Hand puppet

He passed a dead rabbit on the roadside as he walked to work. It seemed so lonely and lost there on the tarmac -- its insides rotten and swollen and exposed -- that he took it to work with him. He made it into a hand puppet to entertain his neighbours.

His colleagues were not impressed. They took him to one side and explained, in careful tones, that the workplace was no place for amateur theatre. Some suggested that he might be better off practicing his routine in his flat, working in private until it was perfected. Some moved as far they could from him, and tried not to meet the rabbit's glassy dead stare.

The boss was so unimpressed with his art he had security called to escort the man from the building. Later that afternoon, they tidied his desk into cardboard boxes and wiped the blood off his possessions as best they could. They put the boxes to one side, sealed and marked with the man's name. They would sit there in case he came back.

The rabbit they buried in the gardens, beneath a paving slab to stop the foxes getting at it.