The grandfather clock ticked in the corner where three generations had died or gone mad, and Wiley realized his ‘quest’ to save his son from Alzheimer’s had only one possible ending.

Content Warning: This story contains infanticide and deals with severe mental illness, caregiver trauma, and the psychological deterioration caused by dementia. The ending is deeply disturbing and may be triggering for readers who have experienced loss of loved ones to Alzheimer’s or other degenerative diseases.

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‘Tic toc…tic toc….tick toc!’ In a dark, lonely corner, the old grandfather clock was ticking its decades-old, sad mantra.

It was pouring outside, heavy drops streaking down the thick, plate-glass windows. The raindrops left twisting, abstract patterns on the glass, whose pearly contours seemed frozen in the random lightning flashes. Outside, the urban landscape was silhouetted against a dark purple sky - dark giants morbidly sparring with lightning.

Wylie stood at the window, watching the slowly moving lights of the late-night traffic below. He listened to the muffled bass of thunder and the unending symphony of the weeping skies. But inside, his heart was beating in perfect synchronization with the clock, aware of each passing second.

The sound of muffled snickering disturbed his reverie. He turned around and smelt the pungent stink of piss.

‘Shit! I forgot to change his diaper again.’ He silently cursed himself and looked at his dying father.

Aaron was secure within the cosy comfort of his bed and was lost in his own sad world. He was oblivious to the warm, wet pool between his legs and was looking through Wylie with rheumy eyes, while smiling at some amusing but rapidly fading memory.

Wylie stared back and was momentarily startled to see a small spark glowing in the depths of his father’s eyes. But then he sighed in hopelessness. There was no spark, and there was no light. The hotline connecting his father’s eyes with his grey matter was broken forever.

Over the last ten years or so, Wiley’s empathy for his father had gone rather stale. His gaze shifted from the pitiful figure in the bed to the gold, gleaming saxophone. It stood in the corner, almost graceful in its sad silence. To him, both his father and the saxophone belonged to the same era - once dazzlingly remarkable, but now dying and forgotten.

Pending the cleaning ritual for another five minutes, Wiley looked out again at the heavy storm clouds. Their ugly bellies were pregnant with rain. He thought of a similar evening in the far-off past. It was raining and his father always loved rain. Rains somehow inspired the musician hidden inside the heart of a common accountant.

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‘Wiley, can you please bring her over here?’ By her, Aaron of course meant his saxophone.

‘Every beautiful thing is a woman to father,’ Wiley silently chuckled to himself.

He delicately picked up the saxophone and cradled it in his arms as small boys do when they are sometimes entrusted with a prized possession. He carefully brought the gleaming instrument to his father, who lovingly ruffled his hair and held the saxophone like a lovely waltz partner. Wiley still remembered the gleam in his father’s eyes. They were alight with the secret dreams of a yet undiscovered maestro.

Aaron cleaned the mouthpiece with a silk handkerchief and then started playing. His lips blew magic into the polished brass, and he became one with the instrument. The rain and music made love, while the clouds clapped thunder to the beat.

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Wiley loved to think of those evenings and those magical moments from the past. He remembered very well his father’s immaculately pressed, black tuxedo, and the carefully brushed-back and gleaming, gelled hair. The dark aroma of Cuban cigars hung about his person like a warm and comforting aura. That was Aaron - a loving and caring father and a brilliant jazz musician. That was Aaron - enjoying the end of the age of sanity.

Then came Alzheimer’s. It was like Wiley’s father got possessed by some ancient evil spirit, who demanded more from its unwilling host with each passing moment. Slowly and gradually, the demonic spirit fed on the soul and body alike, draining them of each speck of intelligent awareness.

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A fresh clap of thunder ended Wiley’s sojourn into the past. He flexed his tired shoulders and went to the cupboard to get a fresh diaper. He dipped the corner of a clean towel into warm water and lovingly cleaned up his father like a mother cleans a baby. Their roles had reversed. His father had become his child.

The warmth of the wet towel brought a kind smile to his father’s face. But Wiley knew it was his subconscious playing games. His father was an empty house playing host to a dark void. He no longer felt any emotion, yet his mind was alive. It was a playground of tired and disjointed pieces of memories. It was a puzzle that could never again be completed. Aaron, the accountant and the brilliant jazz musician, had left the house a long time ago.

