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Lights flickered and bounced off the white walls, floor, and ceiling of the little cubicle, if you could call it that. It was sealed to the outside, an office tomb. He felt the tie around his neck like the collar of a straightjacket, though he wasn't aware of whether or not straightjackets had collars, though if they did they would surely be something like his tie. Even though it was an entirely different color, he associated it very strongly with the eggshell dullness of the surrounding walls. Inane ramblings scrolled down his monitor, things that passed for emotion or politics. In the back of his mind, was a bear who'd been taught to sit in chairs and hold his teacups with the pinky out. To order wine at only the most brick-walled restaurants, their ceilings exposed on fake pipes and rafters to exhume another time from the grave in which they had themselves placed it. This bear in his mind drank coffee and filed reports and smiled at people on the street, while in the back of ITS mind was a fish who'd been shown how to keep his gills closed and fit into a pair of slacks without tracking his fishness on the carpets. A fish at his desk in which he kept a revolver which he didn't know how to use and didn't possess any ammunition for but which nevertheless made him feel as if the potential for something was there. It had been manufactured partially by a declawed badger whose purpose in life was to inspect the cylinders, and make sure they were to specification before loading each into a styrofoam-packed box. In the back of this badger's mind was the faint memory of a pigeon who had the faint memory of having raised his scimitar to the sound of thundering cannon atop a hill in some other lifetime. He did this with fingers, having been a lemur and not a pigeon at all; and one with a very fine hat which he had studied for years to keep clear of all the detritus which seemed to stick to it, each time staring at his pocket watch and seeing the seconds of detritus-cleaning tick by while thinking only of the stream in the back of his mind by which he had sat when he was a lion; devouring, sleeping, mating and dying by no schedule but his fancy. Afraid, hungry, uncomprehending and wondrous.