Jack

Grunting through his business, he did not notice the bathroom clock loudly tick-tocking. He did not notice the time at all. His gaze slid past the too- loud clock face in the bathroom, beyond the digital alarm clock beside his bed. He fell back onto damp sheets, curling into a fetal position. Had Jack checked the time, he may have realized that more than his intestines had gone wrong.

All Jack knew that final day was his bed and the toilet. He missed small oddities while half-sleeping through hazy fever and painful diarrhea. When he roused himself for water from the kitchen, his focus was cold water inside the fridge. He did not glance at the microwave clock reading 4:47, the same time every clock in his home displayed. Had he seen the numbers repeated around the home, maybe he would have tuned into the exceedingly loud ticking echoing hollowly throughout the house. He might have noticed the flickering lights. Might have wondered where his cat was, and why the beast had not begged for its breakfast

The sweating sickness kept him from thinking of anything besides himself, and what he’d eaten or contracted to feel so horribly. He did not connect his illness to his aunt. Did not even think of his aunt, dead and buried for months. He did not equate her wasting illness to what he was experiencing. Perhaps he would have been afraid then, paid more attention to the creaking footsteps, to a familiar cackling laugh heard in his delirium.

Death surprised Jack. He thought he’d sweat and shit out the sickness. Even the sight of his aunt’s haggard visage leaning over him did not prepare him. Until she spoke, he thought her a figment of his fever.

“How’s it feel to be poisoned, boy?” she cackled at him.

His gut tightened, and he tried to rise through her image to make it to the toilet. Fear began when he could not move, at his realization that she held him down. His bowels loosened, his stench filled his nose and mouth. Horror forced shame and revulsion away. The stench of the hag before him overrode his own.

“Thought you’d get away with it? Really thought you could kill me and live easy in my home, with my money? Thought killing an old invalid lady was nothing, huh?” She laughed, harsh and dry. “That’s right, boy! You didn’t fool me!

He opened his mouth to scream, choking on his voice and the vomit she spewed into his throat from hers. Repulsed and terrified, he struggled as she held him down, laughing the awful laugh he had despised for years.