Mr. Flent is a thin, disheveled, and disturbed man who harbors intense rage at the world and its inhabitants. He declares "Filth!" as he walks down the streets and often envisions passerby naked.

Mr. Flent has a particular predilection for children, and makes a habit out of terrorizing them. At a movie theater, for example, he stares intensely at a little girl, "letting the feeling of pride and power and bright, white, imperious, vengeful majesty rise up within him," until she begins to cry.

Mr. Flent flees the theater and walks until he discovers another "delicious" girl bouncing a ball against a wall on some side street. He approaches her and offers an ice-cream soda. The little girl accepts and the pair walk off together, until she stops in her tracks, remembering her companion. "I can't leave Dixie," she says.

Mr. Flent deliberates whether the girl simply needs coaxing or is "pulling the delaying act": "the vengefulness, the fierce knowledge of the earth's iniquity, was rising in him now, and even as he looked down at her, her face and her expression seemed to fluctuate as if seen in an uneven mirror, changing from innocence to guile, from trustingness to sly coquetry."

He tries to cajole her and press on, but the little girl grows frightened. "You must handle them delicately," he reflects. "The youngest of them as touchy as a queen."

The girl explains that her abandoned companion Dixie is a dog. This revelation delights Mr. Flent and re-convinces him of the girl's "innocence." He kneels down beside her, gives her "a playful little shake," and then lets "his hands slide affectionately down over her body." "It made him feel young again," he reflects.

Mr. Flent notices two women walking toward him, and resolves to move along. He insists that the girl leaves the dog. "This time," he says "with an almost loverlike cadence in his voice," "it will be just us two alone."

These words spark "awe and fearful fascination" in the little girl's eyes. Combined with "the touch of his hands on her body, the strange bobbings up and down, the face held so close to hers, and the reasonless laughter," she is moved to cry out with "pure terror."

She screams that she won't go with him, and Mr. Flent experiences a feeling of "high rage": "He had been tricked again, he had been played for a fool," he thinks. He spits "You bitch!" and scoops the girl up, preparing to run with her.

Suddenly, commotion breaks out. The two women walking towards him earlier begin to run and yell; a man on a distant stoop flies down the steps; two men down the block turn and take stock of the scene.

Mr. Flent drops the girl and screams "Filth!" at her. "He was in a strange world full of his enemies, but the fury had taken hold of him, and he knew that his wrath was greater than theirs, he knew that he was invincible," he reflects. "It was to punish such as these that he had been placed upon the earth."

Mr. Flent dodges his pursuers and descends into a train station. Their chase stops at the entrance to the station, but Mr. Flent doesn't realize he can stop running. He dashes off the edge of the platform and is slammed on an incoming train. The train screeches to a halt, but too late: his body is already under the wheels.