White Cedar (by Rune Woodman)
September 27th 2009 03:44
Alright. It was me. There was no murder attempt, it was suicide and this is my confession.
I never planned to make thirty, but I was having such a good time at twenty-nine the time flew by and I forgot all about it. At thirty-five I chickened out. Fear of pain was the determining factor. Then this. This was it, my last chance, forty. I certainly had no intention of suffering the indignity of incontinence, senility and forty-five. You live your life to the fullest, you enjoy every minute and when you’re ready you knock yourself off. No nursing homes, no financial bother, nice and clean.
I had a brilliant plan.
We bought a house. There was this tree in the back yard. It was deciduous (that means it loses its leaves in winter). Anyway, after the leaves fall off the tree is covered in yellow berries. I asked my friend Rebecca if she knew the name of the tree. She said she wasn’t sure but it was definitely a native of some sort.
"A native?" I cracked. "You don't get deciduous natives in Australia." She stood firm on her analysis, so to avoid an argument we went to the internet to check it out. And there it was. On the Sydney Water Native Plant Selector website. An Australian, native, deciduous, bird attracting, shade tree. Perhaps the only one in existence.
Very interesting, but what really caught my eye? The berries were poisonous! Eight of them would be enough to kill a horse. Just eight tiny little berries. And this tree was in my back yard, covered in thousands and thousands of them.
My birthday was approaching and I hadn't found a way to do myself in yet. And I needed something that you couldn't call off half way through. I hadn’t considered poison before. It was the obvious choice. You eat the stuff and that's it – you’re dead! No second thoughts. No remembering at the last minute the $2000 dollars you’d paid for Melbourne Cup dinner tickets.
It was fate. This would be how I would end it all. At last.
I organised a birthday party for myself at a gorgeous little Spanish place in town. All of my friends were going. Imagine how the joyous birthday conversation would morph into concerned looks and then stunned silence as the news of my lateness turned into news of my Lateness.
The party was set for a week-night so my husband would go straight from work and meet me there. I would have all day at home on my own with no one to bother me.
On the morning, as soon as hubby left, I went into the back yard and picked a handful of berries from the tree (didn't want to risk the dirty ones from the ground). I counted them. It sounds like over-kill but I needed twenty. Eight was enough to kill a horse but the website didn't say how long it would take to work. What if it was a slow acting poison that eats away at your brain cells over years and years? I didn't want to risk that happening. Short and to the point, that’s me. Twenty should be plenty; if eight would kill a horse (eventually) then four should do me in and twenty would do it five times faster.
I went inside, sat in my favourite chair and put the first berry in my mouth. It had tough skin that was rough on my tongue. I squeezed my eyes shut and bit into the berry.
Oh My God! I’ve never tasted anything so disgusting in my life! I spat it into my hand immediately. How could birds eat this rubbish?
Chewing the berry was out of the question so I decided to try swallowing one whole. At first the little bugger got stuck under my tongue, right at the back, over where my wisdom tooth used to be. I had to poke around with my finger to get it out. Then it seemed to lodge itself right at the back of my throat. There was a sensation of something there, like when you try to take a pain-killer without any water. I couldn't be sure if it had gone down or not.
At least I didn't have to taste it.
I threw another ten into my mouth and washed them down with a swig of gin. That seemed to work.
Sitting back in my chair I waited for death. Nothing. Ages passed and I wasn't dying yet. Hanging about waiting to die was pretty boring so I took another swig of the gin. Who says you shouldn't go out happy?
I considered the remaining eight berries. They were tough little buggers, too hard to squash between my thumb and forefinger. Perhaps that's why I wasn't dying. The Sydney Water website had said the tree was very successful at reproducing through bird droppings. That's when the penny hit - the skin on the berries was too tough for my stomach to digest them. It looked like I was going to have to chew them after all.
I returned to the tree in the back yard to gather more berries and replace the twelve I'd already wasted. I really didn't want to chew my way through twenty of these things. Perhaps I could mix them with something to mask the flavour. In all honesty the taste wasn't too dissimilar from juniper berries. That's was it - Gin and Tonic! I ran to the kitchen with my berries, dumped them in the mortar and started to grind them to a paste. I can drink a dozen or so Gin and Tonics in an afternoon, it should be a synch to down this lot in a couple of gulps mixed with gin, soda water and a squeeze of lime. Perhaps a few ice cubes clinking in the glass would give the drink that celebratory feel – after all it was my birthday.
