Initiation by Hammer - Part 2

I touched the hammer with my tongue when we were in that inky abyss. Its acrid, metal self sang, the thrum of its life made a vibrant buzz. I remember! Oh how I remember. The Saturnian elements twinkled like moon dust forever in my senses. Her blood on the steel was a rare delight.

A cortex of twisting steps lay down in vertigo perspective. I chanced a hammer would do great damage to the top of a skull if dropped from here. As if popping a soft boiled egg.

The descent is something I’ve rarely relished. The walls seem to close in on me, more so now, more so that I’m bound to the guilt of murder. That exquisiteness I began to feel and see when I first saw my wife at oven. The vulnerability of her very position. So open and unknowing.

The autumn air took the oppression out of me senses and I took in deep breaths to purge my mind.

A hardware store to my left. I stopped by and took note of the hacksaw and made mental calculations of the tiny teeth and what they could do to bone and skin. Work could wait. I’d make my excuses and use Damien. He hadn’t been feeling well.

“What sort of hammers do you have?”

“Err. What’s the purpose? I mean we got quite a few hammers.”

I licked my lips. “For hammering nails,” I said. Hammering the your cortex lobe into smithereens. Cracking the eggy shell of your skull, if you don’t get me a fucking hammer.

“Okay,” he began slowly and rose, “Follow me.”

The man stooped off down the corridor glancing to his left and right. Then he stopped and turned. “You have the look of a worried man.” His angular nose seemed to hook over his top lip and I had a mind to cut it off. He looked me up and down, “If you don’t mind me saying..”

“I do.” I cut him short there.

“Well...” he turned and whispered something.

“What was that?”

“Blood,” he said.

“Blood? What the fuck are you on about?” He stopped. I scanned the shop. No one here. I felt something rise in my gut. I trembled and realised it was excitement. This must be how a lion feels as it bores down on its prey!

“You have blood on your hands.” He looked down at my hands.

I held them up and there they were, lines of her blood, angular and flowing rivulets onto the sleeve of my suit.

The man picked out a small hammer and showed it to me. It was small, yet angular and had a silver sheen to it. He grunted to me. Offering me it.

I held it in my hands and felt the congealing thickness of her mess weld my hand to the cold steel. Its head had a confident weight to it and it had balance. Precision was key. I had to be precise. It was a matter of seconds. What did he say? A professional can kill a man in under one minute? It took me five minutes to kill the charity shop owner. How long would this take?

“May I?” I asked.

“May you, what?” He furrowed his eyebrows at me. He was a couple of inches lower than me.

I checked my watch and set the stopwatch, then play acted hammering a nail into his forehead.

He backed away. I brought the hammer down on him. His hands were in the way and he grabbed my wrist. Fuck! “Hold still!” I ordered him.

He wriggled under me. I brought the hammer down again. He yelped like a dog. This time I felt a connection to something; his head. “That’s better,” I breathed.

“No, no, no, no... please.”

“Put your hands down, then. Put your fucking hands down!” He took his hands away from his face and I straddled the man’s chest, pinning his arms down the side. He was whimpering at me. I’d caught him on the cheek. A scuff mark where the hammer had grazed him. I took a deep breath and checked my watch.

Fifty seconds!

I brought the hammer down on his forehead as if it were putting a tac into a carpet. A sharp, short crack. It actually sounded like the snapping of a branch. He kicked and yelled like a little girl.

I checked the time. Sixty Seven seconds! “Fuck! Fuck!” I brought the steel down on him, over and over again. I felt him shudder beneath me like he was having an orgasm.

Maybe he did.

He stopped shuddering, but fountain still gushed from the cavity in his face. I casually rubbed his blood over the hammer and watch the light reflect from it in incandescent shades of pink and velvet. I licked the end and there was a charge in it. I felt the rapture a vampire must have coursing through their dry veins. The coils of taste ruptured the buds in the back of my tongue, they twisted a whirl of sensation behind my ears.

I washed and dragged the still pulsing corpse. Its sighs and dying functions were quiet enough for me to leave it in the leaf bag of a lawn mower.

I reset my watch and took another hammer, clean from blood. I checked my hands again. Under the fingernails and in the gaps between my fingers.

I took the metronome to work as it was quicker than car. The traffic can be grossly underestimated at times in the morning. The metronome’s monitor flickered and there were scenes of bodies being unloaded onto trucks. Many were in bags and some had been ripped; they hadn’t edited those scenes out. In the background a building could be seen, a fire still raging.

“Can you believe they’re showing that?” A man gasped.

I smiled and checked my watch, but thought better of it.