Well, his life was shit, and this mound of shit just wasn't helping.

While the teenage girl who was second in line began to giggle after audibly gasping, then commenting for all to hear on the whole place's disgustingness, including all its employees, Bryant tried to wipe his hand off on the bottom of the counter. They didn't have any paper towels. His had was sticky, and then he had no choice but to finish the job on the bottommost corner of his black apron, straightened his visor, then smiled as wide as he could for the next customer.

"Hi, welcome to McDonald's," he said. "What can I get for you today?"

He knew if he didn't smile and act happy, his manager, a large black woman in her forties, would come out and yell at him. Last time she'd done that, the whole restaurant had gone silent and stared, all while she told him what a worthless person he was. How he could barely operate the God-be-damned register keypad. "And it has mother-fuckin' pictures," she snapped. "How can you not get the pictures?"

Well, he didn't know how he didn't get the pictures, just that he hated his God-be-damned job and the God-be-damned person who'd invented McDonald's and everybody who'd ever eaten at McDonald's, especially himself. But this job had been the only one he could find after graduating from UMBC; he'd worked in a psychologist's office as an assistant shortly afterwards while taking courses at Hopkins for his Master's, but had been fired and kicked out of school when his boss had found out he'd had affairs simultaneously with three mentally handicapped patients, and worse, fathered one's bastard child. The ensuing scene in the office when the woman--Carrie--had been wheeled in, for she was missing both of her arms and had one clubbed foot--had been bad enough for the police to be involved. Now Bryant had a record, a file with the Federal Sex Offenders database, and a kid with physical deformities somewhere. And no psychologist's office would hire him ever again. He had lost all desire to help people less fortunate than him. Bryant shuddered to remember any of this.

He had decided to start a new life, but was unsuccessful. Now bankrupt from the several lawsuits that had been brought, and won, against him for his inappropriate behavior, he lived alone in a studio apartment in Baltimore, on the third floor of a decrepit brick building. The building was partially hidden from view by a ramshackle meat-packing facility, and so the smell of slaughtered beef sometimes wafted in through the windows at night. In the summer, the blood would boil and a heavy stench would sit and permeate everything; in the mornings he smelled of blood and intestines, and in the evening of grease and mustard. He would have gone home but his parents, after finally being complete in their shame of him as a child, had moved within six months and had not told him where.

It was a dismal existence, but he'd finally submitted himself to it.

At seven o'clock when his shift was over, he walked out without saying goodbye to anybody and trudged home. It was a warm night in September, warmer than it had been, but he still felt cold. He always felt cold. It's probably the weight of my cold, dead heart, he thought ironically to himself, and then smiled.

The smile faded quickly as he reached his apartment. Turning down the back alley, he kicked several empty beer bottles at a stray cat, who hissed and arched its back before scampering into the night. Bryant ascended the fire escape ladder and lifted the window open so he could enter. He didn't like going through the front door, because his neighbors were suspicious of him. One, an old shriveled Chinese woman who hunched over her cane especially hated him. Whenever she saw him she would chatter away in a string of fast Mandarin which he could not understand; he was fairly certain that she was cursing his existence. She had a beautiful daughter, but whenever they passed him in the hallway if they were together, the old woman would jab him painfully in the stomach with her cane to move him along. Bryant supposed she thought that since he was a registered sex offender, he would make off with any woman for sport, even her. Stupid old hag, he thought, every time he saw her. Mostly though, he'd given up long ago.

There were two families on his floor, each with two screaming, whining babies. They kept him up at night. There was also a deaf old man whose apartment stank of feces, beer, and cigar smoke, and who blared his television so loud Bryant could clearly hear it through the thin walls. He liked it when the old man watched the Gameshow Network, but hated it when he decided to watch Turner Classic Movies or the Hallmark Channel.

Once Bryant got inside, he threw down his apron and visor, grabbed a Miller High Life from the warm refrigerator and sat on his sofa. The light was off.

Dammit he thought.

