The Bluestone Review Spring 2022

He leaves strange messages for me on notepads throughout the house…names of people I don’t know and telephone numbers I cannot relate to and have never heard of…times like 4:30 and dates like June 11th that have no connection to me. I’m always looking for the things he takes just to irritate me. When I know they are downstairs, I find them upstairs. But when they should be upstairs, they are always downstairs. He makes me go up and down a lot of steps. I must drive slower than I used to because he causes me to be distracted, and I know he has somehow slipped into the car with me. You just can’t see him. I meet old friends I have known all my life. It is so good to see them, but the monster casts a spell, and I cannot call them by name. I had lunch with a friend yesterday. I think it was yesterday- no, it was the day before. Well, I’m not sure. Slowly, the monster is removing more and more little things that matter to me. Did my red rock come from the buttes of Montana or was it from the Black Hills of the Dakotas? I can’t recall, and anyway, the rock has disappeared now. He may put it back, but he may not. The monster waits. He is very patient. He has all the time in the world because he knows he will win in the end. There is so much to do and so little time left. People I won’t recognize will come for me, I know, and take me away to a strange place I have never been before. I will not be alone. There will be others there who do not know me any more than I know them. We will look at each other without recognition, and for the first time we will see his face, the invisible face of the monster who has stalked us for so long. His name is senile dementia.

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