Here at Redburn village, we work hard to ensure all residents enjoy their retirement in a relaxed, peaceful environment. Our assisted living facilities enable you to enjoy maximum independence, but with a safety net of highly skilled nurses available 24-hours a day, offering you and your loved ones complete peace of mind.
It’s a glorious place to wake up each morning. Cozy. Friendly. Warm. So why not come see what we have to offer?
At Redburn, you won’t just live.
You’ll live to the fullest…
-
The one-eyed cat skulked around my new garden, no doubt gearing up to ‘fertilize’ the rose bushes. Or so it seemed. In retrospect, I may have rushed to judgment. But to be fair, the big move had me all stressed out. And cleaning up some stray’s water shite every morning wasn’t quite how I’d pictured my retirement.
By my feet, there were two cardboard boxes. I grabbed a fuzzy slipper from the closest one and shouted, “Go on, scat!”
The slipper flew in a smooth arc but missed by a solid three metres. My wife, Mary, would have hit the roof if she’d caught me using animals for target practice, even ugly ones.
The little vagrant glanced at the slipper, yawned, then strolled along the side of the house and disappeared.
“Damn fleabag,” I grumbled.
“Honestly Dad,” Angela said, as she carried another box out of the van. “We’ve been here five minutes and already you’re all worked up. Remember what the doctor’s told you?”
“Yeah yeah, nice and easy. But you’ve gotta show these vermin whose boss, otherwise they walk all over you.”
Angela’s nose wrinkled. She had a medium build, short auburn hair, and, like her dear mother, a soft spot for animals. Especially useless ones. That’s probably why she’d fallen for Patrick, who I’d clocked for an oxygen thief ever since he asked for help changing a tire. On a Ford Escort.
We took a moment to survey the peaceful street. The Redburn village consisted of a huge Georgian mansion surrounded by a semi-circle of identical red-brick houses.
“I still don’t get why you insisted on being so far out of the way,” Angela said.
I’d rented a place at the outermost point—a real sore spot for my daughter. She wanted me in the main facility so the staff could spoon food me mushy carrots and wipe my arse twice a day, but I’d quickly poured cold water on that idea.
“Will you quit worrying? Didn’t you see the brochure? If I so much as stub my toe they’ll airdrop in a troop of nurses.”
After a patented Donnelly eye roll, Angela carried a footstool off into the house. Sometimes I couldn’t help but see the funny side of our predicament; it still feels like only yesterday she needed me to shine a flashlight in her closet to chase away the monsters.
In the front lounge, she said, “I just don’t want you to feel like you had to come here. You could always live with me and the kids.”
Like me, Angela acted a tad hard-headed at times. “Sweetie, this was my idea, remember? This place’ll do grand.”
Actually, retirement homes sickened me—they’re the last stop before checkout, everybody knows that—but Angela had two moody teenagers and an overactive nine-year-old to raise. By herself. Already that house was a damn circus, and I refused to be a burden.
After dropping off those first boxes, I went outside to fetch more, only to discover a grey-haired man with narrow cheeks trimming the hedges along the edge of my garden. Beside him stood a gangly orderly, cursed by the worst case of neck acne you ever saw.
“What do you think you’re doing?” I shouted, rushing over to snatch his shears away. Stringy drool leaked from the corner of the man’s mouth as he mimed clipping the air several times.
“Well?” I asked, impatiently.
“I’m Noel. I’m the gardener here.” His voice sounded slow and sluggish. Drunk, almost.
“Well, Noel, I don’t need any landscaping done. I’ll take care of that myself thank you very much.” I offered him the shears, which he accepted, after a few seconds.
Neck acne looked like he wanted to punch me, a feeling that was very much reciprocated.
My daughter wandered out of the house and joined us at the edge of the garden, then Noel said, “I’m Noel. I’m the gardener here.” Again.
Slightly confused, I cleared my throat. “Uhh…I’m Thomas. And this is my daughter, Angela.”
“Pleased to meet you,” she said, offering him her hand, then, when he didn’t respond, she reeled it away and quickly cleared her throat. “So, Noel, how do you like it here at Redburn?”
The muscles in his mouth spasmed involuntarily as his blue eyes glazed over. “The assisted living facilities enable us to enjoy independence with a safety net of highly trained nurses available 24 hours a day. The staff ensure even the smallest details receive their full attention, offering me and my loved ones complete peace of mind. It’s a glorious place to wake up each morning. Cosy…Friendly…Warm.”
“Oh-kay,” I replied, after a short pause.
