The 25th Attempt

Crush. Crush. Crush. The sound was sharp, deliberate, and almost rhythmic. Rodenticide tablets crumbled into a fine, pale dust beneath a firm, dark-skinned hand. The powder swirled faintly in the air, ghostlike, catching in the light. On the man’s pinky sat a gold ring—simple, elegant, unbothered by the quiet violence of the moment.

“Martin! Martin!” The voice cut through from downstairs—urgent, yet familiar.

He exhaled slowly, the sigh carrying both annoyance and resignation. Not today, he thought. He wasn’t dying today.

He set the small bowl of poison aside and made his way down the stairs. Mary, his wife, stood in the kitchen, the scent of breakfast wrapping around the room like an unwanted hug. She had laid out plates for two; the table felt too big for them.

Their home was neat, warm even—but telling. No children’s laughter echoed through the hallways, no family photographs lined the walls. Just the two of them. Always just the two of them.

They ate in silence for a few minutes before Mary began her familiar routine—complaints about work, about bills, about the things Martin never seemed to do right. Her words rolled over him like water over stone, her voice almost capable of making a mad man sane… or a sane man mad.

Martin’s face didn’t change. Not a flicker of emotion. Inside, though, the same thought circled. Maybe it was because his mind had already been made up. Maybe because this was his twenty-fourth failed attempt. Twenty-four times she had interrupted him—sometimes without knowing, sometimes without caring.

It made him furious.

But no matter. The plan could wait.

He swallowed the last bite of breakfast, the taste as hollow as the life he carried. Tomorrow, he told himself. Tomorrow, the twenty-fifth attempt would be successful.