Mickey de Mollusk was an unfortunate creature with no head or backbone who lived in a shell. In spite of his Cambrian ancestry he came from the wrong side of the tracks, a mere accident of birth but it was an austerity which Mickey de Mollusk considered sufficient to afford him the licence of indiscriminate and sometimes venomous ventilation. Meanwhile he resided buried in sediment where he felt safe from predation. He was exceedingly private. Besides he had his shell to protect him and no one would ever see who he really was; on the outside he looked the same from any angle, amorphous. His was a hardened calcified exterior. Inside he was soft, though characteristically less than wholesome and more vulnerable than anything else. This was a regrettable perspective because of course Mickey de Mollusk never came out of his shell so he hadn’t the advantage of seeing – as others might have done – that his exterior though obdurate was nonetheless moderately compelling. But inwardly he seethed with poisonous anger and wasteful notions which from time to time he sought to circulate through his two symmetrical doors (bivalves).
