It seemed to Grant that days passed slowly once you hit the ripe old age of seventy. His friends had told him about this fact of life, and now he felt it himself. As Grant reasoned, being old is one thing, but being old and lonely is another, and he had first felt the distinction between the two several years earlier during one of his son’s regular visits. He had lived on the acreage then, and life was just so darn simpler. For one thing, he could wake up and go to sleep any time he chose, could eat breakfast at midday and lunch at sundown, could take a walk in the forest surrounds and do some thinking about the week ahead. The Home offered none of that, and while he was dispassionately grateful for certain privileges offered to him by the young and energetic helpers, he viewed the negatives with fiercer disdain. Suffice to say that when Grant was told The Big News on the Sunday before, his overwhelming emotion was of anger, swiftly followed by haunting regret. He remembered the bitter arguments at the apartment he shared with his adult son in his later years. He remembered his son’s misguided, piercing comments and his loathsome retaliations. It had all ended one night in violence, a push from Grant sending his son sprawling onto the glass-topped coffee table, which shattered on impact. A shard of glass had sliced through his arm, and the memory of blood gushing from his wounds onto the carpeted floor still made Grant feel sick to the stomach. He would never forget that drive to the hospital, his son screaming in agony as hundreds of bloody gashes covered his body. His conscience had forced him into the Home, logical choice playing no part in in the matter. But he wasn’t abusive at heart, which was why it hurt him that he hadn’t seen his son since his outburst, five and a half years before.  

When Grant was told he had less than a month to live, his first thought was to end it all right there and then. When sanity prevailed and he set his priorities straight, he realised that he needed to call his son, and urgently. After he arrived at the Home, he swiftly made his way to the 1960s telephone he kept in the corner of his room. He hadn’t used it in quite some time, and he started at the thick coating of dust that lay over it like a blanket. Brushing it off, he rapidly set to work dialling his son’s number, which he somehow remembered after the years of silence between them. He heard a faint ringing as his call was transferred to his son’s phone, before an automated voice cut through the noise. “The number you have dialled is not in use. Please check your number before dialling again”. Grant stared at the phone for a moment, then redialled the number. Once again, the automated prompt followed. Grant slammed the phone back in its cradle and cursed. Without phone communication, he would have to visit his son personally at his apartment in the city. Grabbing a jacket and his wallet, Grant left to find his boy.

Albert Jeckerson, drug mule and amateur pickpocket, was having an unlucky day. A high-priority deal with an American banker had fallen through, and his higher-ups expected a steady stream of income, day-in and day-out. To make matters worse, a failed robbery earlier in the day had left him lying low in the maze of alleyways surrounding the city. Now, as the afternoon turned to dusk, Albert risked a second prowl. 

He left his place of hiding and joined a throng of workers leaving for their homes. His glance at his potential targets was strictly professional, a glance so non-committal and unsuspicious that Bonnie and Clyde would have been impressed. He had more talent than he himself knew, and he sensed opportunity with ease. His stream of consciousness, were it be determined by a seriously impressive mind-reader, would have consisted of something like this: “Old man 70 maybe older looks weak but no valuables wait slight bulge left pocket possible opportunity no too risky he looks alert he’ll catch me no jail except wait hearing aid deaf won’t hear me but have to wait ‘til he’s alone”. His persistence was rewarded a few minutes later when the man peeled away from the main group of workers. Albert ran the numbers in his head. It seemed the man was heading for the subway, unless he happened to live in the area. There would be people at the subway, annoying sons-of-bitches that would tattle to authority at a moment’s notice. It would be smarter to rob him now, just sneak a hand into his pocket and snag its contents. Taking a final look around, he made his move. 

Jeckerson’s one mistake was the deafness of his quarry. While Grant did indeed use a hearing aid, it was for his right ear only. His left ear, while not as youthful as his assailant’s, could hear remarkably well for its age. Which is why Albert nearly landed in jail, saved only by his general athleticism as he escaped the law for the second time that day. Grant didn’t feel Albert’s hand dive into his pocket, but he heard the clink of his room keys attached to his wallet as it was gathered and taken from his possession. Immediately, he swung around, twisting Albert’s hand, still buried in his pocket, as he did so. Albert yelped in pain and started struggling to remove his hand. “What the heck do you think you’re doing!”, Grant shouted. Without warning, Albert threw a punch at Grant’s head. Grant ducked to the side, but was clipped on the ear by the blow. 

