Sometime-voices (Part 1)

He sat in the park, but the voices wouldn’ go away. It was the third time this week he was doing this and he knew Nurse Addleton wouldn’t stand for it.

If he walked up to her one more time and told her he was having a headache again, they would definitely put him on stronger meds. And he didn’t like the stronger meds because they made his head bleary. Sure, they got rid of the headaches and the voices, but they also got rid of his memories. Last time, he forgot his own grandchildren, for crying out loud and he’d be damned if it happened again just because of some silly voices.

He had hoped the cold November air would clear his head a little, but that didn’t seem to be the case.

It’s decided, he thought, as he got up off the wooden bench. It had been in the making a long time, to tell you the truth and now that it was finally here, he was more than a little excited.

What came next was the most natural thing in the world. He would leave, as he had a million times before. As he’d left Laney that one winter morning and never came back.

They’d look for him for a while, just like Laney, but then they’d forget about him, just as she had.

The old man packed his bags, which came up, come to think of it, to really only one bag – three neatly-folded shirts he’d owned for 40 years, two pairs of brown trousers (his jeans got torn last Christmas and it had been a relief, ’cause they weren’t comfortable anyway) and a stack of photos. To tell you the truth, he liked the photos best of all, for they reminded him of all the faces he’d forgotten.

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The old man went down the hallway without as much as a glance from the other residents and he assumed they were taking the role of willing accomplice. Either that or they didn’t see him go by.

These days, they weren’t seeing all that much.

He ducked under the scanner at the door and he was gone, just as easily as he’d come to the Atkinson Home for Old Crones.

Of course, that was only what the old man called it.

He wondered as he went down the gravel road, if his grandkids would remember to look for him or if they, too, would forget after a while.

That needn’t matter now, he told himself, for he had a new purpose in life.

The old man left to follow the voices.

To be continued.