“Here, we don’t just live. We don’t just live. We don’t…” Noel’s eyelids fluttered as if he’d gotten laid out by a straight right cross. “I…I…I…”
He looked from Angela to me, back and forth. “I…I don’t want this anymore,” he gasped, his whole body trembling.
Neck acne quickly clamped a firm hand around Noel’s shoulder, leaning in close. “Let’s go Mr. McCann. The ivy on the west side of the main buildings gone apeshit again.”
“I-ivy?”
“That’s right. You’re Noel, the gardener here. Remember?”
“Yes. Yes, I’m Noel. I’m the gardener here.” His voice sounded brisk and relaxed once again.
We watched the two men totter off along the curved road, the orderly’s hand flat against Noel’s back, then I turned to Angela and said, “What’s his problem?”
“Honestly Dad, don’t be so insensitive. That poor guys obviously got something wrong with his head.” Her tone reminded me of the one my wife took any time I pointed out how ugly kids had gotten these days.
“Looks like he’s not the only one,” I said, gesturing broadly across the street, at a dozen other residents dragging themselves up and down the path on metal walkers, past others who stood on their front walkways like mannequins.
Angela grabbed a hefty box from the back of the van. “Oof. What’s even in this?”
“Your mother’s antique cutlery. Give it here.” It switched from her hands to mine. At sixty-eight years of age, I was no spring chicken, but four decades of working construction had left me reasonably well-muscled.
“What’s it made of? Gold?”
“Silver, actually.”
Rummaging through a smaller, more manageable box, she said, “Do you really need all this crap? What are you planning to do with it?”
“That’s not crap. That’s my backup torch and a decker power drill. Do you know how much that beauty cost?”
“I know what it is, I’m asking what you need it for?”
“Say there’s a power outage and I have to put up a posterboard?”
Angela threw up her hands. “Get the staff to help. The doctor specifically told you—”
“Don’t get me started on that quack. See that’s the problem with your generation, you listen to all these fancy buzz words and think you’ve got a million imaginary diseases.”
“Honestly Dad. Sometimes it’s like you’re obliged to have an opinion on everything under the sun.”
With that, she stormed off into the house.
The two of us decorated each room with quaint, sentimental objects that reminded me of Mary. At one point, Angela happened across a picture of me and her mother on our wedding day and went all quiet, her bottom lip quivering.
Paternal instinct told me she needed a hug. I threw my arms around her, kissed the top of her head, then gently cradled her like a baby. No matter how old kids get, they never stop needing their dad.
Mary often joked about our daughter being my Achilles heel—about how she had a direct line through my stubborn nature. “You’ve got a prickly outer shell, Thomas Donnelly, but that’s just a front,” she’d say, with a cheeky grin. “Secretly you’re a big teddy bear.”
We stood there in silence, my arms wrapped around Angela, until at long last she said, “I miss her so much.”
“I know sweetheart. I know.”
Before we’d finished unpacking, another member of the Redburn staff knocked on the front door.
Unlike the previous fella, who had a skinny neck ravaged by acne, this one had no neck at all. He looked like a potato with a face carved into the front.
Past him, above the rooftops, the sun had almost set. Had the whole day already blitzed past?
When I pulled open the door, the potato faced-man said, “Excuse me….but…Ms. Flanigan has requested…your daughter stop by…the main office…to discuss…emergency…contact information.” The frequent pauses he took to draw breath made his speech pattern weirdly stilted.
“But there’s still so much to do,” Angela protested.
“Go,” I said. “I’ll handle the rest.”
After unloading those final boxes, I sized up every room, then, like an expert surgeon, laid out an assortment of tools all real men should have: screwdrivers, tape measures, hammers.
The idea of lounging about all day made my stomach churn; that’s why I’d protested when Mary initially suggested we retire. Of course, once she got the diagnosis, I started hating myself for not listening. My work sabbatical was meant to be temporary, but after the funeral, the boss called me into his office and said, “Wouldn’t it be nice to have more time to yourself, Tom?”
A younger me would have raised hell at some jackass pushing him out the door like that, but after losing Mary, it hardly seemed worth the fight. I became numb to the world. Stuck in ‘run out the clock’ mode with nothing to do besides home DIY, and there’d be no shortage of that now since I’d taken up residence in an absolute bombsite of shoddy workmanship…
The glass door opening to the rear garden jammed at the mid-point, half the cabinet hinges were looser than babies’ teeth, and the floorboards squealed louder than my grandson anytime you told him he couldn’t play his Nintendo Station.
