Another rainy day.  As the summer months waned, they came more frequently, bastions of the months to come.  For the first time in weeks, the smell of smoked food didn’t fill any of their windows.  The women weren’t busy making side dishes, nor were they baking pies, and the children weren’t playing outside.

The residents on this dead-end street had grown distant since Davie had taken his fall.  It wasn’t something that had happened immediately.  They came with casseroles and well wishes, and they spent their free time doing anything to help his wife out around their home, but eventually the fridge was filled.  Over the course of two weeks, all of Davies’ unfinished projects had been finished, and there was nothing new for anyone to say.

Bryer street grew stale, and where most its inhabitants were unhappy, one, in particular, thrived.  ‘Dandy’ Andy ‘From Down The Street’, wore the biggest of smiles. He walked with an extra bounce in his step, and he winked at everyone as if he knew their darkest secrets.

Oh, but if only they knew his.

If they knew his deep, dark secret, they would sing a different tune indeed!

But that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon, not if he had anything to say about it.  Because HIS, deep, dark secret, was being shared by someone else, someone who could still say something about it.  Not the old black man from down the street, however, he had seen to that!  That one wouldn’t be saying much of anything in the foreseeable future.  No, not that one, but a much younger flower.  One more to his liking.  One he had recently picked as his own.

He had thought of her as his flower from the moment that he laid eyes upon her. Oh, she had been planted by another, a gardener who had tended to her, fed and watered her, and pruned her so that she was always pretty, but he thought of it as her having been planted just for him.  She was HIS flower, and he would do with HER as HE pleased!

He had picked his flower, but he had yet to pollinate it with his special brand of pollen.  He had come close.  Oh, so close!  But then that old black man had interfered!

“HE’S IN MY HOUSE!”, he’d screamed over and over in his head, during AND after having dealt with him.

He worked it into a chant.  “hesinmyhousehesinmyhousehesinmyhouse”, repeating the words with manic fervor.  He had dealt with the old man, but he couldn’t get him out of his house.  Even after it was done, after the cops had completed their investigation and left, he just couldn’t get him out of his goddamn house!

“He’s.  In.  My.  House!”

His skin crawled at the thought of being violated.

“How dare he come into MY HOUSE!  Fucking THIEF!  VIOLATOR!  NIGGER!”

Just when he was ready to take his flower and bring her home, HE had-

“-fucked everything up!”

Andy was angry.  He was happy.  He was furious.  His emotions were all over the scale as he thought about the old man and how he’d had the nerve to trespass upon his private domain.

Andy was sad.  He was giddy.  He was nervous, because with the old man out-of-the-way, he was finally going to be able to get what he wanted.  What he won-ted. He giggled at his clever play of words, humming as he skipped up the steps to his front door.

Soon.

“He’s. In. My. House.”

“Shut up,” he said to nobody in particular.