the soluntion of violence
This is how I do it. He might have sensed Anna standing behind him because he leaned over and reached for the weapon on the floor. More a sword than a knife, it was two feet long, a third of that, the leather-wrapped handle. The double-edged blade was glazed with blood. It looked heavy, cumbersome, and crude. She watched a fat drop of Maryann’s blood fall from his hand to splash brightly on the pale rag rug above the tip of the blade, like the dot of an “i”. His bloodstained hand was floating down to the knife when her hand slipped into the shadow of his and took it the way the gulls at the beach steal a sandwich even as you lift it to your mouth. His hand closed on nothing, and she heard a sub-aural grunt as he looked down to where the knife had been. Anna placed one knee on the bed and gripped the weapon like a Louisville slugger. Left-handed, like the great Ted Williams, she swung for the fences, her fluid follow-through ending in a bone-jarring stop as the tip of the blade bit...