Morris turned and fled. I chased after him, reeking of kerosene, but he was surprisingly quick, and when we reached the edge of the city I stopped and watched as he ran toward the main house, where his car was parked. Within seconds he was peeling out of the driveway, but as he sped off I saw him holding something to his ear—another phone? His lips were moving. Calling the authorities?

The “authorities.”

I was alone again, but nothing was mine any longer. And now I had started something that I could not stop. The living room in Apartment 101 had been desecrated, Janet’s workplace had been vandalized; there was no turning back. I knew that I didn’t have much time in case Morris had sounded an alarm.

The day was clouding up and rain threatened. It was the time of year when things could turn from sunny to black in minutes. I had to get going. Turning back toward my project, my heart, I began laughing again, realizing at some point that I was sobbing.

The dream was over. Now it was known, now it had been witnessed, now it was a termite-ridden structure with damage beyond repair. I had tried, and I had succeeded, but my success was mortal, like all things. I could not, as I’d hoped, transcend time, or my own body, or this ugly human plane while alive.

There was only one future for me now. The one that had always waited patiently in the shadows. In my own blood.

I retraced my steps back to the flower shop and kept walking, and began the benediction at the far end of the city, where Jack’s technical college was, where Terri’s emergency room had been. I spread gasoline and lit a match. As I walked back toward Apartment 201, I destroyed each building I passed. Arcade Florists, in flames. The Regal Beagle, gone. God. I stood and watched each place burn. With each match I struck and threw I felt as if I were ripping off a hunk of my own flesh, my own spirit, paring myself back down to drab Bonnie Lincoln, a stranger I no longer knew.

By the time I returned to my beloved Apartment 201, I was exhausted and high on gas fumes. An indeterminate amount of time had passed. The light seemed different. Destruction takes a while. I climbed the stairs for the last time, smelling the distant fires. I looked up at the sky, and for the first time it felt like a California afternoon: warm and smoggy, far-off burning hills making themselves known, and I willed myself into Cindy, Terri, Janet, Chrissy, Jack, Larry, the Ropers, Furley. I gripped the balcony railing and shut my swollen eyes with satisfaction, my final happy moment.

Inside the apartment, I took my last gas can and spilled it over the carpet, across the bedrooms, my precious kitchen. All the good times I had had there. The defunct TV, the kitchen table. In the far corner of the fourth wall, the dog’s auto-feeder full of petrified kibble still sat, and the empty birdcage lay stashed somewhere in a closet. I had never gotten rid of these trappings, maybe my first mistake.