OK, I was standing in line at the 7-11, and there was this, like, sixty-year-old woman in front of me, and she was wearing these clear-plastic, five-inch, Marilyn Monroe marabou heels and this braless, droopy-breasted Billy Ray Cyrus T-shirt with her nipples kind of sticking out where Billy's ears were, and cutoff jeans as skimpy as a bikini bottom so that I could see her buttcheeks and this corduroy of cellulite rippling down her thighs, and she had this flame-red tornado of hair, and she was stocking up on cigarettes, four cartons of Camels, and she had already torn one carton open, smoking already--and remember, it's three-thirty in the morning--and she had a couple of pints of Old Granddad, and potato chips, a variety of heavily sugared products from the good people at Hostess, some electrical tape, a couple of mousetraps with a can of CheezWiz for bait, a National Enquirer, a tube of Preparation H, a single, quarter-pound hot dog--no bun--a 32 ounce cup of coffee, and half-a-dozen condoms, and she slid all this shit onto the counter piece by piece with this big gondola of fat jiggling beneath her arm, and it swung, and it swung, and I couldn't take my eyes off it!

      But the really weird thing, the really weirdly horrible thing was, right behind me in line, was her twin, same hair, same clothes, same purchases, except bizarro Zsa Zsa, unlike bizarro Eva with the Enquirer, had a copy of Skin and Ink, a tattoo rag, and just the thought of the very few intimate places on her that were clothed where a wrinkled World-War-One vintage tattoo could be hiding just about made me shriek out loud and fall down on the floor curled up in the fetal position trying to chew my own brain out, and I was waiting for some godawful moth-eaten, nose-pierced, Betty-Boop Methuselah of a triplet to come crawling out of the ductwork, when I noticed the next person in line, a cabby with a box of NoDoz and a fifth of Jack Daniels, with a chunk of dried vomit on his chin, and I was thinking, I bet it's not even his own goddam vomit, when I noticed behind him in line was this guy all decked out in full camouflage gear, and he was holding a single egg in both cupped hands. Just an egg. Oh, and he only had half a Fu Manchu mustache. The right half, but I couldn't get any deeper insights into GIJoe because I still couldn't get the image of that goddam swinging fat out of my head!

      So I didn't want to stare, because staring is impolite, because I didn't want to establish eye contact with any of the creatures of the night, right? So I looked back to my front, and the first ancient twin was reading off Lottery numbers to the clerk, and I stared at her Ginger-Spice lava-lamp of a wig, with the label sticking out from behind her ear, and I thought, My Freaking God, she's buying condoms, and I shuddered, because what luckless drunken barfly did these two aged trolls have stashed back in their doublewide as condom-fodder to service their brittle, unlubricated, tagteam needs? And, shit, that'd have to be like fucking a brake lining.

      So, I was standing there with my donut and my newspaper, my skin crawling completely around my body for already the second time, and I thought, you know, any one of these misfits maybe could have touched my donut before I got to it, and so maybe eating this donut isn't such a good idea, because I don't know where any of these people have been but none of them look like they frequent the bathroom, and I was thinking I didn't really like the look in the eyes of the guy behind the counter too much either, as a matter of fact, so I just sort of eased the donut under the TV Guide rack, and I was even having second thoughts about the newspaper, and I had just decided that everybody in the place but me really ought to get a bullet in the back of the head because not one of them looked like they deserved to live--and no loss to the rest of us either-- when who came walking in the front door, big as mortal sin, but Charlie Manson.

      Now, I knew I wasn't really seeing Charlie Manson walking in the front door of the 7-11. I couldn't have seen him, right? He was in some jail in California somewhere. I knew that. So it was just some guy who looked like Charlie, which all on its own had to be a real burden in life, looking just like Charlie Manson, I mean.

