There is something that happens in the mind of a woman who is faced with knowledge that some other woman’s treasures are more desired than her own. That her hard won love, cultivated and babied like a fruitful garden has been taken over by the weeds of a whore. It’s quite like an avalanche, a veritable mud-slide of the gingerly placed hormonal blocks that make up a woman’s emotional fortress. I felt the slide, likely it was completely physical at first. The sick feeling in the pit of my stomach that made eating impossible. My outward appearance matched my inward emotions; I became absolutely and fantastically ugly in the month after I had met my replacement. Perhaps I wanted to be ugly. Striving for a reason, I almost convinced myself that indeed, I was a dog and Dom had every right to find a prettier woman. Except I couldn’t reach the pinnacle of that belief. I knew I wasn’t ugly and quite frankly, in the days after my re-entry I began to look studiously at my appearance and finally determined that I was very much attractive and certainly more womanly than the child-like Kirsten. I realized I’d been trying to create an excuse for Dom, one more thing he certainly did not deserve. The delicate tower of my sanity was shaking on it's very foundations. Yet the descent of my mental state came as no surprise. I’ve heard the publicly-deemed ‘temporarily insane’ declare that they had no realization of what was happening to them. That in fact, they thought themselves quite ordinary, until someone told them otherwise. This was not the case with me. I knew I was losing it and I relished every moment of my lucid lunacy. I wanted blood, tasted blood, absolutely craved the infectious scent of it. I had never had such a powerful need; it was nearly sexual.

The morning that I decided killing Kirsten was not going to satisfy my lust for revenge, not alone, anyhow, was the turning point of my momentum. This is where the rollercoaster slides gracefully over the highest track, and sinks slowly over the edge. I quietly and calmly decided that Dom had earned his share of my revenge, that indeed, they both would die and die together.  Perferably in each other's arms.  The two of them would watch me commit this undetermined act, with their own eyes. I intended to find a way to complete this not-so-small task without getting caught. I wasn’t about to go to jail for the bastard, but I damn sure wanted their eyes to explode with tears of remorse and pain and recognition at the sight of their life in my bloody hands.

The ‘how’ was not so easy. There was poison, but that seemed so Agatha Christie that I expected I would be busted simply for the sheer lameness of Murder by Arsenic. Clever little woman I was, I knew I had to be thorough and edgy. It had to be so outlandish that no one in their right mind (which is where I was presently evicted from) would accuse the frazzled and scorned Ex of such a crime.

I swayed in a hammock in my back yard, wrapped in a small blanket until a plan began to piece itself together. I can not remember having one solid thought. Where I had once pardoned and encouraged my mental distraction, now I seemed at it’s mercy. I felt very much like a ventriloquist ‘s dummy, with the exggerated eyes of surprise and the smile of the insane, stretching from one edge to the other. I felt the hand of something big and dark and ugly slide right up my back, with dry, cool fingers. I felt the tickle of the insane tug my neck back in a mock howl, and the insidious laughter that bubbled out of my mouth was not my own. I do not recall making a single decision or creating any one idea. I was a machine on auto pilot. I spent many very still hours, while my mind, in it’s spiraling descent, weaved the complex details of a morbid revenge. I was the shell of a woman, numb to the pain, enjoying the caress of the wicked hand that soothed me and becoming the wet conduit for all manner of evil possibilities.  In they came, not one by one, but all at once and I welcomed them, with open arms and a rapiers smile.  

'Drag em on down, doll...the water's just fine...'