After a five-month pregnancy, my wife gave birth to a ball-peen hammer. It was an easy birth. She read a novel the whole time. Crime and Punishment by FD. A favorite of ours since college. But she did not read it out loud. She hogged that bliss to herself. As her eyes slid across the page, her face as blank as an ice field, I assisted the doula with the birth. This is what love will do to a person. For nine years I had told my wife I never wanted a child. But now, as I held our hammer daughter in my arms and gazed at the silver glimmer of her two heads, I felt my organs shift like continents. I felt my breath blaze like a hydrothermal vent on the ocean floor. So I gripped our hammer daughter by the handle and began destroying our beloved French colonial, inch by excruciating inch.
Steve Gergley is the author of The Great Atlantic Highway & Other Stories (Malarkey Books '24), Skyscraper (West Vine Press '23), and A Quick Primer on Wallowing in Despair (Leftover Books '22). His short fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in X-R-A-Y Literary Magazine, Pithead Chapel, Maudlin House, Always Crashing, Gone Lawn, Rejection Letters, and others. In addition to writing fiction, he has composed and recorded five albums of original music. He tweets @GergleySteve. His fiction can be found at: https://stevegergleyauthor.wordpress.com/
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