Homeotoxicity
Homeotoxicity
He hated his neighbour. They had been good friends once until a boundary dispute got out of control. Viewed dispassionately, it was a trivial matter because the area of land involved was small, but a few inches of a treasured garden that you have lovingly tended for years, that your kids have grown up and played in, is not a little thing to any of us and he was not going to give it away to that damn man.
In these matters an inch can be worth a thousand pounds to the surveyors and solicitors you have to pay to defend your case and he had to spend almost five thousand before the bastard backed down. It wasn’t so much the money but the worrying about it. Just like a song that gets stuck in your mind but far more stressful, the same negative thoughts had repeated over and over in his head.
He was almost over it now and starting to enjoy life again but the hatred for the man would not diminish. They ignored each other now, walked past each other on the street as if it was empty of anyone but themselves or gazed blankly past each other if their eyes happened to meet over the hedge, but in his head he was still killing him in every painful way possible.
Giant Hogweed was growing on his lawn. He had read stories about how the sap can cause a painful skin reaction that can last for years and here it was growing in his garden. It was tempting. What if he smeared the sap on the handles of his neighbour’s garden tools which were in the unlocked little shed just next to his hedge? Trouble was, he might be spotted doing it or the smears would be noticed. He decided against doing it in reality although, in his imagination, he did it over and over again with invented saps that were much more poisonous and made his neighbour’s limbs swell and fall off, his eyeballs explode.
Summer was here again and, darn it, he was constantly sniffling, it seemed he had started to suffer from hay fever. He mentioned it in a casual chat to a neighbour up the road who immediately offered to make him a homeopathic remedy. He had read various reports and believed it was total nonsense but out of politeness to a kind old lady, he did not say so and took the little bottle home, promising to take it as instructed. It tasted of water, which is all a homeopathic remedy is. He was amazed to find that in a few days his running nose cleared up, although the various anti-allergy things he had got from Boots had done very little. Was it coincidence or did water really have a strange memory? Whatever, it seemed to work and he continued to get the remedies from her, doing odd jobs in her garden in return.
It was mid September and he no longer needed the remedies. He was clearing some trees in a little patch of woodland he owned nearby and noticed a cluster of mushrooms. He looked closer and saw they were not the edible sort but Death Caps, one of the most poisonous mushrooms in Europe. What a pity he couldn’t slip them to his neighbour as they looked like the edible ones but he would never get away with it. Hang on a minute! If Homeopathy worked with a solution so dilute that not a single molecule of the curative ingredient was present, why couldn’t it work for toxic substances? He carefully plucked the Death Caps with his gloved hands and put them in a plastic bag.
You can find everything online and it was pretty easy. He ground up the Death Caps, left them to soak for a few days and then diluted the lethal solution, over and over again, until he was quite sure that any trace of the toxins was too small to be detected although, according to the usual principles of Homeopathy, all the biological effects of the original solution should be present. All that remained was to feed it to his neighbour and that bit was easy, just a short spray on the Beetroots next to the disputed hedge that he harvested in autumn. His neighbour would probably wash them before eating but he had allowed for that by skipping one dilution step.
The Beets started being pulled up and three weeks later he heard from someone else in the village that his neighbour had been taken to hospital and was suffering from acute liver failure although the cause could not be established. He was not invited to the funeral but had a celebratory whisky in the garden, looking over at the nice empty one next door and chuckling. Poisoning had been suspected but nothing had been found. Homeotoxicity had proved its worth. He could never tell anyone but he felt proud of having come up with the idea.
It would be a shame to waste it. Let’s see, that neighbour on the other side who was always making a noise with his motor mower, those squealing little girls down the road, that stupid Green Party councillor who was always objecting to things. Minor irritations, so they didn’t deserve to die like his neighbour but maybe a bit of punishment was due.
That Giant Hogweed was growing on his lawn again.
Homeotoxicity
He hated his neighbour. They had been good friends once until a boundary dispute got out of control. Viewed dispassionately, it was a trivial matter because the area of land involved was small, but a few inches of a treasured garden that you have lovingly tended for years, that your kids have grown up and played in, is not a little thing to any of us and he was not going to give it away to that damn man.
In these matters an inch can be worth a thousand pounds to the surveyors and solicitors you have to pay to defend your case and he had to spend almost five thousand before the bastard backed down. It wasn’t so much the money but the worrying about it. Just like a song that gets stuck in your mind but far more stressful, the same negative thoughts had repeated over and over in his head.
He was almost over it now and starting to enjoy life again but the hatred for the man would not diminish. They ignored each other now, walked past each other on the street as if it was empty of anyone but themselves or gazed blankly past each other if their eyes happened to meet over the hedge, but in his head he was still killing him in every painful way possible.
Giant Hogweed was growing on his lawn. He had read stories about how the sap can cause a painful skin reaction that can last for years and here it was growing in his garden. It was tempting. What if he smeared the sap on the handles of his neighbour’s garden tools which were in the unlocked little shed just next to his hedge? Trouble was, he might be spotted doing it or the smears would be noticed. He decided against doing it in reality although, in his imagination, he did it over and over again with invented saps that were much more poisonous and made his neighbour’s limbs swell and fall off, his eyeballs explode.
Summer was here again and, darn it, he was constantly sniffling, it seemed he had started to suffer from hay fever. He mentioned it in a casual chat to a neighbour up the road who immediately offered to make him a homeopathic remedy. He had read various reports and believed it was total nonsense but out of politeness to a kind old lady, he did not say so and took the little bottle home, promising to take it as instructed. It tasted of water, which is all a homeopathic remedy is. He was amazed to find that in a few days his running nose cleared up, although the various anti-allergy things he had got from Boots had done very little. Was it coincidence or did water really have a strange memory? Whatever, it seemed to work and he continued to get the remedies from her, doing odd jobs in her garden in return.
It was mid September and he no longer needed the remedies. He was clearing some trees in a little patch of woodland he owned nearby and noticed a cluster of mushrooms. He looked closer and saw they were not the edible sort but Death Caps, one of the most poisonous mushrooms in Europe. What a pity he couldn’t slip them to his neighbour as they looked like the edible ones but he would never get away with it. Hang on a minute! If Homeopathy worked with a solution so dilute that not a single molecule of the curative ingredient was present, why couldn’t it work for toxic substances? He carefully plucked the Death Caps with his gloved hands and put them in a plastic bag.
You can find everything online and it was pretty easy. He ground up the Death Caps, left them to soak for a few days and then diluted the lethal solution, over and over again, until he was quite sure that any trace of the toxins was too small to be detected although, according to the usual principles of Homeopathy, all the biological effects of the original solution should be present. All that remained was to feed it to his neighbour and that bit was easy, just a short spray on the Beetroots next to the disputed hedge that he harvested in autumn. His neighbour would probably wash them before eating but he had allowed for that by skipping one dilution step.
The Beets started being pulled up and three weeks later he heard from someone else in the village that his neighbour had been taken to hospital and was suffering from acute liver failure although the cause could not be established. He was not invited to the funeral but had a celebratory whisky in the garden, looking over at the nice empty one next door and chuckling. Poisoning had been suspected but nothing had been found. Homeotoxicity had proved its worth. He could never tell anyone but he felt proud of having come up with the idea.
It would be a shame to waste it. Let’s see, that neighbour on the other side who was always making a noise with his motor mower, those squealing little girls down the road, that stupid Green Party councillor who was always objecting to things. Minor irritations, so they didn’t deserve to die like his neighbour but maybe a bit of punishment was due.
That Giant Hogweed was growing on his lawn again.
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