Abel Mingus spends forty-one dollars on salmon tartare and rosé every payday. His ex-wife never understood how a man so utterly parsimonious could waste twenty-eight dollars on a donut mold of dissected fish. 

Abel is the kind of man who folds toilet paper, grocery bags, and underwear into squares, and he’s just as methodical with his stories. Every good idea might be the last, so when he fishes one from the void, he needs each sentence to be a string of gems. Both in meaning and texture. He needs each word to be worthy.

Tonight, Abel is paralyzed because a publisher agreed to read one of his stories immediately. But their novels are the kind with a glossy blood drop on the dust jacket. Or a revolver reflected in an iris. The kind his ex-wife would never read.

Abel’s library contains Sartre in French and Gödel, Escher, Bach. The action in his stories occurs inside broken, complex characters. He’s never seen a slasher film, listened to death metal, or imagined killing anyone. Aside from his ex-wife.

After a two-hour standoff with his legal pad and a paring knife, Abel is suddenly struck by the contrast between readers and doers. Readers may be silly and slow, but doers are layered and meticulous.

If Abel was going to kill, it would be art. The victims would be a string of gems. The arrangement of extremities would be beautiful—in meaning and texture. Each soul would be worthy. Like his ex-wife was.