The door opened and in walked the eight-legged freak we'd been talking about. The hairy bastard had been following me around for years. He was still grotesque with the same intrusive tentacles that could be everywhere at once, including all of the places where they had no business being. Just yesterday I saw his limbs sticking out beneath the toilet seat. The day before that, he uncurled his sweaty fingers and plummeted from the hot lamp above my bed. SMACK--two palms brought an end to that incarnate. As I washed my hands, I tried to forget his filthy limbs, and the feeling of them being upon me. But some things you never forget. How could you if you knew that the same hairy bastard, at least in some form or another, was still around?

The other man in the room, the one that I had been talking to, handed me a baseball bat and crawled into a crack. At least he was good for something. I wound up the bat, like the way Babe would and stared straight into the eyes of my dead sister's father. I know for the first time now where my strength comes from. Back then I had no need for strength. I only wanted to show him my hands of gold. I swing the bat and strike bone. His head explodes like a canon of thunder. Without stopping, I swing again. After round two, I am the last man standing; I gave up being a woman a long time ago. I wipe his splatter from my face with my bandanna and toss it onto the floor.

That next year, the earth bore a billion bright red buttercups. And all of the hands of little girls who touched them turned crimson instead of gold.