u/MuethCandy

“You look just like your pictures!” the woman who had introduced herself as “Miss Pearl” marveled as she ushered Katarzyna into the cavernous foyer. “So many of them don’t…I know it’s just the business, but Dr. Fryste is so, so busy.”

Katarzyna could hardly listen as she took in the mansion’s interior. Ocean waves covering the walls, end table legs carved into seahorses, a kraken chandelier. Even as she peeked down at the swollen feet she’d stuffed into heels that morning, she saw the image of two fish, one black, the other white, circling each other as if in an endless dance.   

Katarzyna flinched when she felt spindly fingers in her hair. 

“Deary, I meant no harm,” cooed Miss Pearl by way of apology, “I’m simply amazed by its quality in regards to its length. And for a swimmer! I still cannot believe the shade is real, but our tests confirmed it is absolutely unadulterated.” Though her English was still shaky, Katarzyna gave a soft “thank you” to what she understood as a compliment.

Miss Pearl then looped their arms and began leading her into an adjacent hallway, jabbering all the way until they stepped into a cozy office. Katarzyna had barely taken a seat before she was bombarded with paperwork. She glanced up from trying to decipher a rat’s nest of legalese to see Miss Pearl waggling an ornate pen expectantly. 

She’d come this far, hadn’t she?

It had been the night after her disastrous Junior National Championships when Katarzyna discovered the subculture of live mermaid shows. She was transfixed from the first slickly edited video - beautiful women gliding through aquariums in their faux-mermaid’s tails, perfectly serene. The way water felt before she had been pegged as a "precocious swimmer.” 

Years of pre-dawn practices, what was her reward? To be berated over and over again by pudgy old men for being half-a-second slow? Everyone loves those girls, Katarzyna had thought sullenly.

Then, as if she willed it into being, the posting found her: a new “Enchanting Aquatic Experience” opening in the United States, and they were casting around the globe to find fresh, top-tier talent. There would even be an open audition three hours from her in Gdańsk. 

Katarzyna had to sell an antique bracelet from her grandmother to fund the trip, but on the day of the audition, she swam with a precision and grace she’d forgotten she possessed.

She had hardly gotten back from the showers before a woman in a sharp suit was congratulating her on the opportunity she was about to enjoy. Delirious with excitement, she was undaunted by the fast talking recruiter’s stipulations. Handing over all necessary documentation for Sea Dreamz, Inc. to secure her work visa? No problem. Three pre-screening medical evaluations with a private doctor in Gdańsk? If someone could front her the cash, she’d be there. Language barrier? English wasn't that difficult. Parental permissions? Could be faked.

Two months later, a private car arrived in front of Katarzyna’s family’s modest home. She gave a last, rueful look at the kitchen door, through which she could hear the shouting of the parents and brothers she was about to leave behind. Then she steeled herself, and slipped out.

At the airport, she was met by the recruiter from the audition. The woman was beaming, telling Katarzyna how impressed everyone was with her, how even Dr. Fryste had inquired about her. Katarzyna asked who Dr. Fryste was.

“Our benefactor!” the woman explained, “He was a pioneer in arthroscopy, and now he is a very successful investor. Magnificent Mermaids is a bit of a passion project for him.” Katarzyna was to meet him after she landed in Cleveland. Until then, she would just have to enjoy her time on a privately chartered flight.

And enjoy it she did. Just as she enjoyed the ritzy suite she was put up in for three days and the chauffeured rides that ferried her around and all the expensive meals. A curated outfit even arrived for her at the front desk, with a note reading, “For meeting you tomorrow! : )”

It had all been like something out of her fantasies, Katarzyna thought as she grasped the pen from the waiting Miss Pearl. As she mindlessly signed each demarcated line, the faces of her family obtrusively flashed in her mind. They would be almost sick with worry by now. But she couldn’t think about that. After she made it in America, she’d stop by her sleepy Polish village so everyone could witness her success.

“Perfect!” Miss Pearl exclaimed as she clapped the stack of papers against her desk. “Now, how would you like to get your official tail?” Katarzyna perked up at the word “tail.” Then Pearl furrowed her brow. “We did see on your medical report that you have a tendency towards magnesium and B12 deficiencies. Would you mind having a therapeutic IV drip before we do any swimming?”

