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Good Deeds Part 2/4This story may contain adult content. |
| Written by Jason Haugh | |
| Monday, 16 June 2008 | |
St. Mary's Retirement Home was by definition a religious community. Sure there were wards for the nonreligious but you could bet that when you checked into your room there would be a picture of Jesus the all mighty and all of his friends there to greet you; including your very own complimentary Bible. The staff would also come by every Sunday to invite you to mass thinking that even if you didn't believe in God last week you might change your mind by the next. Which in fact my grandmother told me was true. "All of these people" she said "are facing death and the idea of a Hell or worse yet, absolutely nothing, scares the **** out of them. Little pussies don't believe in God for 80 years and all of a sudden when they have a week to live they're practically shitting out scripture into their bedpans." My grandmother was a devout catholic for over 40 years until she lost all three of her sons in Vietnam. She was left with a young daughter and a husband that was just waiting for his final heart attack. After that eventual heart attack finally came she renounced God claiming him to be the greatest fictional character ever to be created on Earth. I don't think it was that quick or simple but it's enough explanation for this. I should mention that my Nana is pretty close to pure evil. In fact she could probably be an arch villain in a comic book. After she recovered from her ‘dark period,' which I hear was a traumatic experience for many of my family members, she began to enjoy watching the downfall of others...which got kind of creepy. But yes St. Mary's Retirement Home. It was a religious community that held mainly religious people and my grandmother hated it. My Mother had sent her there in hopes of rediscovering her faith and the old woman knew it. She once told me that when people fell into comas the attending nurse would sit and read aloud out of the Bible for hours. I told her that maybe that comforted those people and gave hope to the staff and the rest of the community. She gave me this disgusted look when I said that and stated in a haughty voice that the only reason they did that for everybody was so they could shock out some new conversions in the community. "In fact," she said later on when getting back on the subject, "if anybody read the Bible to me when I was in a coma I think that it would be the right motivation to make me come back and wake up...so I could punch that attending nurse in the face." "Grandma" I had said in shock "why are you so angry all the time?" "Because," she replied bitterly "I was cheated in life and I want to cheat the rest of the world out of what should have been given to me." That's when I left for the first time realizing my Grandmother was either crazy or evil. As I stated, it was the latter.
As I entered St. Mary's Retirement Home with the intention of raising old Granny's spirits two medics passed by wheeling what I presumed was a dead body with a sheet over it. Feeling uncomfortable and a bit more aware of my own mortality I walked up to the receptionist and requested a visit with Grandma. I got a nifty Visitors name tag without my name...so I guess it's just a Visitors badge...well I got one and walked over to Granny's room. "Who are you and what do you want with my beliefs!?" Is what welcomed me as I entered her room. "I'm your grandson Bruce and I don't want anything to do with your beliefs." She rose from her bed into a sitting position, squinted her eyes, and upon recognizing me waved her hand in a dismissing gesture. "What do you want?" Her tone was harsh and void of feeling. "I just wanted to see how my only living grandmother was doing today and what's happened in the past six months." I innocently responded. "Well I'm still alive as you can see." She said as if it were a fact I could look up in the local library. And then her tone shifted to a more satisfied and wicked version of itself. The voice she loved to use, her true voice. "Unlike some others" is what she had said next. Looking at her puzzlingly I began to ask what she was talking about when she interrupted me. "Did you see the latest one of God's people being escorted into Heaven via a rolling bed and a cheap stale sheet?" She could see the look of surprise on my face and it pleased her into a smile that disturbed me. "That was Martha Conell" once again to the matter of fact voice "she lived a few rooms down, had a bad heart." I started to ask "what does that have to do" when I was interrupted once again. "She should have had more self discipline otherwise she never would have let herself get so worked up." Once again I started "what are you talking" and was interrupted. "Well she had been very popular around here you know. Converted almost every new nonbeliever that came into this place in a matter of a week. She thought that she was so righteous. Well...until....." and this is when my grandmother's face got real ugly. She smiled in a satisfactory way that somehow revealed her bitterness towards the world's population...not to mention a few of her teeth that made her resemble a carnivorous animal. Once she had begun to smile her cheeks rolled up her face slanting her eyes into the fashion of a demon. "That is to say until she was faced with a simple discussion between two adults about whether or not religion was a complete falsehood made up by man to comfort himself about his own inevitable death. That was one topic she just couldn't control herself on. The way she was acting you'd have thought she was