(EXTRACT)

Soon after Parry had arrived to work at the Amusement World, he'd taken one of the pastel electric carts often seen puttering around the park on various errands and gone on an exploratory tour of the place. He got himself so comprehensively lost that his vehicle- the jumped up golf cart- ran out of power, so he left it where it conked out for some maintenance guy to find and tried to find his way back to where he had started from by following the allegedly helpful signs. Eventually he grasped the extent to which his trust had been misplaced; all the signs (Ella Fun says: FOLLOW ME FOR FUN!) were there merely as scenery, and pointed so arbitrarily at their destinations as to be useless.

Now he just let his feet pound the pavement, disconnected from his brain, and surrendered to the rolling rhythm of heel and toe hitting tarmac. I could die in here, he thought, and the costume would just keep walking and walking and walking and nobody would ever realise that I was dead inside here.

Then Parry found himself waist deep in tiny children

'Gogo! Gogo!' they squawked, yanking on his hands like if they did it hard enough he would speak like his plush doll incarnation, who had a string in the small of his back which when pulled out caused badly sampled sound bites to come out of his mouth.

Parry did his best HI KIDS NICE TO SEE YA wave along with the jaunty bob of the rabbit's oversized head which he'd had to master before he'd been allowed to graduate from Talent Induction. That was four years ago, and he still had no stars, a cause for considerable shame in the eyes of career yes men like Talent Supervisor John.

One particularly revolting specimen of childhood, a negative role model for the under fives with coconut hair and chocolate all around his ugly little gob, beckoned Parry downwards with a floppy wristed gesture. Assuming that the wee one wanted to embrace his fuzzy alter ego and plant a naive sticky kiss on the rabbit thing's furry face, Parry complied. The mouth, the mouth. Worse in close-up.

'You're not real,' it said, 'You're not. You're just a man in a suit.'

Blasphemy. To compound his sin Coconut Head then proceeded to try and peer through Gogo Bunny's mouth to perceive the perpetrator of this innocence shattering deception.

Parry had learned how to deal with this kind of challenge to the Amusement World's authority at Talent Induction. Firm, decisive action was obviously called for in this situation. But the only thing he could think of in his distracted, sweating state was to persist with the HI KIDS NICE TO SEE YA and hope that the kid would give it up. He couldn't recall much else from his talent induction because he had been more interested in the desperate graffiti carved into the table in front of him than in paying attention to a droning lecture on the finer points of finding your inner bunny. How difficult could it be, for Christ's sake?

'Listen. Listen to me. You're not real.'

Coconut Head turned to the little dark haired girl at his side for corroboration, but she was exhibiting response 3 (Three) to grown men and women going around dressed in the style of cartoon personalities. About three years old, she stared up at Parry agog, oscillating rapidly between bewilderment and abject horror. Coconut Head himself was exhibiting the second response in the Bigger schema; rejection of the Amusement World Fantasy Experience. Response the first, and the one most heartily endorsed by the corporation, was the kind of mindless adoration- also known as THE SWARM- which Parry was experiencing now as the children milled around his feet with gentle prodding from nearby parents (not necessarily their own). He felt slightly light headed from the still rising heat. He could almost see a glass of cool water floating, cartoon style, before his eyes.

Parry bent down close to Coconut Head's face, close enough to be heard by him and him alone.

'You listen to me,' he said through the rabbit's mouth, 'just piss off back to your mum and dad and don't give me any shit, alright?'

Coconut Head gawped.

'What?', drawn out, rising at the end, the child somehow managed to make the word multisyllabic.

Parry felt the bile rising in his throat, tasted it burning on the very back of his tongue.

'Out of my way,' he said, 'Out of my way. I think I'm going to throw up.'

Parry couldn't help himself. Parry was sick inside his head.

He burst through the children, spume on a sea of families, and began to lope away, hindered by his gigantic feet. The glass of water which had hovered before him had now been replaced by the words AUTOMATIC DISMISSAL as he ran, almost blind with panic, through the park. His puke also floated distressingly close in front of him. The more he thought about it, the more frightened he became, afraid of dying because he had choked on his own vomit and revolted because he couldn't keep away from it. If he'd had anything else to bring up he would have done, and then he would surely have drowned in the hot rising tide of throw up. Thinking of this made him feel even worse but he couldn't help it because he was already caught up in the delirious circular logic. The vile hot taste of it. The lumpy feel of it on his chin.

His stomach was having violent convulsions, his skin in the dark of Gogo's head was clammy and grey. His vision was starting to blur, his view of the park reduced to a mad letterbox format collage of bovine tourist faces and helium balloons, blaring widescreen acid colour cartoon loops and computer controlled reminders about under subscribed rides, burger stands and interrupted queues.

One is never seen without one's head, ever. Automatic dismissal. The sound of the blood in his ears rushing became a constant intrusive buzz, like the time he had rested his head on a computer casing.

Parry wondered how he'd got onto the tracks of one of the rides, but felt it was more pressing at that moment to work out how to get off again. He wasn't even sure which one of the rides it was until he saw the insane grinning face of Marvin Monkey moving towards him along the rails in adrenaline slo-mo. Marvin's Barrel of Monkeys Bullet Train took its passengers on a warp speed drive- by of a robotic Marvin and sundry primate themed animatronic cohorts frolicking in an idealised tropical setting. On its way it took thrilling plunges into rubber piranha infested waters and through impressive looking stay dry waterfalls. Parry could hear screaming, although he wasn't sure whether it was because someone had spotted him in the Bullet Train's path or if it was just because the ride was going so breathtakingly fast.

And the buzzing in his ears. One is never seen without one's head, ever. Automatic dismissal. One is never seen and (contact will be re-established after a fire). And the Bullet Train was coming towards him too fast, Marvin's maniacal smirk zooming in to fill his vision. Parry couldn't move. A huge buzzing, too big for his ears to contain, phasing in and out of coherent speech like a badly tuned in radio (contact will be reestablished after a fire contact will be re-established after a fire contact will be re- established-)

He stagger- fell over to one side and maybe he was just clipped by the Bullet Train as it rushed on without caring or noticing but then he was falling with voices droning in his ears and thinking nothing, pitched into a service shaft and he didn't care how deep it was because it was better than being splattered on Marvin's fibreglass face like a motorway insect in the summer (and after a fire contact will be re-established)

Parry landed hard on his left shoulder or it could have been his right because it was hardly relevant under the circumstances and laid there, stunned and numbed, underneath a slowly dripping pipe. Ha ha, he thought, I'm dying for a drink I'm dying. It was dark there, cool as well and he was zipped up in the droning OM sound of distant subterranean machinery and the blood so loud in his ears. Parry continued to shrink until he became an electron, so small that he had no position in time or space. He became a wave of probability. Anything could happen to him now.