A Taste of Your Own Medicine By Kirsty R-D

A Taste of Your Own Medicine

Secrets are powerful things, hidden whispers in dark corners, the hush-hush of things you want not to know. Threads of dangerous, unpublished words that should never be leaked. A perfect, unravelable spider’s web spun with a silver tongue and quickly thought up lies. Breathy words interwoven in a deadly tapestry. Flawless and quiet, dew drops of suspicion clinging to its silken fibres but ultimately, unable to penetrate the web.

And there was no better web-spinner than John Huberwick. He thrived in a state of hushed tones and zipped lips, fed off conversations that came to an abrupt halt as oaken doors swung open. It was his natural habitat and anyone that got caught on his web would not be leaving it anytime soon. He had become a master in sucking the life out of those that threatened to leave. He had a million eyes, surveying every corner of his web and his instinctive predatorial nature made him a menace to anyone who dared threaten to uncover his cloaked comments.

His biggest secret: his business. Not the business itself but its masked conversations; its locked doors and blackout blinds. He was the founder and CEO of one of the biggest pharmaceutical companies in the world. But their flamboyant billboards, boasting animal-cruelty-free drugs were a curtain concealing the hidden truth.

He was a smart man filled with cunning wit and hid behind a veil of normality, getting himself a wife he didn’t love - many that truly knew him thought he might be incapable of such a thing - and an extravagant house with just a touch of fake humility.

The big secret he tried so desperately to hide: his company illegally tested drugs on humans before they were ready. Luring in washed-up hobos, devoid of hope with promises of shelter and money, feeding them false hope like it was chocolate to a child. They then subjected them to pills that no one and nothing should ever have had to endure. Their web slowly turned black as secrets got darker and crusted blood got older. Their white lies were forever stained red.

However, no matter his growing omnipotence, Huberwick was not a god and could not quite achieve perfection. His wife found papers and heard voicemails left by brainless imbeciles. Eventually, she came to realise what it was she had married: a monster motivated only by money. It took her a couple of months to draw herself to this final conclusion; to believe that what she loved was not at all what she had fallen in love with.

Then, one pale winter day she gathered up her courage and confronted him. She laid it all out and asked him why, hoping against hope that he had a good reason or that it was all wrong or that there was something to help her make sense of all this nonsense. Because no matter how hard she tried to stop, she still loved him just a little and love came hand in hand with naivety for she did it at their home with only the two of them in sight. Even more unfortunately, he had years of lying and acting innocent hidden behind his back. He pretended there was some greater evil at work and told her it wasn’t safe at their home. So, he put on shoes two sizes too big and he brought her into the woods where he drove a shovel through her skull. She pleaded for him to stop, argued that she would never tell, that they could go about their lives and she would leave him to his heartless work. He didn’t listen. On her last breath rode a final whispered plea, “I’ll never tell.”

He looked down as her eyes turned blank. “I know.”

The police found her body and they found the shovel. Within seconds they determined it to be a cold blooded murder. But why? They would never link him to the crime, the footprints - their biggest lead - were the wrong size and when they came he feigned confused heart-break with an act worthy of an award. But beneath the salty tears, lay a knowing smirk. He was free and back in control of his web.

One day, about a week later, John Huberwick was boredly rehearsing his obituary for his wife. Claiming he didn’t have the time and that he was too heartbroken, he had gotten an unknowing intern to write it for him. It was laced with sorrow and anger at the ‘gutless coward who had done this.’ John thought it was perfect - if not a little harsh - but that didn’t mean he could be bothered to perfect it. However, he didn’t exactly have much of a choice. So he sat in his living room, scotch in hand, reducing himself to fake tears as he read words that meant nothing to him. He pretended to break down half-way through, sobbing with a cracking voice about how he couldn’t do this and how it was too hard. He chucked the card aside and wiped away his tears. “Pathetic,” he mumbled to himself.

Fed up of all this poppycock, he looked at his wife’s old favourite chair. It lay empty and faded, coated in a film of dust he couldn’t be bothered to remove. “Cheers, darling,” he said, taking a large swig of his drink. “Will you be joining us anytime soon?” He broke out into a callous laugh, void of any emotions. His heart had long since turned to ice.

