Memento
by Allan Watson
Genre: Drama
Swearwords: A lot of strong ones.
Description: An old man with dementia gets dumped in a home while his family go off on holiday. Feel sorry for him? More fool you.
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Selfish bastards. Sticking me in fucking Bedlam while they swan off to the Costa Brava for a fortnight. I still can’t believe my son and daughter-in-law abandoned me in this stinking shit-hole they call a Care Home simply because I refused to go on holiday with them and their genetically-challenged offspring. Whatever happened to ‘Honour thy parents’? Just because I’ve got borderline Alzheimer’s disease and can’t be trusted to be left on my own in case I burn the house down or forget to feed the goldfish, it’s no excuse for treating me like a dog getting booked into kennels while its masters go gallivanting. So what if I can’t remember things like what day of the week it is and sometimes forget to pull my trousers down when I go for a shit? I hope the fuckers come home with skin cancer. That’ll teach them. I realise that’s wishful thinking. No doubt all they’ll bring back is the usual useless junk as keepsakes of their time in sunny Spain. Cheap, worthless, tacky mementoes to remind themselves of a bland two weeks lounging around doing nothing remotely useful. It’s always the same old rubbish – key-rings, bottle openers, fridge magnets, ashtrays and painted seashells. Garbage that will soon be lost and forgotten. What they don’t know is that I have my own personal mementoes of my two week stint in purgatory.
Sitting here in this pokey little cell they call a bedroom, I lay out my collection on the bed. It’s not a bad haul. Over the course of my stay I’ve managed to steal over two hundred pounds from my fellow prisoners. Most of them are way ahead of me in the Looney Tunes department. They leave cash lying around and don’t even notice it’s gone when they return, although it beats me why their families give them any money at all. I asked Mrs Gallway, the frigid-faced care supervisor who struts about like she has a cactus plant rammed up her skinny arse, about the money and she explained that it helps some people keep connected to the real world by allowing them to buy their own treats from the tuck shop. Fuck the tuck shop. That money is all mine now.
I’ve a few other souvenirs that are worth more than money. These are proper mementoes. I remember enough Latin from my wasted school days to recall the origins of the word lie in the imperative of meminisse which means, to remember. I’m well aware my mental disintegration is a progressive beast; a drooling, crayon-wielding work-in-progress. At some stage I’ll lose the ability to easily remember my swashbuckling adventures from this enforced incarceration, so the keepsakes will hopefully rekindle the flames of my accomplishments here.
I pick up Mrs Johnson’s hearing aid which I stole the night I broke into her room and fucked her. Dozy old cow goes out like a light once she’s taken her medication. I simply waited until McKenna, the wanker with the scruffy beard who does the hourly night patrol, returned to the office to read his book and pick his nose, before making my move, creeping along the dark corridors and slipping into Mrs Johnson’s room without managing to disturb anyone or get lost in the labyrinth of carpeted hallways. Mind you, I almost got lost when I pulled her duvet off and positioned myself between those great, flabby thighs. It took a fair amount of fruitless grinding before I managed an erection worth speaking of, but I finally got there in the end. All the way through the act, Mrs Johnson kept mumbling in her sleep which was off-putting to say the least. I expect she was dreaming about having a conversation with her chiropodist or maybe even her gynaecologist given the relentless pounding I was applying to her starchy old stink-hole. When I finished off with a feeble squirt, I decided her hearing aid would make a nice memento of our coupling. I knew she had a spare one anyway.
I put down the hearing aid and pick up a scrap of cuttlefish bone, turning it over in my hand. I got this from right next door. My immediate neighbour in Stalag 17 is Bob Finlayson. Seems a decent sort of bloke but he was granted permission from the High Command to keep a canary in his room, which in my book made him the Birdman of Alcatraz. Every single night I’d have my beauty sleep disturbed by the yellow fucking pest pecking away at the plastic surround of its cage and it was driving me crazy. It was easy enough to wait until Bob had visitors before entering his room and throttling the annoying bird then flushing it out to sea via the toilet bowl. I left the cage door and room window open so he’d think the bird had escaped. I could hear him through the thin wall sobbing his heart out at the loss of his only true friend. I doubt he even noticed I’d swiped the cuttlefish bone.
