"Why don't you shut the fuck up?"

She was instantly defensive. "Why don't you shut the fuck up?"

"Nobody wants to hear the shit that's pourin' from your mouth."

"I ain't got no shit in my mouth," she said, hands at her waist, head bobbing.

"Somebody should put you out of your misery."

She let out a short, one-syllable scream. Kind of like a single beep from a car alarm.

"What the hell's going on?" the driver asked, looking at Gavin in the rearview mirror.

"Oh, come on. Haven't you had the same thought? Listening to her blabbin' on and on and on. Haven't you at least wished she'd trip and hit her fucking head on the curb when she's getting off the bus? How 'bout you?" he asked, motioning to a man sitting huddled in the corner with a stack of old newspapers. "Haven't you wished somebody'd just make the bitch shut up?"

The little man shook his head.

The driver pulled to the side of the street. Gavin noted it wasn't a scheduled stop.

The doors opened. "Get out," the driver said.

"There you go, lady," Gavin said with satisfaction.

"I'm talking to you. Get out before I call the police."

The woman let out a high-pitched laugh and clapped her hands in a frenzy of excitement.

Gavin pushed himself up and lunged out the door.

He shouldn't have opened his mouth.

Another thought hit him: It would never have happened if the Cantrell woman hadn't antagonized him.

Behind him, the bus's hydraulics hissed as it pulled away.

His head was beginning to throb. He put a hand to his temple. He could feel the artery pulsing. With each pulse, his headache got worse.

Had to get home.

He staggered down the sidewalk, feeling the change coming, the darkness that would drag him down and smother him.

Keep going. Only a few more blocks. A few more steps.

He watched his boots slide across the cement, toes scraping, catching on cracks.

He could feel his muscles hardening. His penis became engorged, growing as huge as an arm, throwing him off balance.

Walk. Walk.

When he was little, his grandmother used to talk him out of his fits. She would distract him.

"Look at the pretty flowers. Look at the tree. See how the leaves are whispering? Telling you to breathe gently, telling you to breathe softly. Grandma's here. Grandma's here to catch you. Grandma's here."

His grandmother died when he was ten. Murdered in her own kitchen while two apple pies cooled in the window. Gavin had found her there, on the kitchen floor, her throat slit with a butcher knife. He'd tried to run, tried to turn and scream, but the blackness had come over him with the thickness and weight of a heavy blanket.

See the flowers. See the pretty flowers.

He was found unconscious, with blood on his hands, lying next to his dead grandmother.

Walk, walk.

It was coming. Coming fast.

His muscles began to contract, his penis shrank. He tried to run, but couldn't. There was his house. He could see it, just past the two-story brick apartment building.

Run, run, run.

I can't.

You can. You can do anything.

He moved faster. Crossing the last street, he fumbled in his pocket, pulling out a set of keys.

Keys to the Kingdom. Keys to the Kingdom.

Around back. Past the shed and the flower garden.

To the kitchen.

He unlocked the door and fell inside.

Gavin came awake with a jolt. Disoriented, he finally realized he was lying in the dark on the kitchen floor. He dragged himself to a sitting position. His hair was soaked and plastered to his head, his clothes were drenched. He put a tentative finger to the corner of his mouth. Dried blood. He could feel his tongue, thick and swollen and sore.

In his confusion, his first thought was to call Gillian. But she'd told him not to call her again. When he was in prison, she wrote to him. She even came to see him. And when he got out, she was there waiting for him.

He thought she loved him. He thought she'd been waiting for him all that time. He thought he would go to her place, and they would live together, maybe even get married. But when he told her how much he loved her, she got weird, pushing him away.

"Gavin, no," she'd said as he clung to her, struggling to pull her close, struggling to kiss her. He could see unease in her eyes, and he suddenly felt like crying.

"I thought you loved me," he said.

"I do love you. But not that way. I love you as a friend."

Friend? Oh, shit. Oh, fuck. No, no, NO!

His future, the future he'd dreamed about all the years he'd been in prison, dissolved before his eyes.

A friend.

It was so hard. Hard to keep going. He just wanted it to end. He, didn't want to get cancer or anything; he just wanted it to be like a pulled plug. Over. He just wanted it over.

He shoved himself to his feet and turned on the light. Opening the nearest cupboard, he pulled out a bottle of whiskey, unscrewed the cap, and took a long swallow. He spent the next several minutes drinking and leaning against the counter, waiting to stabilize. He wished to hell he had something better than alcohol, but he hadn't been out of jail long enough to make any drug connections.

He hadn't had any attacks in a long time. It had been so long that he'd quit taking medicine, but now he'd had two attacks in one week.

The visit from Gillian's sister had brought on this second one. That was obvious.

Finally steady enough to walk, he made his way down the hall to the bathroom, where he took a piss.

The house had belonged to an old lady who'd spent the last ten years bedridden. The place had been so run-down and had smelled so bad that nobody wanted to rent it. An ex-con and convicted murderer didn't have much chance of finding a place to live or getting a job, but Gillian knew some people, and she'd helped him.

The place still looked like an old-lady house-with floral wallpaper and shit. Some of her clothes were still hanging in the closet. Jars of canned food lined the basement shelves. He'd originally planned to give the place a coat of paint, but he didn't give a shit anymore. He'd managed to hang some of his black-and-white photos before deep depression had washed over him. He had more photos. Lots more…

He didn't have much furniture-he kept his clothes in cardboard boxes under a bed that was shoved into the corner of the room. Bad feng shui, he sometimes mockingly told himself, but what the hell? The house and everything about it was a reflection of his soul.

In the living room, he pushed around some open boxes until he came to the one with pictures of apples on it. He dug down past phone books and porn magazines until he found the bundle of envelopes-letters from Gillian.

He took them into the kitchen. He pulled out a plastic lighter.

One by one, he held up the envelopes and let the fire lick one corner until' the paper burst into flame. He dropped them in the sink where they curled and burned, continuing until there was nothing left but a pile of ashes.

Love, Gillian.

Gillian. She was the perfect woman. He was afraid he'd never find anyone as perfect as her again.