How Shall I Kill Thee?

They are both dead now. Frank, bloated and stiff, lies face down across the bed in the other room. He died first. Julie lasted almost an hour longer; she lies on the couch here in the main room of the cabin where I sit. Her eyes are open and one small lifeless hand dangles from beneath the blanket and rests, palm up and white, on the bare board floor.

The light from the fireplace leaps and dances about the room and provides the only illumination; it does strange things with the shadows, especially those on Julie's face. As I write, I keep imagin ing that I see her move out of the corner of my eye, and even though I know it is impossible, my gaze returns involuntarily, hopeful ly, to her face each time.

It is unbelievably quiet here in the cabin. I hear the night sounds outside: frogs call from the weeds at the water's edge; a whippoorwill repeats its mindless nonsense somewhere in the timber behind the cabin; and out on the lake there is the occasional slap of a fish jumping. It is so peaceful--and so ghastly.

Frank was my fraternal twin. When we were younger, in high school, people thought it remarkable, not only that we were brothers, but that we were such good companions. Frank was a social person. Open and outgoing, he loved crowds and sports and fun, while I was the opposite--a studious introverted type. But it was as if the strengths in his personality complemented the deficiencies in mine, and vice versa. Together we formed a composite, a symbiotic association that benefited us both.

I met Julie much later at the university. She was an art student, and she needed an elective to complete the requirements for her degree. For some unknown reason she chose a sophomore biology course, and she landed in the laboratory section I supervised as a graduate assistant. I say for some unknown reason, because she was completely confused by science and had, in contrast to her artistic abilities, absolutely no talent in the laboratory.

She came to me for help outside of class, and I loved her immediately. I began to look forward with such intense anticipation to her weekly Wednesday afternoon visits to my tiny office for tutoring that all of my other work, once so important to me, suffered. My class work was below par, and I made no progress at all on my thesis for that entire semester. I spent long hours staring out the window or at the same page of a book while in my mind I went back and relived every detail of our most recent meeting and constructed elaborate improbable daydreams about the next. My shyness prevented me from declaring my feelings and forced me to be content with our business-like relationship. But as the semester waned a panic began to rise within me and I soon realized I would have to take action if I expected to continue seeing her.

At our last meeting before final examinations, it took all of my courage to blurt out, in a wavering voice, an awkward invitation to dinner. She accepted with such undisguised pleasure that I laughed aloud in pure unbelieving joy after she had gone.

I saw Julie as often as possible after that, and my love for her continued to grow and increased to near worship. That she could love me in return was a thought so inconceivable I dared not even dream it. But she did, and within six months we were married.

Oddly enough, rather than becoming a wedge between Frank and I, Julie added a new cohesive facet that drew the three of us closer together, so that we formed an almost inseparable group, a family. Frank and Julie were like brother and sister with all of the teasing and banter that always accompanies such relationships. Julie liked to scold and cluck over Frank's sometimes exotic love life. Since he occupied the apartment directly across the courtyard from ours, it was impossible not to notice the varied and ever-changing parade of young women he dated.

"When are you going to stop fooling around and settle down?" Julie would demand severely.

"You know there's only one woman for me," he would respond with an exaggerated wink.

"And she's taken."

Frank took a degree in engineering, and he worked nights for a local electronics manufacturer; I continued to study and teach at the university; and Julie painted. She had converted an extra bedroom into a studio, and she spent her days in there with brushes and paints and canvas. Her paintings were the subject of much animated debate among the three of us.

Frank praised her efforts and had several he especially liked hanging in his apartment; but, just as Julie had no aptitude for science, I had no eye for art. When she displayed a newly completed creation for our comments, I invariably asked, "What is it?" Her canvasses, filled with colors and, at best, barely recognizable shapes, made no sense to my pragmatic scientific mind. "Why don't you paint a picture of a tree or a sailboat or even a bowl of fruit?" I would ask. "Something I can recognize."

"Insensitive biological slob," she would mutter in mock disgust.

She displayed her paintings in several local exhibits, and I was as proud and thrilled as she was each time someone bought one.

For two years the three of us continued together. Our happiness was unbroken, or so it seemed to me. I don't know how long we might have gone on like that if I had not made the discovery that forced me to the edge of madness and beyond.

But let me just tell what happened.

