Let’s say you have an axe. Just a cheap one, from Home Depot. On one bitter winter day, you use said axe to behead a man. Don’t worry, he was already dead. Or maybe you should worry, because you’re the one who killed him.
He had been a big, twitchy guy with veiny skin stretched over swollen biceps. Teeth filed into razor-sharp fangs, you know the type. And you’re chopping off his head because you’re pretty sure he’s about to spring back to his feet and eat the look of terror right off your face. On the follow-through of the last swing, though, the handle of the axe snaps in a spray of splinters. You now have a broken axe. So you go to town with your axe. You go to the hardware store, explaining away the dark reddish stains on the broken handle as barbecue sauce. You walk out with a brand new handle for your axe.
The repaired axe sits undisturbed in your garage until the next spring when, on one rainy morning, you find in your kitchen a creature that appears to be a foot-long slug, Its jaws bite one of your forks in half with what seems like very little effort. You grab your trusty axe and chop the thing into several pieces. On the last blow, however, the axe strikes a metal leg of the overturned kitchen table and chips out a notch right in the middle of the blade.
Of course, a chipped head means yet another trip to the hardware store. They sell you a brand new head for your axe. As soon as you get home with your newly-headed ax, though, you meet the reanimated body of the guy you beheaded last year. He’s also got a new head, stitched on with what looks like plastic weed trimmer line, and it’s wearing that unique expression of “you’re the man who killed me last winter” resentment that one so rarely encounters in everyday life.
You brandish your axe.
The guy takes a long look at the weapon with his squishy, rotting eyes and in a gargly voice he says “That’s the same axe that slayed me!”
Is he right?
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