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Displaced to my couch, I could not sleep. The course rasps of forced breath droned out the peace in my head: the breaths of the beast in the other room. This was not the first night of restless slumber; there had been many since she moved in. And her presence affected more than the night hours now; it was with us in every waking moment. It had brought our house to a halt, making the normal day to day business of living, dark and heavy. The mood was upon us all, none had escaped a mood of somber resignation, and I found this mood mixed too with a touch of resentment.

At first there were only small whines: a voice weak and slightly sad that called to you. It beckoned from the moment you left her side; it did not want you to leave; It did not want to be left alone. She was a lonely creature, and the voice let you know. But to stay with her, and give rest was too much for anyone in protracted length, nonetheless a child. And then I was no more than that, and could not bear to be around her.

One might think that it was her face, too gruesome to behold. The wrinkles of age grooved far deeper her than even the man on the moon: skin leathery and worn, pruned by time. But no, this was not it at all, for standing back her face was not so hideous as to cause nausea, or even true discomfort. In fact, her face could hardly be considered anything worse than old and weathered; certainly not horrible nor repulsive, and probably quite normal for someone of her age. Normal, were it not for that wound: that gauss-patched wound on her left temple.

The smell, perhaps. It might have been that: distasteful and foul, the wound wreaked of a stench like puss and medicines. And worse, her body gave off a strange odor also. The wound we could understand, for certainly it was not her at fault for that. The wound was not a thing of her creation. It was not her; it was an invader. We could let it pass. But the stench of her body, that was different: was it age, was it sickness, disease? I do not know. Only to know was that it now was a part of her, a part not easy to stomach. From the first it began to creep through the house, down that hallway - the hallway that was soon to grow so long- and then slowly it settled into everything else; into its very fabric. Truly, that scent lingered well longer than did she.

It lingers in my mind even still.

It is true, the smell was horrible - much worse than her face - but I don't believe that it was the cause of our peculiar aversion either. It was not the reason that we wished to avoid being in her presence, and were saddened by its mere thought. No. For the awareness of the smell lingered only briefly on the nostrils upon entering the house, then faded. And it was only upon leaving, out and into the open fresh air, that you realised how stagnant those life gases of our home had become. This is not to say that the initial shock of re-entry was without its trauma; it certainly was not. I would often avoid coming home as long as possible after school let out, as I could not bear the idea of taking that air - hung with the vapors of death and dying - into my lungs. It was a weight in your mind, yes, but this was not the cause of our aversion of her either. I know that it is not for I realise now what it was: it was those eyes. It was her eyes that we would not bear; glassed and watery, and pained too. They stared at you with the yellow crust of day old tears rimming the corners. They stared at you incessantly - never closing for long.

The beast could not sleep as well.

It was truly hard to look at her, so sad and so evil. She knew what her presence here did to us, the pain that it caused our family... the disruption. A wounded, old creature that had come to inflict wounds of her own. And with quiet teeth and slow claws, she did just that. This is what made my body cringe at any thought of being near her: those eyes looking at me.

Behind them was a mind, thinking, but not feeling. It knew that we could not leave her, it knew that we did not wish her to remain - that we hated every moment that she lingered, and felt guilt for that hatred - but worse, it knew that it would die here amongst all this resentment. The mind behind those eyes knew all of this, but those eyes just stared at you blankly, unblinking, and cold.

At first I stared into them, looking: looking for sorrow, or for gratitude. I found only pain. I tried to ease the pain, but it continued. I tried to feel sorrow and love. I could feel only helplessness, and I watched slowly those eyes grow grim and vicious. They became wild and twisted, you wanted to see someone look back, but there was only a thing: a supernatural thing, a twist on mankind, that taunted you to look and dealt horror when you did.

I lived in a house with, and slept in a room right next to, a horrible creature, a vicious beast.

The beast in the other room was my grandmother.

It was not always so. The memories from before were pleasant: Sunday drives to the country. Rolling hill and wooden fence led us to the farm: Grandfather and Grandmother Zimmerman's farm. They told me that Grandfather had died long before from a heart-attack. Mother told me that they found him in the bathroom; the razor was still in his hand. Aunt Joyce said once that he got what he deserved; he just never knew when to slow down. "Worked himself to death", she said.

I never knew Grandfather: I don't know what he deserved.

