Love, Murder and Maybe (Short Story)

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!