Katarzyna was led to the mansion’s private medical spa. As she sat in a recliner with a seashell-shaped back, an attendant in full scrubs wordlessly took her vitals, then hooked up an IV. She was out cold within a minute.

Katarzyna came to in a bright room. The pain was excruciating. A rough hand was suddenly over hers. Her unfocused eyes could make out the silhouette of a man.

“You’re back, Kasia! Everything went wonderfully,” said the man. “You’ll be able to swim within three months! The catheter will be a permanent feature. I promise, you’ll get used to it.” Katarzyna looked down at her throbbing body in panic.

“Oh, does my little mermaid wish to see her new tail? It may be my finest work yet.” The man delicately pulled back the sheet covering Katarzyna’s lower body to reveal her legs, now surgically fixed together, just like a mermaid’s tail.

And friends, after I heard about Keith's beloved hair randomly catching fire the next day, I realized I'd accidentally discovered how to cast my first hex.

I suppressed a smile, imagining how I'd hold a mirror up to my husband's snotty little mistress, right before I resumed her comeuppance.

This happened about a decade-and-a-half ago, in a rural county known for its university specializing in STEM. I was completing the final semester of my degree and living off campus in an apartment with my roommate, Brady. 

We were an odd pair. I had been a sloshed-on-a-weeknight frat boy and Brady was…himself. He didn’t say a lot, especially in groups. For my first couple of years, we only really knew him as “Side Shields.” He’d sit at the front of the class, nonstop tapping on his brick of a laptop, then send out a Google Doc of the day’s notes to the whole class roster, inviting everyone to, “pls add and edit, thx.” 

I was underwater on a two week transistor lab when I actually used one of Brady’s docs. I’d partnered with some do-nothing douchebag and had an unfortunate habit of smoking my transistors. It was a day out from the due date, and I was frantically posting stickies on how to take certain measurements. Brady directly emailed and asked me to meet him at the lab that night. 

That dude absolutely saved my ass. As repayment, I goaded him into letting me buy him a shitty steak from Applebee’s, and we sort of became friends after. As my junior year rolled around, and I got increasingly tired of riding the curve for every class, I had a little quarter-life, come-to-Jesus moment. I was sick of the frat house, didn’t really even like two thirds of my “friends,” actually wanted to be good at something. It happened at the time Brady was looking for a roommate for his cheap, off-campus apartment. I grabbed the opportunity.

I think I changed more that year than I would in the next ten. My advisor was so shocked by the improvement, he went overtime to help me secure a local co-op. Starting my senior year, I even volunteered with an after school program. That’s still probably one of my favorite things I’ve ever done.

It’s also where the most bizarre incident of my life begins. Every Monday and Wednesday, I’d head to the basement of a local grade school, where they’d corralled the students still left after 3:00pm into a multipurpose room lit like an interrogation chamber. I was instructed to help the kids with their math homework, or barring that, play “math games” with them: chess, Equations, Candyland (that it “involves counting” was the technical justification on that one). 

We were supervised only by a disinterested teacher's aide called Ms. Helen. Within fifteen minutes, I would usually be wildly off subject with my little hoard of glue sniffers. And I use that term with the utmost affection - as a former latchkey kid myself, those lil shits hit me right in the feels.

For kicks one day, I told a couple of kids eating Cosmic Brownies that the real Little Debbie was my great-grandmother, and I was the last scion of the Little Debbie snack cake empire. The joke kept building, until we'd weaved a shared fever dream where as a child I'd been forced to bake endless miniature cakes for my domineering relatives, in the process gaining both a virtuosity and loathing for the art of baking. Eventually, I ran away and vowed never to pick up my rolling pin again. Which, conveniently, was why I could never demonstrate my incredible skill.

As a farewell gesture, I had planned to bring-in an actual, from scratch cake for the kids; a few slick YouTube videos had given me an unearned sense of competency at baking. Unfortunately, their end-of-year was the same as mine, and given I was also pounding the job search pavement, I was a bit overleveraged. Which is a weasel way of saying I waited until the eleventh hour.

Literally. 11PM on a Tuesday night, there I was, trying to bake a damn cake without any baking powder.

I frantically knocked on Brady’s door, thinking by some miracle he might have some tucked away within his neat stacks of canned goods. No luck. Brady’s hobbies were a little too niche for baking. He did, however, offer to drive me on a late night grocery run, probably knowing I’d indulged in a few too many celebratory shots earlier that evening. I thanked him profusely for the offer. 