Wiley gathered the wasted skeleton in his arms and carried him carefully to the rocking chair in the corner. While adjusting the blankets around his father’s frail shoulders, he sensed a movement and turned around. There stood John, his nine-year-old son, leaning against the doorway.

John was a beautiful boy with black, shining eyes, an almost perfect milk chocolate complexion, and a head full of the densest black fur. But his eyes were not shining as he silently looked at his grandfather. Instead, they were two deep pools of growing awareness. Looking into John’s eyes, Wiley felt the jarring onset of an unsettling déjà vu.

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It was a hot and humid August afternoon. Wiley had just come back home from a baseball game - all sweaty and soiled. Ignoring his mom’s pleas for a quick shower, he bounded up the stairs, eager to tell his father about his home run. Passing his grandfather’s room, he heard his father singing softly. The door was slightly ajar, so Wiley managed to slip inside unnoticed. His father was wiping the sweat off the old man’s brow and softly singing his favourite lullaby:

‘The land is dark, the land is sleepy,

no time to be happy, no time to be weepy

Close your eyes and go to sleep,

beware of the shadows, dark and creepy’

Aaron murmured the last sentence with almost a sad acceptance and rearranged his father’s head on the pillow.

‘It is sad.’ Wiley couldn’t keep his mouth shut for long.

‘Yeah, indeed, it is sad, my boy.’ Aaron said while slowly turning his head. ‘Come here and give a kiss to your grandfather.’

Wiley hesitatingly stepped forward and planted a quick peck on his grandpa’s wasted cheek. He never liked the old man, who always stank and kept on staring blankly in space. His disgust changed to hatred one day when the old man knocked him down for touching his saxophone. Wiley ran crying to his father, expecting a quick retribution. But his father did nothing. He just wiped his tears and his bloody nose and said, ‘Look, Wiley, your grandpa is a very sick man and he deserves your sympathy. Just avoid going into his room more often. And please don’t touch his things.’

It was Wiley’s first meeting with the Alzheimer’s.

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Shrugging off the bitter and unhappy memory, Wiley just gave a kind and tired smile to his son. He checked on Aaron one final time and then joined his wife and son at the dining table.

‘What’s up, John?’ Wiley asked the little boy, who was trying to avoid looking directly at him.

‘You again forgot to come to my game, Dad.’ John muttered angrily, and Wiley jolted with realization.

‘I forgot to put on the old man’s diaper, and I forgot to attend John’s game. Is this what I think it is?’ Wiley thought resignedly.

Cloe got up from her chair and stood behind John. ‘What’s wrong, little one?’ she asked while massaging his tiny shoulders.

‘No big deal.’ John shrugged in annoyance and ran to his room.

Cloe looked at Wiley concernedly.

‘Wiley baby, what’s happening to you? Yesterday, you forgot to pick up groceries, and last week you just skipped the old man’s appointment with the doctor.’

It was at that moment that Cloe saw fear jump into Wiley’s eyes. The fear reached out and its dark tentacles slithered out to grip her own heart.

‘Oh merciful God in heavens, not him please…..not my Wiley.’ She thought and ran into the solace of her husband’s arms.

‘Wiley, is it…..?’ She whispered against his strong chest, almost afraid to speak the name of the disease.

‘No, godammit no, I am ok, Cloe. I am really fine.’ But Wiley knew the reality. Alzheimer’s had come visiting again.

He tenderly caressed his wife’s head.

‘You love me now, darling, but wait for the time when I cease to be Wiley and then, you will turn as bitter as gall.’ Wiley thought sadly of his own dead mother.

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It was 1978. Wiley had just returned from school and walked straight into a mom-dad confrontation.

‘For Christ’s sake! Why don’t you go to the doctor? You are forgetting things. You forgot our anniversary. You forgot Wiley’s birthday, and today you just forgot how to bang your own wife.’ Wiley’s mother went on with her frustrated bantering, but Aaron just kept on looking out the window.

‘Are you listening to me?’ She screamed.

‘Yes, I am,’ he answered while turning his head. ‘Nothing is wrong with me, baby. It’s just middle age creeping in.’

Wiley’s mother just stood there. She grabbed the back of the dining chair for much-needed support, her knuckles turning white with silent rage. Then she breathed deeply, walked to her husband, hugged him tightly, and cried.

Wiley loved both of them and wished with all the intensity of his six-year-old heart for his father to get better. But no matter how many times his mom cried, no matter how many times he prayed to God, Wiley’s father kept stepping away into oblivion. He kept walking towards a dark void and the impending doom.

