They had popped up all over the playground. They gleamed in the morning light. For some, they were sweet, a quick fix for the whores and derelicts that had infested the neighborhood. It was Gloria Frump, however, who knew the truth.

“Another one, Buster,” Gloria hissed to her dog. “At this rate, they’ll be showing up at the church.”

She was two-hundred pounds on knobbly legs and her words breathed through her small crack of a mouth. Gloria picked up the hypodermic needle, careful not to prick her fingers. It was her fourth visit to the park that month, and every week, she found something vile. Last week, it had been a marijuana pipe in the shape of a phallic symbol. She’d found cigarettes and broken beer bottles, and now a needle of all things - for Christ's sake, a needle.

Gloria wasn't sure what kind of drug this entailed, but she knew it meant teenagers had paid to inject horrible, dangerous stuff into their veins. When Gloria was a child, she'd spent her money on raisin pastries at the old smoke shop. But when Gloria was a child, many things had been different, and the neighborhood was one of them.

She held the needle for her eleven-year old dog Buster to sniff. He was a Rottweiler whose left eye had been shut out with a paintball gun, and the other had been lost to cancer. This hadn't robbed him of his sense of sight, and Gloria was keen to make sure he knew what these substances were. It would be a tragedy, after all, if poor Buster’s paw trod on the sharp tip and the teenagers poisoned him.

When Buster was finished, he growled and shook his belled collar, jingling it like a musical instrument. Gloria smiled at the needle in her hand at her evidence.

“Well, we’ll see to this now, won't we?" she said. "We know exactly who's going to answer to this.”

***

“Well, we’re doing the best we can, Gloria," Nester explained. "We’ll have you know the city’s given a healthy donation to our district to clean up the crime. In a good few months, I'm sure we'll start to the see the results."

Nester Fredrickson was the only surviving member of Gloria’s high school class. She knew this because she kept a yearbook in her bedside bureau. Every time she learned of a new death, through the obituaries or word-of-mouth from the geezers at the diner, she crossed out their faces with a red pen. The entire book now was full of faces covered in dark blotches, leaving only Gloria and Nester as the valedictorians.

The way she saw it, Nester must have had at least a few more years in him because he attended church regularly. Gloria had never missed a day either, but she knew God favored men for their achievements over women. Gloria didn't mind this very much, because women always felt the need to flaunt how successful they were. There was no such thing as a modest career women, and Gloria had been proud to go unnoticed forty years working at an optometrist’s office. She’d only retired after Buster had lost his eye to cancer.

Nester was a humble man with the frank acceptance that came with never leaving your hometown. He was white-haired and burly with a beer gut that crept up like a hill over his desk. It had been different in high school, when he’d been a star athlete, and where he’d ever so humbly turned down Gloria’s invitation to attend the Derringer High School Prom. But she was still alive, and so was he, and there came this obligation to check up on one another If Gloria asked politely enough, Nester would water her lilacs or take her out for cheap Italian food. As part of the volunteer organization that patrolled the city’s parks, Nester also fielded Gloria’s frequent complaints about the crumbling state of the neighborhood.

It was a sweltering day in his home office, a room that smelled like petroleum because it was right above a local auto shop. It was a tight alcove with sunlight streaming in through the blinds, a place that seemed to breathe with life. Gloria wasn't sure if it stayed that way when she visited.

“What do you mean a few months?” Gloria exclaimed. “I can't exactly walk my dog with needles growing out of the grass. If these people lived overseas, the police would have them shot dead in the streets.”

“They don't,” Nester said dryly. “They live in New Jersey.”

“Well, it bares little relation to the New Jersey that I remember,” Gloria replied. She paused for a moment, musing over the wonder of this. “Do you recall where I was born?”

“Mendham,” Nester replied.

“That’s right, Mendham. And you'd think with the close proximity…” She coughed and went for her handkerchief. This had been happening often, but at her age there wasn't any point in dwelling on it. “You’d think the apple wouldn't fall very far from the tree.”

“I don't understand what you're asking,” Nester said, frowning at her. “We’ll clean up as best we can, and there's no other solution to offer.”

“I'm talking about an issue of character,” Gloria said, shaking her head. “It's come to define the neighborhood: the lack of it. When you let degradation define a neighborhood, it falls apart. Something should be done, but it's not my job to offer a solution. I’m a concerned citizen.”

“So I suppose it's mine then?” Nester said, smiling weakly. “Seventy-four and living above an auto shop?

“Is it even family-run down there?” Gloria said, gesturing toward the floor. Beneath the wood, she could hear the creaking and cranking of metal wrenches. It came up like a savage noise, a beastly hot air. “What kind of people are they?”

“Ecuadorians, I think,” Nester said. “It's the father who owns the business, and he has a few sons.”

“Are Ecuadorians like Mexicans?” Gloria asked, raising her eyebrows. “Or is it a different kind of upbringing?”

“They’ve been in business for years,” Nester said. “That should account for something. He paused for a moment, “I'm not going to speak ill of our neighbors, Gloria.”

“But you have in the past,” Gloria shot back. “If you just used a little more assertiveness, they’d listen.”

“It's a changing neighborhood,” Nester said, shaking his head. His eyes were wide and fearful, and Gloria felt there were surveillance cameras watching them. “I don't like it either, but I have to be mindful. You've seen what happens to people who speak out. There’s professors at that college, restaurant owners in the newspapers-””

“The issue with them is that they stop talking,” Gloria said, cutting him off.

She felt her throat flare up, its strands tightening like a great ostrich. She listened to the grinding downstairs and started feeling threatened, It wasn't how she usually felt around Nester, and it wasn't something she knew how to deal with.

