SARMA

By Joshua J. Dilbert

Joaquin, who suffers from Alzheimer's disease, has recently been placed in a nursing home, only receiving visits from his daughter and twin granddaughters. On one particular visit, he recalls a dream he had at age sixteen. He experiences an alien invasion, later metamorphoses into a reptilian-like creature and experiences an apocalyptic event.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu.com
• Release date: Dec 20, 2020
• ISBN: 9781716333682

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Epilogue

Prologue

I

t was a rainy Sunday afternoon in the year 2080. Selma and her teenage twin daughters, Rosa and Lizzie, were heading to the local nursing home where Selma had recently placed her father, Joaquin. He’d been the rock of Selma’s life through her formative years; however, all of that had changed when he’d been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease several years prior.

Shortly after Joaquin’s diagnosis, his daughter made the difficult decision to move him from his beloved post-retirement townhouse into her cramped spare bedroom. Of course, Joaquin was quite unhappy with her decision; naturally, he didn’t want to leave his retirement casa behind. But, eventually, he relented, knowing that nothing would change Selma’s mind. After all, the apple did not fall far from the tree; Selma was just as strong-willed as he was. Moving as much of his personal belongings into her home as she could,

Selma had Joaquin sign the townhouse over to her while he was still mostly in his senses. She put it up for rent almost immediately, figuring that it could bring in some much-needed extra income.

In time, she hired a Honduran caregiver named Ibis to care for her father as she worked during the day, taking up the reins when she came home from work in the evenings and on the weekends. As luck would have it, Selma would lose most of her hard-earned life savings in a Ponzi scheme.

Forced by dire financial circumstances, she had no choice but to make her reliable and trusted caregiver redundant. Guilt-ridden and selfless, Selma then took it upon herself to find alternate employment for Ibis. Within a few weeks, she found her a job caring for an elderly gentleman who so happened to live across the street.

However, Ibis decided to take advantage of Selma’s kindness a little more, deciding to tell Selma that her mother was diagnosed with stage III breast cancer back in Honduras and desperately needed funds for treatment. Selma wrote her a cheque for five thousand dollars, the last of her already battered savings, with Ibis promising to repay her in full once the will of one of her former employers was probated. However, that payment would never come to be. Ibis skipped town weeks later with her inheritance money, never to return.

Further duped out of money, Selma had to make the decision to put her father in a retirement home. Although it was immensely painful emotionally, it was still a judgment that was for the best. Long after his relocation into the facility, most of his clothes, along with his prized stamp collection, albums upon albums of old photographs, and other mementos, remained strewn around Selma’s house. As she waited impatiently in heavy traffic, a rare occurrence for a Sunday afternoon, she pondered over her life thus far. She’d always thought that, frankly, some aspects of her life had been a little delayed. She was held back a year in high school.

It took her well over two years to find a permanent job after graduating from community college. She didn’t marry until she was thirty-eight and she didn’t have Lizzie and Rosa until she was forty.

Her marriage, though brief, had been tumultuous, to say the least. While friends thought that the two were very much in love and frequently gossiped about their incessant public displays of affection, her outwardly perfect marriage was nothing more than a façade that would eventually crumble like shortbread.

Her Lebanese-born husband, eleven years her junior, ended up walking out on the family when the twins were only fifteen months old. He literally told her that he was going out for a drive; the family never saw him or his prized 1988 Ford truck again. But Selma didn’t give a damn then, and she certainly didn’t give a damn now. She only concerned herself with two promises: ensuring that her twins could get a good education and that her father could live out the rest of his days comfortably.

A downpour of rain started. As the torrent beat heavily on Selma’s weather-beaten red minivan, the minivan’s wipers vociferously brushed across the windscreen, valiantly keeping the view ahead clear. Placing fervent attention on the open road, Selma pondered when she had previously gotten the minivan serviced. It was probably ages ago, but she had simply been too busy to remember. Despite its shabby appearance, the poor vehicle still seemed to be going strong.

Indicating right, Selma turned down the street that led to the recently repainted state-run nursing home where her father resided. But you couldn’t thank the state for the repainting. Some local Rotarians took it upon themselves to do so, sparing many a weekend. The local press had a field day, with newspaper editorial columns discussing how a barely functioning Rotary club could repaint the building and not the state, who owned the damn building to begin with.

She parked in one of the angled spots in the retirement home’s empty car park, another rare occurrence for a Sunday afternoon, and fought with the stuck switch on her umbrella before finally managing to get it open.

I really need a new one of these! grumbled Selma. This bloody switch is always getting stuck! Anyway, let’s try to get inside without getting completely soaked.

Selma and the twins hunched underneath the umbrella and made their way up the steep wheelchair ramp leading to the main entrance. The three of them still ended up entering the building soaking wet, however, the canopy failing to keep them dry. She grew so frustrated with the blasted thing that she just threw it into one of the manicured shrubs that grew alongside the building, hoping someone would just take it.

Remind me to buy a new one of these! she told the twins. "I’ve had it much too long! As a matter of fact, it may even