Aaron was an accountant at the local bank. He was a brilliant accountant and not a single blemish marked his twenty-year-long record. People respected him. His colleagues did. The neighbours did. Even Mr. Patel, the Gujarati owner of the corner grocery store, who never respected his own father, respected Aaron. The people who knew him esteemed his honesty during the day and, when the sun went down, admired his talent with the saxophone.

The world seemed to be a perfectly happy place when a beaming Aaron entered the tiny apartment with his weekly paycheck in hand. They weren’t wealthy but respectably comfortable. The apartment was not luxurious but nice, clean, and comfy at all times. Wiley’s mom ensured it. To top it all, there were evenings in the jazz club across the street with Aaron in the spotlight.

Wiley loved the jazz club. He loved the red smoky atmosphere and the waves of beautiful and magical music. He intently watched his father performing on the stage, smiling at everybody, and especially his wife and Wiley. In those enchanted moments, Aaron’s sweaty face and the gleaming saxophone formed the centre of Wiley’s universe.

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It was almost natural that Wiley was seduced by the saxophone. The instrument felt really smooth in his hands - almost an extension of his own body. After observing his father for a decade or so, the playing came naturally. He blew into the mouthpiece, and his fingers danced on the keys with an invisible life of their own. Aaron just silently watched Wiley, his heart brimming with pride. The legacy had been transferred.

On Wiley’s twelfth birthday, Aaron took a loan from the bank and presented him with a Yanagisawa King Super 20 - a most serious saxophone in sterling silver. It was the most beautiful thing Wiley had ever seen, but his heart still resided in his father’s old brass saxophone.

A day came when the father and the son played on the stage together for the first time. The loyal audience at the jazz club gave them a standing ovation. Wiley and Aaron looked at each other with eyes filled with tears. In their blissful ignorance, they believed that the good times would go on forever.

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A month had passed since Wiley found his parents arguing in the kitchen. One day, when he came back from school, there was a police car parked in front of the apartment building.

‘Maybe there has been a burglary again.’ Wiley smilingly thought of the prospect. A burglary was an excuse for excitement in the otherwise drab and dreary daily routine.

The old elevator was out of order as usual. He bounded up the stairs, two at a time, heart thumping wildly, and almost crashed into his father at the last landing. Aaron was standing between two burly policemen, his hands cuffed at the back.

‘What happened? Where are you taking my father?’ Wiley’s desperate cries were falling on deaf ears. The policemen pushed his father into the back seat of their dark sedan and drove off.

Wiley ran back to the apartment. His mom was sobbing quietly at the kitchen counter. The unthinkable had happened. Aaron had been caught skimming off money at the bank. When confronted by the shocked Mr. Jefferson, the kindly and old bank manager, Aaron simply denied the accusation. The bank had no alternative but to hand him over to the police.

Those were some bad times. All the meagre savings went to the lawyer. Wiley’s mom even had to pawn his new silver saxophone. Food was more important than music.

Then one day, Aaron came back home. The manager had found the missing money. It was always there, hidden under the cashier’s drawers. Aaron had never touched a single dime. He just forgot to enter the amount in the proper register. The bank quietly retired his father with a small pension.

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Wiley’s mother died a decade later. The diagnosis was of delayed, spotted lung cancer, but Wiley knew the truth. Her heart just got too tired and too broken to go on. She was in love with a man who was a pillar of strength and was energetic and bursting with enthusiasm to take life head-on. She had always admired Aaron’s resilience in the face of all odds. Aaron just had to smile at her, and poof, all her petty troubles vanished into thin air.

But Alzheimer’s changed all that. Her once towering and strong husband started to dissolve right in front of her eyes. The change was gradual and slow. Aaron still loved her, but didn’t know how to love her anymore. He still cared for her, but the disease made him selfish. This change was what killed his wife.

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Wiley could still vividly recall that cruel, December evening, when his mother breathed her last in the hospital. Aaron was there too. He had brought white lilies to his dying wife. He sat with her for a long time, holding her pale, wasted hands in his big, brown ones and peering into her clouded eyes. Then Aaron kissed her forehead and asked her who she was. She just caressed his hand, sadly smiling at her long departed husband, and died. Wiley buried his mom and took his father home.