I was almost sure he’d ask to take my rustbucket of an Altima, but he grabbed his keys and asked where we’d be going. Brady had a sweetass car: a restored Chevy Chevelle he’d inherited from a dead uncle. Brady probably knew that car down to the last valve, but damn if he didn’t avoid taking it out on the road if he could.

Here was our predicament: all the nearby grocery stores were closed by that hour. The only place open would be the 24hr Walmart roughly 15 miles away. Usually you’d take Route 73 the whole way down, but that time of night there was always at least one cop car hanging around, jonesing to pull over any kids in hopes of finding even a sniff of drugs.  

When I mentioned Walmart, Brady sort of drummed his fingers on the table for a moment. He asked if I ever went the Twin Foxes Road way. I said, No, I’d never even heard of it. He explained it was a back road that ran pretty much parallel to 73, which you could use to circumvent traffic during the day. It wouldn’t save us any time now, but we’d avoid any harassment. 

It was close to midnight when we finally set off. A few turns down unfamiliar streets, and suddenly there was nothing but a vast field flanking the passenger side. I’m still jarred how, when you’re out in the American heartland, that comfortable, urban monotony can just disappear in a blink.  

I was lounging back in my seat, letting my arm hang out of the open window. It was one of those cool, spring nights where the rushing air feels like dipping your hand in a river's current. Brady was going at an irritatingly steady speed.

I was yakking at him about “opening ‘er on up” when we approached a stretch of wooded road. Brady must've switched his brights on, because I remember seeing everything ahead in an eerie spotlight. There was suddenly just this ominous aura. The car fell uncomfortably silent.

Brady craned his neck to peek in the rear view mirror, and I followed his gaze to see two headlights distantly behind us. Unlucky coincidence someone else happened to be driving that way. Brady glanced up again. The lights were accelerating towards us at an uncomfortable clip.

“Aw fuck, we just had to get some blitzed out redneck who doesn't wanna share the road,” I said as I hoisted myself towards the window. Buzzed me never missed an excuse to shout out of car windows. I leaned out, and there was…nothing. Just the trailing void and the wind against my face.

I turned to slide back into my seat when a flash from the side view mirror struck my eyes, followed by a violent whomp that sent me into the dash. 

“Motherfucker!” I let loose as I grappled back into my seat while whipping my head up to see Brady white-knuckle gripping the steering wheel, face completely frozen forward. “That methhead rear-ended us!” 

Instead of pulling off to the shoulder, Brady lurched the car into the opposing lane. The headlights followed us. Brady moved again. The headlights followed again.

At this point I was screaming at him to just pull the fucking car over, but it was like Brady was in a trance. The Chevy must’ve been pushing past 90mph, sidewinding through the road. The lights behind didn’t seem to move, like they were fixed five feet back from our rear. I felt sick and panicky, and in bewilderment I leaned half out of the window again to…honestly, I don’t know what I thought I could’ve done. Shame an already deranged driver? It didn’t matter, though. I was hanging out of the Chevy to witness only the red glow of its tail lights. What the fuck. How was this possible.

I swear I remember seeing the back of Brady’s car jerk forward as if something physically smashed it, but the whole incident is a blur. Suddenly I was being thrown backwards, then I was wrenched back into the car by Brady’s iron grip on my shirt. I didn’t have time to collect myself before I was eating the dashboard again. This time I stayed put, almost hugging the dash, bracing for the next impact as I felt the Chevy jostle over an uneven piece of road. 

Brady said my name in a flat voice. I looked over at him, but he didn’t say anything else. The Chevy was slowing down. I cautiously peeked at the side view window. The headlight was gone. As I eased back into my seat, I saw the night sky outside my window, and soon the glow of a shopping center was on the horizon.

Brady and I didn’t say anything until he had parked in the Walmart lot. We got out and surveyed the damage. The rear end of the Chevy was fucked. That shit wasn’t dented, it was crumpled. I started apologizing to Brady, offering money I didn’t have to fix it, but he just gave me this confused look and asked what I had to be sorry about. I never knew if Brady was oblivious or like the chillest guy ever. Regardless, we went into Walmart and got my stupid baking powder. At this point, why not?

I was nervous as hell to drive back home. I’d half-heartedly tried to convince Brady to call a ride, but he wanted to get his car home. Prowling cop cars be damned, we hopped straight on 73. 

