Blessed Home

Submitted for Contest #98 in response to: Write a story involving a character who
cannot return home.... view prompt

Mary Sheehan
FOLLOW
277 likes 166 comments

Jun 17, 2021

CONTEMPORARY FICTION SCIENCE FICTION

I am spinning slowly in my tank, suspended in doped-up air, buoyant, bobbing. Piano

music (Beethoven?) plays softly in the background. My eyes are closed, but if I
opened them, I would see only pale yellow light enclosing me in a warm glow.

I like the piano music. It makes me feel calm. That, alongside the sedation. The
Facility keeps mine light, because I prefer it that way, and because I am well-
behaved. The Facility knows my ways, knows I don’t misbehave. I have been here for
a long time now. It must be years, though there is no sense of time. No calendar,
no clock. Only the pale light washing over me, keeping me warm.

This morning, the Facility reminded me that my son will visit me today. He comes
every week, at the same time. While the staff prepare me for his visit, they tell
me he is good to me, compared to most of the others in here, at the Blessed Home
facility, whose families have forgotten them. I nod and smile gently, murmuring the
right response. They think my mind is feeble, like so many in here. I cannot see
outside my tank, but the Facility can see inside, so I stay locked inside my mind.
They cannot see inside my mind. In my mind, I am not suspended in a tank of gas and
air. I go away, far from here.

Where do I go? I go home, to my sprawling house in the countryside, with a red-

tiled roof and ivy-covered archway, the mishmash of furniture and ornaments,
collected over a lifetime, heavy with memories. For sixty years, my wife and I
lived there, raised our child and grew old. We had a black cat with a white tummy
called Cat Stevens. But then my wife died and my only son accused me of going
senile.

The bell that signals that my sedation has stopped chimes. Soon, they will come to
collect me. I stop spinning as the air thins and I float to the bottom of the tank.
I wait.

A pop of glass opening, bright light seeps inside. A gentle hand the length of my
body picks me up from under my arms and seats me in a dollhouse armchair. I watch
as the giant girl in the Facility's uniform scrubs her hands in a sink as large as
a swimming pool. She is a kind of nurse, I think. My wife was a nurse, though in
our day, the Facility didn’t exist. I am handed a pair of sunglasses while my eyes
adjust to the natural light.

“How are you feeling today, Mr Donnelly?” her voice booms.

I mumble something as she dresses me. When I first arrived, I was embarrassed by
foreign hands touching my body, stripping me bare, clothing me in strange scratchy
Facility clothes. But now, I am apathetic. Maybe it’s the drugs.

When I am presentable, she brings me to the visiting area. I sit in an armchair,

more comfortable than the last, watching vast visitors speak to their doll-sized
relatives. I once heard a story about a family who brought home their shrunken
grandma from the Facility, only to have her chewed up by her once beloved dog.
My son comes into view, striding towards me with confident steps. I used to walk
like that too, before I came to the Facility. He plants himself squarely in the
visitor’s chair, launching into a nervous segment on his drive here, and the
audacity of other drivers, and how isn’t it ridiculous that with all the
technological advancements in the world, we still don’t have cars that drive the
middle class from A to B?