Those were dark days indeed - filled with sorrow and helplessness. Though his feeble mind was no longer rational, Aaron was still aware of the depth of his loss and searched for his dead wife all day long. Soon after the funeral, he started wandering off at will, visiting all the spots where he once took his wife. Fearing the worst, Wiley went to the police for help. It worked a few times, but then the overburdened policemen started to ignore him. So when Aaron got lost thereafter, Wiley roamed the city streets, checking each homeless man sleeping under a cardboard sheet.

Once, Wiley found Aaron all messed up and dead drunk with a bloody nose. He was lying amongst a pile of disused garbage cans, while stray cats were licking his face. Wiley took him home, cleaned and dressed up his wounds, and then just wept.

The disappearances increased in frequency, and Wiley had to collar his father like a dog. He wrote Aaron’s name and address on a laminated piece of cardboard and tied it around his neck. Thankfully, the strategy worked. Aaron never tried to remove it and always managed to get home, courtesy of some concerned citizen or the police.

Then the second stage of Alzheimer’s commenced and brought along hallucinations. Aaron started talking to his dead wife, like she was sitting on the rocking chair in the corner of his bedroom. It was so fucking realistic, it creeped Wiley out. Each time his father chose to address his long departed mother, he literally had to force himself not to look towards the empty chair. To top it all, Aaron not only chatted with his dead wife, but he shouted at her, sang to her, and even talked dirty to her. Wiley was going mad amidst the violent erotic fantasies of his father.

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The worst came when Aaron started treating Wiley like an enemy. He abused him, degraded him, and constantly fought off his son’s attempts to clean his excrement. He reacted to each shower like water was burning, hot acid. Wiley was forced to wet sponge his thick stink away, while Aaron slept under the dense fog of sedatives.

Sometimes, Aaron just refused to be fed. Willy had to tie his hands and push porridge down his frail throat. This did almost no good. Aaron vomited on the clean bed sheets and then tried to lick back the foul contents of his stomach. He liked to pee on the bedroom floor and loved playing with his own shit. The apartment stank like a public toilet most of the time.

One day, Aaron mustered every ounce of strength in his emaciated body and kicked Wiley in the balls, while howling with devilish laughter. Wiley had to really stop himself from knocking down his own father and kicking the shit out of his skeletal excuse of a body. That day, Willy wished his father was dead, and then he cried at his own selfishness.

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Wiley and his father were both saved by Cloe. Wiley met her at the hospital where he took his father for regular check-ups. She was a sweet little thing - all smiles and caring eyes, showering kindness and attention on everybody. Wiley fell in love the first time he saw her.

They started dating. He avoided bringing her home the first few times, but then Cloe guessed the real reason. She just laughed at Wiley. Having just buried a schizophrenic mom and being a nurse at a mental health facility, she was no stranger to Alzheimer’s.

Wiley and Cloe got married, and she smoothly slipped into the spot left vacant by Wiley’s mom. She was a good and strong woman and managed to calm down Wiley’s father. Aaron became her personal pet, waiting for her kind gestures and cooing voice to be soothed. The situation at home dramatically improved.

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Two days after Wiley missed John’s game, Aaron died. His lungs were filled with mucus. He died because he couldn’t remember how to cough anymore. He suffocated in sleep.

Wiley played the saxophone at his father’s funeral, trying to remember the times when Aaron was kind and loving and warm. He started playing his father’s favourite piece, but could not go on after the first ten seconds or so. It was like he knew the composition but couldn’t somehow play the exact tune. Tears of helplessness and angry frustration clouded his vision.

Finally, he just threw the saxophone away, sat on the podium, his head in his hands, and cried. People thought the son was grieving his dead father, but only Cloe could understand what was really happening. Wiping her own misty eyes, she went to her husband and helped him back to his seat.

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Wiley buried Aaron beside his mother, under the old oak. He looked at the vacant spot in the family plot and felt mutiny rising like bile in his throat.

‘No, I will not fall prey to this deadly disease. I will fight. I will fight for John’s sake and for Cloe’s sake.’ Wiley silently promised himself.

His personal quest had started - a quest for freedom from Alzheimer’s deadly clutches.

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Soon, Wiley’s bedroom became the mission control centre. There were diet charts pinned to the walls, mental exercise regimens displayed on a makeshift notice board, and a glowing computer monitor in a corner.

Wiley read about the relationship between high cholesterol levels and Alzheimer’s and went on a crash diet programme. He found out about the possible advantages of brain stimulation and started doing crosswords and Sudoku every day, for hours at end. He surfed the internet all through the night, thanks to an Alzheimer-induced insomnia, looking for miraculous drugs and herbal cures.