We got pulled over pretty much immediately. It was approaching 1:00 in the morning, and we were a couple of kids driving around with our back end practically hanging off. The officer was a stern, middle-aged guy with a local accent. He gave us some smartass remark like, “You boys run into some trouble, huh?” as Brady handed him his information. Guileless Brady answered, Yes, in fact we had been repeatedly rear-ended by an aggressive driver on a nearby backroad while on our way to Walmart. 

The cop froze for a passing moment. Then he handed Brady back his license and insurance card and replied, “Twin Foxes Road?” Brady answered affirmative. The cop hemmed over his words for a second before finally saying, “Better to stay on the main routes this time of night, son.” Couldn’t have agreed more, officer. 

Long story short, I didn’t end up baking that homemade cake. Before volunteering that afternoon, I picked up a couple packages of Cosmic Brownies and adhered them together with canned frosting to make some sort of snack cake monstrosity. The children loved it. Of course they did - grade school children would lick a pile of glass for a sugar rush.

Brady and I never really talked about the incident on Twin Foxes, save for that night we got home. Neither of us could sleep, so we sat up on our crappy futon all night. I asked Brady why he didn’t just pull over. He said he didn’t know. “Survivor’s instinct” switched on and something in his lizard brain was telling him to get the hell off that stretch of road as fast as he could. 

“Once we hit that little bridge, the lights stopped following us,” he then explained to me. I accepted that we both made it out unhurt (same could not be said for the Chevy, RIP), it was too weird to tell other people, and that was kind of that.    

In a few weeks we were both graduated, got jobs out of state, and kind of fell off with each other. Not in a bad way, just the way things naturally go when you’ve got two guys with hectic careers who don’t much care for social media.

About three months ago, I ran into Brady at a work conference. He had a beard and an extra 30lbs, but he was pretty much the same guy I’d known 15 years ago. Good ol’ Brady. After a short catch up, we made plans to, for old times sake, have dinner at an Applebee’s. 

We talked about the usual things: relationships, kids, jobs, family drama, absurd housing costs, why I was drinking a Dr. Pepper instead of a beer (5 years sober, y’all). Eventually we got to the good stuff, our glorious college days. I asked Brady if he ever got that old Chevy Chevelle fixed back up. 

No, unfortunately, he told me. He’d moved to the East Coast for a job and offloaded it for a pittance onto some car enthusiast. “At least he probably took real good care of her,” Brady shrugged. I then got to what I’d really wanted to ask. “How the hell did you explain the damage to insurance?”

“Hit and run. They rejected my claim,” Brady said with a genuine laugh. I laughed, too, but there was still the question digging in my craw.

“So what the hell do you think actually happened to us that night?” I finally asked. “I mean, we both experienced it, so it’s not like it was a hallucination. Drones weren’t readily available yet. It doesn’t make any sense.”

“It doesn’t make any sense,” Brady agreed, “But I think the main thing is, don’t drive on Twin Foxes Road after midnight.”

"Now how bout we do an acid test on that face of yours, and then we'll see how valuable that is."

This soufflé would be world's introduction to his perfectly indetectable poison.

Even after all those birthday hugs and kisses, though, she's never seemed to detect my extensive streak.

I just found out she was arrested on suspicion of poisoning her husband with strychnine.

Don't they realize it's the Fourth of July when no one is suspicious of the sulfur stench?

Today as a school nurse, they just break my heart.

You think finding out you were part of the Appalachia Regional Twin Separation Experiment counts?

After my first MRI at age 21 revealed an unexpected third kidney, I asked why they hid the transplant from me.

Collapsing, Cara let her limbs spill over the boulder's cool surface. Sweat burned her eyes as she stared up at the pale sky of a waning afternoon.

She'd finally done it - ripped the bandaid off in a single, angry motion. She couldn't take it anymore. Her overbearing mother nitpicking every grade, her grandmother's snippy comments about her clothes, and Aunt Angeline. Just Aunt Angeline. That sanctimonious bitch's “emergency housing need” had been going on for two fucking years!

All three had set upon Cara as soon as she walked through the door from the day’s piano lesson. The freak chorus apparently didn’t care for the new fringe she had cut herself the previous night. Cara didn't bother to fight anymore. She backed out of the kitchen, padded up to her room, and threw open her laptop. The chat from the night before was still open. That 3cm tall, boyishly handsome face at the header - that was all she’d ever need again.