He saw the blinking message on the answering machine and knew at once who called, but he pressed the button anyway.

"One...message," it said. "Tuesday, September ... twenty-four...five...thirty-three PM."

A different voice came over the tape. "Hi, Mr. Pho," a man said. "This is Burt with Baltimore gas and electric. We're calling to say that as of tonight at seven o'clock, due to failure to pay your bills, your electricity will be cut off---"

Bryant stopped the machine before the man could finish. "Fuckers," he said. So what if he was late on several payments?

He tried to flip on his television, a bulky thing he'd fished out of the dumpster in the back alley and fixed up, but it was silent, immovable. He'd already forgotten. "Damn," he said aloud, and took a long drink from his Miller. What a shitty day. He supposed there was nothing left to do but eat and go to sleep.

Bryant usually liked to come home, relax for a bit, and then cook dinner. He despised eating McDonald's food because they took whatever he ate out of his paycheck at the end of a week. He hadn't known that the first week and ate so much that his total for working thirty hours had been $0.42. After that, he'd saved his money and purchased a large supply week after week of cans of frank-and-beans. Sometimes when he felt like splurging, he bought spaghett-o's, and sometimes on a really special week--his birthday, mostly--he bought himself a pot pie. But he was generally content with the frank and beans.

That night was no different; he was exhausted but famished, and leaned over the edge of the couch and grabbed another can of beans from the paper bag that sat on the floor. Then, heaving himself up, he slowly strode over to the small stove that was against one wall. It was bare, had only one burner, and was gas. He hated cooking with gas; when he'd lived at home they'd had electric, and when Bryant had moved into this apartment, he'd burned everything at least three times before he'd learned how to cook with it. And it helped that his hands were now badly scarred from working with the deep-fryer, and from burning himself so many times on the stove. The scars criss-crossed his hands and upper arms like a map, although this map had a pointless beginning and no destination. He sighed.

"One-way street then," he muttered to himself.

He supposed his hands had fared well enough; the rest of him had not. Whenever he looked in the mirror, he was appalled to see how much he had aged in only four years. Bryant's hair a scraggly mess, his eyes bloodshot and heavily lined and sunken with dark circles, his face was a mess. And he was starting to get jowls, he thought. And while he could accept grey hairs on his head, he could not accept that his whole beard, or what little beard he could grow, was now starting to grow in dirty grey.

"I guess I'm already dead on the outside," he muttered aloud, before turning his mind back to dinner. "Fucking shit life."

He turned the knob for the burner, heard it click. The burner didn't light. He smelled gas, and tried again. There were sparks, but no flame.

"Fuck," he said. His temper rose. "Fucking shit stove!"

He hit it, then tried the knob again, but nothing happened. He still smelled gas.

He opened the single drawer next to the sink that contained three forks, a knife and one spoon, then a bevy of miscellaneous items, including a book of matches. Leaving it open, he turned back and struck a match. It went out before he could reach the burner.

"Fuck," he whispered. His hands started to shake. Brow furrowed, he struck another match, but that one broke, as well as the next two. Soon he was down to one, muttering a different curse after each failed attempt, and soon he had none.

As he turned back to dig in the drawer, he forgot that he had left it open and hit it with his groin. Folding over in pain next to it, he gripped the sink. His face turned red but he managed to utter, "Fuck" twice before having to take deep breaths.

The pain left him, but the aching nausea did not. He remembered suddenly a lighter somewhere behind the television, where he'd thrown it one afternoon. He didn't smoke but liked to light candles. That was, until he couldn't purchase candles anymore because of his McDonald's salary. And so one night in a fit of rage at his last candle having been stolen in one of the many burglaries of his apartment, he'd thrown his lighter at the television.

After a moment, he found it resting underneath a nest of wires.

He tried and tried, but the stove would not light. He shook the lighter and didn't hear any fluid shaking around, finally, and lost it. His can of frank and beans was open on the bare burner, the label peeled off and sitting to one side, crumpled. He batted it across the room with a swipe of his hand.