Then there was Frankie Gilchrist. He acted as though he owned the fucking place. Always hogging the television remote in the common room and boring everyone within earshot about the good old days when he owned a used car dealership. The way he went on you’d think he was Arnold fucking Clark. He was always flirting with the minimum-wage staff nurses, making them laugh with his old charmer routine. He even wore leather driving gloves and a tartan skipped cap when they wheeled him around the garden in his chair. I soon put his gas at a terminal peep when I broke into his room one night and smothered the fucker to death with a pillow. As a keepsake I took his false teeth which were in a glass of water beside the bed.
I’ve acquired a few other mementoes from my enforced stay here. Stupid stuff I couldn’t stop myself from lifting. Thefts inspired by nothing more than random opportunity. Watches, rings, spectacles, even Mrs Hardie’s wig that she wore after the chemo made her hair fall out. I’d have gathered lots more stuff if I hadn’t succumbed to so many involuntary periods of imbecility and crapping my pants. I’ll be taking everything with me today when my beach-bum son turns up to collect me. I don’t expect to be body-searched on the way out, but best not to take chances, so I stash the lot in the false bottom of my suitcase.
At two o’clock there is a knock on my door and it swings open to reveal not just my son, but the harlot daughter-in-law, too, which is surprising. Both of them are looking fit and tanned with no visible signs of melanomas much to my disappointment. I steal a glance at the daughter-in-law’s low-cut top showing off an indecent amount of bronzed cleavage. The dirty cow has obviously been sunbathing with her tits out, fostering no end of oedipal fantasies on my grand-son, whatever his name is.
‘Dad!’ says my son, pretending to look pleased that I haven’t keeled over with a heart attack while he was away. ‘How have you enjoyed your stay here? Like a wee home from home, I hope.’
I force my clenched jaw into a semblance of a smile. No point in causing a fuss just yet. I’ll get my revenge once I’m back at their house and miles away from this place. I’ve a whole campaign of domestic disobedience planned to make their lives an utter misery for the next couple of months. ‘Can’t complain,’ I say. ‘This is a nice wee room and the staff have been very kind. Best two weeks I’ve spent in a long, long time,’ I add spitefully.
Both of them smile at each other. There is something in that shared smile which makes me feel uneasy.
‘I’m really glad to hear that, dad. You see, we were thinking of these last two weeks being a trial run for a more permanent arrangement. We’ve been finding it hard to cope with your condition and think it’s for the best if you moved in here on a long term basis. What do you think?’
Sunlight is reflecting from a small picture frame beside the door and I feel my thoughts slowly begin to unwind and slither around my feet like a long length of unbound hair. Not now! Dear God not now, I scream inside my head. The fuckers are planning on giving me a life sentence in this miserable dump and I can’t find the words to shout and spit my defiance.
There is another memento hidden away at the bottom of my case that I haven’t seen fit to mention so far. A memento mori to be precise. A reminder of mortality; a long-held souvenir from the days when I ran about with the old Glasgow street gangs. I fight against the mental palsy that threatens to immobilise me and stick my hand inside the suitcase, my trembling fingers slipping beneath the false panel at the bottom, groping until I feel that familiar length of mother-of-pearl secure in my hand. A man of my generation isn’t complete without a straight razor for emergencies.
They don’t notice what I’m doing, so relieved are they that I seem to be accepting the inevitable without a shouting match. I nod towards the en-suite bathroom and shuffle woodenly towards it.
‘Desperate for a slash,’ I manage to croak as the door closes behind me. Even as I stand before the mirror with the razor held against my skin, I can hear them unpacking my things from the case. I imagine they’ll be puzzled when they discover my hidden cache of mementoes. I just wish I had the time to write a letter of explanation for each object.
When the honed steel slices through unresisting flesh and the dark bitter blood fountains across the mirror, I have one last thought.
I’ve just given that despicable pair of selfish cunts one holiday memento they’ll never manage to lose or forget.
Swearwords: A lot of strong ones.
Description: An old man with dementia gets dumped in a home while his family go off on holiday. Feel sorry for him? More fool you.
