Ate was pretty sure this was the guy who'd tried to steal her puppy. It sort of looked like him, but it was hard to know because she'd had to chase him down and then he was all lady, I don't know what you're talking about and then all Oh god! Please no! Please stop! and then with the crying and curling up in the bathtub and bleeding everywhere. Humans were hard to read.
Well, not all humans. Ate's type were easy to read. Ate liked them arrogant and reckless, that was her perfect prey. Nothing fitted her more perfectly than the ones that thought they owned the whole world. Silly silly men. Didn't they know yet that she was inside all of them, that Ruin would bring them down one by one?
But this one wasn't like that and already it bored her. She could feel so little of her own reckless folly inside him and it became dull. So she poked him a bit with the knife and tossed a finger or two to the puppy. (The puppy had been alive for more than a month. That might have been a record for Ate and dogs. She never exactly meant for them to die, but as cute as they were she sometimes forgot to do things like feed them, or remember not to leave them somewhere.)
The doorbell rang and Ate grinned at the man, bouncing up to her feet. "Your new friend is here," she told him cheerfully, leaving the bathroom and puppy to chew on fingers.
Ate answered the door with a cheerful smile. She didn't really have any clue who this guy was supposed to be, but Ate was sick of disposing of bodies. "Hi there, sugar," she said, pulling the door wide open. "Come on in." Her stilettos - baby blue and stained with blood - had left dark red prints across the wooden floor from the bathroom