Karen advanced on him, this Karen that was not Karen, until the small of his back brushed against the kitchen counter. She moved further towards him, fingers twitching towards his throat, with the lithe and graceful walk of a stalking panther slinking closer and closer to its prey. Her eyes narrowed to slits and a mocking smile crossed her lips, the expression so un-Karen that Bobby almost let out a breath of pure horror. This Karen screamed cruelty from every plane and angle. This was not the woman Bobby knew and loved, not his wife Karen, who pretended to sprinkle love in her homemade pies, who wept after watching the news and who made monthly donations to six different charities. This was a monster with her face.
The panther continued to hunt and small harshly poised hands convulsed towards ripping out Bobby's throat. A feral snarl began low in its throat, ripping through snapping teeth. Bobby, trembling with horror and disbelief, could find no escape but to lean further backwards until his spine almost lay flat on the worktop. Beads of sweat broke out on his forehead and fear numbed his senses like freezing water running through his veins, crystallising into ice as it travelled until he could no longer work his own limbs despite his brain screaming viciously to move, to hurtle through the door and never look back. The demon thing with Karen's face pressed on forward, leaning over Bobby as he bent awkwardly backwards. It had him now and it knew it. Unless… out of the very corner of his eye, Bobby caught sight of the kitchen knives in their holder just within reach and the idea flitted through his mind like a light bulb sparking atop his head.
But what if Karen was still in there, screaming at him to save her? What if? And what about him? Karen couldn't die; she couldn't leave him, for heaven couldn't gain one without the other. Their lives were so intricately bound, so irrevocably thread in a woven net of love that to tear those heart bound knots would surely kill him too.
The world around blurred, the colours of one object blending into another and only the creature remained, etched darkly against the run of faded colour. A clear cut monster in sharp definition. It was then that it's eyes clicked between one blink and the next to a solid black, whites and everything. Bobby sucked in a sharp breath of fear and disbelief, and reflex made the next move for him by scrambling wildly for the largest knife on the counter to face the creature that stole his wife and wanted him too.
Bobby saw himself take this sequence of events and panicked, his eyes widening in shock. He couldn't hurt Karen, to hurt Karen was to hurt himself, and yet it was too late to swerve or to stop; his arm had set its course. And as he plunged the blade into his wife's stomach his soul, heart and mind bled for her.
And so the heart bound knots were torn.