The Back Door

Alzheimer's. Dementia. PTSD. The nurses keep trying to explain to you what's "wrong" with your grandfather. Nothings wrong with him. He's always seemed this way. He might have been forgetting things lately- you were the one that buried his cat, starved to death- but he's always acted strange. His pale blue eyes would dart around as he talked to you, as if he was making sure no one was listening in on the conversation. He would always hum when nobody was talking, as if to get rid of the silence. Drown out the void with music. The best thing about him was the stories. He's told hundreds. Enough to fill entire books. Countless emotions filled every word as he related to you his memories. Although they varied, most of his stories were about the war. He'd paint such a violent picture in your mind that you couldn't sleep for days, and when you did fall asleep all you could dream about was crawling forward in the red sand.
You tried to tell them not to put grandpa in the nursing home. He didn't need it, but no one listened. Lately all adults have been doing is signing papers and fighting. Your biggest fear is becoming an adult some day. Grandpa said you didn't have to if you didn't want to. You could spend your life laying in a valley, drinking the morning dew and eating the clouds like candy.
It takes about a week to get grandpa situated into his new "home". You visit him a lot. He continues to tell you his stories. They're the same old war stories, but somehow every time he says one it seems new, like you've never heard it before, and they're still as grappling. Like you're living the war through his eyes. Like you can see every detail. Hear every scream. Bleed out every crimson drop.
Every time you leave that room you feel like a new person.
You've been sneaking into grandpa's house. You still have a spare key. There are so many corners of the house that you never even seen. So many books you've never read. You never even noticed the paintings on the wall. Before today you couldn't have said what they were of, other than abstract swirls and shapes.
Every time you visit grandpa something has changed. There are more wires hooked up to him. More pill bottles piled up beside him. His stories get more and more intense. Every time he tells you one it goes to the same place. A building in enemy territory where him and 7 other men were hiding, and every time he tells the story the house gets invaded. He could've stopped them, but he ran. He went out the back door. Everyone died. All 7 men. They could've been saved.
Every time grandpa tells you the story he starts crying. Most of the time a nurse comes in and yells at you. Makes you leave. You have to promise to never make grandpa tell you the story again. You don't stop. You begin locking the door when you're with him. You unplug the wires. You spend more and more time at the house, reading books, looking at paintings, walking through empty hallways you swear you've never walked through before.
You tell grandpa about you're explorations of the house. He starts asking you to bring him things. A book he wants to read one last time, or a painting he wants to see again. He tells you that he's going to die soon. He's stopped taking his pills. He'll only have a few weeks before he goes, and he doesn't want to go with his life still incomplete. He looks into your eyes, tears running down his face, and tells you the story again. This time it is so vivid you swear you can hear the guns go off as you run. You swear you can hear the screaming. You swear to the Lord, you could hear 7 thuds, as their bodies fell to the floor.
A few weeks pass by. Grandpa is looking sicklier every day. You spend hours on end in his house. He tells you the story almost daily, and every time it seems more like real life than a story. One day, as you're looking through books in his house, on a bookshelf you didn't even recognize, you find something. In a hollowed out book there's a gun. You recognize the gun. It's the same one you clutch in your palm every day as you run from the house. As you hear the gun shots.
That day, as you walk into grandpa's room, he looks you straight in the eyes and says he knows you found it. He says he has one final request. You know what you have to do.
You bring the hollowed book into the nursing home and hand it to him. You ask if he's going to tell you the story today. He says no. Today you will make the story.
You look at the monitor. His heart is beating way too fast. A nurse runs in. Grandpa lifts the gun, fires it, and says three words. "No running today."
6 more nurses rush in. 6 more bullets are fired. At one point you crouched down in the corner. You don't know where you are. You open your eyes. You're in his house. You recognize it this time. You finally realize that you visited it every day in the story. You see the back door sitting open. You grab the door frame and hit your head on the wall. Again and again.
You open your eyes. You're back in the nursing home. Grandpa is dead. Blood is on the floor. You close your eyes again and keep hitting the wall. After 7 thunks the world goes black.

You wake up in a white room. It's pretty small, with just a bed and a window. Slowly you lift the clean sheets off of you. You sit up on the mattress and stretch your back. Outside the window you see a sign. "Turner's home for the Mentally Ill." As the sleep wears off you convince yourself it was all a dream, because if it wasn't then you don't know what you'd do. You can't let anything convince you it wasn't. Not the crimson stains on the floor. Not the bruises on the back of your skull. Not even the gun in your palm that seems way too familiar.