Feeling Sure

For a time

For a moment, just before he woke up, Albert was eight years old again.
Britain had just declared war, and he was wondering what all the fuss
was about. He was standing at the train station, weighed down with a
big trunk and endless lectures from his mother, thinking about all the
exciting things he was going to do when he arrived at his Auntie's
house. She had a big garden with a stream running by it, and sometimes,
if you were really quiet, you could see fish swimming in there. Albert
spent a long time down by the stream, holding his breath and not moving
a muscle, in the hope of seeing something. She even made a swing for
him out of some thick rope and a plank of wood, which he would spend
hours on, only coming in for tea when the shadows grew too tall to
touch.
If he had ever looked to his past, he would have remembered those days
as the happiest
of his whole life.

He woke up to find the sun shining in through the window. He painfully
reached over and pulled the blind down. He hated the sun.

His third stroke had left him with only partial use of his right side,
and his doctor had told him again to stop smoking, but as far as Albert
was concerned he had not long left anyway, so why should he?
He gingerly swung his left leg off the bed and reached for the various
bottles of pills on his bedside cabinet. He cursed as he shook various
amounts from each container. His daughters were trying to get him to
move into a home. He reached shakily for the glass of water on top of
his dresser. and painfully swallowed the handfull of pills. He would
rather die than be put in one of them, he thought. He knew they were
only after his money, the money he had spent his whole life saving. No
one was taking that off him, not the taxman, not the banks, nobody. He
would rather burn it. As for his family, what had they ever done for
him? Nothing, that's what. He had washed his hands of them. All they
wanted was his money. There could sing for it for all he cared.

He heard the church bell then, calling the morning worshipers to
prayer.

"You're all a bunch of sheep!" he croaked out of his window. Some of
them turned to look at the old man gesturing towards them, but most of
them ignored him. He dismissed them with a wave of his hand and
struggled to get dressed as best he could.