“Well,” Gloria said, feeding the silence. “If you want something done right, I suppose you have to do it yourself.”

***

She found more in the park the following morning. Two hypodermic needles by the dumpster. There was graffiti everywhere there and obscenities that should have gotten these people whacked as youngsters at the dinner table. This was wishful thinking, she figured, since their parents were probably dope fiends who collected unemployment.

When she was strolling down the path with Buster on his leash, Gloria came across a couple of hoodlums by a bench. It was raining and they were selling see-through umbrellas. She tried to walk quickly, evading their eyes.

“Excuse me, lady?” one of them asked. He was a Hispanic man with a sharp buzz cut. To Gloria’s disgust, she saw he was wearing a crucifix around his neck. “Would you be wanting to keep that head dry?”

Gloria said nothing, walking by with her nose in the air. He tried again,

“What’s wrong, lady?" he said. "Can't walk your dog in the rain. That's not going to do him any good.”

The other hoodlum chuckled. He was African-American and tall with thick dreadlocks.

“Dog ain't going to complain about no rain,” he laughed. “It's this woman who's going to get that pretty face wet. How old are you, lady?”

“Seventy-four,” Gloria said curtly. She didn't know why she'd stopped in her tracks. Buster started to whine, urging her to continue walking. There was a need to hold her ground, to show the same ancient cracks in the sidewalk would be there after they were long gone. “I take it you're not attracted to anything here.”

“This motherfucker,” the man with dreadlocks laughed, shoving his friend. “Sweet talk the lady. Come on."

The Hispanic man scowled, offering the white umbrella. “They’re only five bucks. It's going to pour.”

Gloria ignored the glowing handle of the umbrella. She looked at the bone structure in his face, coarse and thin with sunken-in eyes. There were dots of blood in the corners as if she was looking at the seeds of a rotten fruit. He was an addict, which Gloria could detect like first nature.

“What are you going to spend your profits on?” Gloria said, raising her eyebrows. “I expect this isn't going to go to college tuition.”

The hoodlums scowled, clearly insulted by the comment. They amused her when they looked around the park, as if they wanted a police officer to show up.

“Listen,” the guy with dreadlocks said coldly. “We're being respectful here, and we’re not causing anyone any trouble.”

Gloria reached into her purse and pulled out a small notepad. She knew that some people nowadays preferred to write on little computers, but she's never managed to learn how to type correctly on the pudgy keys. She retrieved a pen from her purse as well, a red one she used for circling coupons in catalogs. She began to scribble down an address on one of the scraps of paper.The hoodlums regarded this with concern. The mere act of note-taking, their presence being acknowledged on paper, seemed to frighten them to no end.

“We're just selling umbrellas,” the Hispanic man said, getting annoyed now. “Half of the profits are going to the church, and we’re going to spend the rest on rent.”

“A coincidence then,” Gloria said. She held out the paper, offering it out to them. “My son’s been struggling to make rent payments as well, and he's turned to a bit of a side business.”

She didn't have a son, and she was too shriveled up now to muster one. She looked at the hoodlums and wondered if they saw through her, just like she knew their umbrellas were plastic garbage that wouldn't last through a single storm.

“I think you might be interested,” Gloria said, staring them deep in the eyes. “Most of the crowd around here is.”

The Hispanic man seemed absolutely flabbergasted. “Is this an operation or something? Who the hell are you working for?”

“I'm just a concerned citizen,” Gloria said. “I want to make sure young men such as yourself have a way to do business, even if it's unsavory.”

“You're faking us out,” the dread-locked man snapped. He started to pack up the umbrellas, not willing to converse any longer. There was a crack of thunder above them and it started to drizzle.“Goddamn bullshit, that's what it is.”

“He sells heroin,” Gloria said, not even blinking. “I don't know what you prefer to call it, but I'll refer to it with its scientific definition.”

The Hispanic man bit his lip. She'd struck a chord in him it seemed, and he wasn't bothering to pick up the umbrellas. “How cheap?" he asked. "How low are we talking?”

His friend looked enraged, turning to him with wide, red eyes. “You're buying this shit she's selling? There's probably cops watching right now.”

“Well, then they're welcome to come out,” Gloria said curtly.

She turned toward the playground several yards away and raised her arm. She pretended to usher somebody in, miming for the entourage of imaginary cops behind the swirly slide. Nobody came on her beck and call. The rain started to fall harder now and splashed in the pavement like a musical pot of water. They were alone, and Gloria would hold no illusions otherwise.

“Consider it,” Gloria said lightly. She slid the note with her address into the Hispanic man’s hand. He closed his palm, and Gloria’s flesh on his was like silk on sandpaper. She smiled at the two stooges.

“You're welcome tomorrow afternoon,” Gloria said pleasantly. “He’ll be waiting for you.”

And with that she turned around, strutting with Buster down the walkway. When she started to hear conspiratorial whispers, with both of their heads bent over the paper, she knew she'd soon be receiving some special visitors.

***

The following morning, Gloria sat patiently in her kitchen and waited. It was already two, but she knew these people had their own biological clocks. They rose late and led lives of debauchery before falling asleep even later.

Gloria sat facing the wall in her kitchen and stroked something in her purse. It was metal and stiff. It swished between her car keys, her makeup box and a couple of green mints she sucked after she smoked. She'd woken up with an awful headache, which hasn't improved after a spell of nerves. Inside her bag, her fingers flexed around a small rubber band. She pulled it over and over again, imagining each time she was dragging the Earth out of its orbit. When she did, she would be like the powder that floated in space, lost and meaningless. But before that, in a neighborhood that had seen better days, Gloria was ready to leave an important statement. First, she had to stop shaking.