"FUCK!" he screamed, not caring who heard him. He balled up his fist and shook it at the stove. "FUCKING! JUST! LIGHT!"

And his hand burst into flame.

It didn't hurt. That was strange, he thought. His whole hand must have caught on fire from the stove, or something, but it didn't hurt. It was completely enveloped in white-orange flames, but he felt fine. Bryant wiggled his fingers, and they wiggled. He smiled. It hurt the muscles in his face.

"Awesome," he said, and the flames burned out, leaving his hand pleasantly warm, but clean and white, otherwise. Bryant thought he must not be flammable! He blinked, but when he opened his eyes his hand was still itself, scars and all, with the pleasant warmth.

"LIGHT!" he commanded, but nothing happened. Could he make it happen again? Was it just a dream?

"LIGHT!!!" he screamed, banging his hand on the burner. The can of frank and beans jumped and spilled, but he didn't care. With one finger he began picking up pieces of bean and eating them, and with the other hand, still balled up, he bashed the burner repeatedly, trying to catch himself on fire.

It wouldn't catch again. Maybe hitting it harder would make a spark, and it and the gas would ignite, catching him on fire again, he thought. So he hit the stove harder.

"LIGHT DAMN YOU, LIGHT!" he shouted. It wasn't working. He felt angry. "Just a fucking screw up," he said to himself with gritted teeth, and got more angry.

Feeling his chest fluttering and his pulse burning through his temples, he hit the stove so hard he felt the burner scrape away flesh. At the same time he'd screamed, "BURN DAMN YOU!!" he also felt the flames again, and slowly pulled his hand away to look at the miracle of his skin, burn-free.

He was too slow; flames licked outwards and ignited the gas that had been gathering around the stove for several minutes unabated. Bryant did feel the heat that suddenly burst from the burner.

There was a strange feeling of air being sucked out of the room, and before Bryant could put out his hand or turn around he and all of his meager furniture and possessions were blown backwards with the force of a train through his thin walls and down onto the street below. There was agonizing pain that blazed through his body as he hit the ground, but quickly fainted, as his apartment rained down fire and ash on top of him.

When he came to, there were sirens and people fleeing the building. Through his blurred vision, Bryant made out his downstairs neighbors, and the ones on the first floor. But where was the old woman? Her daughter?

He tried to sit up, but his legs were paralyzed; lifting up his pants leg, he saw shards of white bone jutting through the flesh. The other pant cuff was burning, but he wasn't hurt; as the fabric was eaten away, his broken, mangled leg was exposed underneath. And then he looked at his hands and arms; they were white, not even darkened with the ash. Some of the screaming people stopped and saw him; they pointed and looked at him, jaws agape.

"Why aren't you burned?" someone screamed, shaking him. It sent a jolt of pain up his broken legs and into his groin. The man began to pat down the flame that was rising up his leg, but withdrew his hand when he saw the unmarred flesh beneath. "Where's my family?!" the man shouted, then left Bryant alone. But the man kept casting accusing glares at Bryant.

He knew he was in trouble when another woman pointed at him. After this, the crowd began to back away from him. Their voices became hushed. In the distance there were sirens.

"Why isn't he burning?" someone said, loudly enough for him to hear. "He's the only one."

Everyone looked frightened, tired. Singed. Everyone except for him.

Panic flooded his system, made him move. He couldn't walk; he crawled. The only thing he could think of was the accusing stares in his neighbors' eyes. Fuckin' shitty life, he thought. Everyone hates me. They think I'm a freak. Bryant crawled, and the pain was so much he threw up once. Nobody seemed to care; the sirens got closer, and he had managed to slip away underneath the fence and away. Where? He didn't care. The bile was thick in his mouth. He just knew he would get as far as he could, away from these people, away from this life.

And just to be sure, he snapped his fingers after staring intently at his hand for a moment. He felt heat rising, and then two slender flames appeared on the end of each finger. Putting out his hand, he crawled away, smiling.