The farm was beautiful. The orange color on the house, the color that Grandfather had not lived long enough to paint over, was easily overlooked amongst the golden fields of wheat and the jerky plod of dairy cows. I loved to roam the fields and woods, to play along the bank of the creek up the street. You had to look far to see another house on grandmother's farm. Only one other building in sight: another farm on a hill nestled amongst the wheat fields. I did not mind those trips to the country; they were pleasant in truth, and are held by me in reverence - still glossed in the warmth of my childhood perceptions.

She was a part of all that; those things. Grandmother was all of those things: the fields, the cows, Spring days, and Sunday dinner. But also Grandmother was a stranger. I liked her for my mother liked her; loved her I suppose. But she was a thing beyond my conception, ancient and feared. Electric kisses that sizzled your lips and effervesced of cough drop on her breath, veiny arms and ankles, veins that strained to be free of the skin that so loosely restrained them, and stories of dead souls from another time and of bingo games: this was the stuffing of an effigy of my grandmother, the effigy that I held in my mind... I believe her name was Wilhemina, Peg for short.

This all ended one day, quite abruptly. One day we simply stopped going to the farm on those Sundays, and for reasons unknown to me. Mother became sad when I would ask her why, and would give me no real answer. And I did not press, it left free all the Sunday afternoon to play -and so I did.

I had found new recreation to fill those afternoons, and had almost forgotten what they had once been filled with - several months having passed - but then one day Mother sat down sadly at the dinner table. After long silence she said, "Grandmother Zimmerman will be coming to live with us. The hospital said that they can do nothing more for her, that it is better that she be at home now.... Your grandmother has cancer, Christopher, and she is coming to stay with us."

Her first week was uneventful, actually quite nice: a novelty. I enjoyed sleeping on the couch; my parents being in my room, I could turn on the living room television to watch forbidden, late-nite programming. Grandmother coughed occasionally. Her room was adjoining the living room, and the sound carried very well to my ears. It was a wretched hack, but infrequent. I slept soundly in its spite. Mother seemed quite somber, Father overly cheerful. We all took turns bringing her needs: water, dinner, books. Just through the kitchen to the hall, then past the stairway and the bathroom, and you were brought to her door. The door of the room that had previously been my parents, just a dozen steps down the hall - a small dangling light switch swung by your head, midway.

Grandmother was still strong enough to use the toilet on her own. We had no need of a bedpan, only an escort. Grandmother was extremely quiet.

I had never before been around illness; this was not real. I did not understand what it meant. And so life continued as it always did. I went to school, played with friends (though I did not have them over to the house any longer) and I watched television with the family. Mother stayed home all day now, but she was busy with the household. Father worked as he always did. Grandmother, she stayed in that room all day long; alone most of the time. Just so, several weeks passed, and then came that voice.

The femininity was gone in her speech now, it held the leading edge of a deepening rasp. It was a dry rasp. Slowly it began to call, and most often for me. It called for water as we ate dinner. It called for the pillows to be adjusted as we watched the nightly news. It called for more blankets as we brushed our teeth for bed.

"Christopher," it said, "bring your grandmother her book."

"Are you there Christopher," it said, "I need another blanket."

"Where were you all day," it said, "your grandmother missed you dear Christopher."

It said. It said. It said.

Each time I rose, rounded the corner through the arched entrance to the hall, and walked until the tile of the hallway met the carpet of the bedroom. Twelve steps, but growing wearisome. 14 if you plodded. 20 if you scuffed you feet the entire way. It was drudgery, but hardly unbearable.

In the mornings the sun shone through the fine, white weave of the window drapes and fell across her silhouette. She no longer closed the door. The shadow would shorten as the morning grew on. Once you could stand at the end of the hallway and make out the lines of wrinkles in her face, the blue rays of light shining though the strands of her grey hair, the square form of the stained gauss on her forehead; but the light pulled back as time went on and my eyes strayed less often in that direction. She became indistinct and far off.

One morning, though, I do remember the sun was especially white and cheerful. Walking by, through the kitchen, my eyes strayed down the hallway to find her with her head tilted toward the window. I swallowed hard and decided to say good morning. I walked into the room, and watched a tear roll down her cheek as her eyes followed the slow sway of a willow in the side-yard as a breeze flowed through the sagging branches. She turned to meet my face when I entered, and drew an image in my young mind: a remembrance. On her face I saw the same sad look as I had seen that very first day; the day of her arrival. One arm in my mothers, the other on a cane, she had hobbled through the front door. She was weak and bent, relying heavily on the support of my mother. They entered the house with so much effort, slow and clumsy, then Grandmother stopped and held against mothers tug. She turned and watched the door swing shut behind them. The door closed under the steady tension of a damped spring, stopping with a thud. Her faced craned back around to look at mine: there had been a tear then also.