All of a sudden, Gloria heard footsteps on her porch. They were a followed by a long, drawn-out chime that echoed through her house. Her visitors had arrived. She could hear whispers through the gap in the door.

“See what his prices are, then we split--”

“My cousin lives around here. Wonder if he knows my cousin.”

She crossed over the the door with her purse. Gloria peered through the keyhole and saw their faces magnified like the reflection in a fishbowl. They regarded the door with their bloodshot eyes and their dirty teeth. Gloria twisted the doorknob slowly, so slow she could hear every crack from the cogs and gears.

When she opened up, they greeted her on the doorstep, both wearing hoodies that shadowed their faces.

“Is he home?” the Hispanic man asked.

Gloria nodded and took a reproachful step back. This was a technique she'd seen on the Discovery Channel to protect yourself from wild animals. If you respected their territory, they wouldn't think to bother you. She winced at their aroma as they passed her, hot sweat and men. There was a surge of panic as they made their way through, stepping through the doorway like a sacred veil. It had happened. They were in her domain.

“Nice place,” the Hispanic man said, surveying the kitchen. “Nice as it could be anyway.

“So where is he?” the man with dreadlocks said, turning to Gloria. “We've got to make this quick.”

Gloria just nodded, nursing her hands on the straps of her purse. “It will be very quick. I can assure you.”

With that, her shaking hands reached into her purse. She rummaged around the cold metal. It was impossible to grab, almost like an optical illusion. It was unthinkable, the point- of no-return, and yet Gloria Frump had reached well beyond that.

All throughout that morning, she’d consulted the Bible in her bedroom to ensure herself that she wasn't doing anything wrong. God used corrupt people all the time for his bidding, just like he'd used the harlots. She'd waited patiently in the kitchen, considering what she was about to do, but also considering something scarier: what if she didn’t?

From her purse, Gloria retrieved a Colt pistol. She'd purchased it several years ago after the neighborhood had gone to the dogs. It all happened in a matter of seconds, too quickly for Gloria to think or feel anything. She brought down death like an exterminator devoid of sympathy when they sprayed insects.

Gloria aimed the pistol at the Hispanic man and pulled the trigger. There was a jet stream of blood that shot from his head, much darker than she thought it would be. A thin mist of brains splattered the wall behind him. His knees buckled, and then he toppled to the ground. One down.

The man with dreadlocks screamed. He did a strange dance, his ankles clattering against the table behind him, and he fell into a cluttered mess of wood. His body was caught between the chair legs, a macabre decoration of sorts for her living room. His hands shielded his face, almost like his meaty flesh could withstand the strength of a high-speed bullet. If his words were supposed to be a prayer for salvation, Gloria thought they were awfully vulgar.

“Motherfucker,” he screamed, covering his face. “Son of a bitch! Don't hurt me; don't hurt me-"

"I'm only looking out for the neighborhood,” Gloria said, shaking her head.

And with that, she pulled the trigger again, and a resounding boom echoed through the house.

***

Gloria decided to bury them in her backyard. This was difficult because she didn't have enough strength to carry their corpses by herself. She could've asked Nester, but she had the suspicious feeling he wouldn't have taken kindly to murder. It wasn't murder though, she figured, but more like a cleansing of sorts. If she hadn't killed them, then they probably would have killed each other like a bloody cockfight.

Gloria didn't feel fear per say, but rather a soothing sense of relief. This was her life now, and that was that. Even in mythology, Pandora had every choice of how to react once she opened the box. She could've allowed the world’s dangers to overwhelm her, or she could have grown up and put her foot down.

To bury them properly, Gloria decided to dismember them first. She did this by carrying them to the bathtub, a difficult task in its own right, and then dropping them in like dirt laundry. When she sliced their limbs off - a delicate procedure, which consisted of six parts; the head, the arms, the legs and the torso - Gloria turned on the hot water. This sent all of the blood bubbling down into the drain. She worked steadily as the bathtub turned into a steaming pink fountain. The stench was unbearable when she cut off their legs at the waist, and would have been even worse if she hadn't lost her sense of smell years ago.

At long last, Gloria had twelve different body parts at her disposal. She walked to the kitchen and retrieved a package of black garbage bags. After pulling out six - because she wouldn't allow the hoodlums the courtesy of having their own coffins - she separated the different body parts. When she wrapped up the procedure at a little after nine-o-clock, she had six garbage bags waiting to be disposed in her kitchen. This would have to wait until tomorrow of course, when she would invite Nester over to dig a hole in her backyard for plumbing,

Gloria stared at the garbage bags and felt nothing but a rush of exhilaration. Murder was tepid at first, murky waters, but there was a great strength when you finally went through with it. In the mind of Gloria Frump, she was the newly elected mayor of the neighborhood, and perhaps there would even be a parade in her honor. So after feeding Buster his dog treats, Gloria took out her dentures, placed them in a glass of water and retired to a marathon of The Young And The Restless.

***

The following morning, Gloria awoke to a peculiar sight. It started as a day unlike any other. She brushed her teeth and put her dentures back in, biting down on that acrid taste of tobacco and saliva. She folded her bed sheets and went downstairs to cook some bacon. This was frowned upon by her doctor, but in Gloria’s eyes, she figured she’d earned the right to eat whatever she wanted.

When she entered the kitchen, she was shocked to see that the garbage bags had been ripped open. Each bag had a thick tear inside and a thick, red trail streaked across the floor. Her entire kitchen was covered in blood. Buster had already happened upon the scene. He sniffed around, searching for evidence perhaps. He looked up at her and whined, pleading for an answer that she didn’t have.

With limbs that felt weak and limp, Gloria walked over to one of the garbage bags. She grabbed the flap and picked it up with a shaking hand. It was entirely empty. There wasn’t a single body part left inside and only the lingering, bloody trail paved a path.

