NOTE: This story might contain subject matters not suitable for sensitive audiences.

An old shriveled-looking man walked into the TV room where a small boy was watching some high-paced movie. The man smiled and thought of the first time he had the privilege to watch television. But soon he also thought about the immense loss to society; young ones never go outside, glued stuck in front of the moving images on the screen.

He cleared his voice, louder than normal, and Todd – his grandson – looked around. Both smiled but Todd soon turned his face back to the screen, not wanting to miss any of the unfolding action.

Such a shame he thought as he looked at his grandson. How will this end he wondered. With no one able to get away from the screen? With no one able to tell a story not relying on some prefabbed and precast story? What will happen to the deeper meaning of life? Questions about morality and our existence in this strange place?

The fridge contained nothing of interest except for the cold beer enticing him. He looked at his watch; the arms were not near any reasonable time to be drinking. Screw it he thought and picked the beer as if a bouquet of flowers for his late wife.

“Come, Todd,” he shouted from the kitchen. He heard credit-type music, presumably the movie was done.

Todd came running to his granddad. He grabbed his legs giving him a hug of some kind.

“Come, let Granddad tell you a proper story,” he said to his grandson as they walked to the porch. The outside temperature was warm for winter. The first sip of beer was always the best, he thought, as he sat down on the lawn chair. He kicked off his shoes, sending a sour smell into the air. If they both did not acknowledge the smell, it does not exist, he thought. He smiled at his own reasoning.

“Let me tell you a story of a friend I had known. Or no, it was a friend who told me the story. I think. Agh, it was many years ago, my mind is not what it used to be.”

Todd looked at his granddad, sitting at the bottom of the lawn chair picking at the grass that was due for a cut.

“It happened in the days before all of this random TV nonsense,” he took a sip from the beer and looked at the horizon in front of him. “When life still had some meaning, or we thought so.”

Todd scoured the grass for bugs, not listening to his granddad’s voice. His attention span was already shortened by the TV nonsense. But his granddad also seemed to be lost in his own world.

“You know,” he took a sip of his beer. “Those days,” he started but for some reason, he could not think about those days any longer. “I don’t know,” he looked down at Todd and smiled at the boy. “Maybe those days were not so good.”

A sudden shadow enveloped him, but the sky was clear. His own emotions, again, he thought. The cold beer did not help now. It only made him more aware of the fact that he sat there thinking about these thoughts. What made the olden days better? Thinking about his late wife did not make him emotional as such. Many tears alone in the night were cried the day she died. But his mind went further back, latching onto something he could not remember but he felt the pull, he felt the shadow. Another sip and another, maybe it might dislodge the thought. He looked down at Todd, but the boy was no longer there. He looked up and saw Todd running after a butterfly, almost as if the boy was a dog.

This made him smile, the thought again forgotten. The last sip of the beer was always a sad moment. He looked at the bottle, trying to read the small-printed ingredients list, but he forgot to put on his glasses.

“Todd, come over here, let me tell you that damned story,” he shouted as the boy ran behind the insect. “Todd, come over here.”

The boy listened and sat in front of his granddad again picking at the grass with his fingertips.

“What can I tell you,” he started.

“The damned story,” Todd replied nonchalantly.

This made him laugh at the boy. He thirsted for another beer, but looking at the watch the hands still did not reach anything significantly close to a proper drinking time.

“Agh,” he said again. Getting up was a mission, as his body did not want to do it any longer. “Wait here,” he told the boy. He picked another beer from the bouquet of beers in the fridge. He sat down again, looking at the boy. But Todd was gone. In his place, a small English bulldog looked at him with puppy dog eyes. What in the name of…

The dog barked at him, but not in an aggressive sense, rather to get his attention. He wanted to be picked up. Was this Todd? Where was Todd? He put down the beer and picked up the dog, almost as if this was needed to get Todd back. “Are you Todd,” he asked the dog looking into its eyes.

The dog barked, but the old shriveled-looking man heard the boy talking through the dog. “Yes, Granddad!”

He put the dog down and sat down on the lawn chair, taking that heavenly first sip of a new beer.

“Come, boy, let me tell you a story,” he looked at the dog-boy playing with the grass in front of him. “You know, those days,” he said, but he did not know those days any longer. The second sip flowed into the third and fourth. The empty bottled hit the floor as he fell asleep.

***

It was late afternoon when he woke up. The sun warmed his skin and he felt young again. Slowly, everything came back to him. The first beer, the second one, but after that he could not remember anything. He looked at his watch and the time looked more appropriate for a beer. He stood up with great difficulty and picked another beer from the bouquet. He sat down in the familiar lawn chair and looked at the horizon, now turning a ripe yellow. He sighed and took the heavenly first sip. And another, and another, until the sad last sip. The bottle empty in his hand, he stood up and walked into the house; the winter temperature only arrived now. He closed the door and walked to the kitchen. The television was blaring static noise. Its screeches manifested as scratches in his mind.

“Turn that off,” he shouted. But the sound persisted. He first picked another beer and walked to the room from which the sound came. He saw his grandson sit in front of the TV and thought This generation, stuck in front of the TV will be the end of us.

“Come, let Granddad tell you a story, one from the olden days before this TV nonsense,” he said as he turned around to walk to the kitchen.

But no one responded. The TV kept on producing a static noise as the body of a young boy and his dog lay on the floor. The old man could be heard from another room talking to his long-dead grandson.

Postscriptum, or A Sad Ending

I have a love-hate relationship with my own writing. Many of my short stories have these abrupt endings. Sometimes it works, sometimes it's a miss. But that is up to the reader to decide. For now, I hope you enjoyed the story. Please let me know what you thought of it in the comments.

Happy reading, and stay well.

The photographs used in this post are my own, taken with my Nikon D300. The writings in this post are all my own.