Like most things of the sort, some immediately turned away from it; others inclined to stare it down often approached it but in so doing they almost invariably became either disenchanted or desensitized and rejoined the throng of the former. And it was this thought which led Gary to first consider that his commitment to eradicating homelessness among sheep might be nothing more than a novelty.

For a time he’d thought of himself as a tough not in the sense that he’d lift wallets or ruin topiary but that he knew what he knew and stared out as if on a world already traced with the hairless, fingerless hand of close-cropped chance. He could tell when someone was about to flee and he could tell when someone was about to eat. He sensed beginnings in the slightest of snack samplers and endings just after. He knew the form of wild winds and the content of nameless sauces. But this was not the first time he’d begun to feel self-consumed like a fat man, as wretched as wide, cursed to be covered in candy shell. And there’s no word for feeling like you know what you know whilst knowing that you’d previously known knowing only to once again be surprised at new sounds and meal deals. There’s not even a shorter way of saying it besides maybe at once sure and unsure; joint and several like the father and the son or the steps to clutterers’ anonymous. And so it was that his sudden fall was quite unexpected. When the world, one day, formed itself anew the terror which he felt was just too much and so he screamed and when he heard the sound of his own voice set against the world he now saw he screamed some more and when he felt that he could no longer scream this prospect too terrified him for its only by calling its name that terror relents and so he thought to write down his thought but no combination of vowels and consonants could capture the rough edge of it so he screamed himself silent and then resolved to hurl the pencils which had failed in the face of their greatest calling and the colored pencils too, though they had given slightly more effort, and when there was no more to throw or voice in his lungs he flung out his arms at intervals while extending his digits at alternating intervals and when he could barely lift his arms anymore he sprinted and sprinted away from the falling night and when his feet could move no longer he at last sensed that resignation was the only path left to what paltry righteousness there could be in such a feckless world and at last he sat down to the very lunch in which his doom seemed but a side. And it was only after he had nothing left to lash that he accommodated himself to the hot dogs hastily thrown into his macaroni and cheese.