“She’s _back_,” Seth snarls, startling me from the other room.

The pancake I’d ambitiously attempted to flip misses the pan from my flinch.

I stare vacantly down at the remains of wasted potential now decorating the ancient sawdust speckled floor.

The addition fits in perfectly with the rest of the decor in these hollow unfurnished bones of this home that my husband and I bought to renovate.

His idea, of course.

As if we can fix what he broke between us by restoring this historic home.

There’s a reason countless scary movies start this way.

While I’ve been navigating this situation like a dissociative ghost, it’s Seth that seems possessed.

He storms into the kitchen, forcing me to reluctantly look up from the remains of my poor pancake.

Giving the splattered batter a look that I don’t appreciate, he then places his hands on his hips and assesses me with a similarly disgusted expression.

Those blue eyes of his had previously drawn me in until I learned they had the same effect on other women.

It’s the same gaze that twinkled with joy at our wedding – the same one that had widened in poorly acted surprise just a few short years later at my infidelity accusations, glazed over when I revealed my proof of it, then filled with forced tears while overtly reminding me that I was his financial hostage.

The very same one that never restored its imitated spark of empathy before he insisted we invest in this home.

But this is the first semblance of emotion I’ve seen in them in months.

I have to say, I much prefer the open sociopathy.

He’s furious.

Spitting mad.

I’m surprised he’s not foaming at the mouth, but there’s still time, I suppose.

“Did you hear what I said?” He seethes.

Each slowly spoken word reverberates against the vacant space.

“You said that she’s back?” I confirm casually, which angers him more than if I’d voiced any of the choice words that immediately sprung to mind.

He reaches up to further muss his overgrown blond hair.

“She’s just out there! _Pacing!_” He spits so furiously that his voice cracks.

I nod slowly and abandon the stove to walk toward the large front bay window, keeping the knife hidden in my robe in case this devolves like last time.

Seth follows on my heels, hopefully awaiting a matching indignant reaction towards the older woman that I don’t foresee myself managing.

For a little over a week, I’ve noticed her cloaked white curls and fur coat as she paces our short iron fence every day, her speed picking up whenever she passes the most rusted part of it.

A few paces from our front step, she glides her gloved hand over every dulled spoke.

Her extended wrist is wrapped in a red scarflette, dancing distractingly in her routine like a matador’s taunt to a bull.

“It’s maddening!” Seth seethes at my back.

I furtively look over my shoulder for any trace of smoke coming out of his nose.

The woman draws both our attentions when she stops then, perhaps sensing she’s being watched.

She reaches into her jacket pocket, turns in our direction, and forcefully tosses something that audibly scatters all over the stone of our front porch steps.

“That’s _it_! I’ve had it!” Seth declares, storming toward the door.

I could almost swear I see the woman smirk in the split second before I chase after him.

My hand lowers to my robe pocket, wrapping around the hilt of the knife, just as he grabs the ornate doorknob.

“Seth, don’t!” I plead.

He blindly flails his arm back, uncaring if the attempted blow lands.

I’m doubly grateful for my skills at ducking when he swings the door wide, welcoming all the birds that the woman apparently summoned with seed to come inside.

He raises his arms to cover his head with a wild cry.

Pigeons and mourning doves flutter into the frame and inspect the high ceilings with curious coos.

My face feels strange.

I raise my fingertips to my taut cheeks until realization dawns.

_I’m smiling. _

The rare action so distracting that it takes the dreaded sound of Seth speaking for me to realize I’ve been left behind once again.

“I’m going to kill you!” He threatens the poor older woman, his feet dancing over the slippery seeded steps in his attempt to reach her.

I raise my blade and charge after him, praying there are no historic walking tours of the area scheduled soon.

“For once in your life, stop!” I yell, the words emerging out of a deep well of distain.

He whirls on me, those cursed eyes flaring in fury before landing on my extended weapon.

Several things happen at once:

The instinctual reaction to the threat has his body jerking back until his toes barely balance on the edge of the slick step.

The long battering arms begin to pinwheel at either side of his pleading gaze that I almost fall for.

My hand even extends as if to grab him before I think better of it, recoiling and curling it instead into my own chest.

_I’d rather save myself. _

His monstrous mask contorts as he attempts to launch at me in punishment for my betrayal.

I’m smiling at the irony when he unintentionally pushes himself back, propelling his body atop the gate, and landing upon it with a sickening wet thwack.

A rusted iron spoke pokes upward through the place his heart would be if he had one.

His body spasms in both shock and familiar fury, face turning toward our elderly visitor that slowly approaches him, expression contorting in visible horror before becoming entirely unmoving.

I’m still staring at his vacant face, fighting the humor burbling to the surface at the way it’s no different than when he was alive, only quieter, when the creak of the gate opening startles me.

The old woman enters, ignoring the corpse adornment, and shuffles easily up the seed filled steps until reaching for my wrist.

I mutely offer it in habitual appeasement.

She plucks the red scarflette from her wrist until it waves before my face.

Her low throaty chuckle is warm yet humorless as she intricately begins to wrap it around my own wrist, unblinking at the blade still in my fist.

“It’s amazing how little it takes to set them off isn’t it?” she muses.

The rhythmic splat of my husband’s blood punctuates her point.

“Animals,” she goes on, tying off the scarf a bit too firmly, “they’re all the same.”

Seemingly pleased with the affixing of her gift, she finally looks up at me.

I startle at her appearance.

The decades older, happier, future version of myself, seems to have expected that reaction.

She pats my hand and eases her way toward the front door, turning back with a smirk to say, “I forgot how much of a fixer upper this was.”

The person I’ll become then leaves me alone outside with my husbands harpooned husk, unsure whether she’s referencing the currently bird infested home or myself.