Walking down the steps at the entrance of the clown school, Alex heard two final words yelled from the mouth of his now ex-teacher. "Get out!" yelled the professor, sounding similar to an axe murderer yelling at his prey.

With those two words, Alex Big's life began to take a turn for the worse. It was not that he was always bad person, or that he hated people, rather he was just lonely. Having one parent die when you are 3 and the other when you are 5 doesn't exactly bode well for your future character. As if tragedy wasn't enough, he never lived a very privileged life. Remembering only the house of his abusive and alcoholic foster parents, he hadn't seen much of the world outside of his twelve by twelve bedroom. Expectedly, Alex was never one for academia. The way he saw it was that, if he could get B's and A's in his classes with little to no effort, he might as well not worry about trying. Unfortunately, his good grades did not translate to success later on in his life. His dream since youth was to work with Cirque du Soleil, and that was exactly why he attended clown school.

Now that he was no longer a student, he had to find something to do with his life, so Alex went on a rather short job hunt, eventually applying to a local amusement park as a cartoon character impersonator. On the application, he put "former clown school student" rather than "expelled from clown school." He knows the job is a shoe-in.

Six and a half months later, Alex finds himself spending another day staring through the mesh. Not thinking, not watching, just staring, blankly, as if he had just seen a phantom glide past him. Almost on autopilot, he walked the same path as he had since he got the job. Past the same concession stands, past the same roller coasters, seeing the same pay-to-play games that were rigged so that even Mike Tyson could not win a boxing game. He wanted to observe all of the unique faces, see the glints of excitements in children's eyes as they gazed up at the towering rails of steel, spanning every possible color of the rainbow. He wanted to greet the people, to hear what rides they had been on, how much fun they were having and what their itinerary for the day was. He wanted to notice the hue of the sky, the color of the trees and the vibrant steel towers, but all he saw was grey. Willpower was more absent to him than love.

Out of the blue, two fellow impersonators walked up to him, and one said, "Marisa wants you in her office, now." He could not see his co-workers' expressions, but he did not have to see it to understand their air of, "I wonder what's going to happen to him."

On the way, Alex fails to notice anything around him, too busy pondering his own fate.

Knocking on the standard yet imposing door, he is called in by his boss, Marisa. She ushers him towards her desk and asks him to take a seat and take off his mask. He wanted to smile, but could not find it in him. He hated her with a passion due to her inability to respect his skill set.

"Alex, you've been here for how long?" She didn't leave time for an answer. "Three months?" She didn't leave time for a correction. "Well, anyway, I called you in today because I've been watching you work as of late and I haven't seen you greet more than ten people in the past week."

Alex knew what was coming, there was no more point to listening. His eyes were directed at her, but his brain was not, too busy thinking of what exactly to say. Should he mention her attention to detail, or lack thereof, was the reason he was getting fired? Should he mention he gets paid so little to the point where he can barely afford a healthy dinner? Should he mention that his co-workers spend most of their day sitting in obscure areas of the park, seizing every opportunity to not work? Should he take the low road and mention that everyone thinks she looks like a horse?

Before he had a chance to rule out his options, he heard her say, "you're fired."

His brain both refocused to Marisa and her horse-like features. Rather than spew a plethora of his thoughts, he stood up, shook her hand, and without a word, left the building.