Wiley got conned, he got robbed, and he even got sick because of the herbal trash he ordered online. He read a study linking coffee with a considerable reduction in the risk of dementia in late life, and increased his coffee intake to twenty or so cups a day. He was a possessed man, determined to fight a war which was probably already lost.

Wiley also started getting into trouble a lot. First, it was just altercations with the supermarket staff over the levels of nitrates in tinned food. Then he fought with his doctor as he thought the drugs weren’t having the requisite results. He also fought the assistant manager at his bank when he refused him a loan. Wiley badly needed this loan to order some medicinal herbs from India.

One day, when Cloe fought off his attempts to eat the gold fish in the living room aquarium, Wiley accused her of wishing him dead.

Wiley felt sanity dripping out of him, one drop at a time. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t plug the leakage. He knew he was getting paranoid. The insanity and paranoia made him listen in on Cloe’s telephonic conversations with the doctors and her friends. He perfectly understood the demons of the disease, but submitted to their dark power nevertheless.

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Things took a turn from bad to worse when Wiley made John an equal partner in his quest. He knew the increased hereditary risk of Alzheimer’s for African Americans and hence wanted to shield John at all costs. But John was just a kid, fond of fried chicken and pizza. He just couldn’t come to terms with an all-vegetable diet and herbal concoctions. Once Wiley enforced this diet, John started falling sick frequently.

Cloe watched it all. She knew Wiley was going to die one day soon. But she wasn’t ready to accept him taking along John. They started having fights. They tried counselling and had to abandon it when Wiley tried to strangle the therapist for calling him sick. They tried to discuss the issue, but reasoning became arguments, and the arguments got violent. Soon her colleagues at the hospital started talking about her blackened and swollen eyes.

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Thus passed five very long years. Wiley had entered the fifth stage of the disease. He started suffering from severe cognitive dysfunction. Once in the middle of a sentence, he forgot Cloe’s name. After repeatedly failing to recall it, he just placed his head in her lap and wept. But no matter how much his mental health declined, he still carried on with his quest.

Wiley still tried to walk a lot but had frequent falls and ultimately got his hip fractured. After recovery, he tried to enrol in an experimental drug trial but was rejected due to the advanced progression of the disease. He fought with the hospital staff where the trial was taking place. He also attacked a physician with his walking stick. The hospital authorities turned him in, and the Atlanta justice system took a long time turning him free. But the last blow was yet to come.

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A few days after Wiley’s release from prison, Cloe got back from the hospital after a tiring night shift. She unlocked the apartment door and suddenly smelt something oddly familiar. It was a smell from the past, from her college days. Then realization suddenly dawned upon her.

‘Oh my God! Who is smoking weed in my house?’

She stormed into their bedroom, where Wiley sat on the bed, smoking weed. He looked up at her through the fumes, with an almost stupid smile on his wretched face. She looked around for John and then found him mercifully alive, but lying unconscious amidst a large pool of vomit.

‘Why Wiley….why? He is your son, and you were making him smoke this shit?’ Her voice got hoarse with pent-up emotions.

‘Just try to understand. Marijuana can help prevent Alzheimer’s.’ Wiley offered weakly.

That day, for the sake of their only son, Cloe decided to commit Wiley to a psychiatric institution. She just couldn’t go on. She just couldn’t take it anymore.

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It was a rainy July afternoon. Cloe was away at the hospital finalizing arrangements for Wiley’s admission. He was alone at home with John, but Cloe trusted the sedatives.

It was probably thunder that woke up Wiley. After a few moments of disorientation, he got up and went to John’s room. The little boy was napping in the bed in which Aaron had died, while the old grandfather clock silently ticked away in the corner, ‘Tic toc…tic toc….tick toc!’

Wiley walked to the window. It was pouring outside. He watched the raindrops slithering down the glass panes. He tried to find meaning in their zigzag patterns but failed.

A sudden flash of lightning and the delayed drum roll of thunder broke Wiley’s trance. He looked back at John through the purple fog and smiled. He had found the way to end the vicious cycle of Alzheimer’s in his family and felt intoxicated with the power of realization.

He silently stepped forward and picked up a soft white pillow. He looked down at the sleeping child with gentle, fatherly love. Then he placed the pillow carefully but firmly over John’s face. The child struggled for a few minutes and then ceased moving. It was all quiet and peaceful. The quest was finally over.