Poison Killed The Cat
Poison no.24 he read. The vial only sat on the second shelf. Hundreds of small crystal vials filled with different coloured liquids were meticulously arranged in the towering cupboard. Each one had a neat label either numbering them or naming the known ones; cyanide, hemlock, belladonna, and less known ones; strychnine, curare. The cupboard was ostentatiously labelled ‘POISON’. He had been looking for the bathroom when he had glanced at the cupboard through an ajar door. How could he not be interested in such a beautiful dangling carrot. He didn’t care that any normal person would have run. Run and left this house. But instead, he had slipped into the room and cautiously opened the door to the cupboard.
Now as he stood their beholding the terrifying (but impressive) sight. He didn’t know what to do. He couldn’t reasonably return to dinner with an obvious psycho, but he doubted he had it in him to confront the host. He could possibly call the police. But was it safe to do so inside the house? Maybe he should just backtrack to the common sense he had ignored earlier. The instinct that when you see something so obviously dangerous that you should run. Activate the flight response. He didn’t even have a fight response he was just curious. He was a cat, and he was about to be killed.
But yes, he would sneak out. It was the best option. As slowly as he could he closed the cupboard door, keeping an ear out in case he heard any footsteps.
“Adam, Adam, Adam,” came a mockingly disappointed voice from behind him. He whirled around, wincing as the cupboard door closed the rest of the way with a slam.
Standing in the doorway was the host of the night. Henry.
Adam tried to take up a defensive position, straightening his back and throwing back his shoulders.
“What are you doing in here? The bathroom is further down the hall,” Henry said with a further mocking undertone to his words. Adam felt like a fly stuck in a web with a taunting spider.
“Well, I was, uhm,” Adam scrambled for an excuse, “I was looking in here to see if this was it and noticed that the cupboard,” he gestured behind him, “was open and I figured that you probably didn’t want it to be, so I came in to close it,” he ended with a gasp for air.
“Oh, isn’t that odd? I would swear that I closed it last time I was in here,” Henry said with fake confusion as he strode closer.
“Yea. That is odd,” Adam said carefully as he started to edge his way away from what would end with him in his coffin.
Henry nodded emphatically, “just so I know, how much did you happen to see?”
He said it in a way that conveyed genuine curiosity, but his gaze conveyed a threat.
“Barely anything, almost as if it was empty,” Adam forced out a laugh and glanced at the door.
“Right, right,” Henry paused where he stood with his arms crossed over his chest as if he was considering something.
Adam took this as the perfect opportunity to make a dash for the door.
Quicker than Adam had expected, Henry had stepped back into the open door and closed it with his back.
“Tsk, tsk. Come on, you must know that by now I can’t let you leave.”
With a click of a lock Henry looked Adam in the eye and spread his mouth into a malicious smile.
“I can’t have you spilling my little secret, can I?”
Adam shook his head, not really in answer to the man, he was just shaking all over.
“I knew you’d get it!” Henry said gleefully as he stalked forwards.
Adam stumbled backwards, “I promise I won’t tell anyone!”
“Of course you won’t,” Henry pulled out a chair from the side of the room. It clanged against the cold stone floor as he placed it right in the middle of the room.
“Sit.”
Adam took a step back and away from the shadowed chair, “why?”
“Well, we have to make sure you keep your promise, don’t we?”
The rest of the night was a blur.