He looked back up at the chair and the ice cube stopped in his chest. There on the faded leather was a face he knew too well and yet not at all. It was his wife but not as she had been in life. Dark circles ringed her eyes, cuts and bruises littered her ashen skin. Her clothes were dirt-ridden and caked in grime from the muddy, ground. Most noticeable of all was the massive gash on the side of her head. Blood was encrusting itself on her hair and turning into hard crystals as it streaked down her face. She stared at him and he couldn’t help notice that life still resided in her eyes. Only just barely; it was subdued and had almost been stolen, but it was there nonetheless. He recognised this moment; just before the last wisp of air left her body. All of these things occurred to him in less than a second. Then he blinked, astonishment gripping him, and she was gone.

He looked around him, searching for any traces of the woman he had killed. He found none. It didn’t occur to him that his wife could be visiting him from the morgue or that there really was a greater evil at work because he knew full well that many others’ blood had stained his hands over the decades and nothing like this had ever happened. Instead, he simply shrugged then looked at the glass in hand. “Blasted drink,” he muttered before downing the last of it.

Three days came and passed without a hitch then arrived the funeral. Huberwick spent the day acting mopey and crying tears that really were no more than salt and water. Eventually, his name was called, he walked up to the stand and began to recite the obituary written for him. He had everything down to a tee, from coughs to stutters to pauses. Even which eye each tear fell from was choreographed to perfection. After a particularly long pause as he supposedly struggled to hold it together, he looked up at the people in the pews. He could almost see their heads moving back and forth as they ate out of his palm.

But then his eyes fell on a particular person, sat right beside their sobbing mother. His wife. She looked the same way she did when she had sat on her chair, her stare full of fearful hatred burning holes in his retinas. He blinked but she remained this time, still sat on the pews. He looked down at the card in his hand and, ignoring what could surely only be a hallucination, he carried on talking. By the time he looked up from the card, she was gone again and no one seemed any wiser.

That night, when he got home, he threw all the alcohol he could find out the window, blaming it for the strange impossible sights. Glass shattered on the floor, viscous liquids of varying shades of brown mixed together, bubbling and sloshing as they became one deadly mixture. He continuously shouted profanities out the window as though cussing would empty him of his demons. He screamed and hurled insults at the broken bottles, pretending that his slipping insanity returned with each taunting remark, even as he threw it on the streets.

Across the span of the next week, John stayed sober but it changed nothing. He saw her glare in the flicker of candles and witnessed her last moments over and over again. At night, her final words drifted through the window making a promise she had no choice but to keep. I’ll never tell. He woke screaming, only to question whether or not he had actually slept.

Twice, while in bed, he felt the cold touch of her dying skin against his but whenever he looked, she was gone. Slowly he stopped sleeping and circles danced around his eyes, leaving dark footprints as they went.

The knife’s edge became his home as he shrivelled up and cried onto its steel blade.

One night, he sat on his couch, twirling bourbon in a glass - he had abandoned his idea that sobriety would help and had instead followed the opposite path, chasing his demons away with early morning drinks that didn’t stop all night.

There was a storm brewing outside, rain lashing at the windows and the occasional flash of lightning setting the sky on fire. In the far distance, tendrils of orange light were creeping above the horizon. He had completely given up sleeping the past couple of nights - who needed it anyway? It only brought bad things and uncertainty. He had on as many lights as possible for the dark promised the unknown.

Gradually, he realised he could hear an unfamiliar and inexplicable noise. Like metal scraping against wood. He turned to where he thought the noise was coming from but as soon as his head turned, he wasn’t so sure. The sound seemed to move around him, taunting him. It was here and then it was there and then it was everywhere and then nowhere but still somewhere because he could still hear it echoing in his ears. He glanced all around him, ready for the apparition of his wife, his heart speeding in dread-filled anticipation. There was nothing to be seen. Then he turned his head back forwards and there she was, somehow even more gruesome than before. Her skin was bluer than before, the blood darker, the grime more caked. From every crevice of her body leaked a reeking stench, pungent and unavoidable. He looked into her eyes as a new kind of fear filled his veins. They were blank now, void of life. She was dead. This was not a memory returning from the depths of his own mind, this was her rotting soul having come back.

In her hand he noticed the source of the noise. A shovel, laiden in blood and dirt. A hair crusted on by dark red liquid turned a gruesome solid. He recognised it as the shovel he had used to murder her.

Terror ran its icy finger down his spine as she opened her mouth and said in a horrible, raspy whisper. “Let’s see how that medicine of yours tastes.” She lifted the shovel above her head and Huberwick let out a cacophonous scream.

Lightning flashed and silence followed.