      But I figured I was just probably remembering Charlie wrong, because how many people have a really clear picture in their heads of what Charlie really looked like? You keep the images of the crazy hair, the crazy eyes. You keep the whole bloody helter skelter thing on the walls and Sharon Tate, maybe, and maybe Squeaky Fromme trying to wax Gerry Ford, and maybe you keep the image of the swastika he carved into his forehead, but I know I didn't carry around a photographic image of Charlie Manson in my head, you know? Nobody does. There's too many other things I had to keep straight in my head. I had a life to live.

      Well, anyways, Charlie walked in, looked around real quick, nobody paying him any mind, and then he walked out again, just like that, revelation-sudden and epiphany-fast. And I got out of line and followed him, because I knew, I just knew, that it really was Charlie Manson.

      He took off walking down Halsted Street. He hadn't aged. He looked just like he'd looked thirty years before, the first time I'd ever seen him, after his arrest, before the swastika, before everybody in the country had their own image of the Charlie-mask-of-evil set in their heads.

      He was small, skinny, dressed like he was still in the Sixties, black Beatle boots and these green-and-orange striped bellbottoms, like some dirty, funky, thrift-store Davy Jones. So that was how I knew it wasn't him--I just knew--because he's an old man in prison now.

      He walked all disjointed down the sidewalk, and I followed him, and he caught up with this tall guy in a suit, and he walked alongside the guy, and he started talking into the guy's ear, you know, cupping his hand around the guy's ear and whispering into it, his lips moving like he was in fast-forward, his eyes all wide, dilated close-up. He talked and talked, doing this little sidestepping, shuffling, hippity-hop to keep up with the guy in the suit, because like I said, the guy was a lot taller than Charlie, and Charlie really had to step on it in order to keep pace, if he wanted to keep whispering whatever evil mojo he was whispering into the guy's ear.

      But the really weird thing was that the guy didn't notice Charlie at all, didn't notice Charlie hanging on his ear like he was dragging a phone booth with him, didn't notice Charlie jabbering some lunatic mumbo-jumbo in his ear, didn't notice Charlie spazzing down the sidewalk like some drugged-out hippie jester dancing macabre out of the acid-stained Sixties onto 2001 Halsted Street.

      Nobody noticed Charlie, except me. I watched his act, all the while trying not to really watch him, if you know what I mean. I watched other people, too, to see if anybody else noticed the 3D-Charlie-flashback variety show, but nobody seemed to. I was the only one seeing anything odd.

      Then the guy in the suit took out his cell phone, punched in a number, and held it against his ear, the same ear that Charlie was still jawing into. And the guy still didn't notice anything, didn't hear anything, didn't feel anything. He should've been able to feel Charlie's breath, Charlie was so close, but he didn't. The guy just talked into his phone, smiling, laughing, walking down the sidewalk, trailing a full-color, fully lifelike, hyperkinetic, Charlie-Manson, psychedelic shadow as he went, like two movies running side-by-side at different speeds.

      And that discouraged Charlie, I mean being ignored like that. I could see it in his face. Sure, he kept crowhopping alongside the guy for another half-a-block or so, waving his hands in the guy's face, yelling at him so wild now that I could see spit flying out of Charlie's mouth from where I was, twenty yards away--even if I still couldn't hear the words--but Charlie's heart just didn't seem to be in it anymore. Like I said, I could see it in his face.

      The guy turned a corner onto Aldine, phone still stuck to his ear, yakking away, but Charlie just stopped. He just gave up and let the guy go on his way. He just stood there on the corner, shoulders slumped, like a brokedick dog. He worked the fingers of his right hand into his rat's-nest hair and scratched. He started twitching his right leg as he scratched, like a dog. And people just walked right past him like he was no more there than Andy Warhol or Jim Morrison, because of course he wasn't. He couldn't have been.

      And he didn't have the crazy grin, the loopy leer, like I remembered him. He had this dejected look, this despair, which might reasonably be expected from someone that no one else could see or hear or feel even though he was standing there right in the middle of them. It was kind of sad; you know, if you put aside the fact that it was Charlie Manson.

