Forty three years of marriage, and each year had been worse
than the one before it. Why did they stay together? Forty three years is almost
a lifetime. Jacob winced as the sheer sense of lost time hit him.
It was for the kids, wasn’t it? Yes. It definitely was, he
tried to convince himself.
The truth that Jacob only ever admitted to himself after a
few drinks of whiskey and in solitude, was that he had stayed with his wife
Ruth because he had been too afraid to ask for a divorce. She could be a scary
person when she wanted to. He had spent the better part of their marriage being
intimidated and strong armed by her in to making various decisions. Including
having kids.
Fuck it. He loved his kids. Though they weren’t kids
anymore. Julie was almost forty and Nathan was thirty four. Full grown adults,
who made their own decisions and stood their ground against their nightmare of
a mother. They were sensible kids. The first thing they did when they turned
eighteen, both of them, was to get away from home. Away from their mother’s
destructive shadow and build their own lives.
At first Jacob had been dismayed with their decision to move
to the city. He had even resisted it, especially with Julie. But then as time
went on, he saw that it was a good decision for them. Yes, it meant that he
wouldn’t get to see them as often, but at least he didn’t have to sit there and
watch Ruth suck the joy out of their lives as she had done with his.
Let them enjoy their lives. His Julie and Nathan. He was a
proud father.
Besides… his time wasn’t over yet. He still had a few good
years left. Years he was now determined to live happily. With Melanie.
Melanie Carmichael.
He realized there were butterflies in his stomach even as he
thought of her name. Melanie was only two years younger than Ruth, but she
might as well have been a teenager. She had such a wonderful spirit, that
woman.
Jacob looked across the acres of his farm stretching in
front of him, as the setting sun’s golden touch made the brown blades of grass
glow.
He continued to sway in his rocking chair, on his porch.
This moment was peaceful. It would have been magical with Melanie been by his
side. He closed his eyes as he tried to remember the scent of her perfume.
It
always made him swoon.
He smiled as he realized there would be many evenings in the
years to come, with him sitting on this very spot, with her hand in his.
He had met her only a few months ago. She was a retired
teacher from the city, who had moved here to enjoy her golden years.
He had fallen in love with her almost immediately. He had
been stunned at first, at the intensity of his feelings. Love was a thing he
had forgotten, and had even buried the memory of ever having felt.
Maybe it was that sweeping flood of emotions so sweet that
willed his decision. A decision he didn’t take lightly, but took nonetheless.
Ruth had to go.
He was aware of how severe and cruel it sounded. But he knew
it was his only chance of happiness. Didn’t he deserve some happiness? After
forty three years being bound in chains by that cruel woman who knew no love…
didn’t he deserve something good?
He did. So he had decided to take it upon himself.
He didn’t know how though. It had taken him a few days to
figure something out. Nathan’s wonderful computer machine. That monstrosity in
the den which he had installed a year ago.
“Dad, you can look up anything in this, do you understand?
Anything!”
Nathan had been almost excited like a kid again. A young boy who was
sharing all the neat tricks of a beloved toy with a grown up.
Dear Nathan. His
sweet child.
How he had helped his old father, he would never know.
Jacob had ignored the machine for a few months. But after
Melanie came into his life, and the decision had been made regarding Ruth, he
finally started to learn the mechanisms of the thing.
He was astounded at all the things stuffed inside that
little screen. Nathan had not been kidding. Ruth had been suspicious of his new
found joy for it.
When was that woman ever not suspicious of any joy he found?
He cursed what foolish moment in youth had convinced his heart that she was the
one for him.
A life wasted. His... and now hers.
No. He reminded himself again. His life was still left. But
she had to go.
On some level, he was sorry, but still Ruth had overstayed
her welcome in his life by decades. It was time.
This is for love, he told himself. Not out of hate. But for
love.
Besides, he sated his nagging conscience, it is not like
Ruth is having the time of her life. That woman was miserable from the moment
she woke up to the moment she slept, and she spent all her waking time making
sure he would not sustain a smile as well.
Even if he did ask her for a divorce, she would make it the
rest of her vindictive life’s work to destroy everything he had ever known, and
would still remain a depressing old hag at the end of it all.
No way was he willing to take that road. This was the way.
The way the machine had shown.