I returned to the apartment one morning just over a month ago to pick up some notes I needed for an experiment. Turning the corner of the building, I saw Julie come out of our apartment and, for some reason, I stepped behind some shrubbery before she saw me. What possessed me to do it? I don't know, but looking back, I think I expected her to come toward me, and I must have planned to step out and surprise her. So much has happened since then, I can no longer be sure what was in my mind. I only know I watched in puzzled disbelief as she crossed the courtyard and let herself into Frank's apartment.

I don't know how long I stood there, and I can't describe the thoughts clamoring inside my head. Frank slept during the day, and I knew he must have been home. The implications of what I had just witnessed were almost more than I could bear, and as I wandered aimlessly back toward the campus, I forced myself to believe there was an innocent, logical explanation for it all.

I called our number later in the day, and it rang twelve times before I hung up.

That night when I got home, Julie met me at the door as usual, and I waited expectantly, ready to believe her explanation of why she had been in Frank's apartment. But she didn't mention it. When I finally said I had called and received no answer, she looked confused for just a second before she recovered, smiled and said she had needed some more paint and had gone out for a while. I wanted to leap up and scream, "Liar!" but the situation and the hurt were so dreamlike, so unreal, that I was unable to say anything; I stood there, mute, struggling to control fearful emotions.

After that, suspicion took complete control of me; I waited in concealment each morning to watch her make the trip across the courtyard. In the evenings when we three were together, their banter took on a second--a hidden--meaning for me that inflamed my already wounded pride. Soon, the first seeds of hatred began to germinate and angry visions of revenge began to dance before my eyes.

I considered going to the apartment to confront them and to accuse them with my knowledge. If I had loved either of them less, I would have done just that, and none of this would have happened. But there is a kind of equation that governs such things, and it states that greater love turns to greater pain turns to greater hate. By the time I reached the third stage in the equation, nothing short of terrible revenge would satisfy me.

From that moment, I began to plot murder.

My first impulse was to get a gun and simply burst in and shoot them. But hatred, held in check long enough, turns cunning and shrewd, and I decided to find a safer, more elegant, way to pay them back. My reasoning went something like this: In order to succeed, to achieve true revenge, I would have to kill them in such a way that I could not be blamed for their deaths. To kill them and not have to pay for it would be the sweetest revenge of all. And furthermore, they would have to be aware as they died that I was responsible. Only then, I thought, would our debt be settled. With these parameters as a guide, I set about the task of designing a method to achieve my goal. In the days that followed I examined and rejected such crude and inferior schemes as accidental fires, defective automobile brakes and anonymous bombs. When I got around to poison, I started to dismiss it too, as too risky, too traceable; but then my knowledge of biology provided the answer I had been searching for: Clostridium Botulinum! Even the name had an evil rhythm, and I knew immediately I had found the way to commit the perfect murder.

C. botulinum is the microorganism responsible for the deadly disease known as botulism. The organism is common in the soil and mud throughout the world, and it produces, as a byproduct of its metabolism, one of the most potent natural poisons known. Microscopic quantities of this powerful toxin, when ingested by humans, are fatal. The most common sources of botulism are improperly canned vegetables and spoiled meat, and the only thing that prevents the disease from being more common is the fact that the organism and its toxin are relatively delicate. Acidity destroys or inactivates the organism itself, and the toxin, a protein, is easily inactivated by heat. But nevertheless, enough people are stricken and die often enough from the malady to be significant. If my unfaithful wife and brother were to eat some tainted food, and if they were to subsequently die of botulism, a perfectly natural "accident", how could I be blamed?

It was a simple matter for me to do the necessary research in the university library, and to prepare, unnoticed in the laboratory, the proper nutrient medium to grow and isolate the organism. Within a few days, I had collected a flask of thick brownish fluid that contained enough of the deadly toxin to kill every human in the city. I poured a small vial full of the fluid, stoppered it tightly, and dropped it into the inside pocket of my coat.

Then I devised the rest of the plan.

From my research, I learned the poison normally takes anywhere from twelve to seventy-two hours to do its work, depending on the quantity ingested, and since I expected to administer large doses to Frank and Julie, I figured a weekend would be plenty of time to carry out my design. I would need to have them isolated from civilization to prevent their signaling for help, so I would suggest a weekend here at the cabin. The cabin is owned by a naturalist colleague of mine at the university and we had often borrowed it before, so there was nothing unusual to arouse suspicion. Wilderness surrounds the cabin and there are no neighbors for miles in either direction along the lake shore. Frank and Julie would be totally at my mercy.