      Then he saw this other guy across Halsted, this white guy with dreadlocks and so much jewelry piercing his face he looked like he'd fallen on a nail-gun, repeatedly, and Charlie got this gleam in his eyes like his eyeballs had just been polished with speed, like he could see clearly again, and he sprinted off across the street, right into traffic, like he didn't care about what was to his right or to his left or anywhere else around him, except for dreadlock guy, and he crazy-sprinted right at him.

      Funny. I'd never seen Charlie run before. I'd never even thought about him running anywhere. Just sitting. In court. In jail. He ran like he was shackled. Bent low to the ground, awkward, like he was handcuffed and legcuffed and all attached to a chain around his waist. But he moved fast, like he was used to it.

      And then a car hit him. At least my mind screamed that the car should have hit him, should have thumped over him, should have shattered him. I flinched, still on the sidewalk twenty-five yards away, waiting for the squeal of brakes, the fishtail, the thud, the cracking windshield, the cracking bones, the skinny body launched psycho-elbow over asshole over the roof of the car, but none of it ever came. The car just went through Charlie like he was a ghost, except I knew that he wasn't a ghost, because he was in that prison out in California somewhere. The car went right through him though. Didn't swerve. Didn't brake. Didn't blow its horn. Right through him, like he didn't even exist; except, of course, I could see him: right there on the street in front of me.

      And then Charlie came out on the other side of the car, and he was across the street, circling dreadlock guy, and that gleam in his eyes doubled like he had half-a-dozen, 200-watt eyeballs plugged into each socket, and he started in with his whispering again, whispering into dreadlock guy's ear, pacing him along the sidewalk with this stuttering, schizophrenic body-English, head and hands and eyes all moving like three different people were fighting for control of them, and he was whispering in the guy's ear, all the time whispering.

      I figured I'd had enough, you know? Just enough. I turned around and went in the other direction, because I decided that I didn't want Charlie taking notice of me, not with those eyes, not crabrunning down the street after me. I figured: I can see him, so maybe I can hear the whispering too. And that just can't be good, you know? So I just went the other way. I just said to myself, OK, I just saw Charlie Manson, but it's over now, and everything's OK. It's over. Charlie's gone, and it's over, and it's OK.

      Except that the whole way home, I couldn't get Charlie out of my head. I couldn't stop thinking about him, replaying the whole thing over in my head. I couldn't help thinking to myself: What the hell was he whispering about?

#

      Now, understand, I wasn't crazy, but all the way back to my apartment, I just couldn't get Charlie out of my head. I kept saying to myself: I'm going to my apartment. I'm just going to my apartment. Yep, just going to my apartment. I don't need a newspaper. I don't need a donut. I just need to go to my apartment and forget about Charlie Manson and all those other psychos in the 7-11 breathing their crazy-viruses all over the donuts. That's all I need. Just go to my apartment.

      That's when I saw Gacy. Now I knew for sure, knew for goddam sure, that he was Gacy, because this was Chicago, and I was lifelong Chicago, and Gacy was a hometown pervert, a top scorer, Chicago's very own; you know, busiest airport, tallest building, biggest body-count, maybe even shot on actual locations when the monster-movie of the week was filmed; except that I knew Gacy had been executed. But he was Gacy, sure as shit. I'd seen his picture enough times over the years. I even saw, around the edges of his face, around behind his sideburns, around up where his jawline ended, little bits of white clown makeup that he hadn't washed off, like a painting of a clown had been cleaned away with turpentine, like somebody was looking for another painting underneath, you know, something more artistic or valuable or beautiful, and they just got Gacy instead. I knew it was Gacy. I guess the authorities hadn't killed him quite as thoroughly as they had thought.

      He was out in the middle of a parking lot. There were cars passing by and a couple of teenage goth girls shortcutting across the lot, but they didn't seem to notice anything odd. There were people walking past on the sidewalk, like me, but they didn't seem to notice anything either. There were whole buildings full of windows facing the lot, but nobody up there was staring or pointing. There was a goddam police station not three blocks away, but there wasn't anyone who noticed John Wayne Gacy standing in that parking lot.

