In a pale little jail with two huge roofs, there lived a family of bats with bright pink hooves. On the floor under the hooves lived an egg-faced boy, by nature as wily as he was coy. He snuck pieces of chalk into the bags under his eyes, and dreamed of paintbrushes every time he cried. He was quiet, stealthy and quick, and knew how to disappear real swift. He escaped, and he escaped again, but he always got caught and got jailed in again.

He knew in his stomach that he would run away for good, so one day he woke up and went straight to a pool. He plunged in and swam deep towards some frogs, promising them his paintbrushes if they helped him across. The frogs and the boy swam and swam, swimming away until they met a girl in a jam. At the deep end of a moss-covered cave, she was only a pair of legs sticking out of the sand. Fearfully, they grabbed the legs and pulled. They pulled and they pulled until out came the girl, lying in a heap and looking quite dead.

They knocked on her head to wake her up, rapping away in a tuneless tune. With a splutter after a minute the girl woke up, her eyes glassy and her hair standing on end.

She said gulamulamo and gulamulamo and scratched her head, awake and alive and an escapee from the dead. Stupefied and zoned in another land, she sat there with her face in her hands.

Used to having no friends at all, Egg-boy was ecstatic to finally now have a friend. He broke out a balloon to cheer her up, except it burst in her face and swallowed her up.

He began to cry, mourning her loss – the loss of the lost lady from the dead. He cried and he cried until his eyes swelled up, growing to the size of large teacups. They fattened and flourished and fettered around his sockets, like cue balls inside pool table pockets. They grew and they grew until they sunk his head in – and like a mighty tornado did the boy then spin.

The frogs watched the show and laughed and ate, and abandoned Egg-boy alone to his fate.