The flying brick was made in St. Louis, Missouri in 1995. It was shipped by rail to Colorado with 11,000 other bricks, a small number of which were used to build an addition to a rental property on the Hill. This brick was an extra, left in a pile of construction debris in the alley. Bored with its uselessness, excited by the music, the fires, the sirens, the brick leapt from its pile and flew into the streets in a fit of dull red, heavy, inanimate rage. It hurled through the crowd, whizzing by heads, bouncing off riot helmets. It gave a solid, square shape and feel to a hand; it imparted power and anger and strength. It passed through a plate glass window without a scratch.
The brick finally rested amid broken glass as the noise settled, and eventually only the squawking of radios and alternating red and blue flashes disturbed the interior of the shop where it lay. But the brick felt an uneasiness, growing into horror, as a realization came to it: the scatter of glass that lay around it, the window that it broke, was made from the very same sand as itself. It wept red powder and crumbled a little as it waited in the growing dawn, and thought about all the great things that glass and brick had built together, including the violated building where it now lay.
Overcome with shame, the brick didn't hide in the morning when people came and swept it up with all the rest of the useless rubble.