      There was just me, and there was Gacy, with a shovel, digging a hole like he's digging into soft earth and not asphalt. Just digging and digging. There were shadows around his feet. I saw the tops of his workboots sticking out the haze of darkness surrounding him. I saw the bootlaces tied off just above his ankles, sticking out of the darkness, and the blade of the shovel disappearing into the darkness, then coming out filled with dirt. I couldn't see how deep he had dug his hole, but worse, I couldn't see what he was digging it for. There were just the shadows for about ten feet around him, with nothing to throw any shadows around him, because there were streetlights and the parking lot was near empty and everything was lit except whatever was down there underneath the soles of Gacy's boots.

      And every few shovelfuls, Gacy'd straighten up and look around, look over each shoulder, but he was still stooped, you know, like he had a low ceiling over him, and he'd sniff at the air--I swear to God, sniff at the air like an animal--and then he'd be back at his digging, until he finally must have had it deep enough to satisfy his needs, because he put down the shovel into the darkness, and he squatted down, and he reached down into the deepest part of the shadows with both his hands disappearing into the darkness, and he set his feet, and he heaved at something, and the something rolled over, and I saw an arm flop out of the darkness and swing over and flop back down into the darkness again, a limp arm, the wrist all torn and bloody like it had been tied, and I heard this thump, not much of a thump, a whispered thump, maybe a teenaged thump, and then Gacy stopped, and he looked around again, and he sniffed, and he satisfied himself again, and he stood up, still a little stooped, and he started in with the shovel again, only this time he started to throw dirt in, where he'd just been taking it out.

      And there were no cops rushing to the scene from their station just a couple of blocks away, and there were no sirens, and nobody paid him any attention at all. There was just Gacy up to his ankles in shadows where there were only mercury lights, wielding a shovel like he was real comfortable with it, and that steady rutch, rutch, rutch sound of steel slicing into dirt, where there was no dirt, only asphalt.

      I decided I didn't want to see any more, you know, so I just made a left and started to walk away. I walked faster and faster, and I just kept hearing that shovel-sound, rutch, rutch, rutch, and I thought, who knows, maybe I'm going to start smelling stuff now, too, you know? And I knew what it was I was going to smell, right? So I just kept walking faster.

      I got home the long way, but that was OK, you know, because home was good. Except when I tried to turn on the lights, and the lights didn't turn on.

      This put me on edge, you understand, on account of what I'd already seen so far that night, and because the lights in the hallway were working just fine. I walked into the apartment, quiet, and I didn't hear anything, and I didn't see anything.

      But someone was there, right? I felt it. I snuck over to my bedroom, to my bedroom closet, which I opened real slow, so as not to make any noise.

      "They all deserve to die," said a voice behind me, faint, wispy, like it was nothing but the shadow of a voice, scratchy, like the voice off a disintegrating, old, black-and-white movie.

      I turned around.

      Ed Gein was standing on my bed, staring at me. He was wearing some woman's face, a skin-mask he'd peeled off of one of his victims, but I saw it was Gein anyway, because the streetlights were bright and harsh, coming in through the window, and he was just standing there, and it was quiet like Ed and I were the last two people left in the world, and his eyes were just staring at me from way, way over on the other side of the skin-holes in that dead woman's face.

      He wasn't actually doing anything. Just standing there on my bed. But how do you know when someone like that is going to lose it? Just lose control? His eyes were wide as two shrieks. I could hear his fingernails scraping at the inside of his skull, like he was clawing his way out.

      I reached up to the shelf in my closet, real slow. He just stood there, still, doing nothing but screaming through his eyes and breathing, and the skin of his mask rippled whenever he exhaled.

      I moved slow, real slow. I didn't want to set him off.

      He inhaled, and the skin fluttered. He exhaled, and the room seemed to get a little darker despite the streetlights outside, as if each time he inhaled, he breathed in some light, and when he exhaled, he breathed out some of himself, the shadows of his demons.

      Now, I didn't want to have anything to do with Ed Gein, you understand, but apparently Ed didn't share that same civilized apathy about me.

      "They all deserve to die," he said again from deep on the far side of that murdered skin.