She would never walk back through that door.

Now I was looking upon that same sad face again, and I thought that I could see this pain in her eyes once more: I felt understanding and it made me sad. Then it was that the voice rasped, "Could you get your grandmother some water, dear Christopher?" I left the room to do her this service. By the time I returned, the tear had dried, melding in with the rest of the yellow crust from her glassy eyes. My sadness had left. Understanding was gone.

The smell was well through the house by now. At school they laughed and said that I stunk like a hospital. It was true; in my clothes, my hair, probably on my skin. You could not wash it off, you could not rinse it out; it clung to everything that it touched. I told everyone that my father had become a doctor, but the town was too small for that, and they did not believe me. The teasing started that day. And that day when I came home was the first time I remember hearing the cough. It was not as before; now deep and now wet. It was loose and sinister, like gargling with phloem. With it came the wheeze in her breathing; a wheeze akin to a muffled whistle. A different pitch on the way in - much deeper than the shrill when she exhaled.

It was then that we learned the full extent of the hall's property for echo. We used to laugh at my father's booming voice from the bedroom and how it carried through the house with unusual character. It was shaky and resounding, we thought that he sounded large and fearsome: giant. He would boom out, "Fee Fie Foe Fum!" We giggled and ran. But we had never heard it echo like this. The humour was gone now. Dinner was silent. Mother asked Father about work, and me of the things at school. Neither of us felt much like responding, the sound of the rusty pumping of sick lungs and the occasional gush of phloem being expelled took the conversation out of us. Twice it rasped to me for water, both times Mother went to her.

I did not move.

Even the drone of the television after dinner did not squelch it out.

"You didn't say hello to your grandmother yet, Christopher," it moaned over the tune of the 'Happy Days' theme song playing on the TV.

I pretended not to hear.

"Christopher," it rasped, "do you know where that book is."

I pretended to be sleeping. I did not reply.

"Please come say hello," it begged at last. The voice was weak and hung with a pathetic tone.

I stared through the television, beyond the walls. I stared until I could no longer ignore the disapproving gazes of my parents eyes upon my face. I clinched my eyelids and rose to confront my dread.

The hallway was dark, and the stucco arch gave it the eery semblance of a cave. The stale air hung in your lungs, dank and musty. The shadows hung like stalactites. Her breathing resonated with the walls of the slender passage. I could not envision anything human at its end. A dragon's lair, a demon's pit, but not my grandmother's room was down there.

So I stepped through the darkness with unusual hesitance. I had walked this path one million times before; it had changed now. I was trapped in the lair of a beast, about to face its toothy, salivating grin. A thousand cautious steps until the cord of the light switch ran across my face like a cobweb. In the instant before I opened the light, I saw the sleepy motions of her breath making the sheets rise and fall like the giant ribs of a pale dragon by the moonlight that shown in from outside the window. The silhouette of her hand was reaching out toward me- bony and long fingered.

Fear was all over me. I wanted a knife, a bat, a gun, or better yet, a suit of armor. I wanted to be safe from this danger; whatever that danger was. My hand reached for the cord of the light.

I pulled with desperation....

The light came on, but the horror remained.

I made the last leg of the journey to her bedside, my head bent. I closed tight my eyes and made myself kiss her cheek as her hand held my own. I fought not to pull away, and my limbs trembled.

She asked me to sit beside her; I could not conceal my distaste.

In the dim glow shed by the hall light I looked at her hand and my own. Soft and supple my skin was. Short little fingers, shiny nails with pink showing through; my hands were opposed to hers. Those withered bones with skin clinging: they were yellow and veiny, with the cuticle turned brown, and they were cold too.

In the silence I contrasted the lines of her face to the form of mine. Tight and youthful, my skin held taut to the firm muscles and baby fat of a child's face. My eyes were light and far-off blue: eyes for gazing. Her skin was dark and loose, chiseled with the grooves of age. The end of her nose sagged down toward the ground, slightly enlarged toward the end as if pulled upon for too long. Her teeth were brown at the gums - when you got to see them - and her eyes were dark, but they held no mystery. They were tired eyes: eyes for the closing. Yellow-brown liquid oozed from under an ever growing gauss pad on her temple. It looked as if it would soon overwhelm her left eye; I looked away.

