Only With Extreme Pain

Hey, I hope you enjoyed my last post and I hope you enjoy this one. Before you read it however, I want you to know that, yes, the end is a bit dark (sorry, spoilers) and I have absolutely no idea how I came up with it but I assure you that you do not have to worry about me, despite what happens in the story, I am perfectly fine, perfectly happy and do not need any kind help. I promise with all seriousness. C


It only took 24 hours for the poison to kill him. I sat by his bedside and waited as he moved through every painful stage. I was completely helpless to the toxins that invaded every part of my poor sweet brother.
My friend Callie came in and put a comforting hand on my shoulder but I shrugged her off maliciously; she thought she could sympathise but her baby brother was not dying in the most excruciating pain with no hope of survival, or even pain relief. She just did not, could not understand.
His breathing suddenly began to falter and I whimpered, desperately clutching for his rough hand. I squeezed the clammy thing with all my might and pleased with him.
“Do not leave me, Christopher! Please! Please, brother, do not leave me; you are all I have left.”
For a second I though he was about to wake up when his eyelids fluttered at my words but then  his hand – and the rest of his body –went limp. I began to scream, pressing a hand to his young face. I begged with him, with the gods, anyone to bring him back.
Callie ran out, returning with her husband and together the two pulled me out and away. Callie paused and walked back, leaving her husband to struggle with me alone. As I was dragged from him, Callie lifted my mother’s handkerchief the one she that she embroidered herself with wildflowers and given to me on her deathbed and lay it neatly across Christopher’s face.
Outside I wept in a heap on the ground. My brother was only sixteen, he had a full live to live, he could not be gone, it simply was not acceptable. It was his fault; the Lord of our lands. It was he that had provided us with some newfangled toxic fertiliser and told us that it was okay, that the rumours were not to be believed that the evil substance was dangerous. He had told us that it worked better than animal dung, that the people who had created this substance created it to do this job and to do it well.
Yet all our crops were dying. All the young boys that had believed him, that helped spread the substance were getting ill, and my sweet, sweet, innocent brother had a fresh cut on his hand yesterday when he went out with the other boys to throw the poisonous stuff out. Even they agreed that the Lord had been lying when they saw the massacre that was our crops.
I would not let anybody get away with this. My father died in battle and my mother died of illness, my husband was beaten to death in a fight and now my brother, the last life that remained with me was gone; the candles all blown out. The Lord would not forgive himself for what he has done to me; to the boys that were ill; to Christopher.
That night, once they had managed to calm me, and Callie’s husband buried Christopher in a shallow grave marked only by a small flat stone carved with his initials that fitted neatly in the palm of one hand, I climbed from my bed and without dressing walked through the village like a thief in the night. I found my way to the Lord’s manor in the enclosing darkness and climbed into the grand building through the window.
I looked around. I used to know this place. When I was small I would sit on that table over there while my mother cleaned and repaired all the clothes for the Lord and his family. Here I would curl up when she worked late with a cup of hot milk and soak in the caressing heat of the fire. It was not hard to remember the floor plan of the place and I found each room with ease.
The two sons, the daughter, the wife each suffered little. A quick swipe across the neck with my kitchen knife was all it took. I knew I should have found it harder to do such a thing but somehow I did not even need to wince. My hand was happy to carry out the act but for the man himself, he deserved to know what he had done. I woke him up and told him what had happened. His eyes widened in fright at the knife I still clutched in my hand, the blood that dripped onto the floor.
“Drink this,” I said to him, holding out a vial of the poison. “Or I will kill myself too.”  I turned the knife on my own stomach. “And I will be another life on your conscious.”
With shaking hands he took the vial and uncorked it. I nodded and he threw his head back, tipping the contents down his own throat. He looked back at me with teary eyes. I could see in them that he was already feeling the pain that Christopher had. Good! I thought dangerously and with a manic grin I plunged the knife through my stomach and cried myself into an endless sleep.