Sincerely, Jennifer x

I never understood how she got out every night. I kept the keys in my hands, and in the morning, they were still trapped, tightly in my fist, but the door was unlocked, and Grandma was gone. 

Every single night. 

As the sun struggled to rise from its slumber, I’d slowly count in my head, but I never got very far. 

One. 

Two. 

Three. 

She would scream. 

She always screamed as the sun rose. Why? I could never say. It was the kind of conversation we could never have. The kind of thing she could never face. I’d rush out of the house and shelter her in blankets, but it was never enough. 

She screamed. So loud. So scared. I wondered what she saw. I wondered where she went. I held her as she yelped and howled, but until it was over, there was nothing to be done. 

When it was done, she fell silent, shrinking and small, like a lost child, cradled in my arms as we walked back to the house. 

I would ask her why, but she would just stare before us, as if there was something only she could see, sentencing her to silence, and I would ask her no more. 

It had been that way since I got home. I had been away for years, having my adventures, shaking off the shame of being a dreamer in a dreary village. 

Still, I was always going to go home. My head remained full of my dreams, joined by the good company of my memories, but I had to go home. 

Grandma was sick, and I wanted to take care of her. 

She had nobody else, 

She was so apologetic when I arrived. She seemed to think that she was holding me back, but as I explained again and again, looking after her was just a new adventure. 

I had no idea how true that would become. 

She had been ill for a while. I had tried to pretend that it wasn’t happening, but with every passing day, and every strange event, I had to accept it. 

There was nothing else to do.

I couldn’t explain it to the doctor. He just didn’t understand. He said that it was just what happened to “a woman of her age”. Just the circle of life. Just the journey that all of us must go on, when the end is nigh. 

It was more than that. I knew that. Not diagnosable. Not solvable. Not fixable. I knew that, after a while, but I think that bothering the doctor about it gave me a little comfort. I wanted to believe that it could be changed. I wanted to believe that it could be different. 

The night would approach, with bared teeth and a cool stare. It could not be avoided, and with it, the change… the scream… There was nothing I could do, nothing for me to fix. It was just something that we had to go through, and so, we did. 

I think that this might be the end. 

Sometimes she knows. I’m almost certain of that. It’s like she has been freed for a second, so small, shaking as she takes my hands and whispers desperate pleas for it to end. She cries, as if she is a child, and I, her wise matriarch. I cry too. I cry and I cry, long after her tears dry, and she is captured again. 

This was a sickness that could not be cured. I knew, and sometimes, I think that she did too, but we played pretend, as if things could be different. It had to be different. I was clinging to the idea, because anything else was too much to bear. 

I took care of her during the day, listening to her life, from factory girl to high flying lawyer. She had become something that nobody could have imagined. She had seen the world change so many times, and in those moments, when she would remember, it felt like perhaps it wouldn’t need to change again. I prayed that it would never change again. 

The nights were echoing, and endless. I would watch her sleep, waiting for it to take her. Falling into my own jagged slumbers, tossed from one nightmare to the next and surrounded by shadows that spoke truths I could not hear without weeping. 

I awoke, as I always did to a sprinkle of sunlight, stretching across the wide sky, and her wails, whipping through the house from the garden, and the day would begin again. 

I know the cause, if I really look. I don’t want to know. I would give everything not to know, because knowing means that I also know how to end her torment. She told me so, quite matter of factly one morning, as we made breakfast together. A bowl or two was smashed in shock, and I swept ceramic on autopilot with an unconvincing smile as she continued to tell me the terrible tale. 

I tried not to listen, humming loudly in my head, wishing it away, letting the last fragments of the lovely lilac bowls crunch under my bare feet, in the hopes that I could make a deal. One form of pain for another. One moment of suffering to ease the one I’m running from. I bled, and I bled, but it did no good, because I had heard every word, and there was nothing more to be done. 

All I could do was sleep through it. She repeated it, like a wish, or a spell. Demanding, almost commanding, with tears in her eyes and a smile that fooled neither of us. She was still trying to protect me, so that I didn’t have to face it on my own, but she was old, and weary, so it was much harder than before. 

She always screamed as the sun rose. Why? I knew. I knew! We had the conversation. I had wept, and begged, and mopped the blood from the kitchen floor, but I still held the keys to all the doors, tightly in my fist as I slept, and I still held onto the idea that it was not time. 

I had been a dreamer, in a dreary village, but before that, I was a dreamer in a hospital bed, barely clinging to each breath as doctors did their best to kindly ask my family to prepare for the worst. 

So small, shaking as the syringes, tubes and machines shook their heads and sighed. Silent as my grandmother knelt beside my bed and wept, begged, and mopped my little lips with strawberry balm. 

Everyone was asleep, except for her when he arrived. 

Him, with his promises, and his prickly skin. Surveying the scene with a slight smile as the room beeped and whirred, and her soft sobs were suffocated by the dead air of nighttime. 

Sometimes, I wonder if she invited him, or if he could just sense her sorrow. 

He was the one who dealt in desperation. A purveyor of the things people pine for, waving his hand and making a wish into reality, but always with a price. 

A deal was made, a soul, for a life, and the deal was quite fair, I suppose. He insists that he is always fair. She could live out her days, but one day he would call, beckoning her to her new home as the sun rose. 

She knew he would come, and with time, so did I. All I had to do was sleep through it, but I always awoke, and I always ran, pulling her back from the pact she had made with a child’s shaking hands.

He finds me in my dreams, reminding me of the terms that were agreed, and behind his soft, almost agreeable voice is a grimace, and gritted teeth. I am getting in the way. I hold the thing that belongs to him, and so, I am a thing to be furious with.  

It was not my debt, and it was not my deal. I stood in the way, dawn after dawn, and perhaps, I will play this game with Luxor forever. 

She asks me to let go, but I cling to her, like I cling to the keys as I am stolen by sleep, hoping that the sun will never rise again, so that she will stay, forever.