The Fading Away - SCP Foundation

I am watching my oldest grandchild get ready to leave home for college. It is an overcast day with occasional sprinkles of rain, but the entire house feels bright and warm. While I chat with my daughter about how to stay occupied once the nest is empty, the teenager scampers around the house, looking for anything he might have forgotten to pack. He asks my daughter if she can think of anything, and she tells him not to forget his body wash. We laugh amongst ourselves as he flusters and scuttles to his bathroom. I tell her that she now knows what it was like for me when she went off to university decades ago, and a look of warm remembrance passes over her features, which have only begun to show signs of aging in the past few years. I smile. The pitter-patter of raindrops on the living room window breaks up the silence between us.

I am falling. All around me is pitch black, and I am in free fall. I try to flail around for something to hold onto, but I cannot move anything, and no breath comes to me when I try to cry out into the dark. I feel something breathing on the back of my neck. I am helpless as I feel something wet trickle down my back, as a sharp pain courses through my body, as I feel something crawl up my spine and wriggle between the notches, as I feel it slowly make its way into my skull, as I jolt awake drenched in sweat. I look around my room, with its baby blue walls and thin white curtains, and feel relief wash over me as I realize that it was just a nightmare. I think that I see the glint of an eye or fang in the corner for a moment, but it disappears when I blink.

I am going to the playground with my grandchildren. It is a warm August afternoon with only a few light gray clouds in the distance. My grandchildren are going to start school in a few weeks, and they want to go out for something fun with me one last time before the summer ends. The park is all bright colors and soft mulch. I watch as they sprint toward the big structure in the middle, hollering the whole way. I chuckle to myself as they stumble and quickly right themselves, sternly tell them no when they try to crawl the wrong way up the lime green slide, and stroll over to help them when they try to climb the multicolored rock wall to the top of the tallest tower. After a while of this, they tell me that they want to get on the swings. I make no effort to keep pace with them as they dash over to the swing set, which is some distance away from everything else in a corner of the mulch bed, and hop on next to each other. I give each of them as big a push as I can muster when I get there, and they are off. They have learned to use the swings without much help from me. I smile. The rusty chains squeak as they swing back and forth.

I am doing a crossword in my living room. The rain is coming down hard outside, which is strange to me because I remember it being sunny not too long ago. While I am trying to think of an eleven-letter word for a curious person, I suddenly feel a sinister presence behind me, and I send my pen and newspaper tumbling to the floor as I dart out of my seat and turn around. For a moment, I think that I see a shadow, some kind of hazy creature waiting to be witnessed, but the moment quickly passes, and I find nothing behind me but the shadow of my chair. I take a deep breath, sit back down, and retrieve my things. When I look at my paper again, I find that I have no memory of what I was doing.

I am picking my daughter up from her first day of preschool. The old building is surrounded by oak trees whose branches sway gently in the September breeze, sending reddening leaves fluttering to the sidewalk as I pull into the parking lot. I see her staring at me through one of the windows before I have even put my car in park. As I step out and begin making my way to the door, she disappears from my view, and I hear the teacher chiding her for being impatient as I wrap my hand around the cold door handle. When I appear before her in the doorway, she bounds toward me and leaps into my arms. I look up at the teacher and tell her that I am surprised because she had no problem leaving me in the morning. The teacher informs me that, after I drove off, she broke down in tears and was inconsolable for hours. I smile. Another car pulls into the lot behind me.

I am lying in my bed at night. Rain is trickling down my bedroom windows, and I cannot sleep. Strange noises come to me from down the hall. I take a while to sit up at the foot of my bed and slide into my slippers, cursing my old body as I do so. The bottom drawer of my nightstand glides open without a sound when I go to retrieve the old kitchen knife. I would prefer to bring the pistol my husband kept in our safe, but he never taught me how to fire it before he died. I shuffle down the hall, blue light trickling out of a slightly ajar door on the left, and try to keep as quiet as possible. The door creaks a little as I slowly push it open, revealing a woman I do not recognize sitting on my couch and watching TV, her shadow seeming to grow longer as I approach. She notices me approaching with the knife raised above my head and springs to her feet. She puts her hands up while asking me what the Hell I am doing, and I demand to know who she is and how she got in my house. She looks at me with a mix of sadness and recognition. She tells me that she is an old friend of my daughter, and she was asked to look after me while my daughter left town to visit my grandchildren in Seattle. Confused, I gradually lower the knife, and she gently ushers me out of the TV room and back to bed.