_____________________________________________________________________
Selfish bastards. Sticking me in fucking Bedlam while they swan off to the Costa Brava for a fortnight. I still can’t believe my son and daughter-in-law abandoned me in this stinking shit-hole they call a Care Home simply because I refused to go on holiday with them and their genetically-challenged offspring. Whatever happened to ‘Honour thy parents’? Just because I’ve got borderline Alzheimer’s disease and can’t be trusted to be left on my own in case I burn the house down or forget to feed the goldfish, it’s no excuse for treating me like a dog getting booked into kennels while its masters go gallivanting. So what if I can’t remember things like what day of the week it is and sometimes forget to pull my trousers down when I go for a shit? I hope the fuckers come home with skin cancer. That’ll teach them. I realise that’s wishful thinking. No doubt all they’ll bring back is the usual useless junk as keepsakes of their time in sunny Spain. Cheap, worthless, tacky mementoes to remind themselves of a bland two weeks lounging around doing nothing remotely useful. It’s always the same old rubbish – key-rings, bottle openers, fridge magnets, ashtrays and painted seashells. Garbage that will soon be lost and forgotten. What they don’t know is that I have my own personal mementoes of my two week stint in purgatory.
Sitting here in this pokey little cell they call a bedroom, I lay out my collection on the bed. It’s not a bad haul. Over the course of my stay I’ve managed to steal over two hundred pounds from my fellow prisoners. Most of them are way ahead of me in the Looney Tunes department. They leave cash lying around and don’t even notice it’s gone when they return, although it beats me why their families give them any money at all. I asked Mrs Gallway, the frigid-faced care supervisor who struts about like she has a cactus plant rammed up her skinny arse, about the money and she explained that it helps some people keep connected to the real world by allowing them to buy their own treats from the tuck shop. Fuck the tuck shop. That money is all mine now.
I’ve a few other souvenirs that are worth more than money. These are proper mementoes. I remember enough Latin from my wasted school days to recall the origins of the word lie in the imperative of meminisse which means, to remember. I’m well aware my mental disintegration is a progressive beast; a drooling, crayon-wielding work-in-progress. At some stage I’ll lose the ability to easily remember my swashbuckling adventures from this enforced incarceration, so the keepsakes will hopefully rekindle the flames of my accomplishments here.
I pick up Mrs Johnson’s hearing aid which I stole the night I broke into her room and fucked her. Dozy old cow goes out like a light once she’s taken her medication. I simply waited until McKenna, the wanker with the scruffy beard who does the hourly night patrol, returned to the office to read his book and pick his nose, before making my move, creeping along the dark corridors and slipping into Mrs Johnson’s room without managing to disturb anyone or get lost in the labyrinth of carpeted hallways. Mind you, I almost got lost when I pulled her duvet off and positioned myself between those great, flabby thighs. It took a fair amount of fruitless grinding before I managed an erection worth speaking of, but I finally got there in the end. All the way through the act, Mrs Johnson kept mumbling in her sleep which was off-putting to say the least. I expect she was dreaming about having a conversation with her chiropodist or maybe even her gynaecologist given the relentless pounding I was applying to her starchy old stink-hole. When I finished off with a feeble squirt, I decided her hearing aid would make a nice memento of our coupling. I knew she had a spare one anyway.
I put down the hearing aid and pick up a scrap of cuttlefish bone, turning it over in my hand. I got this from right next door. My immediate neighbour in Stalag 17 is Bob Finlayson. Seems a decent sort of bloke but he was granted permission from the High Command to keep a canary in his room, which in my book made him the Birdman of Alcatraz. Every single night I’d have my beauty sleep disturbed by the yellow fucking pest pecking away at the plastic surround of its cage and it was driving me crazy. It was easy enough to wait until Bob had visitors before entering his room and throttling the annoying bird then flushing it out to sea via the toilet bowl. I left the cage door and room window open so he’d think the bird had escaped. I could hear him through the thin wall sobbing his heart out at the loss of his only true friend. I doubt he even noticed I’d swiped the cuttlefish bone.
