ROLLING MEADOWS

This story is part of the collection, Demons and Other Inconveniences. If you like it, grab the whole book.

THE FOLLOWING is true.

Mostly true. Well...if you drive down a certain highway in southeastern North Carolina, you will find a nursing home plopped down right next to a travel agency…and there is nothing else in either direction for miles. Weird? Not in the south.

That much is true. The rest is pure speculation...but it might be true. It might be close enough.

12:00pm Monday.

 

ROLLING MEADOWS, it says on the sign. You might as well call it A Great Place to Die and just be done with it. I should disown this sorry, ungrateful shit for planting me here. That's what he's doing, planting. That’s what you did with vegetables, right? But I ain’t a vegetable yet. I could still kick his ass if I had to, but that wouldn’t do any good. He’d still be an ungrateful shit, but then, he’d be an ungrateful shit with a sore ass.

The drive out was boring and tedious, but at least it was long. There were two whole lanes of traffic to watch, all of it hugged by trees that went on for miles, hours it seemed. Finally we pulled in and the first place I saw was Plane and Simple Travel. The wooden sign has got this palm tree and an orange sun carved into the corner underneath that stupid name. Regardless, it is that business I’m hoping we visit.

I’d spend my life savings to ship my wrinkled ass to Tahiti or Maui. One of those places where I could die an old drunk with a grin on my face, a cocktail in one hand and some bikini-clad jailbait in the other. My heart would give out before my funds, but that’s not to be the case. No, we’re next door at the heart attack hotel where my loving son will leave me claiming, ‘it's for the best, Pop.’

Shit.

Who puts a travel agency next to the Alzheimer Estates anyway? It’s a sick joke if you ask me. The sickest joke I can think of. Bastards. Maybe the Plane and Simple folks will book me a trip to the graveyard so I don't have to hang out too long. Then we can call this a very annoying layover.

As they shuffle me through the front double doors to the center of the building, I smell it. This place stinks like sour breath, institutional food and piss. Welcome home, Jimmy.

My son walks to the reception desk which is guarded by a flabby woman who wears an ugly set of scrubs. They're covered with ducks or some such nonsense. The two start out with the usual pleasantries which will no doubt end with my incarceration.

“Mr.?” she says looking at my ungrateful son. She draws the word out, holding the errrr as if it might pull the answer out of his mouth.

Come to think of it, he isn’t ungrateful. In fact, I’m sure he’s very grateful. Grateful to be unloading the old man on this shithole, grateful I’ll be swimming in a sea of blue hair and false teeth. I'll be doing fucking crafts for fun and gambling over who dies next. I’d bet they play poker and ante with butterscotch pudding cups. I think I’ll make him a nice ashtray out of turds. It’ll look nice on his desk at the office. Flabby is still holding the Misterrrrrr.

“Aldridge. James Aldridge. I am his son, Bill. We have an appointment at 12:15?” he answers.

Chubby duck lady peers over her glasses at a clipboard and smiles again. Her name plate says Lucy, but I prefer chubby duck lady.

“You sure do. Right here it is!”

She looks back up at him, never me. I guess since I have no say in this matter, I have no say in this matter.