Gloria hurried to the counter and put on her spectacles. She decided to let Buster stay behind, as this wasn’t something safe for her trusted companion to deal with. She traipsed down the hallway, headed for the front door. When she peered through the screen door, she saw there were red tracks winding down her walkway, all the way down to the sidewalk. They were like thick tire marks, a clear testament to what she’d done.

It was the police, Gloria’s mind screamed at her. It had to be the police. They’d stormed into her house in the middle of the night. The hooligans, the sheer self-righteousness to barge into her home. Well, she didn’t know how the body parts had gotten there, she decided; that was certain. She was old and invalid, and if somebody had organized a murder at her home, then she’d been too busy resting to notice. She’d been framed, obviously, for a crime that she hadn’t committed. Anybody would believe that. Anybody. In fact, come to think of it, Gloria was sure she’d heard burglars the night before. That was right, burglars, and that would certainly rouse the suspicion of the authorities.

“Come on, Buster,” Gloria said. Her voice came out as a choked whisper. “We’re headed to the police station.

***

Rather than taking the familiar route to the police station, Gloria decided to follow the tracks of blood. It was the easier way to decide what had happened because she may not have even been visited by the police at all. It could have been some crooked robber, some nasty pervert who had broken into her house in the middle of the night. Buster sniffed the ground as they walked, guiding her down dusty sidewalks that smelled like alcohol.

At long last, Gloria came to the park. She walked cautiously, taking heed of the dark splotches beneath the fallen brown leaves. They weren’t very far from where she’d encountered the hoodlums yesterday, where they’d accosted her like wicked bandits about selling cheap umbrellas.

When she turned the corner, Gloria saw two figures standing by the playground, the same spot she’d seen them at yesterday.

At first, she thought her eyes were playing tricks on her. It had to be that way, or perhaps everything had been an ethereal dream. She had reclined last night in her living room and watched Turner Classic Movies after all, and she’d made her bed like any other day, so maybe nothing was out-of-place. Maybe this was a sign of old age, a warning that she was losing her marbles.

It was both of them, and they looked the same way they had yesterday. Both the man with the dreadlocks and the buzz-cut looked fresh and jubilant, not a body part rearranged or mangled. At their side, they even held the same basket of umbrellas they’d been selling the day before. Buster started to bark at them as he and Gloria approached, and Gloria wasn’t surprised. If she had a voice, she would have been barking too.

“Excuse me, lady,” the Hispanic man said, smiling at her as she approached. “Would you like to be buy an umbrella?’

“Real cheap,” the man with dreadlocks said. “And I expect it’s going to rain soon, so you’d be keen to keep yourself dry.”

“You came to my apartment yesterday," Gloria spat.

They blinked back at her, just as confused as she was.

“It might have been somebody else,” the Hispanic man said. “We’ve got a lot of friends around here. I’ve got a lot of cousins.”

“And I expect you’ve got some friends too, Ma’am,” the man with dreadlocks said, still holding that cheeky grin. “So to keep their heads dry, why don’t you stock up on some umbrellas?’

‘Don’t you remember what I did to you?" Gloria yelled.

‘Yes, Ma’am. We most certainly remember," the dreadlocked man began.

“Then what happened?” Gloria blurted out.

“Well,” the Hispanic man said, scratching his head. “We’ll say we remember if it makes you feel better.”

“Would you like an umbrella?” the man with dreadlocks said again, filling the silence and holding out the basket.

Gloria’s eyes flickered between them. She searched for a message in code, a button out-of-place on their jackets, something to show that this wasn’t genuine.

“I'm not interested,” Gloria said coldly. “But I'll certainly consider it in the future."

***

Gloria waited in the park that afternoon. She watched as the hoodlums went about their business, selling their flimsy umbrellas to passerby. She sat with Buster in a small rest area where chess sets were set up. Twice, fellow senior citizens asked her to play, but she turned them down both times. She was too focused with watching her new acquaintances. It hadn’t been a dream, she decided, watching as they packed up their umbrellas at the end of the day. When she dismembered their bodies, it hadn’t moved with that strange sense of hyper-reality. She remembered being present. Perhaps it was something she couldn’t fathom, a glitch in the system. She had heard computers made mistakes sometimes, so perhaps the same could be said for time. Who was to say that time couldn’t unravel itself like a rope?

Gloria decided that she would be the one to set things right.

She waited until dusk where everybody else had cleared out of the park. The hoodlums stood together sharing cigarettes and talking beneath their dark hoods. It was here that Gloria reached into her purse. She rummaged between coins and ointments before settling on her pistol. Her fingers traced around the holster, dancing around the round trigger. With nobody at the park, she would be able to clear out after the gunshot. Then she would return to her living room like clockwork, where she would go back to watching soaps. It wasn’t just repetition. It was reinforcement.

Gloria listened to the hoodlums a few yards away. She took off her sunhat so she could hear their conversation.

“Stubborn, isn’t she?” the man with the dreadlocks said. “But we’ll get her in her place.”

“Right where she belongs,” the Hispanic man said. “Can’t mess with fate, man.”

She didn’t know what they were talking about it. It was probably about some showgirl or something, a prostitute destined to rot in a gutter. Gloria rose with the pistol in her hands. Buster whined beneath the chess table, clearly tired after spending half the day waiting in the park. While he was very interested in dog biscuits, he didn’t seem to have much of appetite for murder. Gloria didn’t either. It left an awful mess behind, but hopefully this would be the last of it.