      I nodded. I shouldn't have nodded, but I figured it was best to agree with Ed Gein if he was standing stark naked in your bedroom at four in the morning holding a hunting knife and all shrouded in a dead woman's skin, you know?

      He didn't say anything more, so I tried ignoring him. I ignored him just as hard as I could as I eased my hand up to the shoebox on the closet shelf, because you don't want to listen to a guy like Ed Gein. You just don't.

      I fingered the lid off the shoebox and reached in and got out my gun, a pistol, a loaded Bulldog .44, and when I had that in my hand, I felt better. I felt like I had a fighting chance, at least, you know?

      And Ed, he saw the gun too, and he hopped down off the bed and away from me, and I moved with him, and he backed out the bedroom door and through the living room and out the front door and into the hallway, and I kept forcing him back with the gun, and when I got into the hallway myself, the lights that had been on weren't anymore, and Ed started dancing, naked, twirling and flapping his arms around and hopping down the hallway until he disappeared down the stairs.

      So, OK, by now I knew something odd was going on, and I wasn't, you know, exactly tired anymore, or at least I didn't feel like going to bed, if you know what I mean, Gein having just sweated some of his psychosis into my sheets. So I went back outside, figuring maybe I'd go to the hospital, figuring maybe a hospital was a good place to be right about then.

      I saw Speck standing outside the hospital, because what I'd forgotten was that Speck liked nurses, right? Every time a nurse walked out of the door, Speck ran over and planted himself directly in her path.

      The women didn't see him. No one saw him, because he was dead, right? Died a couple years back. Well, no one saw him but me, squatting in some bushes across the street, pressing my Bulldog against the side of my aching head like it was a patch on my leaky peace of mind.

      Each woman walked right through Speck as if he wasn't there. There was this little nurse, the first one, dark hair, round face, Asian features, compact little girl. She walked right through Speck's body, and she didn't even slow down. Didn't hesitate. Didn't look back. Didn't notice anything.

      But Speck did. When the nurse passed through him, he threw his head back. His eyes rolled back in his head. His whole body shivered, and I thought for sure he would just topple over. And he smiled. And I guess I knew then why he was in front of a hospital, because that smile was like a wound in his face.

      I started walking again, back home, down Halsted, even though I hadn't really thought through the concept of going back into my apartment.

      Jeff Dahmer was sitting on a bench outside this store on Halsted across from the 7-11. He had a paper shopping bag sitting in his lap, like he was waiting for a bus, or maybe for the gay bars to start emptying out, this being the middle of Boys Town. Blood seeped out of the bottom seams of the bag, trailing down his pantleg, dripping off his cuff onto his shoe. There was this mussed blond hair sticking out of the top of the bag, parted on the left.

      I ignored him. I walked right past him.

      "They don't deserve to live," he said when I was nearest him. "Sarright," I heard from the bag, but I saw Dahmer's lips move, and then he started laughing.

      I didn't answer. I didn't turn my head. I just walked faster, my head down. A smaller target that way.

#

      And that's when I bumped into this guy on the sidewalk, this guy who looked just like Andy Kaufman, you know, the comedian? That's how I knew the guy was David Berkowitz, because the first thing I'd said to myself when I'd first seen Berkowitz was, shit, he looks just like Andy Kaufman.

      I stumbled, stopped on the sidewalk, and it was just me and Berkowitz.

      "These people don't deserve to live," he said. Right off, that's what he said to me, and I was already tired of this conversation.

      "Go fuck yourself," I said.

      "I'm right, and you know I'm right," he said, and he smiled, I guess because he knew then that I could hear him, because he knew I was listening.

      I shouldn't have said anything. I shouldn't have let him know I could hear him. I ignored him. I didn't say anything else to him. I started mumbling to myself, Get fucked, and, Hey, you, you suck!, and, Fucker!, so maybe he'd think that I was just crazy-talking to myself, and not him, and then maybe he'd leave me alone, but it didn't work.

