The Fool

Bonnie squealed as she raced through the carnival, bells jingling on the jester's cap that was the only thing she wore. More bells jangled at her wristlets and anklets, drawing attention from everyone she passed. She saw nothing but a sea of grinning faces, people she knew and people she didn't, all of them clearly intensely amused at her predicament.

Her clothes had been given to a clown. She'd been told she had to catch him to get her clothes back. Bonnie knew she could run pretty fast, but the clown always seemed to be able to stay one step ahead of her. Every time she thought she was about to catch him, she tripped on a banana peel or a tent rope or a split custard pie and landed face-first in a wedding cake or a puddle of mud or a gigantic custard pie.

She'd tried to take a shortcut through a gap in a fence, but she'd gotten stuck. And then the clown had come around behind her and spanked her bare bottom really hard, while everyone pointed and laughed at her. And by the time she wriggled free, he'd run away again.

And she'd tried to take another shortcut through a big tent that looked empty. But it turned out to be the dressing room for the carnival's sexy acrobat harlequin girls, and when she'd blundered in a dozen beautiful athletic blondes with no clothes on had screamed at her and told her to get out. And when she tried to run away, she caught her foot on a guide rope, and the whole side of the tent rolled up, and all the naked harlequin girls were exposed to the whole carnival, and a dozen clowns with cameras were on hand to take pictures.

And once she'd actually caught the clown, but he'd just hogtied her and wrote I SUCK across her breasts and left her dangling from the nearest oak tree. And when she'd finally gotten down she just had to start chasing him again.

But this time she was finally going to catch him! Bonnie darted after the clown as he fled into the back door of a building. She stopped, puzzled. Where was she? Why was it so dark?

The curtain went up.

Bonnie was standing on stage in front of the entire student body of Pinkwhistle High School, wearing nothing but a jester's cap and bells. She squealed and covered herself, then saw the clown and raised her fists. The clown smiled.

He was holding a fiddle. He put it to his chin, and began to play a jolly circus jig.

The Pinkwhistle students roared with laughter as red-faced, red-haired Bonnie Driscoll danced stark naked on stage for everyone to see. She wiggled her bottom, high-kicked, did the can-can and the twist and the charleston and the macarena. She couldn't help herself. Something about the clown's music made it impossible for her to stop.

Dancing naked in front of the whole school! The humiliation was absolute. But there was no escape.