“Let’s head back home,” the man with dreadlocks said. “We made good money today so-

Gloria pulled the trigger. The sound exploded through the air, echoing like a kick in a football stadium. It was then that a round hole appeared in the center of the dreadlocked man’s throat. He gurgled and sputtered up black blood, his hands clawing at his throat. It didn’t matter, Gloria realized, because he was a smoker, and that meant he’d have ended up with a hole in his throat anyway.

The Hispanic man yelped, jumping back in shock. “Motherfucker! What the hell-‘

Gloria fired again. This shot hit the Hispanic man square in the temple. He toppled over like a chicken at a farmyard, drained of life with his body quivering on-and-off. That was that. With dusk settling over the park, strips of orange and black like the witching hour, Gloria had achieved neighborhood cleanup again. She furrowed her brow, glaring at the rumpled bodies piled on top of one another.

“Come, Buster,” Gloria said. There was the echo of police sirens from a few blocks away, but she knew they would pay her no mind. She wasn’t a perpetrator after all, and an elderly woman walking a dog only could have played the victim. “Let’s go watch television,” she muttered.

***

The next morning, Gloria could scarcely believe her eyes. It wasn't probable. It couldn't be true. She was sure that it was a trick of the light, or perhaps her mind playing tricks on her. Her own mother had suffered from Alzheimer’s of course, and it wasn’t out of the question that Gloria carried the genes. But there they were there in broad daylight. It was the two hoodlums again, and they were selling the same see-through umbrellas.

“The nerve,” Gloria said, her hands shaking on Buster’s leash. “The unbridling nerve.”

She stormed over to the hoodlums, and both of them greeted her with the same warm sincerity.

“How goes it, Ma’am?” the dreadlocked man said. “Pleasure seeing you around these parts again.”

“So you’ve seen me before,” Gloria said coldly. “That means you remember who I am.”

“We see you every day,” the Hispanic man said. “Passing through. Y’know what I’m saying?”

That sent them into a fit of laughter, but Gloria didn’t find anything funny. She glanced at their skulls and wondered if there was something supernatural at work, or perhaps even a medical marvel. Perhaps their skulls were plated with silver steel, or perhaps they had a pair of identical twins somewhere. There had to be an explanation, yet the ideas were leaving her like colored balls rolling out of a machine....

“I’ve had enough of this already,” Gloria said.

And with that, she reached into her pocketbook and pulled out the pistol. It was like catching a couple of rats in a mouse-trap, nothing but a jolt reaction when the spring slam shut. The hoodlums recoiled in fear. They held their hands up, shaking as if the bullets couldn't puncture their skin.

“Lady, we don’t want any trouble,” the dreadlocked man stammered. “You’ve got to put that down.”

“Shit,” the Hispanic man mumbled. He looked at the nozzle of the revolver. “What the hell’s going on here?”

“I’ve seen you before,” Gloria cried. The words rushed out of her, and she knew the bullet would as well. “I asked you to come to my house, and that’s where I got rid of you. Then yesterday, you were standing right here, and I got rid of you again.”

“We always come here,” the Hispanic man said, raising his hands in the air. “This is where we sell things, and we don’t want any trouble.”

“You got to put that down, all right?” the dreadlocked man said. “Your head’s mixed up right now, and you’re in a bad place.”

“How old are you?” the Hispanic man said, minding his distance "Do you have any family?”

“It’s none of your business,” Gloria said. Her finger shook on the trigger, sweat dripping down her palm. “I’m old, not senile, and there’s a very fine distinction.”

“Well, put that thing down,” the dread-locked man said, speaking in a cool voice. “Because I’m sure we can find somebody to take you home, to wherever you’re supposed to be. Always around walking with that dog of yours. Too old to be walking alone, right? There’s go to be somebody you can talk to.”

“Is it loaded?” the Hispanic man asked, raising his eyebrows. “Look at the pistol. Is it even loaded?’

“Of course it’s loaded,” Gloria said, but the words came out with venom. She felt insulted in a way, because she simply couldn’t remember whether she’d put in the bullets. “Any second, I’m going to fire the bullet.”

“You don’t want to fire it,” the dread-locked man said again. His voice was soothing and cool, but Gloria figured the devil’s was as well. “You’ve got some life left in you, and you don’t want to pull yourself into a mess. Now, why don’t you hand me the gun?’

She should have fired. There’d been no issue before, and it should have been simple to fire a shot into each of their foreheads. Yet as the morning sunlight glazed over the park, Gloria felt an awful lot like she was sleepwalking. It was like stepping out of a trance, realizing how the world had gone on spinning even when you hadn’t been around to watch it. Blinking in the hot light, she felt a wave of revulsion at the thought of the dread-locked man inspecting her pistol. It was her property, and simply none of his business.

“You don’t want to look at it,” Gloria said again. “I’m...I’m going to shoot-”

“Are you saying that because there’s nothing inside of it?” the dread-locked man said.

With hands that didn’t even shake, the dread-locked man pulled the pistol from Gloria’s hands. He opened the cartridge and checked inside. He waved the pistol upside down, and surely enough, there wasn’t even a jingle. The gun wasn’t loaded.

“Do you have a home?” the dread-locked man asked after a moment. “We can see to it you find somewhere to go.”

At Gloria’s side, Buster tugged at the leash, urging her to leave. Perhaps he could feel what she was thinking, the stark sense of being dropped in an alien world. Everyone around her operated at a different frequency, one that simply didn’t accommodate women who were seventy-years old. She looked at her frail hands, clawed like the talons of a bird. How long had things been going on like this? At one point, Gloria wondered with horror, had she started to lose her mind?

“Lady,” the Hispanic man said, raising his voice and stepping forward. “We can get you where you need to go...”

