Short Story- Care Home Blues

I walk past the care home twice a day. The care home where my Grandmother lives. Once cruel and vindictive now she rots there, complacent. Demented.

I have walked past the care home twice a day for about two years. I have never been inside the care home.

Sometimes I see the residents for the care home being wheeled out onto the red brick terrace, blankets over their knees, some with mugs of tea, others chuffing cigarettes.

I squint to try to make out her frail shape but it is never her.

Two years, twice a day of being too scared to enter, scarred by memories of tab stained fingers, bad tempers, stale smelling grocery shops, betting slips, soldier soldier re-runs and lemonade in teacups.