"Hey, hi, come on in, neighbor!" Chuck flung the door open wide, heedless of the wave of stinging cold that blasted into the front hallway. "Just take your boots off right there and come on into the kitchen with me. I just made some hot cocoa, you can drink it and warm yourself up. It isn't drugged this time, I promise." He grinned mischievously, and Anna rolled her eyes at the familiar old joke. She awkwardly wriggled out of her thick, clunky galoshes and padded on wet stocking feet into the comforting warmth of Chuck's ramshackle old house.
Chuck closed the door behind her quickly, following her down the hallway into the tiny kitchen in the back of the house. "Whoof!" he exclaimed, rubbing the goosebumps out of his pasty arms where they were exposed to the icy winter air. "It's a sharp one out there today, huh? They said it was going to be cold out, but you know how the weather forecasters are. They always predict the worst, then they can just say, 'Oh, we dodged a bullet with that one!' when it turns out sunny. Anyhoo, cocoa's in a mug on the table for you. Go ahead and get yourself warmed up, you had quite a walk out there."
Anna wanted to reply, but her teeth were still chattering a bit too hard to speak. Even with a thick parka and three pairs of long underwear on under her snowpants, she was feeling the cold by the end of her mile-long trip to Chuck's house. She'd thought about driving, but the inconsistent plowing this far out in the country meant that even with four-wheel drive, she was more likely to get stuck than she was to make it up Chuck's long, steep driveway to the top of the hill where he made his home. She was sure it was worth it for the view, but she didn't understand how he managed to get out of his garage in the winter.
Anna doffed her coat and sat down at the table, where a big mug of steaming hot chocolate waited for her. "Drink it all up, and then we can talk about why you came over," he said, heading over to the stove where a whole pot of the stuff awaited his attention. "Make sure to get it all, the poison sometimes sinks to the bottom." He snorted in amusement, picking up a wooden spoon and stirring the thick brown liquid.
"I thought you said this batch wasn't poisoned," Anna said wryly through stiff blue lips, her fingers wrapping around the mug and soaking in the warmth of the ceramic surface. She thought about pulling off her knitted cap and letting her long auburn hair out, but that would mean taking her hands away from the heat for a moment. She wasn't quite ready for that yet. Maybe once the cozy kitchen thawed her out a little, once the hot chocolate warmed her up inside as well as out, but it could wait. She wasn't going anywhere any time soon.
"Oh, right, right," Chuck said, arranging his features into an expression of theatrical innocence. "It's not. Scout's honor. Perfectly safe to drink it all down, no drugs in there at all." He moved the pot of cocoa off the stove and onto a hotpad. "Just good old fashioned hot chocolate that's perfectly safe and ready for you to drink. You can trust me, right? I'm your neighbor." Despite herself, Anna shook her head in amused resignation. It was always the same gag, every single time. She took a grateful sip, her lips quirking in a half-smile at Chuck's familiar antics.
And she spluttered as a bitter, medicinal taste filled her mouth. "Why do I always fall for that?" she muttered, squirming her tongue around to try to get rid of the unpleasantly familiar flavor. She probably shouldn't have swallowed, she realized just a moment too late, but it felt somehow rude to spit the liquid back into the cup right in front of the man who prepared it. Even if he did pull the same gag on her every single time. And even if Anna fell for it every single time.
Wait. Every... time? That-that couldn't be right. She knew he wouldn't do that, she... she always trusted him to give her something good to drink when she came over after her daily writing was done. And he always told her that it wasn't drugged, and she always believed him. A mug of hot cocoa, or some iced tea on hot summer days, or lemonade or coffee or, or, or... Anna's brain froze up, trying to reconcile her absolute certainty just moments ago that Chuck was joking with her almost-comfortable familiarity with the exact opposite outcome.
Until Chuck spoke. "Because I always tell you to," he said mildly, taking a seat next to her at the kitchen table. "I always remind you to trust me and believe me, Anna, and you can see how well it works because you always forget what's in your drink until after you've already swallowed it. That's what makes this whole little friendship of ours possible." He looked perfectly calm and friendly while he said it, his bald head nodding encouragingly and his deep brown eyes twinkling with merriment. Anna had to remind herself three times that he was talking about drugging her.
"I... no," she said, her voice thick with puzzlement. "No, I wouldn't... I wouldn't just swallow poison, just because you told me it was safe. That doesn't... that doesn't make sense." She could feel the pieces trying to fit together in her head, seeming disjointed and incongruous no matter how she tried to make them click. She knew she recognized the taste-it was unmistakable, like wormwood or star anise. She knew that every single day, Chuck told her that the drink wasn't drugged, and that was such an absurd thing to say that of course he had to be making a joke, because why would someone blurt that out unless they had something to hide?
But nobody would hide something that badly, that obviously. So it had to be a joke. Chuck was kidding, lying so blatantly about not drugging her drink that of course he was confessing to drugging her drink, which meant that he wasn't drugging her drink because who would confess to drugging someone's drink if they wanted them to drink the drug? So it couldn't be true. The logic twisted like a spiral staircase in her head, but every step felt sure. The drink was safe. But if it was safe, why did she taste poison? And why did it taste so intimately familiar on her lips?
Chuck's calm, mellow voice broke into her confused thoughts. "Of course you would, sweetie. You're doing it right now." Anna almost choked when she realized that somehow in her distracted, woolgathering state, she'd once again put the cup to her lips and was swallowing down gulp after gulp of the thick, bitter liquid. She'd almost finished half the mug without even noticing. Quickly, Anna placed it back on the table and forced herself to pull her hands away.
"W-why?" she said, her voice sounding bewildered and terrified in her own ears. "W-why, why am I... I..." Anna trailed off into silence, not sure how to even describe her own actions. She didn't notice. That was the part that kept breaking into every train of thought that began to form, shattering her every effort to make sense of events as it hit her over and over and over again. She'd just been drinking poison, drinking poison that she knew was poison and that someone had just finished telling her was poison, and she didn't even notice that she was doing it. That was... that was fucking impossible. But she'd done it.
