Unholy Trinity: Alzheimer’s by Dawn Debraal

Our church worships at the altar of the Unholy Trinity. Its gospels are delivered as a trio of dark drabbles, linked so that Three become One. All hail the power of the Three.

Giving Away

“Edna!” Hank Reynolds ran down the road after finding the screen door torn from its hinges, his wife missing. In the distance he could hear his partner of forty years screaming for help. He should have taken the truck, there was no way he’d ever catch up to her. His legs were tired, and he was out of breath. Hank bent over heaving trying to get breath into his COPD afflicted lungs. To hell with it, the woman had been on his nerves. Maybe it was the dementia that made him forget he could no longer run, maybe it wasn’t.

Giving Up

When Hank Reynolds reached home, he dragged himself up the stairway, completely drained of energy. The brain eaters, that’s what he called them, had taken his wife. He went after them, forgetting he had a truck. Hell, he’d forgotten how to drive. Hank ran until he could no longer propel himself forward wondering why they hadn’t taken him instead of his beloved wife… what was her name? Then he remembered he had dementia, his father had it, now he was afflicted. It most assuredly prevented them from harvesting his brain. Those abominations could smell a bad brain a mile away.

Giving In

Edna didn’t make a sound when the horde killed her, they fought over her brains as she was the last living human in the area, it was time for them to move on. 

“There’s a man back there, where we got the woman,” the thought ran through them collectively, they were of one mind and near starving. 

“We’ve got no choice, it’s him, or die.” Poor Hank succumbed in seconds his brainless body quivered on the ground.

“Where now?” The swarm asked their leader. “I don’t know.” The horde was doomed, by eating Hank, they were infected with his disease.