I picked it up by the handle, and I marched back into the living room.

Walter had slumped back down in his chair. He looked up at me as I stood there.

"What are you doing with that?" he asked.

And I bashed it over his head.

It didn't knock him out, but it hurt him very badly. He fell out of the chair, bleeding, and couldn't stand up no matter how many times he tried.

I pulled him into the kitchen.

I got out the block of kitchen knives, plus a meat tenderizer, plus a meat cleaver.

I cut him apart. Starting out and moving in, so he was alive for much of it. Fingers whittled down. Toes. Fillets of calf, thigh, bicep. Two hundred pounds of flesh. And buckets of blood settling into the grout-lines of the kitchen tile.

I put his bones in trash bags. I put his meat into the garbage disposal.

The disposal was a good one. It only jammed at the end, with his scalp hair. It broke it, actually. Smoke drifted up from inside the drain's mouth.

I didn't know what to do, then, so I called the police and waited.

They arrested me. I didn't resist.

No bail for me. The community was apparently quite shocked at the turn of events. Our neighborhood was quiet, middle-class; the most that ever shook the sheets was a domestic abuse charge, or maybe some kid setting off car alarms.

A wife chopping up her husband was a big deal.

It made national news for a while – just a blip, but an important blip.

It attracted Ingersoll to me.

They went to transfer me to the courthouse for trial, but it's not like they had me under intense scrutiny and security. I was an early-thirties housewife who had quietly gone along with everything they asked.

They didn't expect a truck to broadside the van.

They didn't expect me to be extracted and whisked away.

But that's what happened. Ingersoll found my story, and believed that something very important – something very useful to him – could be found in me.

He was right. He's been spending the better part of ten years grooming me. Cultivating my cruelty the way you might prune a bonsai tree. It's more about what you cut away than what you leave behind, I assure you.

That's where I'm at, today. I owe him everything. That's why what I'm going to do today, with you, pains me so very much. The last thing I want to do is disappoint him.

But this is what he instilled in me.

I do not enjoy competition. Too many mouths and not enough food. You see?

THIRTY-FOUR

Suicide is Painless

Miriam's blood is an icy slush. Its sluggish passing beneath her skin leaves a trail of gooseflesh above.

"I get it," she says, quiet.

"This organization doesn't have room for the both of us."

Miriam tilts her head and wipes her bloody, drooly chin on her hyper-extended shoulder.