But Gloria didn’t respond. She left the pistol with the deadlocked man, a useless hunk of metal that was no used to her. She grabbed Buster’s leash like the reigns of a horse and took off, hurrying in the opposite direction. She didn’t need to go somewhere. They did, and that had been her point from the very beginning.

***

“Well, we have your test results back here,” the doctor said the following Wednesday.

For ten minutes, Gloria had sat with Nester in the waiting room at the doctor’s office. He had come to provide emotional support, which was hard to salvage in the situation. When Gloria glanced around the room, she saw pictures of things that terrified her; brains with pink stems and heads sliced open to create diagrams of nasal passages. It was strange how a person’s whole weight, the whole essence of their being, could fit instead of a stupid brain. It was even stranger how easily it could be broken.

“Just take a deep breath,” Nester had said again. He sat helplessly in the corner, unable to say much of anything. “We’ll see what happens.”

“It happened to my mother, you know,” Gloria had said quietly. “It was slow at first, a gradual thing. She’d mix up names and dates,or she’d take the wrong turn when we were just down the street from her house. But things build. They always build.”

She took a breath and considered the nursing homes in the area. She had only visited her mother once, and the atmosphere hadn’t encouraged her to come back. She couldn’t live in a world of sterilized walls and old people dribbling on applesauce. She had something to live for surely. Something. But what?

“Nester,” Gloria had said after a moment. “You’ll remember me, won’t you?”

Nester had looked up at her, not quite understanding. “I don’t follow, Gloria,” he said.

“Even if I don’t remember you?’ Gloria said. ‘I used to think it didn’t matter. I always wanted everyone to forget me, and have that be that. But the things I did. The people I knew. The places I saw. I’d just like somebody to remember that.”

Nester nodded at her, biting his lip. “If I was able to remember you completely,” he said softly. “I’d do it in a heartbeat.”

Now, the doctor had walked in the with the clipboard. Gloria imagined the tone of a funeral director, ready to tell her that her mind would drift off into a far-off place and crumble to dust. But when he walked into the waiting, the only thing on his face was a bright, cherubic smile.

“I’m pleased to say you tested negative,” the doctor said. “Your memory is fully functional, and you seem well-prepared to have a healthy mind in old age.”

Gloria gawked at him but no words came out. Nester laughed and crossed over to her, cupping her hands.

“Isn’t it great, Gloria?’ he asked, hugging her around the neck. “Isn’t that just terrific?”

And just then, when rain started to trickle outside the window, and a storm started to brew over the horizon, Gloria thought of nothing but umbrellas.

***

The two of them went to a small restaurant in town after that. Nester called for a celebratory lunch for Gloria’s diagnosis, or lack thereof. When Gloria failed to offer much of a reaction, picking at the peach cobbler she’d gotten for dessert, Nester seemed to detect something was off.

“What’s wrong?’ Nester said, blinking at her. “I thought you’d be ecstatic.”

“Of course I am,” Gloria said quickly. “I just…” She frowned for a moment, considering the wild details. She was in the right state of mind, and yet she recalled everything. The dismemberment, The gunshots. She couldn’t have told Nester about it, because he’d be inclined to send her right back to the doctor. Then again, sympathetic ears for Gloria were far and in-between, and Buster back home wasn’t very vocal in terms of offering advice.

“I’ve seen things,” Gloria sighed. “I’ve seen things I can’t describe.”

“Like what?’ Nester asked.

“These two hoodlums,” she explained. “They hang out in the park every day and sell umbrellas. Whenever I come near them, I have these fantasies. I think about chopping them up into little bits. I think about shooting them. I think about doing all of these awful, terrible things.”

Nester frowned, mulling through the details. “Are these things you want to do, Gloria?” he asked.

“No,” she sighed, picking at her cobbler. “But if these things happened to them, I wouldn’t raise much of a fuss.”

Nester seemed to consider this for a moment. In the silence that ensued, the waitress, a Puerto Rican by the looks of it, dropped off their bill and walked away. It was agonizing to sit through, because Gloria knew all too well that he couldn’t call her crazy. This was happening. It was real, and there was nobody but her old high school swing to piece it together for her.

“You have a lot of resentment, don’t you?” Nester asked quietly. “Do you think it’s led you to seeing things?”

"Well, I don’t think resentment leads to hallucinations,” Gloria barked back. “If that was the case, I’d be living in Wonderland at this point.”

“But the other possibility,” Nester went on. “Is that you’re seeing these things because you’re supposed to.”

“Is it God?” Gloria asked, perking up in her seat. “Do you think God wants something to do with me?"

“I don’t believe God would encourage that,” Nester said, shaking his head. “I don’t agree with the state of the neighborhood, but the violence, the things you’re describing...it’s just not something God would encourage.”

“Then do you think it’s the devil?” Gloria asked, leaning in closer.

“I think you need to take a rest for awhile,” Nester sighed, picking up the bill.

***

At Nester’s request, Gloria decided to rest the next week. She spent most of her time in her bedroom, napping in the dark and occasionally getting up to squint out the window. She could see children playing in the streets. Colored children. There were Cambodians and Nigerians and all sorts of things that Gloria couldn’t name. When she glanced up at the skyline, she saw the neighborhood stretch up into the hills, the same ones that her father had used to commute down every morning on his way back from work. While it was true that the world had changed, there was a certain principle that had been forgotten. It was the decency, the sense of depth. It was something that couldn’t be described, and yet didn’t need to. Gloria was the one who decided what mattered.

When she tried to sleep, she found herself haunted by dreams. She found herself on long paths that winded through the park and umbrellas that hung from trees like flowers. She saw the hoodlums playing chess, and the hoodlums at the basketball court and the hoodlums selling their worthless umbrellas. They smiled at her with grins that glowed like campfires, almost white against their dark skin.

