Come along, Grandpa
A very short horror story
For today’s short horror story, I did a quick search of stock photography, then wrote the first story that came to mind.
So, based on the image above, let’s have…
Come along, Grandpa
At 9:45am, the girl knocks on my door. It is exactly the time the letter said she would come.
“Come along, Grandpa,” she says. Her voice is high and light, but it is cracked with forced cheer. She smiles and her teeth shine, white and sharp. “It’s time for your scan.”
The letterhead had been very official. Dark blue logo with a bright orange swish. A company motto said something in Latin, but it’s been too long since school, too long since I needed to remember any of those words. All the forgotten things linger in my mind, like boxes in unlit rooms. Those dark places seem to outnumber the ones I use, the ones I can still go to. Bad things live in those boxes, packed and sealed, but I know there must be cherished memories in there too. Everything is lost together as the bulbs flicker out.
She leads me from my house. A moving company waits at a discrete distance, ready to replace my possessions with someone else’s. I find myself patting my right trouser pocket, searching for the door keys the girl told me to leave behind.
There are others walking the path, two by two. ‘Two by two’. Sunday-school stories. Sitting cross-legged wearing grey shorts in a draughty hall, listening to Bible passages and wondering why these stories with animals were real while the ones my parents read were made up. Why did the teacher say my parents were lying? None of it made sense.
Ahead, a woman my age falters. “I don’t want to go,” she says.
Her young companion, sunlight catching on tears brimming in his eyes, licks his lips.
We get closer. I reach for the woman’s hand, but she pulls away. I understand. I’m a stranger.
The laboratory building is ugly. Curves of concrete and glass, that were probably supposed to look modern and inspiring, just look alien.
A young man—everyone I’ve seen for years seems to be a young person—holds the door open for me. His smile looks tired. “Scanning is ahead, you can go straight in.” He gestures to a distant hall, then turns his smile to the next people, following along two by two, and the corners of his mouth twitch up with refreshed effort.
My companion leads me into the hall. Recliner chairs on wheels, padded with sterile white leather, are arranged in small circles around the room. Many are occupied by unmoving old bodies. Their faces are covered by the scanner, revealing nothing of the gore beneath.
The girl leads me, arm around my waist, to an empty seat. Her face is flushed. Wet red eyes above wet red cheeks. I didn’t notice when she started crying. She hugs me. “Goodbye, Grandpa. I love—” her lips shape the ‘you’ but the sound gets caught in her throat.
I don’t recognise her.
Before I sit, I see double doors open in the far corner of the room. Beyond it, steel pans clatter and knives are sharpened. An old body is wheeled through, still in the chair, remains of the head covered.
She hugs me and runs away, nimble legs dodging between chairs, out towards the morning sun, forearms swiping at the tears.
In the chair, I lie back. The letter told me the scanning would be painless. I would feel nothing as microscopic layers of my brain are skimmed, analysed, and encoded. Every dark memory box lit under surgical light.
It’s not true.
I am immobilised, but I feel my grey hairs singe, my skin shaved away, cold air sucks blood away so it can’t upset anyone, so it doesn’t look like I suffer.
Light floods my mind, even as the pieces fall away.
I remember my Latin lessons, and the company’s motto translates: No wisdom lost. No flesh wasted.
Pieces of myself sparkle, ceilings of dark rooms torn away, allowing blasting light to enter for the first time in decades.
My daughter. Her daughter—the girl.
The pieces vanish.
The memory of their memory is gone.
I lose them, again.
And I go.
The end
Well… That ended up in a very dark place.
Different prompts can lead us in very different directions. If you fancy something to perk you up a bit, how about a very short werewolf comedy horror?
Next week I’ll be unpicking today’s story to see how I’ve played with different ideas to create character, tone, and scares.
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Have a great week, and go be awesome to the world,
Mata xxx