Then there was Frankie Gilchrist. He acted as though he owned the fucking place. Always hogging the television remote in the common room and boring everyone within earshot about the good old days when he owned a used car dealership. The way he went on you’d think he was Arnold fucking Clark. He was always flirting with the minimum-wage staff nurses, making them laugh with his old charmer routine. He even wore leather driving gloves and a tartan skipped cap when they wheeled him around the garden in his chair. I soon put his gas at a terminal peep when I broke into his room one night and smothered the fucker to death with a pillow. As a keepsake I took his false teeth which were in a glass of water beside the bed.
I’ve acquired a few other mementoes from my enforced stay here. Stupid stuff I couldn’t stop myself from lifting. Thefts inspired by nothing more than random opportunity. Watches, rings, spectacles, even Mrs Hardie’s wig that she wore after the chemo made her hair fall out. I’d have gathered lots more stuff if I hadn’t succumbed to so many involuntary periods of imbecility and crapping my pants. I’ll be taking everything with me today when my beach-bum son turns up to collect me. I don’t expect to be body-searched on the way out, but best not to take chances, so I stash the lot in the false bottom of my suitcase.
At two o’clock there is a knock on my door and it swings open to reveal not just my son, but the harlot daughter-in-law, too, which is surprising. Both of them are looking fit and tanned with no visible signs of melanomas much to my disappointment. I steal a glance at the daughter-in-law’s low-cut top showing off an indecent amount of bronzed cleavage. The dirty cow has obviously been sunbathing with her tits out, fostering no end of oedipal fantasies on my grand-son, whatever his name is.
‘Dad!’ says my son, pretending to look pleased that I haven’t keeled over with a heart attack while he was away. ‘How have you enjoyed your stay here? Like a wee home from home, I hope.’
I force my clenched jaw into a semblance of a smile. No point in causing a fuss just yet. I’ll get my revenge once I’m back at their house and miles away from this place. I’ve a whole campaign of domestic disobedience planned to make their lives an utter misery for the next couple of months. ‘Can’t complain,’ I say. ‘This is a nice wee room and the staff have been very kind. Best two weeks I’ve spent in a long, long time,’ I add spitefully.
Both of them smile at each other. There is something in that shared smile which makes me feel uneasy.
‘I’m really glad to hear that, dad. You see, we were thinking of these last two weeks being a trial run for a more permanent arrangement. We’ve been finding it hard to cope with your condition and think it’s for the best if you moved in here on a long term basis. What do you think?’
Sunlight is reflecting from a small picture frame beside the door and I feel my thoughts slowly begin to unwind and slither around my feet like a long length of unbound hair. Not now! Dear God not now, I scream inside my head. The fuckers are planning on giving me a life sentence in this miserable dump and I can’t find the words to shout and spit my defiance.
There is another memento hidden away at the bottom of my case that I haven’t seen fit to mention so far. A memento mori to be precise. A reminder of mortality; a long-held souvenir from the days when I ran about with the old Glasgow street gangs. I fight against the mental palsy that threatens to immobilise me and stick my hand inside the suitcase, my trembling fingers slipping beneath the false panel at the bottom, groping until I feel that familiar length of mother-of-pearl secure in my hand. A man of my generation isn’t complete without a straight razor for emergencies.
They don’t notice what I’m doing, so relieved are they that I seem to be accepting the inevitable without a shouting match. I nod towards the en-suite bathroom and shuffle woodenly towards it.
‘Desperate for a slash,’ I manage to croak as the door closes behind me. Even as I stand before the mirror with the razor held against my skin, I can hear them unpacking my things from the case. I imagine they’ll be puzzled when they discover my hidden cache of mementoes. I just wish I had the time to write a letter of explanation for each object.
When the honed steel slices through unresisting flesh and the dark bitter blood fountains across the mirror, I have one last thought.
I’ve just given that despicable pair of selfish cunts one holiday memento they’ll never manage to lose or forget.
About the Author
Allan Watson was born, lives and works in Glasgow, but has never worn the kilt or eaten a deep-fried Mars Bar. He is a comedy sketch writer, a composer/musician and the author of four novels and a collection of short stories. Many more interesting facts about him can be read on his Amazon author’s page here.