It was a few days into his tinkering with the thing that he
chanced upon a strange place. A site, as Nathan called it. Jacob had until then
mainly used the grey, beeping machine to search for things to read. But this
place, this site, was different. There seemed to be a lot of people on it. Or a
lot of names at least. Strange, sometimes funny and often perplexing names he
found hard to even say out loud.
It still boggled his mind, that. How is it a place and how
could people be on it? It wasn’t…. real. Not really. Was it?
In any case, this place called ‘3chan’ had a lot of
intriguing ideas in it. And one of them just happened to deal with homemade
poisons.
Jacob was shocked beyond belief to see that at first. He had
almost unplugged the machine.
Surely this was illegal. Would the sheriff come calling?
Would they know he had been to this weird little place? Sheriff Thomson knew
him. Would he be appalled at what good old, mild mannered Jacob had been up to?
The fear and paranoia had kept him awake one entire night.
The next day, he had a couple of drinks, and forced himself
to revisit that place. He had to know what it was.
Despite what little credit or worth Ruth had given him for
over four decades, Jacob believed inside that he was a smart man. And this was
his chance to find out. This was his chance to prove to himself when it
actually mattered that he was a capable man.
Ruth never ventured near the machine anyway. She found it
godless. She had said so the day Nathan brought it home.
The devil’s toys she stayed away from, being the good
Christian woman she liked to call herself. Jacob had realized years ago that
her faith was just another thing for her to hate and judge others by. This
time, sanctioned by the Lord.
Her distrust of the machine though worked in his favor. He
got more time alone with it.
Slowly, bit by bit, he unraveled the mysteries of the
‘internet’. And one very confident day, when Ruth had gone out to the market
mumbling and cursing him for being a waste of space, he searched for that
familiar, scary room in this immense labyrinth of information again.
Homemade poisons. He found it.
And there in that cozy and naughty little room on the deep,
dark internet, hidden away from Ruth and the Sheriff and his kids, he found
what he had hoped to find.
Near undetectable poisons.
Something that could kill a person and leave no trace if
they did an autopsy. Or so the ‘3chan’ said.
It wouldn’t lie to him, would it? What reason could it have
anyway? There was no money to be made off of him. That’s how you see if anyone
is out to make a sucker out of you, his daddy used to tell him. Is there any
money they can make off of you?
If the answer is no, then you can trust them. Jacob trusted
the ‘3chan’.
It was then a matter of covering his tracks and patiently
acquiring the ingredients necessary. That took some time, but Jacob bought it
bit by bit from the market, so no one would be the wiser. A couple of times he
had to order some things from the city, and that meant records of orders placed
in the market logs. But he was as careful as any man in his shoes should have
been. He hid the particular thing he needed by also ordering a bundle of other things
with it. No one could see through this, he was confident after a while.
It took him another few weeks to prepare the mixture, which
was mainly herbs, properly.
This was because Ruth liked to keep tabs on where he was and
what he was up to at all times. It was tricky doing all of this without her
getting the wind of it.
The sheer terror of Ruth actually knowing… that was enough
motivation for Jacob to take all the precautions.
And finally, the day – no – the night had arrived. And here
he was swaying calmly on his chair, looking at a magnificent sunset.
Why was he so calm, he wondered. Last night had been one of
cold sweats and nervous excitement. He had almost chickened out of the whole
thing.
But the thought that this was the last day he would have to
spend with Ruth. That Melanie was waiting for him to hold her hand and beckon
her into his life, that changed his mind.
And the plan was back on. Just like that.
Now the final day of misery was drawing to an end, and Ruth
was unaware of it. For some reason, this made him feel powerful. It was the
first time he had felt that. Power over someone’s life and destiny. An odd but
enticing sensation. He paused to think if this is how Ruth had felt every day
they had been together, knowing how tied up and helpless she had him.
“I’ve set the plates. If you’re going to have supper, come
have it.”
Jacob broke out of his reverie to hear Ruth utter that worn
out, familiar invitation.
But today, Jacob was heading to the supper a content man. A
gleeful child inside, though no one could see it.
He had… implemented the solution to his problems earlier in
the evening.
Ruth liked to have a couple of glasses of wine before her
supper. She was very protective of this habit of hers, for no apparent reason.