I prepared the drink and mixed in the ground berries. It looked a tad jaundiced, but aside from that the ice cubes and lime made it almost appealing. Returning to my chair I sipped the cocktail. "Wow!" I thought. "What a great drink. If I didn't know it was poisonous I'd be handing these around at parties." On their own the berries were totally offensive, but mixed up like this it was like some sort of chemistry was happening.
I slurped my way through the drink in a flash and returned to the garden. I had to have another one, and lets face it. at this time in my life spending a morning drinking cocktails wasn't going to do me any harm. With another twenty berries in it I took my time with the second drink. Didn't want to knock myself out with the booze before confirming the poison was working.
A strange sensation spread over my body from the pit of my stomach. It wasn't painful, it was numbing. Actually, it was kind of sexy. "This is it Melia," I said out loud (that's my name, Melia Azedarach). "No more tomorrows. No more regrets. Hello Oblivion!” Well, perhaps I wasn't as succinct as that but it captures the general feeling of the moment.
Unconsciousness crept up on me from behind as the room faded to black. Somewhere inside my foggy brain I knew that my last breath approached.
Obviously I wasn't around for what happened next, but my husband has filled me in on the blanks.
Everyone at the party was bitching on about how I was always late for everything; how I'd probably even be late for my own funeral. My husband couldn't get me on the phone and not being the sort of man who would defend my honour in my absence, he jumped in his car and drove all the way home to get me. Crashing through the front door of our house he saw I had half fallen out of the chair, a shattered tumbler scattered at my feet. He leaped over my body, grabbed the phone and called for an ambulance.
The ambulance arrived and I was taken to hospital. My stomach was pumped and they saved my life – those BASTARDS! I'm not holding a grudge as it turns out it was all a waste of time. Apparently the berries are only fatal if you boil them down and inject the juice straight into a vein. Eating forty or so will give you little more than a couple of week's of diarrhoea and cramping.
I had denied it was suicide partly because of the embarrassment, I knew I'd have to see a psychiatrist and I would never be left alone again. Partly because, as soon as I was conscious my husband was at my bedside confessing every affair he'd ever had with every man, woman and whatever during the course of our marriage. The police were itching to call it attempted murder and I figured he deserved to be treated like a criminal for a while.
But none of that is important now and I feel I should come clean. He didn't try to kill me. I've been seeing a psychiatrist for a few weeks and she's helped me sort things out. I guess life goes on. I've spoken to a lawyer and with the money from the divorce I'm going to open a bar. I've already got a name for it – White Cedar – after my signature cocktail of berries, gin and lime.
I never planned to make thirty, but I was having such a good time at twenty-nine the time flew by and I forgot all about it. At thirty-five I chickened out. Fear of pain was the determining factor. Then this. This was it, my last chance, forty. I certainly had no intention of suffering the indignity of incontinence, senility and forty-five. You live your life to the fullest, you enjoy every minute and when you’re ready you knock yourself off. No nursing homes, no financial bother, nice and clean.
I had a brilliant plan.
We bought a house. There was this tree in the back yard. It was deciduous (that means it loses its leaves in winter). Anyway, after the leaves fall off the tree is covered in yellow berries. I asked my friend Rebecca if she knew the name of the tree. She said she wasn’t sure but it was definitely a native of some sort.
"A native?" I cracked. "You don't get deciduous natives in Australia." She stood firm on her analysis, so to avoid an argument we went to the internet to check it out. And there it was. On the Sydney Water Native Plant Selector website. An Australian, native, deciduous, bird attracting, shade tree. Perhaps the only one in existence.
Very interesting, but what really caught my eye? The berries were poisonous! Eight of them would be enough to kill a horse. Just eight tiny little berries. And this tree was in my back yard, covered in thousands and thousands of them.
My birthday was approaching and I hadn't found a way to do myself in yet. And I needed something that you couldn't call off half way through. I hadn’t considered poison before. It was the obvious choice. You eat the stuff and that's it – you’re dead! No second thoughts. No remembering at the last minute the $2000 dollars you’d paid for Melbourne Cup dinner tickets.
It was fate. This would be how I would end it all. At last.
I organised a birthday party for myself at a gorgeous little Spanish place in town. All of my friends were going. Imagine how the joyous birthday conversation would morph into concerned looks and then stunned silence as the news of my lateness turned into news of my Lateness.
The party was set for a week-night so my husband would go straight from work and meet me there. I would have all day at home on my own with no one to bother me.
On the morning, as soon as hubby left, I went into the back yard and picked a handful of berries from the tree (didn't want to risk the dirty ones from the ground). I counted them. It sounds like over-kill but I needed twenty. Eight was enough to kill a horse but the website didn't say how long it would take to work. What if it was a slow acting poison that eats away at your brain cells over years and years? I didn't want to risk that happening. Short and to the point, that’s me. Twenty should be plenty; if eight would kill a horse (eventually) then four should do me in and twenty would do it five times faster.