In my mind I tried to envision the planet from which she came, or perhaps a part of this world that I did not know of: a place where things other than humans lived; things like Grandmother. I looked at myself, at the people I knew, even my parents, but the contrast was too great to reconcile. She was not human: too old, too sick, too bent, too withered. She was a beast, a horrible creature. Some thing had not eaten Grandmother, nor taken her over: this was Grandmother; the stranger we had gone to visit on Sundays. The electric kisses, apple pie, and candied peanuts; they had all been in place to hide this strange beast. I don't know of anyone who had seen her young. There were no pictures. There were no witnesses. There was no proof. We had no idea were she came from, where any old people came from. They were sent here too hide in their lairs and torment us from within.

These old things are monsters.

I wanted this one dead.

Hissing snarls and fangs grew in my head, I was sitting bedside to a monster; one that could not chase me if I ran, one that could not hurt me if I did not let it, one that could not touch me unless I touched it first. So I got up and ran out, slowing only to pull the cord and leave the beast back in its darkness.

Compassion had died in me, the fear was gone now - only loathing remained. I brought her water, food, books if she asked, but was always careful not to stick my hands too far within the confines of its cage. It wasn't but two days until the voice stopped calling. It didn't call to me, it didn't call to anyone. It took what we gave it and did not complain. The wheezing continued, as did that horrible hack and the stench as well, but the beast took well to its training. Mother and Father grew quiet and sad, something terrible was bothering them, but they said nothing to me and so I did not mind.

Weeks past, the sleeping was hard. The smell that hung on me gave little rest from the horror at home. It was a constant reminder that followed me everywhere. I had found some ground to stand on though, and so I could endure. I knew also that it would not be too long. Mother's dressing had grown to stretch over the left eye now. It moaned sometimes, a soft moan. Rarely was it fiery. My life returned at least to the ritual of what it had once been. I was out more often, staying late at school or playing with friends. I could eat and watch television in peace, the noise no longer caused much unrest in me. This was not the same for the others.

She had been with us more than two months when Mother let me stay home from school one day to tend to Grandmother. It was Mother's day to go away, Father demanded that she take some time for herself, but he could not get off from work. The task of watching Grandmother was mine: an afternoon of cartoons and leftovers did not trouble me.

I woke the same time as always to see Mother off, and brought Grandmother her breakfast. I ate my own in front of the television. Hours past without a peep, just the slow, deliberate croak of breathing in the next room. It was well past noon and I had forgotten about lunch, when the breathing got worse. She began to moan: it was a terrible moan, restrained, hiding real pain. I could tell this much, but I had decided to ignore it. It did, however, reminded me that I should bring her some lunch, but not yet. I must wait this out, until it stopped. Then I could bring her some food.

It was like baby food, what we fed her.

The cough was wet and chunky. It sounded like something was coming up, but I held fast; it would go away soon. I was resolute, and she still did not call to me. An hour pasted of moaning and coughing; finally, I could take no more. I gathered up some things for her lunch, got her water, even the book, and then I tip-toed down that hall.

Her body was on its side, turned away from the door. I approached cautiously not knowing what I might see. Her body shook in a cough, the bed rocking up an down in step. I heard her swallow down hard to pull back something which she did not want to spit out. I reached the door, and turned looking back over my shoulder to reassure myself that there was something to turn back to. The hall was longer than ever. It stretched out and narrowed into the distance, like a beginning art student's drawing trying too strongly to show perspective. The sanctuary of the kitchen was miles away, but I would not run this time. I don't think that I could have.

"Grandmother," I said, "I brought you some lunch." My voice trying to sound cheerful and assured.

She did not move. Only her breathing reassured me that there was still life in her. So now I swallowed hard and walked around to the other side of the bed to face her.

With only one eye left she was looking off into the sky through the drapes I had neglected to open this morning. Tears, many this time, were streaming down her cheeks past small flecks of pneumonic phloem that she had tried so hard to keep down. Only a few spots around her wrinkled lips, and on her cheek for an entire days gagging. The eye looked up to me, and for the first time I felt a twinkle of recognition. Only a faint glimmer, but it was there.

Still looking at me she said softly, trying to control the gruffness in her voice, "Any other way, I would have made it be any other way.....I am so sorry, dear Christopher."

Her body convulsed now in a sob, and tears welled within my eyes too.

It came in a flood: understanding. I understood what a trial she had gone through, and what the recent weeks of silence had meant, and what they had cost her - this dying woman.

