Choking and spasming were symptoms of poisoning. Hands that twitched and reached out in confusion like a bird frantically flapping its wings. Eyes wide and white, mouth running red, and face turning purple, all of it in the books that Evanna- the stoic nurse with her perfectly ironed attire -had studied for about half of her life. The brunette’s green eyes, similar to a field of dying grass, glazed over with a bit less than indifference. Half-lidded, she watched as her mentor struggled on the ground, squawking and flapping his hands for help.
Poisoning can happen in plenty of ways. Be it chemicals, mushrooms, or berries, all it took was ignorance and oral ingestion. Four yew berries rested safely inside the old man’s sandwich. Two more rested in his stomach. One more on the floor next to his lolled-out tongue, puffing and twitching as his eyes clouded over. Evanna could taste death in the air. The taste was sweet, sour, and nickel-like.
While she imagined his bones in the middle of a dune, he croaked, spasms stopping as his whole body simply collapsed. The young nurse looked down at the corpse through her bottom eyelashes before gently kicking him over to check if he was dead. The clouds in his eyes and his lack of breath were symptoms of a disposed-of hindrance.
After confirming, she sighed, letting her shoulder-length fawn-brown hair fall out of her bobby pins. Twirling around and brushing off her neat white dress, she floated to the sink to wash her hands of the yew juice. It smelled like the old man. Bitter and ragged, hair sticking out of his head and forever a grimace perking above his lip. She closed her eyes and wiped her hands off before leaning down to the cold corpse. She pulled a cigarette and lighter out of his coat and lit it, taking a long drag and blowing the smoke out of the window. The gray cloud scattered around nearby branches, looking like a charred assortment of organs.
Thirty-two feet in the air, Evanna looked at the town below and flicked her cigarette against the windowsill. Busy bees, constructing and running and linking arms to say ‘goodbye.’ Evanna had none of it on floor three of the hospital. The stink of bitter blood and sanitization chewed at her brain, driving her mad, driving her to reach out the window and collect berries from the blossoming tree. She ran her finger along its beautiful branches, taking another drag of the cigarette and directing it at an empty branch.
The corpse of her old mentor stunk like bile and poison and ice. It made her wrinkle her nose and wave the beige curtains to shoo away the scent. Shooing away her feelings, her thoughts, her brain, and her mind.
She needed him gone. She needed the smell of bile and poison and ice out of her nose for the second time in her life. In a deep forest, she stood atop a picnic blanket, teeth clenched with veins running blue. The cold ran up her fingers as she attempted to squeeze poison out of her little brother’s snake wound, the sound of joined weeping in her ears as she screamed for someone to help. Evanna could still see the pain in his eyes, the fogging, the seizing, all of it. I am a doctor, for God’s sake! The brunette screamed at herself, despite only being in two months of apprenticeship. Poison, poison, what do I do about poison?
After presenting the little one’s body to the old croak, he glared and lit his cigarette, talons piercing the paper. “You did what you could. We lose our patients and we move on.”
Evanna could still hear his cold mutter, voice crackly with ash, wasted vocal cords over a hundred years. He didn’t get it. The crow didn’t understand. She lost everything that day. With wild green eyes fixed on the ancient nurse’s back, she swore, swore, swore… “I’ll get you, vulture.” But she was young then and the wrinkles that once ran along her uniform now sat on
her forehead.
Now, a PHD hanging on the wall, a body on the floor, and the curtains flowing gently, Evanna felt a sort of emptiness in her chest. He’d taken the only thing she had…but what was left after justice was served? She leaned down, taking the sharp chin of the man in her hands and turning his narrow head toward her. With eyes matching his, she put the cigarette out on his lip and let his head fall to the floor.
Evanna sat down, leaning on the corpse and closing her dull green eyes. It wasn’t pretty, but she did what she had to do. She found no purpose in life without a little smile to go home to. And now that the old crow could no longer caw, she could fall asleep without seeing a snake on a platter decorated with the heart of her kin. Tonight, she was dreaming of a feast full of carrion.