I would poison them and, later, when I took their bodies back, I would claim I, too, had been stricken with a mild attack of food poisoning and had been too ill to go for help. A sufficient percentage of botulism cases recover to make my story plausible. It was a beautiful plan, a foolproof plan, and it worked perfectly. Even now, I take a horrible perverse satisfaction from that.

All I had to do when we arrived here at the cabin last night was to secretly empty part of the contents of the vial into a bowl of potato salad Julie had prepared as part of our late supper. Then I waited. I lay in the bed beside Julie, unable to sleep, filled with anticipation of my coming triumphant revenge.

I will not describe the agonizing deaths they suffered early this morning. I shudder at the insane delight I took in their suffering. Before they died I carried them in and placed them side by side on the couch. Then I paced back and forth before them.

By that time they were too weak to help themselves, and they pleaded with me to get them to a doctor. Their heads lolled crazily because the poison had already blocked the nerve paths controlling the muscles in their necks.

"Wh...why are you...doing this?" Julie managed to choke out.

That's when I told them the truth. I don't remember what I said, only that I shouted and laughed wildly and wouldn't let them speak until I had poured out all of the pain and hatred I had stored over the past weeks. When I was finished, I stood triumphantly before them, relishing my revenge and the horrified expressions on their faces.

"Gus...you fool!" Frank said. It was becoming increasingly difficult for them to speak as more nerve paths were destroyed.

"I was in..Frank's apartment...painting," Julie wheezed.

"What?" I could not comprehend what she was trying to tell me.

"Your birthday...next week...you said you wanted a painting you could understand...I was working on your present...a landscape...couldn't work at home, you might see...Frank let me work in his living room...while he slept."

The meaning of what she said struck me like a blow and I refused to believe it. "You're lying!"

I grabbed her shoulders and shook her; her head flopped violently on her nerveless neck. "You're lying! You're just saying that to fool me!"

"She's telling the truth," Frank said.

I didn't want to believe it. I looked from one to the other, hoping to detect some clue that they were lying to me. But their expressions were meaningless now, the eyes fixed rigidly, the facial muscles limp and useless.

I don't recall much of what happened after that. I remember a growing sense of horror, and I remember that Frank died a few minutes later; I carried him into the bedroom and placed him on the bed. My mind, a turmoil of grief and hate and disbelief, was totally paralyzed, and I could not decide what to do. I laid Julie out on the couch and covered her with the blanket. I cried and begged her forgivness, but she did not speak again before she died.

I tried to convince myself they had lied to me, that I was right in what I had done, but by then nightmare had driven me to the edge of insanity, and I paced about the cabin gesturing wildly and talking loudly, illogically, to the two stiffening corpses.

Sometime during the day, my wildness subsided into a quieter more rational form of grief and I calmly made what I considered the only proper choice open to me: I would atone for my horrible mistake by imposing the same fate upon myself that I had decreed for my wife and brother. The vial in my coat pocket was still half full--I removed the stopper and swallowed the rest of the vile stuff.

After I had carried out my own death sentence, and while I waited for it to work, I had a sudden urge to fetch the painting that had brought about this disastrous circumstance. I, in my state of guilt, thought it would be somehow just to bring it back here as an ironic symbol of the love that had existed between the three of us. I took Frank's keys and drove back to the city in his car.

It was dark again by the time I arrived back here at the cabin, and the poison was beginning to work. After a time I regained sufficient control of myself to build a fire in the fireplace and to sit down here at the table to write this account.

I must end quickly now, for I am growing weak from the fever and vomiting. Already my vision is starting to blur and my throat and lips are sore and dry.

It won't take much longer.

But before I stop, I must explain why I am still occasionally wracked by uncontrollable laughter; You see, I drove to Frank's apartment, and let myself in--and that's when the fits of laughter began.

There was no painting.

I entered the bedroom and the bed was still unmade, as if the inhabitants had only recently departed. There was a pair of Julie's sandals lying askew beside the bed and the familiar smell of her still pervaded the trysting place.

That is the story, concluded just in time, for I am having difficulty with the pen now and wish to seek a comfortable place to endure my final agony. There is room on the couch beside Julie. Perhaps I will join her there beneath the blanket in one final meaningless embrace.

It is all so incredibly funny.