Geronimo! Cries the Zebra

Frank woke up, squinting at the sunlight filtering through the drapes. He did not recognize the room. Looking at the decor, he decided it must be a motel room. He was wearing pajamas he did not own, but they fit. The thing he couldn't explain was the dead zebra in the other bed.

Frank fumbled around his nightstand for a moment before finding his phone. He ignored all his confusing text message notifications and went right to his camera roll in search of clues that would explain the dead zebra beside him. How had he gotten himself into this mess?

“No no no no no not again please no” thought Frank. That’s when he found the shaky video on his phone: a hovering helicopter dropping animals. The video ended with the zebra pitching out of the cargo doors and the sound of Frank’s screams.

The zebra was wearing a tiny parachute. He had been trained for years to parachute out of helicopters, starting as a young foal in the Big Brother Circus. Frank, of course, did not know that, and seeing it about to take place again was too much to process. It had to be stopped.

But how? The circus was going to keep on forcing the zebra to parachute out as its main attraction. Invisible guards surrounded the zebra almost all day and night. None of them had a handy habit of getting drunk either...Frank spent hours in his hidden tent until- Yes! That was

the ticket! He’d always abhorred the swill they fed him- gave him terrible gas. He held his nose eating bucket after bucket. By showtime he was firing some truly noxious gas! He heard the guards dropping one by one. Finally, they’d all dropped and he made his escape ! Free! Free!