The River Styx

 Come slip away with me.

I sing the words under my breath to avoid her criticism. Of course I know the lyrics.

My daughter sighs, staring down at me with drooping puppy dog eyes.

Don't pity me. I'm perfectly healthy.

"You need to rest dad," she says.

I look to her new husband for support.

Charles.

He always takes my side.

Come on chuck, tell her I'm right.

Chuck lowers his eyes and tells me he can play it from the cloud. I have no idea what that means.

"Come slip away," I mumble.

Dammit. What is the name of that band?

I close my eyes to concentrate and she appears before me in her brilliant white wedding dress. I hear the subtle notes of a piano drift down the aisle on the heels of my bride.

Come slip away.

I snap open my eyes and change my thoughts before they attack. They can't have that one.

"It's sail daddy. Come sail away."

I squint. In the harsh fluorescents of the hospital room, she looks just like her mother.

"Florence." I smile.

"It's Sylvia dad. Your daughter."

She leans over the bed rail yet her gaze remains fixed on the blanket covering my legs.

"I know who you are. Sylvia, the one who can't remember song lyrics. You should be in this hospital bed, not me."

Does she really think I could forget my own wedding song?

Sylvia lays her hand on mine while a doctor, no older than twenty, moves in to unclasp a leather buckle from my wrist.

"There were a few minor injuries from thrashing in his sleep," he tells her.

"Nobody believes me," I whisper. The words barley escaping my cracked lips.

Sylvia leans in for a kiss and I turn away. I return to humming the tune in my head.

She takes Chuck's hand and leads him to the door. The doctor follows closely behind and flips the light switch on his way out leaving me vulnerable in a heavy darkness.

My mind is left to wander. I shouldn't have confided in such a young boy. He gave me a juvenile smirk and proceeded to diagnose me with Alzheimer's disease. I laughed in his face. He couldn't be further from the truth. For the past year, invaders from space have been stealing my memories. They dig and pick at my brain with their long, sharp sticks.

I'm slipping away.

another sleepless night the sun spills in the only window of this dingy hospital room. The door handle to my room jiggles. My heart begins to race. I struggle for the remote to call the nurse but the wrist strap prevents me from reaching it. The door jamb clicks. Strange distant voices whisper under the increasing rhythm of the heart-rate monitor. Of all the times they've come, I've never heard them speak. One sounds female, the other male as if they were having a conversation. And then I recognize the voices. Sylvia and the doctor have entered my room conversing about me as if I were asleep. I squeeze my eyes closed to play along.

"In the last two days the progression of the disease has escalated." The doctor's voice echoes between the bare tile floor and the ceiling.

"Please take these restraints off." Sylvia returns.