“Dang you, you old coot”, Albert retorted hotly. Rapidly, he freed his hand from Grant’s grasp, placed the wallet inside his jacket, and pushed hard against Grant’s shoulders. Grant was sent sprawling on the concrete, hands scraping against the rough surface, knees cracking as he went down. Albert didn’t witness this event. He had noticed the man in the alleyway nearby, staring at him and talking rapidly on the phone to who could only be the police. Sprinting along the pathway, Albert ducked into messy underbrush, cutting his hands and legs on a prickly thorn bush as he passed. Cursing, he fled the scene.

Blood trickled thinly from the palm of Grant’s hands, and from Grant’s knees. His right ear throbbed in pain, and the steely taste of his body’s inner liquids were evident on his tongue. The do-gooder, a young male of about twenty, rushed over to assist. “Oh my god! Are you okay?” he rushed. 

“What do you reckon?” Grant replied drily. He eased himself up, ignoring the do-gooder’s helping hand. “I don’t know who he was. Petty thief, probably. Gave this old man a scare, that’s for sure!” As he talked, he rubbed his hands together, like a hobo warming his hands beside a fire. 

“What did he steal? Cash?”. 

“Uh-huh”, was the reply. 

“Look, I called the police, they’ll be here soon. If you wait here with me-. 

“No thanks”, Grant cut in. “I better go. I’m already running late”. The do-gooder looked at Grant curiously, but only said 

“Well, can I give you some-“, 

“No, I’ll be fine”, Grant said quickly. And with that, he half-hobbled, half-walked to the end of the street, turned, and was out of sight. The blood on the concrete was beginning to dry.

It was only once Grant had sat down at the train station that he realised he now had less chance of seeing his son. He needed a ticket for the train, and that would cost at least a few dollars. Digging around his pocket, he pulled out an old, crumpled packet of Marlboros. He opened the pack and took out a cigarette. He had quit a few years back, but he was dying anyway, so what was the harm? Of course, he would need a lighter, and he hadn’t one on hand. Sighing, he placed the cigarette back in its pack. Had his life always been like this? An endless stream of misfortune, ending with a depressing stint in the Home? Grant thought so. “Did I deserve my life?”, Grant wondered out loud, drawing the attention of a pale teenager hunched over on a bench seat nearby. He had been swallowing pill after pill from the palm of his hand. The teen looked cautiously at Grant, sensed no danger of being reprimanded for his unhealthy habit, and returned to swallowing his pills. Grant visibly sagged, and a single tear, hidden from the eyes of his carers and friends at the Home, trickled from his eye. Yes, he had hurt his son, but it had been an accident, hadn’t it? And his son had been fine. Or had he? Grant, confused at his uncertainty, suddenly went stiff. A cold shiver made its way down his back, and goosebumps dotted his arms. He had been told by the doctor at the hospital that his son was stable, but had he checked on his son after that? Grant remembered driving home from the hospital, alone, too ashamed to think, and vowing never to see his son again. “I’m a bloody idiot”, Grant whispered to himself. He heard the loud and piercing scrape of metal on the railway tracks ahead and stood up quickly. “Idiot”, Grant repeated.

Grant had never undertaken a publicly illegal act in his life, excluding his miserable attempt at stealing Jackie Robinson at the naive age of eight. The baseball card had been $10 at the local pawnbroker, and Grant, his head filled with the possibility of gaining the awe and respect of his Playground Buddies, had attempted to swipe it. He hadn’t made it through the door before Mr Michaels, a balding man of 50 and owner of Mike’s Pawn Shop, called out from behind the dingy metal counter of the store. “You payin’ for that, boy?”. The harsh tone of his voice froze Grant in his tracks, long enough for Michaels to cross the space between them. A chubby, hairy hand landed on Grant’s skinny shoulder. “I do things to boys who pinch”, Michaels growled. “I do little shits like you good”. Grant’s upper lip trembled, and he tried to wriggle from Michaels grasp. It may have been trickery of the light, but it seemed that Mr Michaels, who had sold to his mother many times over, had a dangerous glint in his eyes Grant hadn’t seen before. “Listen, kid, you better rack off now before I do something I might regret”. The hand, which had been gripping Grant’s shoulders with almost painful ferocity, lifted. He leant in close and caressed Grant’s cheek with the back of his hand. “Go”, Michaels whispered in his ear. Grant was running the next second, baseball card spiralling to the ground from his clenched fingers. 

