July

Just as Chencha came home a few nights ago, the ranch was attacked by bandits. Chencha was raped, and due to severe injuries to my spine, I became paralyzed from the waist down. Tita returned to the ranch, neither of us wishing to talk to the other. I felt helpless and humiliated, because I needed Tita to care for me. The soup she prepared tasted bitter, and I refused to eat it. Dr. Brown came to check on me and mentioned that he hoped to come back someday and ask for Tita’s hand in marriage. It was then that the idea occurred to me… Could Tita be poisoning me? There is nothing she desires more in the world than to be free of my rules and restrictions so that she could marry whoever she wants. After Dr. Brown visited, I rejected all of Tita’s food. In an attempt to ruin Tita’s plot, I demanded that Chencha prepare my food. Everything was going well. Chencha prepared and delivered all of my meals and waited in my room until I tasted it. However, one day Chencha tried to mislead me. She brought me my meal, but it tasted unusually bitter. I immediately knew that Tita had prepared that meal, and I sent Checha out of my house. Tita continued to hire new chefs for my ranch, but most of them left after only a few days. After we had gone through almost every chef in town, I was forced to eat meals prepared by Tita. I was very careful about the food Tita had made, and I demanded that Tita taste the food before I did. Tita’s meals occasionally brought me sharp pains in my stomach, which I relieved by using a very strong emetic called ipecac.