I am relaxing on a grassy hill with my husband. This hot, cloudless May afternoon is more than welcome after the long Minnesota winter. I can hear mourning doves cooing, children laughing, leaves rustling. We have been basking in the light and warmth in silence for a while when he suddenly rolls over to face me and begins tracing a figure eight on my navel with his pointer finger. I giggle and ask him what he is doing. He gives me a grave look, takes my hand in his, and tells me that he wants to try for a baby. For a while, I am too shocked to respond. When I finally find my voice, nothing coherent comes out for some time, and he stares intently at me all the while. Eventually, I manage to ask him if he is being serious. He brings his face intolerably close to mine, looks me in the eye, and says that he is as serious now as he has ever been. I think a while about the futures stretching before me now like tributaries flowing into a river, and I say yes. He smiles with tears welling in his eyes, pulls me into a tight embrace, and says thank you over and over. I smile. A plane passes silently overhead.

I am trying to figure out where I am. Are these my baby blue walls, my thin white curtains? Everything is blurry, indistinct, and far, far too bright. I stumble around this strange room for a while before taking notice of a highlighter orange sticky note hanging from the edge of the nightstand. I peel it off the wood, and it tells me take meds, get the paper, eat breakfast. Recollection washes over me. This is my house, and I am being taken care of because I cannot remember things well anymore. I do as the note instructs, taking my medicine in the bathroom and retrieving the newspaper from the front porch, and I find a bowl of oatmeal sitting in the microwave when I make my way to the kitchen. I think that I see a shadow behind me when I go to warm it up, but nothing is there when I turn around. It takes me a moment to remember what I am doing in front of the microwave afterwards. Eventually, I remember to warm up the oatmeal and slowly work through it with the spoon placed on the table for me. It does not taste like much, but I can live with it. I wonder when that nice young lady will be back.

I am working late in the lab with my partner. We are running out of time before our supervisors begin demanding results, so we need a breakthrough in the near future. I am analyzing a fresh sample of the anomalous microorganism we have been studying under a microscope when he suddenly looks up from his scribblings and makes his way to my workstation. I try to tell him that now is not the time, but he is having none of it. Despite my protests, he creeps up on me from behind, wraps his arms around me, and begins planting kisses on the top of my head. I try to contain myself, but a giggle eventually escapes my lips, and the jig is up. For a fleeting moment, my work is abandoned in favor of playing silly games with the man I am now certain will become my husband. The future holds more scribbling on printer paper, more straining my neck looking at samples on glass plates, and more scrutinizing supervisors, but this moment only holds laughter and visions of the sun. I smile. Fluorescent lights hum above us.

I am trying to figure out who I am. These thin, jagged shapes in front of me, are these my hands? Little squares of neon color tell me put slippers on, go to bathroom, take meds, brush teeth, go to kitchen, eat breakfast, the lady is your daughter. I try to do what they say, but the words will not stay put in my mind. I imagine myself trying to grasp a stream of water as it trickles through the tiny gaps between my fingers. I shamble to and from the bathroom while straining to remember what I am supposed to do in there, frustration washing over me in waves. I should not struggle this much. I should just know what to do. I should not need someone else to usher me around and make sure I do everything. I open my mouth to curse myself, but the words do not come to me. I think I see my shadow growing longer behind me.

I am making preparations for my high school graduation ceremony tomorrow. They have a very particular procedure that they want us to follow to make sure that everything goes as smoothly as possible, and I need to practice. I button up my gown, fasten my cap, make sure that the tassel is on the right side, and practice walking in that slow, dignified way they coached us on at rehearsal a couple weeks ago. My parents watch me from the other side of the living room with grins on their faces, my father occasionally remarking that he still cannot believe his little girl is already going to be a graduate, my mother just clapping whenever I do it especially well. When I am satisfied, I take my cap off and run a hand through my hair. My parents walk over, pull me into a powerful hug, and tell me over and over that they are so proud. I smile. My father pinches the tassel between his thumb and forefinger and turns it to the other side of the cap.

I am trying to figure out what I am. Splotches of color, blues and greens, float across my vision. I hear faint whisperings from things beyond what I can see, but I cannot make out words. Hands emerge from unseen places to act on me without my asking. I am shed skin being blown about by the breeze. I am a stone at the bottom of a mighty river watching the current flow above. I am a twig on the forest floor feeling the heat from an approaching inferno. Have I always been mere object? I think I went to a park once. In the corner of my vision, I think I see a shadow looming over me. I am afraid.

I am getting ready for the first day of school. As my grandmother watches from her chair in the living room, I slip some fresh notebooks into my backpack, zip it shut, and sling it over my shoulders. My mother walks out of my parents' bedroom, her flowing hazelnut hair done up in a bun. I was a little late getting out of bed, and she is eager to get going, but my grandmother will not let us leave without giving me a hug first. She pulls me into her warm embrace and whispers that I am going to do so well, only freeing me when she sees my mother trapping the invisible watch in mild irritation. I wave goodbye to her and briskly make my way to the garage with my mother. I slide into the backseat of our gray Chevy minivan, and we are off as soon as my seat belt buckle clicks into place. The September sun is rising above the pine trees as we pull out of the driveway. I smile. We drive towards the light.