      "Do you want to know why they don't deserve to live?" he said, and me, like an idiot, I stopped mumbling while he was talking, like I was having a normal conversation with a normal person, instead of talking to the Son of Sam, who I couldn't have been talking to, because he was in a prison somewhere out in New York. "I'll tell you why," he continued. "See that guy over there?" He pointed to the left, across Halsted, and I looked. It really was like I was talking to a normal person. "You know what that guy does? He takes the receiver of a telephone--he still has an old rotary phone, with a big, heavy receiver--and he beats hell out of his wife with it. He uses the phone to hammer her face because he doesn't want to bruise his hands. He plays the piano. Not very well, but he thinks he does. He beats her black and blue. Puffs her face all up. Blood all over. Closed her eye up a couple of times. He's a pretty unpleasant guy, really, piano playing aside. People like him, though. The people who don't know what it is that he does to his wife, that is, and even some of the people who do know what he does. I know it's not an especially tragic story. You've heard it before, but the fact remains. The guy really deserves to die."

      I couldn't go forward, and Dahmer was behind me, so I just crossed the street. The 7-11 was there, all lit up and peopled. I figured if I could just get to the 7-11, then everything would be OK. He wouldn't follow me in there, not with a bunch of other people around. He couldn't do anything to me in there. I could stand his talking until then.

      He followed me.

      "I know what your first thought was when you heard this little tale of woe," he said. "You thought, well, the wife puts up with getting beaten, so she probably deserves it. And some of their friends know about it, and they don't do anything to stop it, so they probably deserve to die, too. Those are some pretty callous thoughts. Normal people don't think like that. But that's just not true. It's what I thought, and I'm normal."

      I squirmed. I ignored him harder. I walked faster. The 7-11 was less than fifty feet away.

      "Oh, sorry," he said, keeping up with my pace. "I'm sorry. Really, I'm sorry. You're not callous. You're sympathetic. You care. You feel her pain. You're a good person. You think that the guy shouldn't beat his wife with a telephone receiver. Somebody should do something about something like that. Well, no one is going to, unless you do. Here's your chance. There he is. Go ahead. Do something. Go talk to him. Reason with him. Go tell the police. Oh, that's right. He'll say, Go fuck yourself. The police will laugh at you. Well, why don't you go take him into an alley and beat him to a pulp? Go ahead. Be a good person. Do something."

      I walked. I mumbled to myself, trying to drown out his voice. I wanted to shout Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! in his face, but I knew he wasn't really there. I wasn't crazy, but people would think I was crazy if I started yelling at somebody who wasn't really there. And maybe I really would have been crazy if I'd started yelling at somebody who wasn't really there.

      "Maybe I've just got you all wrong," he said. "Maybe you don't really want to do anything about it. Maybe you're not just callous, living in the big city, can't worry about everybody else's problems, just leave me alone, the Kitty Genovese syndrome. Maybe you just really don't care. Other people's pain just really doesn't affect you. A woman gets beaten near death? So what? How does that affect me? Do you know what a lack of empathy like that can signify?

      "Wait. You know what? Maybe I shouldn't tell you. Maybe you don't want to know. Or maybe you already know."

      I was in the 7-11 parking lot. I looked over my shoulder and saw Dahmer sitting on his bench across the street. Our eyes met. He got up and started walking towards me, carrying that damned shopping bag, leaving a trail of blood. I rushed for the door of the 7-11. All the lights were on. There were people inside.

      "Antisocial loner," Berkowitz yelled, and I started to run, and he ran right with me. I saw Charlie sprinting bowlegged over from Roscoe street off to my right. "Sociopathic tendencies," screamed Berkowitz. "Those are warning signs. I'm trying to help. Really, I am. You could be dangerous. You could snap..." He snapped his fingers, and it sounded like a gunshot. "...just like that. Or maybe you already know that. Maybe I'm not saying anything that you haven't already thought of. I'm sorry. That has to be pretty hard to live with, the knowledge that you could lose control at any moment, that other people's lives just don't have any meaning for you. I'm really sorry for you. Really."

