White Leaves

‘Jill, don’t go out there yet, it’s still wild, Ted grumbled, his head buried in a box. ‘Found it’
‘What’
‘The bottle opener, I want to celebrate our new home with a glass of something’
‘How about milk’, came the snarling reply?
‘I was thinking more of…’
‘I know your thoughts exactly!’ Slumping on the sofa, she glared at him. ‘How about you do something useful and get the TV working so I have something to do. Can’t be sitting here watching you empty boxes can I’

Sarcasm was rife between Jill and Ted, it was how they lived now, neither seemed to notice, at least it seemed that way to outsiders. Jill had a hold over him, something nobody knew about. There’d been an accident, several years ago; she had been quite badly hurt, although she was fully recovered now; it had been Ted’s fault. Any time she felt he stepped out of line, she threatened him ‘I can tell them, they’ll still want to know, they can still lock you up’.

Recently things were improving for Ted, although it had involved moving house, this wasn’t however, to improve their relationship! Jill flew up from the sofa, ‘I’m going outside, I don’t care if it’s wild, I want to see, I have to know’.
‘They may not be there’.
‘What do you care, you don’t believe me anyway’.
Ted smiled to himself; he knew his plan was working. After opening a bottle of beer and drinking it, he went to the back door and watched Jill wandering through the wilderness; she was smiling; Ted thought to himself, this was a good sign. He called to her and she came back up the rugged pathway, quite out of breath, excited, so different from when she entered the garden; ‘they came, they came'.
‘I told you they would; didn’t I say they would be waiting for you.’
‘You did, yes you did, I’m sorry I doubted you’, her eyes alight like a child’s.
Jill sat back down on the sofa and Ted handed her a drink, energy drinks she’d recently begun to enjoy; an unusual drink for her as she wasn’t keen on fizzy drinks, but these just hit the spot.


Their move came about after Ted overheard one of their neighbours talking about Jill, not realising he was there.
‘She walks around in the garden talking to the plants, I’ve tried talking to her, but it’s like she doesn’t know I’m there; she’s losing her mind I reckon’
Ted and Jill were renting so it wasn’t difficult to move house, two months notice, then off to a different area. He had first realised things were beginning to change for the better the day when Jill came in from the garden with that same glazed look in her eyes he was seeing today. ‘Ted, I’ve found something special and I need to make sure you look after it, I need you to make sure you don’t cut it down. Come and look, please’. She pulled at his sleeve. He followed her to a spot behind the shed where Ivy was growing. ‘Look at the white leaves in the Ivy, they are special’. This took Ted by surprise; he wasn’t expecting this so he reacted badly. ‘There aren’t any white leaves, what are you babbling about’.
Jill’s face changed and she flew into a rage, it took Ted half an hour to get her indoors and calm her down. It was his first encounter with the results of the concoction he was adding to her drinks. After this, he was more careful with the dosages and he mostly had it right now. The symptoms, he’d been told, were like Alzheimer’s; the mind went first, followed by a bodily system shutdown. This was much quicker though than Alzheimer’s, taking months rather than years. He realised that if he moved, people around them wouldn’t know how long she’d been ill, easier to explain when the end came.

Her anger on that first day at the house was not a surprise to Ted; he knew she was afraid, she’d left behind the most important thing to her, her white leaves, the leaves she swore spoke to her. They’d told her they would be at her new home but a logical part of her brain couldn’t understand how so she panicked. The panic had turned to anger, sarcasm, directed towards Ted, dear Ted, yes, dear Ted indeed! They had been there, though, she was so relieved, and they then began to tell her there was something wrong with Ted. She began to find it harder to get down the garden, her legs weren’t working well, her hands couldn’t grasp things, she struggled with the watering can and tools were getting harder to manage. She’d spoken to doctors but nobody could figure out what was causing her problems, they felt it was psychosomatic. She never mentioned the leaves, feeling they wouldn’t understand, also it wasn’t just the leaves now; the bees would buzz ideas into her head, the butterflies whispered as they flew past. The wind rushed through her thoughts depositing doubts, and then it dropped the answer to all her problems into her subconscious.

Ted’s mistake was that he’d never dealt with anyone with a mental health disorder and as this was induced rather than natural, he mistakenly thought he was in control of the situation. He underestimated the power of drugs, any kind of drugs. A month after Ted and Jill moved in, the police were called to do a welfare check on a new neighbour; she was wandering in the garden in her nightgown and had been there all day, possibly through the night. They entered the house and found Ted with a pair of scissors in his back; he’d been dead a while. They searched the house as part of the investigation and found the concoction he’d been feeding Jill; she was never charged and the White Leaves never spoke to her again.