When Gloria was unable to sleep one night, she shuffled herself out of bed. Careful not to wake Buster, she walked downstairs and helped herself to a glass of milk. It was a bit old, and yet she hadn’t mustered up the enthusiasm to go outside again. After a few days of being quarantined, Gloria had started to treat the house like her own private domain. The outside world was filthy, unclean, and perhaps her house was the only sanctuary that the world had left.

When her stomach grumbled, Gloria cut herself a piece of cottage cheese. It was when she cut it up on her counter that she started to hear noises. She glanced around uncertainly, her hawks scanning the room like a hawk. Nothing was out-of-place, and all of her old dolls and antiques were still sitting in their glass cabinets in the living room. Frowning now, Gloria continued to slice up the cheese. It was strange to dismember it, slicing into the surface. Cheese, Gloria realized, reminded her of the consistency of human flesh.

“Hey, lady,” a voice said suddenly.

Gloria shrieked. She spun around and knocked over the plate. The strips of cheese fell to the floor, food for the rats. She looked around the kitchen in a whirlwind, wondering if anybody had gotten inside. She needed a weapon, something to defend herself. The gun was gone now, because she’d given it to those awful derelicts. Devoid of any resources, Gloria swore and dug into her drawer. She pulled out spatulas and spoons. All of a sudden, she foraged a long, sharp carving knife that gleamed beneath the light from the ceiling fan.

“I’ll call the police,” Gloria yelled into the depths of her house. “If you don’t come out now, you’ll never hear the end of it.”

It was then that she heard a low whistle. It was like a catcall, the same kind of awful thing that the neighborhood hoodlums used on women. She turned around cautiously, ready to face the screen door in the kitchen. At first, all she saw were two round eyes, bright white like they were floating in mid-air. Then he pressed his face closer to the screen, and Gloria saw who it was; the man with dreadlocks, and he was waiting right outside of her door.

“I was wondering,” the dread-locked man called out, shifting his head. “If you’d be interested in buying one of our umbrella.”

“Stay back!” Gloria shrieked. She cowered against the fridge, hugging the knife to her chest. “Don’t come any closer! I’m warning you!”

“I don’t want any trouble,” the dread-locked man said. “I’m just telling you it’s going to rain tomorrow. It’s going to rain, and it would be in your best interest to buy an umbrella. If you’re around at noon tomorrow, why don’t you buy them at the block party?”

“What block party?’ Gloria yelled. “What are you talking about?”

“There’s a block party tomorrow,” the dread-locked man said. “That’s where we’re selling. If you stop by, we’ll give you something real nice.”

“Will you go away if I buy one?’ Gloria yelled. “Will you leave me alone?”

He descended back into the darkness, his face as shapeless as the night. The crickets chirped on Gloria’s patio. A few blocks away, there was the whirring of police sirens and the barking of Rottweilers. She lowered her arm and dropped the knife. It clattered on the floor, and then Gloria slowly sunk down with it. She started to weep, but in the back of her mind, she took a mental inventory of the money in her purchase. Tomorrow, with no choice of her own, and feeling like she was being forced at gunpoint, she would make a special purchase.

Gloria hadn’t been aware that there was a block party. The concept confused her, because she genuinely avoided most of the events in the neighborhood. From what she could gather, it was an event celebrating that the crime rate in the neighborhood had gone down. There were supposed to be different booths set up down Main Street and all sorts of exotic food: kabobs and falafel and all sorts of things that Gloria’s palette wouldn’t have permitted. She had no interest in staying long however, because she was only going to make a purchase.

When Gloria woke up that morning, she wasn’t surprised to see it was raining. The dread-locked man was right. She could see cars outside her window headed toward Main Street, which meant that the party hadn’t been called off. Because it was under tents, the organizers had probably figured that this wasn’t an issue.

Gloria decided to take Buster with her. This was more for protection than anything else, because she wasn’t keen toward going into town alone. As Gloria walked down the street, she felt like she was walking into a foreign jungle. She heard men laughing in languages that she couldn’t understand. She saw two Filipino girls playing with hula hoops and a couple of Puerto Rican kids listening to a stereo on their stoop. They eyeballed Gloria as she walked by, perhaps the same way that wide-eyed creatures would from forest canopies.

At long last, Gloria found herself at the block party. It took up four blocks in total. The rain was pouring at that point, but the weather had done little to weaken the festivities. The party was in full-swing. There was wild music playing from one of the tents, and the smell of all sorts of delicious food wafting through the air. Even under the tent, Gloria noticed that puddles were everywhere. Because of the poor infrastructure of the neighborhood, most of the roads weren’t properly maintained. This led to rain collecting in small crevasses and puddles everywhere. Everywhere she looked, sneakers sloshed in water as families ordered food from different vendors. In the distance, there was a crackle of thunder, perhaps what got her to walk into the crowd.

“Come on, Buster,” Gloria muttered, tugging on his leash.

Before Gloria found anyone else, she ran into Nester. He was volunteering for the event, clearly by no choice of his own. She saw him sitting at a picnic table and speaking to a Hispanic family with a rowdy bunch of children. The father laughed at a joke Nester said, shaking his hand, and Gloria felt a wave of revulsion as she walked by.

“Gloria?’ Nester called out when he saw her. “What’s going on? You’re supposed to stay inside.”

“It’s too wet,” Gloria said thickly. “I have to get an umbrella.”

She parted her way through the crowd, keen to lose Nester before he followed her. It was disorienting enough being around these people, surrounded by words and dialects she couldn’t understand. There was a whiplash of color: white, black, brown, red. She felt like she was holding her breath underwater, only able to survive for a temporary amount of time. The hoodlum had said he’d been waiting for her.