      He was smiling. I could see it out of the corner of my eye. I got to the door just before Charlie got there, and I yanked it open and ran inside, Charlie and Berkowitz and Dahmer right behind me.

      Gein was on top of the counter, spinning around and around, wearing this cape of skin over his shoulders, and it flew and flapped as he spun, and he had the severed head of a woman in each hand, clutching them by their hair, and he spun around and around, and the store was darker than it should have been, and I heard this shovel-sound, this shovel digging into loose dirt coming from the back of the store where it was darkest, and the whole place smelled like corpses and blood, and I stopped, and I screamed, and I didn't care who thought I was crazy.

      "Leave me alone!" I screamed. "Leave me alone!" Except it didn't come out as words, I think, so much as a wail. I turned around, and I saw Dahmer coming at me with this knife that looked sharp enough to cut right through bone. Now I don't know about anyone else, but when I see Jeff Dahmer making a run at me with a knife, I don't have to think twice.

      I pulled the Bulldog out from under my jacket, and I fired.

      Then they all rushed me, and I kept firing, and the gunshots just reverberated off the walls, back and forth, and then they were all over me, and one of them, Dahmer or Gein or someone, must have got me because I felt this thud and pain in my stomach, and then another in my chest, and I fell down, but I kept firing until I couldn't fire anymore.

      Then it was quiet, the last of the waves of gunshot echoes dissolving into silence. I lay on my back, staring at the ceiling, and I couldn't move, and it felt like someone was standing on my chest, and I was bleeding, so I knew that Dahmer must have gotten me with the knife, and I was surprised it didn't hurt more. It should have hurt more, but it didn't, and I stared at the ceiling and tried to remember if any of them were cannibals, because I didn't want to be eaten alive, but I couldn't remember.

      Charlie leaned over me. He was dressed like a cop, and I knew that that wasn't right, Charlie being dressed like a cop. He had a gun out, pointing at me, and I felt this pressure on my wrist, and I looked down, and he was standing on my wrist, and he pried the Bulldog out of my fingers, and I didn't have any strength to stop him.

      And down on the floor, beyond Charlie-cop's foot, I saw the old lady with the Ginger-Spice wig, just lying there, blood pooling around her, and her twin was slumped against the counter, bleeding too, and the clerk had fallen on top of the counter, blood dripping off his fingertips to the floor, and the cabby and the camouflage guy were on the floor too, shot in the back as they tried to run away, and I was in the center, and they all radiated out away from me, and I knew all of a sudden that they all had Bulldog .44's in them, and I had missed Charlie and Berkowitz and Dahmer and Gein and Gacy, and gotten the people in the store instead.

      And Charlie stood over me, or his spirit, or his astral projection, or the manifestation of evil which in this particular aspect just happened to look exactly like Charlie, and he laughed at me, and he laughed at me, or maybe he was just laughing at all the stupid senseless slaughter dripping onto the floor all around us.

      And then Charlie's face melted, and it changed into the face of this cop I'd never seen before, and he wasn't laughing, and he was looking into my face like he could see me, but also like he just couldn't see me.

      "You're gonna live," he said, still pointing his gun at me, and I sniffed at the air, and I could smell that his gun had been fired, and I knew his bullets were in my stomach and chest, and he sounded thoroughly unhappy about the fact that he thought that I would live.

      I didn't believe him, though. I felt bad. Not pain so much as cold, cold like I'd never felt before. And sorry. Sorry for the shooting. Sorry for shooting these people instead of Charlie and Dahmer and Gein. I wanted to say something. I wanted to say I hadn't meant to shoot anyone. It was Charlie and Berkowitz I'd meant to shoot. I wanted to say it had all been a mistake, an accident. I wanted to say I was sorry. I tried to say I was sorry, but the cop couldn't hear me over the Lottery machine ticking away as it printed out the last of Ginger Spice's tickets before it stopped ticking altogether.

      He leaned down closer when he saw me trying to talk. I tried again. I swear to God I wanted to say I was sorry.

      "Jodie," I said. "It was all for you, Jodie."

-The End-