Old Mother Vixen had been the rightest of all when she'd said the small occupations were all the flock had ever had. "Make hats for cats and collect the lifeless - that's the crowning glory of the sleeping dead... Dreamer, you make for the sun!"

Tall Thing ran, lithe legs pounding perfect feet into the dust of all that had been before, and all that was coming. The greedy grasping hand of Concerned Professional on Tall Thing's shoulder burned with the puissance of harnessed mediocrity and the will to cage. Tall Thing kicked it in the eye without breaking stride - hurdled the writhing burden of its naked pity and need to control spun in a perfect 180.

Tall thing ran, strong legs pounding calloused feet into a desert of slick desires and sticky promises made through laughing teeth and a snarl. Fast food family value corporate mission statement works of stunning insight and humanitarian packaging were unmasked at this speed. Clear eyes stripped decaying skeletal beggars with one pleading hand outstretched for paper love, the other hidden and asphyxiating a deformed dove. Tall thing ran right over the heads of stolid working class archetypes, industriously beating their wives and dogs into blissful submission, buckling themselves into the grave for another air-conditioned slide into waking death.

Tall thing ran, dodging crumbling concrete walls of hive progress and leaping the piles of severed heads from every free spirit with feet stuck in the day's glue. Cotton ball faced mothers screamed blank obscenities at their low ceiling world, all the while absently tieing screaming toddlers to their legs and arms with wire. Demagogues applauded their own cleverness in hideous rapture, smearing fresh faeces on the small cracks in the facade of their creed.

Tall Thing ran, tired legs pounding blistered feet into a mangled net of clutching hands and wailing mouths. Rusty razor teeth urged conformity with all the imaginative persuasion possessed of the herd. Chewed nail fingers clutched hesitantly with the nervousness of a billion betrayed lives. The mass who would be marionettes waited in an endless queue to buy pictures of themselves, with handfuls of their own coagulating blood.

Tall Thing ran, aching legs pounding bleeding feet through the world's saddest joke; the grey plantation where starving dreams drag themselves to an end. Desires and hopes pushed weakly at the membranes of their fleshy cages, abused pets fed on bile soaked VHS artifice and the lies of loved ones. The stench of misery and vicarious experience growing in endless rows; a fetid orchard that only failure could bring to flower.

Tall Thing ran, legs and feet long forgotten. Blind eyes watering because the sun was very close now. A steady rhythm maintained for a lifetime stopped in its own metaphor. The widest smile. A tall silhouette briefly eclipsed the waiting sun.