I went inside, sat in my favourite chair and put the first berry in my mouth. It had tough skin that was rough on my tongue. I squeezed my eyes shut and bit into the berry.
Oh My God! I’ve never tasted anything so disgusting in my life! I spat it into my hand immediately. How could birds eat this rubbish?
Chewing the berry was out of the question so I decided to try swallowing one whole. At first the little bugger got stuck under my tongue, right at the back, over where my wisdom tooth used to be. I had to poke around with my finger to get it out. Then it seemed to lodge itself right at the back of my throat. There was a sensation of something there, like when you try to take a pain-killer without any water. I couldn't be sure if it had gone down or not.
At least I didn't have to taste it.
I threw another ten into my mouth and washed them down with a swig of gin. That seemed to work.
Sitting back in my chair I waited for death. Nothing. Ages passed and I wasn't dying yet. Hanging about waiting to die was pretty boring so I took another swig of the gin. Who says you shouldn't go out happy?
I considered the remaining eight berries. They were tough little buggers, too hard to squash between my thumb and forefinger. Perhaps that's why I wasn't dying. The Sydney Water website had said the tree was very successful at reproducing through bird droppings. That's when the penny hit - the skin on the berries was too tough for my stomach to digest them. It looked like I was going to have to chew them after all.
I returned to the tree in the back yard to gather more berries and replace the twelve I'd already wasted. I really didn't want to chew my way through twenty of these things. Perhaps I could mix them with something to mask the flavour. In all honesty the taste wasn't too dissimilar from juniper berries. That's was it - Gin and Tonic! I ran to the kitchen with my berries, dumped them in the mortar and started to grind them to a paste. I can drink a dozen or so Gin and Tonics in an afternoon, it should be a synch to down this lot in a couple of gulps mixed with gin, soda water and a squeeze of lime. Perhaps a few ice cubes clinking in the glass would give the drink that celebratory feel – after all it was my birthday.
I prepared the drink and mixed in the ground berries. It looked a tad jaundiced, but aside from that the ice cubes and lime made it almost appealing. Returning to my chair I sipped the cocktail. "Wow!" I thought. "What a great drink. If I didn't know it was poisonous I'd be handing these around at parties." On their own the berries were totally offensive, but mixed up like this it was like some sort of chemistry was happening.
I slurped my way through the drink in a flash and returned to the garden. I had to have another one, and lets face it. at this time in my life spending a morning drinking cocktails wasn't going to do me any harm. With another twenty berries in it I took my time with the second drink. Didn't want to knock myself out with the booze before confirming the poison was working.
A strange sensation spread over my body from the pit of my stomach. It wasn't painful, it was numbing. Actually, it was kind of sexy. "This is it Melia," I said out loud (that's my name, Melia Azedarach). "No more tomorrows. No more regrets. Hello Oblivion!” Well, perhaps I wasn't as succinct as that but it captures the general feeling of the moment.
Unconsciousness crept up on me from behind as the room faded to black. Somewhere inside my foggy brain I knew that my last breath approached.
Obviously I wasn't around for what happened next, but my husband has filled me in on the blanks.
Everyone at the party was bitching on about how I was always late for everything; how I'd probably even be late for my own funeral. My husband couldn't get me on the phone and not being the sort of man who would defend my honour in my absence, he jumped in his car and drove all the way home to get me. Crashing through the front door of our house he saw I had half fallen out of the chair, a shattered tumbler scattered at my feet. He leaped over my body, grabbed the phone and called for an ambulance.
The ambulance arrived and I was taken to hospital. My stomach was pumped and they saved my life – those BASTARDS! I'm not holding a grudge as it turns out it was all a waste of time. Apparently the berries are only fatal if you boil them down and inject the juice straight into a vein. Eating forty or so will give you little more than a couple of week's of diarrhoea and cramping.
I had denied it was suicide partly because of the embarrassment, I knew I'd have to see a psychiatrist and I would never be left alone again. Partly because, as soon as I was conscious my husband was at my bedside confessing every affair he'd ever had with every man, woman and whatever during the course of our marriage. The police were itching to call it attempted murder and I figured he deserved to be treated like a criminal for a while.
But none of that is important now and I feel I should come clean. He didn't try to kill me. I've been seeing a psychiatrist for a few weeks and she's helped me sort things out. I guess life goes on. I've spoken to a lawyer and with the money from the divorce I'm going to open a bar. I've already got a name for it – White Cedar – after my signature cocktail of berries, gin and lime.
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