After a few minutes, Gloria squinted through the rain and saw them. They were standing just outside one of the tents. Their hoodies were drenched in rain, and yet the basket of umbrellas sat beside them just like any other day. Gloria marched up to them with Buster, a meeting that felt fierce and militant. In a crude sense of irony, Gloria felt like she was participating in a drug deal.

“Look who decided to show up,” the Hispanic man said, smiling at her.

Gloria nodded and reached toward her purse. Before she could grab any money, the dread-locked man stopped her

“It’s on the house,” he said, grinning as well. He reached into the basket and handed her an umbrella. “You keep yourself dry now.”

Gloria took a deep breath and accepted the umbrella. She grasped the wood in her hand, almost ready for it to disintegrate. But it didn’t, and there was nothing out-of-the-ordinary to think otherwise.

‘Thank you,” Gloria said quietly. “I’ll be on my way now.”

“You’re not going to stay for the festivities?” the dread-locked man said. “There’s a lot of fun going on here. It would be a shame if you missed out.”

“No,” Gloria said, grinding her teeth. “You said I was supposed to come here, and then you’d leave me alone.”

“We’re just making a pitch,” the Hispanic man said with a shrug, “You’re welcome to join everyone when you’re ready.”

“I don’t encourage this,” Gloria said thickly. “I don’t stand for what’s happened here, and I’d be willing to die for my neighborhood if it meant I could bring it back.”

“That’s a hefty request,” the Hispanic man said.

It was then that Buster started to bark. He growled and shook on his leash. While he’d been temperamental at times before, Gloria had never seen him this riled-up. His mouth started to froth. He bared his fangs at something in the dark, something in the opposite direction.

“What’s wrong with your dog?” the dreadlocked man asked. “He’s not keen for the party either?’

“We’re going home now,” Gloria said, struggling with his leash. “I’m going to assume you’ll keep your end of the bargain, and that I served my purpose to you here.”

“You didn’t,” the dreadlocked man said, shaking his head. “At least not yet.”

“You have a much bigger purpose,” the Hispanic man said.

With a loud whine, Buster broke free from his leash. He yelped and dashed off through the crowd, swallowed by the hoard of Gloria’s neighbors. It was like watching a child fall into a shark cage, a small creature around thousands of devilish fangs. Her best friend. Her plaything. Her companion when everyone else had left her….

“Buster!” Gloria cried out. “No! Come back!”

“We’ll leave you to it then,” the dread-locked man sighed.

Gloria took off through the crowd with the new umbrella in hand. She paid no attention to the hoodlums as they vanished in her blind spot, lost in the darkness behind the tent. Her heart pounded as she looked at the trash on the concrete: cigarette buds, empty bags of Fritos, stains that she couldn’t even fathom. She found herself in a cesspool, a place full of hands that looked like the claws of roadkill. Families turning to stare at her, speaking in their nasty languages. The vendors at the food stands squinted through the smoke, scratching their heads as Gloria dashed through the fun-house. They were out to get her. They’d been in cahoots with the hoodlums, and now they were going to do away with Buster.

“Gloria?" Nester asked as he appeared in her vision. He’d just noticed her it seemed, and he looked awfully concerned, “It looks like you’re going to have a heart attack.”

She ignored him and shouldered past him. She’d reached the end of the midway, and nothing but a long stretch of sidewalk traveled off to the bowels of the neighborhood. Gloria teared up, looking out into the great beyond. He would be forced into dogfights perhaps, those awful things where men bid money to watch their pets kill each other. He would be run over by a garbage truck or poisoned by a drug dealer.

All of a sudden, Gloria heard a quiet jingle. She recognized it as the sound of Buster’s collar. When she looked out into the darkness, she saw him in mid-air like an apparition. He was being held by a pair of hefty arms with dark skin. Both of the hoodlums were standing out in the rain on the sidewalk. The dread-locked man held Buster in his arms.

“Come over, Gloria,” the man said. “You can get wet. You have an umbrella now.”

She took a step outside the tent with the umbrella over her shoulder. There was a rumble in the sky, almost condemning her, but she paid no attention. She saw his jeweled collar in the moonlight, the same one that she’d purchased for Christmas. It didn’t matter that the world was unsafe. It didn’t matter that she couldn’t even pick up milk at the supermarket without feeling like she was going to be gutted. With Buster, she would return to her home and set up camp, wallowing in her thoughts, making sure the old neighborhood was remembered until the time came for--

There was a flash of white light that pierced the ground. It came with an unimaginable boom, a sound so loud that it seemed like a bomb had gone off. It was a bolt of lightning and it struck Gloria Frump right in the heart. Her white hair was fried immediately, just as every major organ in her body shut down. With the sidewalk scourged beneath her, Gloria was already dead when she hit the sidewalk.

….

But as the onlookers come to help her now, seeing nothing more than a poor old woman who died in a freak accident, perhaps we should consider the alternative.

Gloria was killed, you see, because of her umbrella that conducted the lightning bolt. If she hadn’t been there to act as a conductor, the lightning would have struck the large puddle on the ground. In a winding river, this puddle seeped through the concrete and traveled through half the booths at the block party. If lightning traveled through the stream of water, the second thing it would have found were the feet of hundreds of unsuspecting people.

So as these neighbors rush to Gloria’s aid, they are unaware of how they’ve been spared. They are unaware of how the one-eyed dog outside the tent got there, and who will take care of it now as it comes bounding over. They are unaware that there were ever two men waiting outside the tent, one Hispanic and one African-American with dreadlocks. And they are unaware, though perhaps not in the way she hoped, that this old woman has achieved a coveted dream. With thousands of volts of electricity traveling through her body, it is Gloria Frump who has saved the neighborhood.