This week, at Carrot Ranch’s weekly flash fiction challenge, Charli Mills asked us to write a story to reveal a character’s symptoms in 99 words exactly, no more, no less.
The symptoms of Dementia are devastating.
My flash deals with the symptoms of Alzeimer’s, which is the most common type of dementia, by focusing on the mental alienation many sufferers experience, especially in the final stages.
I watched my father and several aunts go through this alienating and cruel illness. The process was gradual, but eventually everything was misplaced or misunderstood. They seemed to inhabit a new planet full of aliens, including themselves.
*****
Aliens
Someone had locked the door and hidden the key, so he crawled out through the window. His clothes and shoes were no longer where he had left them, so he walked through the streets in his slippers and pyjamas.
When he tried to return, the house was no longer on the same road. They had built a lake in its place. He flew across and landed in a spaceship where some Martians were experimenting on a new species.
He smiled at the alien and asked, ‘The man in that mirror looks familiar. Is he your chief? what’s his name?’
*****
Check out some of the other stories.
Rereading Jane Eyre 
I’m about to go spend a week in Martian territory with my parents while my sister is on vacation. My mother has Alzheimers. Even last year things were so much different. You capture the alien well.
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My father died 8 years ago, and I really didn’t know much about Alzheimer ‘ s at the time. I found it very hard to cope due to my ignorance. It’s easier to cope when you understand what happens to the patient. I hope all goes well for you next week 🙂
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It’s just such a terrible thing to face Alzheimer’s either as the victim or the family. At least there is now very active research going on to find either a drug to slow it or something to stop it’s progress altogether.
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We’re all more aware nowadays, which helps. Also there’s much more research. There was no specific medication for my father 8-10 years ago. They just gave him tranquilisers. Very sad.
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Hard to watch someone lose their identity through dementia of any sort. You have portrayed it well from the sufferers angle.
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Thank you. I’ve spent a long time trying hard to understand what happens in their minds.
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I think in the early days it would be incredibly frightening.
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Well done. My mother was not after the ‘aliens’ but there was some strange happenings in the house that only she seemed to understand. Intense.
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Thank you. It’s so hard to get under their skin…
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