eight instead of 93...especially when she made that frightened look as she started to go." Grandma was getting excited now, her face glowed and she hunched in her chair gripping the arms with unnerving ferocity. "Oh I couldn't help myself I had to lean into her ear and ask her where her faith was. She just looked at me with her eyes wide open trying to comprehend what was happening and the look of horror stretched across her face. Oh how I wish I could have taken a picture but it happened to fast. That's why I'm keeping my camera out on the nightstand now. To be ready......just in case." By this time grandmother's face was radiating with a sinister joy. I then realized that she was more evil than I had ever imagined. She had to be stopped before she killed anymore innocent Christians. But what could I do? "You could unplug her from those machines and see if the smug ***** can maintain life naturally." My reasonable half commented. "And then she can find out if there's a Hell or not waiting to argue whether it exists as her face is burned and made to melt like candle wax in a new indefinable method of pain." I just sat there looking at her for a few minutes imagining her face dripping onto her bed when she suddenly spoke breaking me out of my thoughts. "What's wrong with you?" She asked suspiciously cocking her right eyebrow. Shrugging my shoulders I simply replied "I just don't understand how you can resemble Satan so closely." That got her going. "Satan!" She shouted standing up onto her bed. "Let me tell you about Satan little boy!" "Oh lordy," I thought to myself, "here it comes. Why didn't I just say ‘good talk grandma. I love you, gotta go, bye.' It would've been the easiest way out of this crazy woman's world. " But instead I got, "You think that everything in this world can be resolved with a please and a thank you! If everyone is nice to each other then peace will overcome! You're forgetting that I was around to see the Hippies soil that dream like a baby soils his own diapers. You call me Satan because I find joy in revealing the hypocrites that surround us all but what do I do about it?" "You laugh when they die of a stroke in your own room." I responded. "You're damn right I laugh! And I hope that you do to when you get to be my age because that's one of the only things that we have left in this world near the end. The soothing confirmation of being right when challenged by an inferior intellect who isn't looking for a complicated debate but another fool to just nod and agree with what ever spews from that book and out of their mouth." Grandmother was getting heated up by this time, throwing out hand gestures as if she were a composer. "In fact," she continued, "Martha was practically begging for this. She'd always be starting up conversations about religion with me and most of the time they'd end with a nurse escorting her to the infirmary. She knew that a conversation with me could kill her but she just couldn't stay away. SHE WAS SO UNCERTAIN OF HER FAITH THAT SHE HAD TO CONSTANTLY REASSURE HERSELF BY CONVERTING OTHERS! GODDAMN YOU MARTHA!!!" This last sentence my grandmother screamed throwing her fists into the air before collapsing onto her bed from exhaustion. Or at least I thought that it was exhaustion. I really wasn't quite sure. In fact, after watching her for a few seconds I noticed that she wasn't blinking. Or breathing for that matter. I couldn't believe it. One moment this crazy relative of mine is jumping on her bed shouting and screaming her atheistic beliefs while slamming poor Martha Conell and the next she's perfectly resembling the woman she had inadvertently killed 20 minutes ago. My heart was pounding like a bass drum in a death metal band. "I have to get out of here," I thought to myself. "But before I do anything I have to at least check her out to see if she is in fact dead." Taking the three whole steps between myself and the bed I sat down and placed my hand on my grandmother's neck checking for a pulse. Her body was still warm but then again, she had just died. As I started to take my hand away her eyes popped open and her upper torso pistoned up in a split second coming face to face with me. "AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!" was the only intelligible sound coming from either of us until my grandmother's hand flew through the air violently connecting with my face. She kept on screaming for about two more seconds until her eyes rolled up into her head and she fell down permanently. I leapt off her bed and sprinted out of the room, through the hallway, past the receptionist, and out of St. Mary's Retirement Home. Hunching over to catch my breath I replayed the scene that had just taken place. My Grandmother had died, and the last thing she had done on this mortal coil was ***** slap her only grandson before going on to the afterlife she didn't even believe in. " ******* *****," I said as I walked to my car passing a nun who gasped. "Oh not you," I said kindly, "I'm talking about my Grandmother that just died." She gave me a look filled with horror, disgust, and fear. Mix those together and you get one interesting face. After getting in my Taurus and driving off I decided that my mission of helping people for the day had officially just been canceled. I also noticed in the mirror that a palm and five fingers were imprinted on the right side of my face. A Grandmother's loving touch. To be continued...
Author's Note: This wasn't a critique on religion or anything. It was just about one mean old woman who lost all love of life save for death. Copyright 2008 Jason Haugh |
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