How she and Erik had first started messaging was a blur. Probably because Cara had been pretty well toasted after sneaking some of Angeline’s hard stuff on a lonely Saturday night. 

It was a landscape shot that had pinged her attention: a first-person view of Cavanaugh’s Crest, a boulder at the edge of a local nature reserve. During a particularly horrible freshman year, Cara had spent many hours writing emo poetry at that very spot.

Cara followed the profile link to discover the poster was fond of shirtless pics posed with bros and beers. But the liquid courage was potent, and she started what was to be a night of nonstop back-and-forth.

Cara awoke in the sober daylight to a novel of messages between her and a handsome college guy. To her horror, she found she’d left Erik on read after passing out. She feverishly typed out an apology message. An hour later, she received a reply: 

“Heard, Sleeping Beauty ; )”

That wouldn’t be the last time Cara drifted off during their nightly messaging. Every time she’d be apologetic, and every time, Erik would give the same cheeky response. If she was Sleeping Beauty, he was really Prince Charming. 

Behind the party boy persona, Cara found an inquisitive, funny, and caring guy. Erik would reply intently to every screed on her household’s new drama. He wanted to know about her, everything from the new band she was listening to, to that time she’d had a reaction to a bee sting when she was eight. No matter what happened at school or home, there was always him. 

After an incident where her mother ran Cara’s driver’s license through the shredder, Erik told her she needed to get out of there. ASAP. Of course Cara wanted to leave, but she had nowhere to go. Why not move into the apartment Erik’s uncle was letting him rent this summer, then?

The plan then fell into place. The day after graduation, Cara would be free.

But graduation was still months away. And Cara wanted out, now. 

She anxiously massaged her neck as she waited for a reply. Maybe Erik didn’t really want her after all. Of course that wasn’t the case. Her prince came through, writing that if she was ready to go, she should pack her stuff, and at half past four, meet him at what was to be their spot - Cavanaugh’s Crest.

Cara would take only the essentials, fitting everything she’d need for the rest of her life into a houndstooth backpack. Even her phone would need to stay - her mother tracked it. As she strode toward the door, Cara heard Angeline making a smartass comment about just where she thought she was going. Cara didn’t respond, didn’t turn around, would not even acknowledge her family ever again. 

Once she was outside, she sprinted to her bike and pedaled like a madman to the cut through to the nature reserve, adrenaline spiriting her away to a new life.

She was giddy with exhaustion and excitement as she waited for Erik to arrive. She was lounging on the boulder, enjoying the sun on her face, when she felt a sharp prick on her left calf. Cara shot up to see a stinger poking out of her leg.

No. No, no, no. After that incident when she was eight, the doctors warned her another bee sting could be fatal. She had packed her Epipen, hadn’t she? She must have. Panicked, Cara rifled through her backpack. The fear seemed to hasten the swelling in her mouth. She had to find that Epipen. Or maybe she should go find help. But there was no one else in earshot. After more fruitless searching, Cara haphazardly started towards a trail. She’d barely made it through the brush before she succumbed to shock.

Cara woke up cradled in a burly pair of arms. She blinked her bleary eyes to see a balding, middle-aged man peering down at her. He smiled, and flashed an empty Epipen tube in his left hand. 

“Sure got here in the nick of time, didn’t I?” the man said. Cara rasped a “thank you,” then managed a “How did you…?” while gesturing to the Epipen.

The man furrowed his brow. “After you told me about your allergy, I vowed to never be without one of these bad boys.”

Cara’s face paled.

“What a way for us to finally meet face-to-face, huh? Cara, my Sleeping Beauty.”

"We just hope for twelve toes and thirteen fingers, like any healthy human child."

My friend's face paled as she examined the breaker switches and said, "This place didn't list having a basement."

It was a chilly Halloween night, and a gaggle of young idiots had gathered in front of the gates of the abandoned Arbogast mansion. None could quite say how the dare had been cast, but once the group caught glimpse of the Gothic monstrosity’s shadow against the full moon, it had become sine qua non for the evening.

All were fashioned quite festively for the holiday and most imprudently for the weather, particularly little Katy Leathlow in her cat ears and matching kitten heels. Of course, it was she who had “won” a tourney of “Rock, Paper, Scissors,” and was thus anointed to retrieve a token from the mansion. Katy’s eyes had welled with tears, and she pleaded to her friends that she could not truly go alone, but the others were steadfast. They all knew the tragedy of the Arbogast family.

