality kind of way, mostly that they had none.

Most of the staff had been expelled from other circuses for one thing or another some for minor or petty theft others for more dubious actions. Their equipment was old, much of it makeshift, some even engineered by people who didn't pass year ten maths let alone an engineering degree. The owner and ringmaster himself not turning enough profit to repair even the most basic of issues.

It was for this very reason he had just registered himself in the animal rescue group. Most of his own animals being so old that you could audibly hear the lions creak every time they jumped and the elephant so wrinkled that it was beginning to lose its recognizable shape...

... middle of paper ...

...ce.

"Someone just shot me with a confetti cannon." It yelled at him.

True, someone had just fired the cannon strait into his back, the same cannon used to blast the crowd with crappy pieces of recycled paper.

Turning around he faced his attacker, who despite his short stature was standing on a small crate still holding the lighter with a large grin across his scared face.

"Why you litt..." He started, as he took a step before stopping to look at his midriff. The six foot javelin seemed to extend a good three foot in front of him. The shock kept him standing for another few seconds before his body gave way and the ground rushed up to meet him.

Greedo took a modest bow, backing away into a dark corner of the big top and crawling under the canvas. As a dwarf there would always be another circus job, but this time he thought to himself, 'I might try for television.'