Looking at her in that moment I saw a different view of my grandmother. One I had not wanted to see before: I saw my mother, older and nearing death, and I felt a double loss as I was watching one small part of Mother dying right now before me, and a glimpse into the future as the rest of her was to go. And more, I was watching something that was a part of me, a part of the things from which I was built as it decayed into dust. It was easier to watch a beast die than to watch a part of yourself.

For when I looked at her face now, I saw the form of the bones beneath and how they resembled my own. When I looked in her dark brown eyes, I could see a splash of gold around the pupil like the gold at the center of my sparkled blue. Her hands were emaciated, but feminine and longer than ought for her height. I held my own out to hers and watched my slender, girly fingers as they touched their ancient predecessors. I saw my own mortality lying on a bed, manifest, and I was not made sick.

I do not know what struck me to give me this new sight. It was only a moment of recognition, but from it there was no turning back. My delusion of her as a beast, dehumanised, was gone in a single twinkle of an elderly pupil: a twinkle of sadness.

I wiped Grandmother's face with a napkin, then dotted the puss on her temple to keep it from running into her good eye. Her face was clean when I propped her up to see a pained and forced smile, one that was as sincere as any I have since seen.

She didn't look out the window, she looked only at me now.

"Thank you, Christopher," She smiled to me. The wrinkles became translucent, exposing the person beneath.

She made a tremendous cough, but it seemed incidental at that moment - to us both.

"I was young like you once, you know. So long ago, but seeing you brings it back just a small bit, but enough."

"I believe you," was my reply. And it was sincere.

As I left her there that day, I was amazed at how bright that hall had become, and how short a walk it actually was: only twelve regular steps; eight if you skipped. I watched that long hallway that had separated us grow short; looking back from the kitchen I was startled at how clearly I could see the wisp of a smile on her lips.

The day passed quite pleasantly. Mother returned later, well earlier than she had said upon leaving. She was nervous, and went quickly into the room to tend grandmother. I heard them speak. Soon she came out looking uneasy and slightly pleased. She didn't say anything.

That night I slept like the baby I had once been, falling asleep almost immediately. It was dark still when I awoke; a sharp noise had roused me, but a silence followed. After a long stillness I heard it once more: it was the gushing of vomit. I got up and ran toward the room, calling, "Grandmother! Grandmother!"

The light came on with the hurried flick of my finger, and what met my eyes nearly brought me to regurgitate. Blood and vomit was strewn over the sheets, staining them with red and brown. Grandmother's hands clenched and pulled at her bluish hair: between her fingers were clumps that had already pulled loose. Her face was covered in the paste that squirted from her mouth, and the patch had been torn away.

I reached for her and held her body to me. I was crying and frantic. I grabbed at the sheet and started to wipe her face, while calling for Mother to help. Grandmother's body convulsed in heaves as her stomach had been emptied. I turned her face to me.

"Are you alright, Grandmother?" I asked.

One open eyed turned vaguely toward me, and an empty socket that sunk deep into her skull looked nowhere. Her mouth opened, and her stomach found new reserve; she threw up more goo. It dripped from my hands and ran the front of my shirt. I stared into that open, eaten-away left eye socket. It oozed yellow puss in response, and stared back mindless. Grandmother's one good eye looked scattered and twisted. I looked in. Nothing came back.

I moved back in awe, and her hands followed me out still clutching uprooted hairs, soaked in stench. Her face was emotionless, animalistic. Her mouth opened and closed like a carp's. The goo was everywhere, and now it was on me.

The switch turned once more in me, and this time it locked.

I pushed her away and ran down the hall. I ran and ran. Time dragged. I continued on winded. Running and running, I found myself breathless and exhausted at last reaching the kitchen. My mother came around the corner her expression bewildered. I looked at her, my own expression calm - now cold.

"I won't live here any more, Mother." My voice was flat. My eyes as fixed as my mind.

Grandmother was fine the next day, or so Mother told me; I had moved to Aunt Joyce's, never to see Grandmother again... or that is until the funeral six weeks later.

I did not cry at the funeral that day. I never suspected that I would, only it was that I never could have suspected my reason for not doing so. A part of me died with her as I watched a window into all of our futures pull finally closed; Grandmother's future drew to a close - alone. Alone in that house, alone in that body; I would not face her. I would rather let her die without saying goodbye - a thing which I have never forgiven myself for - only it is, that I only realise this now. Now that I am old and growing quite ill and facing the same possibility soon in my own life.

And so this realisation comes, as with so many, too late to do grandmother, me, or anyone any good.

Perhaps.

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