He looked at his surroundings with loathing. He saw his peers going to school and his elders going to work and he saw them all standing in a web of chains. The chains held and constrained them, allowed them no movement. The wrapped around and around and around their bodies and attached themselves to the ground. They tightened and tightened until their victim's knees bent and they bowed under the pressure. They fell to their knees and their heads were hung low under the pulling of the chains, and still they pulled and pulled, until they sucked their victim into the earth, and all that was left was dust, which floated away on the whistling, meaningless wind.
They weren't human. They were alien mechanical dogs, performing stupid tricks for a cold, hard, bone-shaped biscuit.
"Here, boy." He heard the masters' voices, coming from high above. From the clouds, but still, they had that slave-ish quality. They were the voices of chained individuals. "Here, boy. Do these invoices. Fetch those survey results. You want to keep your job? Your family fed? You want that VCR? That TV? Then do as I say, boy." And, of course, they did the masters' bidding.
It almost made him retch.
He took his stance.
He made himself the epitomy of everything his chained peers weren't. He shaved his head so his long, straight hair flowed from the crown of his skull and dyed it jet black. He subscribed to different (and sometimes, somewhat absurd) theories on life, politics, almost everything. He tried anything, as long as it was new and refreshing. He did all he could to separate himself from the wage-slaves and future wage-slaves, and he tried to show them that they were tied down and trapped.
They reacted by ostracizing him, and so he lashed out.
He saw himself standing before the world and giving everyone his middle finger. He stood before the uniformed masses. He yelled obscenities at them. He looked up at into the clouds, into the masters' domain and mocked them.
"Ha!" he yelled. "You suck!"
The chains snuck up on him. There were thousands and thousands of them. They wormed their way up his ankles. They wrapped themselves around his raised middle finger. Like eels, they slipped and slid and writhed about him, waiting for the right moment to strike.
They found his neck and tightened there.
Just when they were sure they had him, just as they were preparing to engulf him and make him theirs, he bolted and ran. They gave chase, clinking behind him. He ran long and hard, but they were much faster. They closed the distance between them, and made for his feet, but he lept.
And he flew.
His hair was pushed back from his forehead by the wind. The dust of the dead stung his face and eyes, but he laughed. He was free. He floated above everything. He looked down, and saw the billions of people in chains. They stretched outwards in every direction, until he lost sight of them.
The chains which had once tried to capture and bind him battered themselves against the ground far below. They beat a pattern in the dust until they broke apart. Then the earth swallowed the shards and fragments. They had lost.
He was free, but where was he to go? Up only led to the masters. The same mechanical dogs caught in the same chains. The only place was down. Down, to join his loathsome fellows on the whistling, meaningless wind. Down, for youth to give way to death...