There are destined tools in a murderer’s kit. There are objects that are prized for their cruel, metal heft; there are objects that feel like a gun in the hand.
From the first lover’s quarrel, she knew she was to kill her man. When did murderous blood start singing in her veins? Birth? Marriage? Insemination, when she felt too dirty to stand in the shower?
Her stomach was warm with child now. She wanted to kill her man whenever the baby kicked. She wanted to kill him when her stabbing back pain returned; a spine pulled in by a bulging stomach and pushed out by work. She felt gnarled, rotten, like the trees across her street that were cut down during an ash borer infestation.
She found herself believing she could see ghosts. Nobody could tell her she was evil, and no doctor could wholeheartedly diagnose her with anything, so she didn’t stop.
A ghost-cat curled up at her feet every night, never opaque enough for a name or a dish of milk. A ghost-dog walked her to the train every weekday. She was thoroughly haunted, thoroughly sick.
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Like blood in water, people become murderers, deranged monsters incapable of anything else. Objects become murder weapons in their own way. Murderers start thinking about them too carefully.
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They are fighting now. He has her on the ground, at the mercy of a hammer he’d picked up from a side table. Blood pools under her from an especially nasty blow to the head, and she's howling in pain, clutching a fire poker.
He sneers through a sheen of sweat: “That baby! You hate it, don’t you? You want me to get rid of it?” Her voice gets more hoarse and desperate with every passing moment. She's wailing now, desperately crying and screaming for him to leave. She doesn’t want to hurt him anymore.
When her man stomps on her stomach, an infant creature shimmers above her for a moment. Before the form dissipates, the woman is standing. She is motivated by hot rage. She's off to the hunt; she is going to maim and kill.
She punches him hard in the cheekbone, lingering on his face to stick a polished fingernail between his eye and its socket. He grabs her arm, and she swings it in a circle to break the hold (a frantic move recalled from her Girl Scout self-defense badge). She pushes him back and kicks his stupid, prone body until it hits the ground.
Pinning him down with her shoe, she brings the pike down on his jugular. It splits the ligament, driving apart vertebrae and leaving ash in the gaping wound. Warm, dark blood seeps under the peeling linoleum floor tiles.
Her hand flies off the handle of the poker and it clatters to the floor.
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Desperation breeds quickly enough to blind reason. The fire poker burns red-hot without melting the plastic of the evidence bag.