Congratulations on Murdering Your Ex With a Hammer!

Bruises on thighs turned to bruises on lips and eyes and then it had to end. Four years ago, three if we use dates as a means of tracing time back to the time before calendars became unfortunate inconveniences. It was a bad breakup, a bad end to a bad time that made you do bad things.

It would be easy to say that you hated him before, that you hated him when you swung at his skull, but you didn’t really. You knew the face, not the eyes but the shape, the hairline, the half-beard, the scar. You let the hammer carry through, obliterate the skin and bone and muscles underneath and didn’t concern yourself with cleanup.

It was the way of things – you and your friends needed food. He was already dead. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t blink, just limped and lurched towards you stiffly. When he fell you imagined a sigh of relief, though it was probably just gas escaping. It will be a heartbeat where you’ll feel selfless, like you’ve done something good for someone for a change. That isn’t a feeling you get to have that much anyone, so that’ll mean a lot.

Once the dust has settled you won’t remember where his body falls. You won’t try to find him or say any sort of last rite above him to sanctify what has transpired. You’ll grab all the oatmeal you can, stuff it into a duffel bag along with readymade soups, boullion and anything that was still sealed inside of a plastic bag. You won’t even look down as you walk out, but that night you’ll dream of him, what he looked like long before.

You’ll think about the time you had with him, the moments you felt happy, the end, the devastation and the movement beyond what he said: that he couldn’t deal with being someone who’d been raped, that the burden was too great for him. You’ll recall the weeks before the ending, the weeks that stretched into months, the self-destruction that came back, that almost didn’t leave.

When you wake up the next day in your sleeping bag, ass to ass with the man you’ve been fucking whenever you can find a safe moment of privacy, you’ll have a big grin on your face. You won’t be able to describe way, even to yourself.

Congratulations on Murdering Your Ex With a Hammer!