He had never stopped or even questioned her on it, but still she liked to point
out that wine was okay. The good Lord didn’t mind her having a couple of
glasses of wine to soothe her weary old soul after a hard day. Why, wine was
practically a church approved drink, if there ever was one.
On top of this, she still liked to give him a whole lot of
grief over the few drinks of whiskey he had every week. A worthless drunk, she
sometimes called him, when he knew that he was far from that.
But then again, it was no surprise to him. Ruth was near
allergic to anything that made him happy. So over the years, he had learned to
turn a deaf ear to her words on this matter.
There was, after all, a limit to how much a man could give
up in life. His drinks were his last defense against insanity. Or it was… until
Melanie. Now she was his reason for everything. From waking up every day in
this hell hole of a marriage to what he was about to do, or rather had done
already – she was his one shining reason and goal.
Jacob looked at Ruth, as they sat down to eat their food.
Had she had her wine already? He would have liked to see her
drink it. Just to be sure.
But he dare not bring it up, on account of raising her suspicion.
He had carefully mixed the full dose of the potent mixture
into the last bottle she had opened. It was supposed to be tasteless and odorless. He hoped to hell it was.
Jacob’s own sense of smell and taste had waned in the years
before, but Ruth’s was still as sharp as ever. Would she smell something fishy?
Or poisonous?
He closed his eyes for a brief moment and reined in his
nerves. Stay calm, old boy.
The whole ordeal of… well, everything… is almost over.
The ‘3chan’ said the mixture would take 3-4 hours to work
and when it did, it would be sudden and almost instantaneous. That meant, Ruth
would probably pass away in her sleep.
No, she definitely would die tonight. She had to, and he
wanted her to. Why sugar coat it now, he thought. He had done it, and now he
just had to hope for the best. This would either be the most miraculous night
of his life, or the most heart breaking.
His thoughts again wandered into the ‘what if’ lane. What if
the whole thing had been a scam? A cruel joke made up by one of the faceless
names on the internet?
He couldn’t bring himself to finish that thought. He needed
this to happen, and for the first time in years, and for the strangest of
reasons in the end, he found himself praying for his miracle.
Oh God, please show some mercy, call this vile woman to you,
he begged within. Let her be in heaven. He didn’t care. He wanted to make his
heaven here. Ruth could have paradise.
He was caught up in this inner dialogue, and paid no
attention to the things Ruth was muttering to him. Hateful things about every
person she had encountered that particular day. How they were all sinners.
Jacob was lost in his odd prayer. And so their possible last
supper ever finished without either of them really acknowledging the other’s
presence.
They went to bed the same way, and soon Jacob was lying
there in the darkness, listening to her snore.
How much longer now? How much longer did he have to wait
till it was over? Till he could breathe again?
His stomach was now in knots. He was sweating profusely.
If Jacob had listened to Ruth that night, or any other
night, maybe, just maybe Ruth would have talked more, and not just mutter
complaints. She might have been more forthcoming about various things too.
Maybe she would have told him many years earlier, instead of
keeping it her annoying little secret, that on the days she was particularly
worn out she hated hearing him mumble things to her. Bland, plain, pointless
things about something or the other that initially forced her to plug her ears
with cotton wads. He never noticed though and at some point, it began to
irritate her that he didn’t notice the lengths she was going to, in order to
not listen to him yap on.
Maybe if he had paid attention to her then, or had bothered
to check with her, she would have included him in the new system she had
developed wherein she mixed in some of her wine when cooking his food to
improve the taste for his dull tongue, and also so he would go to sleep early
and not bother her.
Maybe she would have shared all of that with him.
Maybe.
Life is full of a lot of maybes in the end, it seems.
The following is a Facebook post that began making the
rounds on the internet a couple of months later.
YOU WILL NOT BELIEVE THIS LOVE STORY THAT WILL TUG AT
YOUR HEART STRINGS!
A couple from rural
Oklahoma, Jacob and Ruth Whitfield, who met when they were just teenagers, got
married for love and raised a family together. After 43 years of a happy marriage,
they both passed away as an old couple, on the same night, in the same bed, due to
natural causes. Imagine the odds. Some matches are truly made in heaven!
SHARE AND LIKE IF YOU BELIEVE IN THE POWER OF TRUE LOVE!
