Night

The first few times the woman came, Nightwing had flown. The noises startled him more than the intrusion into his home. After all, humans were ground-bound. His perch high in the rafters was safe from the interloper. It was an excuse to get out and hunt anyway. He'd long ago picked over all the mice and other tidbits that had inhabited the barn before he claimed it as his.

Now her comings and goings did nothing to disturb him short of waking him from his day-sleep. He opened an eye and ruffled his feathers. Barn owls are not by nature deep thinkers, not about philosophy and motivations anyway. They root out their prey, catch it, eat it, sleep, and try to avoid becoming the prey of another animal along the way. The woman, though, was curious. She killed but didn't seem to eat. The men who she brought were curious too. They appeared to be eager to be led to slaughter. The males that came with her smelled heavily of lust as they approached the building, but their scents quickly turned to the acrid scent of fear he was accustomed to for prey.

Nightwing had begun to analyze the humans, for killing without purpose didn't happen in the animal world often. Observing the people had made him more curious about other animals too. Sure, animals like felines preferred to play with their prey like the woman did with the men she bought, but cats ate their kills, at least from what he could tell. That or they left the corpse at their domicile. Perhaps to save it or as a gift for the people that lived with them.

Other humans didn't seem to kill each other as she did either. They yelled and sometimes fought physically, but nothing died. Somewhat disappointing, actually, for as he'd discovered human meat tasted quite good.

Darcy wiped her brow. She glanced up at the only witness to her deeds, a large barn owl that always seemed to watch her. Another rapist bit the dust. Another girl avenged. She wondered what the bird of prey thought of her. They were both hunters, after all. She sliced a strip of flesh as was her current tradition and tossed it to her avian companion, who gobbled it up.

She sometimes worried about herself. Wasn't she a serial killer after all? Shouldn't she feel guilty? She looked down at the body of the murdered man. Nothing. No empathy, sympathy, or any of those normal emotions one should feel for someone who just had a chainsaw shoved in their guts. Kneeling, she looked at the man's face and flicked away a lock of hair from his wide, unseeing eyes.

"Do you know the original purpose of the chainsaw?" She laughed. Exactly who was she talking to? The dead dude who cut up his girlfriend after she refused to have sex with him and then raped her for three days? What did he care? He was dead. Hopefully burning for eternity. Or reborn as a mosquito. Or male preying mantis. Those would be the afterlife options for him if there was any justice in the universe.

What about her afterlife? She wasn't sure she believed in an afterlife, but if there was, wouldn't she deserve punishment too? If the laws of the universe mirrored that of humanity, her afterlife would be decidedly unpleasant. If it wasn't, she would just be... gone, right? What would be worse? She looked up at the owl.

"Do you know the original purpose of the chainsaw?" He (she thought it was a he) hooted in answer.

She looked back down at the mangled man.

"It was to cut a woman's pelvic bone and remove an infant. Poetic, isn't it? Two hundred years ago, a woman would've been killed like this over an affliction a man like this caused her."

Planting her hands on her knees, she rose. Better bury the body.