Adolphus Arbogast, renowned around the nation for his resplendent glass creations, had lived in the mansion sixty years prior with his three lovely daughters and his one very disturbed son. The boy had inherited his father’s talents, but, unfortunately, he had other proclivities. 

When questioned by police, he explained how his father’s young housekeeper was as beautiful as any fairytale princess, and he knew instantly that his own art could never improve upon the Lord’s. The law, however, did not find this sufficient reason to shear off a woman’s head and preserve it in glass, as meticulously wrought as the glass might have been. The boy was institutionalized, and the Arbogast family skipped town. Legend has it, though, only a few years later, Adolphus bribed a doctor at the institution to free his son, and the boy had absconded to the only home he had ever known. Whispers warn he now endlessly stalks the mansion’s decaying halls, waiting for someone to dare return.

It was on this image Katy fixated as she heaved her small body through a broken window and landed in a cramped sitting room. Something small, but distinct, that’s all she would need as proof of her daring.

Katy kept her footfalls light, and soon she came upon a cabinet holding myriad glass figurines. She decisively set upon an emerald green peacock and pulled open the cabinet door, only for the rusty hinges let out a shrill creak. Katy froze in terror for a blink, but regained her composure, grabbed the peacock, then sprinted back towards the window. As she balanced atop the rotting frame, she thought she heard a faint shuffle come from the hall. Panicking, she jumped into a thicket of weeds, then raced back to the safety of her friends. With a hero’s welcome, the group spirited Katy off to a drunken house party. She hardly had time to notice the kitten heel she had lost.

But it was not lost for long. Katy found it the next morning, on her back porch, encased in glass and with a handwritten note:

“I found you, Cinderella.”

It’s always the ones you least suspect.

Hunched on a metal chair, Hilda Gifte looked haggard, a fluorescent-lit distortion of the friendly retired nurse I’d seen in online profiles. I dropped a heavy hand on the two photos laying in front of her: on the left, a beaming little girl with a farmer’s tan; on the right, a sunken-eyed waif, skin blanched white as snow. They were both of her neighbor, seven-year-old Rosy Larson. 

I had been briefed on Rosy’s condition that morning, but the Larsons were local celebrities - everyone already knew their story. The young couple’s thriving daughter suddenly came down with a mysterious illness, and the desperate parents bankrupted themselves in search of a cure, to little avail. Eventually, they pleaded on the local news for assistance. The town rallied and began a slew of endless Facebook posts and fundraisers. 

For all that financial fortune, answers eluded even the best specialists. The child would have a miraculous turnaround one week, only to once again refuse food the next, her skin regaining that awful pallor.

The case seemed hopeless, until a call to our tipline yesterday. 

Rosy had been left with a babysitter that afternoon when Ms. Gifte came over for a social visit. Well acquainted with the helpful neighbor, the babysitter let her in and directed her to Rosy’s sickbed. As she peeked in to see if the pair needed anything, she caught Ms. Gifte handing the child something while pressing a finger to her lips. The babysitter demanded to know what it was, and Rosy revealed a handful of fruit shaped gummies. Ms. Hilda sometimes gave them to her as a special treat, the girl confessed. The older woman then stammered, snatched the gummies, and quickly fled. Dutifully, the babysitter called the Schwartzwald Sheriff’s Department to report a case of suspected child poisoning.

It was a shocking accusation, and we might not have entertained it, had we not discovered Ms. Gifte’s decades of experience at a number of advanced toxicology research labs. Could it really be the never-married, childless Hilda Gifte, jealous of the young family next door, got a twisted thrill out playing God with her medical acumen?   

Ms. Gifte seemed set on silence until a lawyer arrived. Still, I pressed my palm down on the pictures of Rosy, and asked if, with all her specialized experience, she had any inklings of what could’ve caused such a ghastly change. 

“Of course I did, but no one believed me,” a faint murmur answered. Surprised, I asked Ms. Gifte to repeat herself.          

 “You didn’t know them before, you have no idea how convenient it all was, the money,” she said, voice cracking as it rose. “The symptoms, that pale, pale skin. I suspected, but I couldn’t prove it, and I had to do something!”

I point blank asked if she had injected something into the gummies she had been giving Rosy.

“I did, sir, but it was no poison - it was the antidote!”