A hand was placed over my mouth and I was pulled into an alleyway. I remember my mother warning me about alleyways, to stay away from them; she also warned me about hitchhikers and white vans and talking to strangers and how I should never answer the door when she wasn't there. Everything she ever told me flashed through my mind as I was pulled into the alley by the rough hands.

The hands belonged to a man in a long, white straitjacket  His red, scraggly hair covered his eyes, but as I turned around, my own eyes were fixated on his mouth. On his smile.

It was wider than his face. Somehow. I don't know how it was possible, but it was. It was like looking at one of those impossible objects - you don't notice how wrong it is until later, the aspect that just couldn't possibly work in real life. The staircase that goes on forever, the fork that cannot possibly exist. The smile that is wider than the face.

He had a knife in one hand and his other hand was still gripping me. He didn't say a word, but he didn't have to say anything. I knew what he wanted to do. He was what my mother had warned me about; he was the stranger I should never talk to, he was the person inside the white van, the hitchhiker on the side of the road, the man who knocks on doors to see if anyone's home. The man with the mile smile.

I took the gun from its holster and I pointed it at him, but he wasn't afraid. He slashed forward with the knife and I felt an arc of pain in my hand. I almost dropped the gun, but held onto it despite the pain.

All of my mothers words, all of the images of white vans and hitchhikers and strangers, they all poured out of me and into the gun. I watched as another bullet was made. It looked like a bright white tooth.

The man still gripped me with his other hand and he pulled me forward, pushing his knife against my throat. I felt the cold steel and then I raised the gun against his chin and I pulled the trigger.

Needless to say, he died with a smile on his face.