When the doors to the train carriage slid open in front of him, Grant had to fight his primal instincts to run straight into the beckoning opening. The ticket inspector was standing to the side of the open doors, and would certainly notice an elderly man, looking fit to keel over and die, dash inside the carriage with the focus, (if not the speed), of a junior Olympic sprinter. Instead, Grant moseyed slowly to the entrance, his casual demeanour masking his true motives. Grant considered whistling, then decided against it. In the movies, criminals whistled just before or after they committed a crime, to appear as nonchalant and innocent as possible. Normally, the criminals got busted soon after, and Grant decided not to test this unwritten rule in real life. “Hi, mister, does this train go to the city?”, he asked the ticket inspector. 

’Sure does, sir. It’s pretty packed in there at the moment, though. Standing room only. Come with me and I’ll try and find you a seat?”. Grant mulled this over. 

“That would be kind of you, sir”, he responded eventually, trying to sound as confused and vulnerable as possible. Which, Grant thought, wasn’t too difficult in his current situation. 

“Come with me”, the inspector invited. Grant followed the balding middle-aged man into the train. The smell of cigarette fumes and stale piss assaulted his nostrils, and Grant vowed to only breathe through his mouth during the duration of the train journey. He walked through the path created by the inspector as he pushed past the throngs of standing passengers to the back of the carriage. The inspector stopped at a lonely seat beside an elderly woman and gestured to it. “Here fine?”, the inspector questioned. 

“Thank you”, Grant replied, and dropped into the seat. The inspector politely nodded before moving back down the carriage. He’s forgotten to ask for my ticket, Grant mused, astonished at his luck. As he thought this, the inspector, now many paces away, stopped and turned to look at Grant. No, not now!, Grant bemoaned. The inspector was at Grant’s side a moment later. 

“I’ll need to see your ticket, sir”, he said promptly. Grant’s mind raced as he tried to invent an excuse for his unlawful actions. 

“Um, I-“, Grant started, and then the commotion on the platform began.

One hour later, Grant was looking out the window of the moving train, trying to spot each bird as it passed his view. “Crow”, he said absent-mindedly as a whirl of black feathers flew past his vision. He’d spotted about twelve in total, mostly crows and pigeons, but he’d be darned if he hadn’t seen at least a few starlings and a tit. I should’ve been a bird-watcher, Grant thought to himself, and a soft laugh escaped his throat. The train had been on the move for at least half an hour, and Grant estimated he’d see the tips of skyscrapers before long. His mind wondered briefly back to his lucky break at the station, when the teenager outside the train (Grant now thought of him as Pill Popper), had collapsed on the ground in a series of dramatic convulsions. His head had swung back and forth against the concrete, and white froth poured from his mouth. Grant couldn’t help comparing him to a rabid dog. The inspector had forgotten completely about Grant’s ticket and had rushed outside the carriage to assist the teenager. The missed ticket had since been forgotten, and Grant hoped this would remain the case until he arrived at the city. 

Now, looking outside the graffitied window, Grant thought of Pill Popper’s fate. It was the teens own fault that he had collapsed in spasms (Grant would have bet a thousand dollars it was an overdose that did him in), but Grant still sincerely hoped the boy had survived the incident. Grant shivered despite the sweltering heat of the day, and his mind played back the scene from the hospital, the last night he had seen his son. “Your son’s fine”, the doctor had said. ‘He’ll be alright”. This should have felt comforting, but to Grant, the words sounded like shallow promises rather than the truth. He shivered again. The sun was still up, and the city was ever closer, but Grant felt utterly miserable. 

It was dark when Grant got to the city, and he decided to wait until the light of day to drop the news of his numbered days on his son. Instead, he searched for a cheap hotel to spend the night. Eventually, he found one: an ugly brick building with the words “Hotel Grandeur” scribbled on the door in marker pen. Despite the sophisticated name, the hotel was anything but. A rancid smell of rat droppings and rotting animals filled the building, but Grant didn’t seem to notice. He was exhausted after his escapades in the city and at the train station, and fell asleep in his room almost instantly. 

In his dreams, he was walking towards the subway entrance when he felt a hand reach into his pocket. Turning around, he saw Albert Jeckerson behind him, a stretched smile painted across his face. “Fuck you, you old coot! You couldn’t even save your son!”, Albert said, and his grin widened. 

“Yes I did”, Grant denied shakily, but Albert shook his head. 

“You know what you did, you maniac, disillusioned, fucked up coot”, he said, and pushed Grant’s shoulders. Grant was flung backwards, but where the concrete should have been to stop his fall, there was only inky blackness. Grant fell, fell past those he had loved, those he had let go. There was his mother, who waved as he passed with a sad smile, and John, who turned his head away at the sight of Grant. A wave of guilt passed over Grant as he realised how little he had spoken to his friend since arriving at the home. The do-gooder who had called the police began to walk towards him, and Grant realised that he must have imagined the falling, for he was on solid ground again. 