But first: that front lounge demanded a shelf on the side wall—a place to display Mary’s favourite necklace, along with some select photographs.
After mounting the mini-shrine, I gently ran my fingers across a shot of her taken down by the beach. “What do you think, sweetheart,” I said, “would you still love me now I’m a useless old fogey?”
Her picture didn’t answer. It never answered.
From the corner of my eye, I spotted a strip of wallpaper peeling away above the skirting board, directly beneath the window. Grunting heavily, I got down onto my knees for a closer inspection, my spine feeling like it had gotten hammered by a hot iron.
Alongside my head, that scraggy feline from earlier jumped up onto the outside ledge. Half of the cat’s left ear was missing, and judging by the missing clumps of fur, it had gotten into a brawl with an electric razor. You could barely tell it was a tabby.
“Go on, scat.” While I furiously rapped the glass, the cat lifted a hind leg and casually licked its own crotch.
Murmuring my disdain, I rolled up my sleeves and peeled away the wallpaper, only to discover the beginnings of deep marks etched into the wall, some so deep my thumb fit right inside them.
I let out a low whistle. To me, it looked like somebody had gone back and forth with an axe and then done a third-rate job papering over the damage. No two ways about it, the entire lounge needed replastered.
As I mused over the best size trowel for the job, practically giddy with excitement, the doorbell rang. A nurse with long, dark hair stood on the front porch. “Mr. Connelly, I presume?”
“Call me Thomas.”
“Pleasure to meet you, Thomas. I’m Prisha, one of the staff nurses here. I’ve come to give you a check-up?”
Checks-ups. Otherwise known as the perfect opportunity for smart alecks to point out the things you already knew didn’t work right.
Still, always better to get things over and done with. “Fine.”
In the lounge, she fitted a tube around my arm and inflated the cup before listening to my heartbeat through a stethoscope.
Already bored of the dreary silence, I asked, “How long have you worked here?”
“Just started two days ago,” she answered, her attention focused on my wrist as she tracked the pulse. “You’re in pretty good shape, Thomas. You’ll have to tell me your secret.”
“Oh, the usual. Drink plenty of water, get as much fresh air as possible. And I was a builder for forty years. That keeps you fit alright.”
She grabbed a notebook from her pack and flicked through my case notes. “Now what’s this about a metal plate?”
I drummed my forehead. “Work mishap. Not my fault, some idiot who had no business being on a construction site. He got the sack and I got a plate in my skull.”
“Sounds nasty.”
She handed over a clear plastic tray with little compartments for the red and yellow pills. “Okay, so we’re gonna keep you on a basic course of meds. Nothing serious, just some essential vitamins. But generally, you’re in tip-top shape. I wish the rest of our residents were as healthy as you.”
“Reckon you could put that in a letter and post it to my daughter?”
She smirked.
With that, the nurse gathered up her things, said her goodbyes, and then left.
In the kitchen, I heated a tuna casserole and ate it standing next to the counter. The fecking cat followed me around the back of the house, watching my plate fixedly from the window beyond the sink, its single eye glowing against the dusk.
“Suppose you’re looking fed?” I said. The cat licked the roof of its mouth, as though agreeing with the statement. “Well forget it.”
A spontaneous staring contest broke out. “I will blast you with the hose.”
My agitation gradually boiled over into anger as the four-legged menace refused to budge. “That’s it. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
A framed photo of Mary stood on top of the microwave, a sentinel on guard duty. Her picture almost seemed to frown at me. “Oh come on, I wasn’t serious.”
Throughout the years we spent together, my wife almost drove me to the looney bin by constantly bringing home injured critters. Back then, it nearly drove me up the wall. But now, I’d give anything—literally, anything—to have her barge through the door carrying a baby bird with a busted wing, one last time.
“Oh alright,” I muttered to her picture.
I scrapped leftovers onto a plate and set them on the outside step. The sentient ball of fuzz wasted no time getting stuck right in.
Narrowing my eyes, I said, “This is a one-time deal. Don’t get any funny ideas.”
After washing up I wasn’t yet ready for bed and, honestly, felt rather lonely sitting there, mindlessly flicking through photo albums. When you lose a soul mate, they leave behind this unpluggable gap, one no amount of petroleum-based putty could ever fill. Although Mary never strayed too far from my thoughts, a late-night stroll would at least help clear my mind.
Outside, warm light spilled from the lamposts, contrasted by the darkness of the road. A high iron fence surrounded the entire estate, the only way in or out through an automatic gate, because the last thing people my age want is break-ins or drug addicts lounging around.
