I'm asking you, I'm begging you, could you please shut your mouth for just five minutes?" You can imagine the reaction. They ended up in the basement.

You can kill a man with those words. No gun. No bullets. Just words and a girl.

My mouth opened. It happened. Yes, with my head thrown into the sky, I started howling. Arms stretched out next to me, I howled, and everything came out of me. Visions pored up my throat and past voices surrounded me. The sky listened. The city didn't. I didn't care. All I cared about was that I was howling so that I could hear my voice and so I would remember that the boy had intensity and something to offer. I howled, oh, so loud and desperate, telling a world that I was here and I wouldn't lie down.

Why me?' I ask God. God says nothing. I laugh and the stars watch. It's good to be alive.

It's not the place, I think. It's the people. We'd have all been the same anywhere else.

A SMALL PIECE OF TRUTH I do not carry a sickle or scythe. I only wear a hooded black robe when it's cold. And I don't have those skull-like facial features you seem to enjoy pinning on me from a distance. You want to know what I truly look like? I'll help you out. Find yourself a mirror while I continue.

And I stop listening to me, because to put it bluntly, I tire me.