“Oh my god! Are you okay?”, the man said, and Grant grabbed the man’s hand. 

“No, I’m not. There was this man who tried to rob me, and he… he said things that-“. Grant was cut off mid-speech as the man placed his finger across his mouth. 

“It was rhetorical. I know you’re okay, but did you ever ask me if I was?”, the man said. Grant stared at him, confused, then in horror as the man’s face began to distort. “You know where I’ve been staying these past years? In a coffin. Under the ground. Slowly decaying cos YOU KILLED ME, YOU MURDERER”, Grant gasped in terror as the face transformed into that of his son. 

“I didn’t. I swear I didn’t”, Grant wailed, but his son shook his head slowly. 

“You’re crazy. You belong in the loony bin. No, you belong in the electric chair”. As he said this, an electric chair materialised around Grant.

 “Please, I didn’t mean to, please, spare me, please”, Grant begged, but his son stepped in front of the large lever which protruded from the sidewalk concrete. 

“Flick the switch, rot in ditch”, his son voiced in a sickly, sing-song voice. “Flick the switch, rot in ditch, flick the switch, rot in ditch and JUST DIE ALREADY”, his son screamed. With that, he pulled the lever towards him. A loud, sharp crackling filled the air, and then Grant woke up. His hands shook under the bedsheets, and sweat dripped down his brow. A single tear rolled from his eye. 

Grant was able to extract some small change from the sympathetic owner of Hotel Grandeur, but he found the bus ride from the hotel to his son’s apartment no less stressful than his train journey the day before. Twice he could hear his heart pounding like a jackhammer inside his chest, and half-expected the passengers around him to ask if he was feeling okay. None did, but Grant reasoned this could have been due to the loud punk-rock playing through the tinny bus speakers. Grant’s anxiety had been building steadily since he had woken at 4, and now it overwhelmed him, consuming his thoughts and eating away at his logic. But I didn’t kill him, Grant thought desperately as the 245 hummed closer to its destination. I hurt him, yes, maybe scarred him, but killed him? No! Besides, the doctor said he was fine. His mental reassurances did nothing to combat the all-encompassing darkness that wedged itself further into his mind. The unavoidable truth that somehow, despite the doctor’s words, his son was dead. It was the indescribable feeling of knowing that caused Grant to have one final, terrible thought before he arrived at his stop. They can’t pin it on me, he thought, and with that, he stepped off the bus.

As Grant walked up the path to his son’s apartment, he felt like a man visiting a tomb. He would have sworn his skin was slowly melting under the ugly hot glare of the sun, akin to the wilting corpses of the tulips beside the front door. His finger quivered as it circled the apartment buzzer, locating the button that would alert apartment no. 15. Screw his heart disease, Grant thought it far more likely he would drop dead of a heart attack if he waited much longer. What will happen if some middle-aged woman answers, or an old codger like yourself? What then? his mind questioned. Then he’s moved somewhere else, replied the last echo of reasonable thought in his mind. No, he’s dead, responded his insurmountable conscience, and it was this voice that sounded far louder and truer to Grant. His fingers located the button, and he winced as if expecting a needle-sharp point to protrude through the metal and pierce his finger, injecting his body with the poison he deserved after murdering the one true miracle in his life, his son. Grant’s eyes closed, he breathed one long, slow breath, and he pressed in. 

A low buzz sounded from the box, and Grant opened his eyes. The world froze around him, his focus resting entirely on the small, metal rectangle before him. Seconds passed. Then a few more. And then Grant understood everything. There’s no one there, Grant realised. And why would there be? Who would rent an apartment where a murder had occurred? Here I am, expecting someone to-. His thoughts cut off as a static crackle of life burst from the buzzer. Grant’s heart leapt into his mouth, and a soft groan escaped his lips. “Hello, who’s there?”, a young male voice questioned. 

“My name’s Grant. Who am I speaking to?”, Grant forced from his lips. Silence. Grant waited for a response, but his desperation undermined his patience. “Please. If you could just tell me who this is?”, Grant pressed. The buzzer crackled again, and then, finally, the speaker replied, not with an answer, but with a question of its own. 

“Dad?”, the speaker asked, in a soft, wavering and unmistakable voice. Grant froze for a second, and then a wild laugh escaped his lips. The laugh turned into a long and joyful cry, accompanied by similar sounds from the occupant of apartment 15. Tears spilled from Grant’s eyes onto the dead tulips below. Looking down, Grant had one final realisation. I’m free, he thought, and then his son was outside, arms outstretched.