A curved pavement carried me past handsome homes. Each time the wind gusted, leaves scattered across gardens and back doors banged lightly; another sure sign these eejits didn’t understand the meaning of ‘home repairs’.
The main building dozed, despite it not being all that late. Most likely the feebler residents had already turned in for the night.
I continued along that asphalt road until, up ahead, a distorted shape blitzed across my path, quickly disappearing between two houses. It only stayed visible for a fraction of a second.
Probably my imagination. At my age, your eyes play tricks.
Further along, I caught glimpse of a silhouette peeking over a slanted roof. A sudden gust of wind made me squint, and by the time my eyes adjusted the thing had vanished.
That damn optician had warned me about not wearing my reading glasses more often…
Just then, something swooped above my head, momentarily blotting out stars. A moment later there was this brief, far-off growl; an odd mixture of a lion’s roar and a jackal’s bark. I couldn’t dismiss that as blurred vision. My creaky knees rattled as I broke into a spontaneous jog, eager to get home.
The growl—if you could even call it a growl—came again, closer this time. I pinched my keys between my first and second fingers and held up a closed fist.
Thoughts of Mary got swallowed by fear. Mindful of the cramping muscles in my legs, I bolted from one circle of light to the next until, midway between two points, my left foot clonked against a solid object and sent me tumbling forward.
On instinct, my hands shot out. In your late sixties, a fall like that usually meant a one-way ticket to the ER, but lady luck smiled down on me that night. My palms burned from where they’d scraped against the asphalt, but I’d survived.
In a heartbeat, I scrambled back to my feet and spun toward whatever tripped me, and as I did, my stomach clenched, because now I could see what it was.
A pale figure flat on their back, completely motionless.
A nasty jolt of terror stabbed me as I leaned close to the corpse and realized I actually recognized the person lying there.
It was Noel. His face looked pure white, the thin lips had gone bluish at the corners, and the entire right half of his neck almost appeared black from an ugly, purple bruise.
After failing to locate a pulse, I rushed home and called the Redburn reception, then watched through the lounge window as two orderlies loaded Noel onto a stretcher and wheeled it away.
My hands refused to stop shaking. What sort of asylum had I checked into?
A few minutes later potato face stopped by, spouting off some horseshit about Noel’s heart giving out.
“What about the bruise?” I demanded, shocked he actually expected me to believe everything was hunky-dory.
“There was…no bruise.”
“No bruise? The poor bastard had one the size of my fist.”
“Mr. Donnelly…you’re mistaken…it’s late…and you’re…tired.”
The two of us argued back and forth, me growing steadily more agitated, him sticking with his bullshit story until, finally, he signed off with, “Ms. Flanigan will explain…everything…tomorrow night at…the weekly meeting.”
Okay. Fantastic. Explain away. Whatever she said made zero difference to me, because I didn’t plan to stick around. Before I’d dismissed the lounge marks as the result of hiring a cheap laborer, but after hearing that growl and stumbling over Noel’s corpse, suddenly they seemed more…sinister.
All night, I lay awake staring at the ceiling. I couldn’t have slept a wink even with Mary beside me.
First thing in the morning, I called Angela.
“Dad? What’s going on?”
There was no need to worry her by plunging into the grizzly details. “Everything’s grand. I’ve just been thinking, this whole move might not be such a great idea.”
“Why what happened?”
“Nothing. It’s just…I’ve had some time to think, and you’re right. Living with you might be the best option for everyone. Redburn’s not really a great fit.”
Immediately her voice lost any sense of empathy. Of warmth. “But Dad, the staff there work hard to ensure all residents enjoy their retirement in a relaxed, peaceful environment. Their assisted living facilities mean you’ll enjoy maximum independence but with a safety net of highly trained nurses available 24-hours a day.” She rattled off the speel like a recording machine.
“Angela…why the feck are you talking like that?”
“They’ll ensure even the smallest details receive their full attention, offering you and your loved ones complete peace of mind. It’s a glorious place to wake up each morning. Cosy. Friendly. Warm. At Redburn, you won’t just live. You’ll live to the fullest.”
She took a deep, shuddery breath. “Yeah, I completely agree. You should stay put.”
Before I could get another word in, she signed off with, “Glad you’re enjoying yourself. Gotta go. Love you.”As I slumped back into an armchair, completely dumbfounded, the cat jumped up onto the window ledge and licked its front paw pad.