Oldage - Blog Posts

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Excerpt #1: The Waiting Room

    Seated in the doctor’s office I peeked over my magazine, causing the collage of perfume bottles to distort until they resembled vague, pastel coloured light-bulbs clustered at the brim of my vision. Across me slouched a woman with a house shaped cage on her lap, a string of drool snailing down her chin as she snored. I made a face at her green-cheeked conure as it inched down its tightrope towards me, bobbing its head. The middle-aged man a few seats down, his cowboy hat flipped over his eyes, fanned himself with a lung disease brochure even though the air conditioning had been set to blast. My eyes followed their thought bubbles as they bounced off the oily walls and popped. The severed letters puffed up to the ceiling in a cloud of confetti, mundane details they’d already forgotten. The parakeet’s thoughts were less entertaining, a string of staccatos that fizzled out before they could even form. 

     When the secretary, a bullnecked woman with streaked green hair grated down to a pixie cut, waved her faux quill pen at me, I placed my magazine back on the rack and followed her down a hallway tiled with domino doors. She kept glancing back to confirm I was still on her heels and hadn’t wandered off like a sneaky child. Once we reached my cubicle she finally left me alone, her black heels clacking against the shiny floor as she trotted off. I crunched down on the paper spread out over the bed, dizzy from the reek of iodoform. Fortunately the doctor arrived quickly, tapping a clipboard against his palm as he asked why I’d come. I lied that my back had been killing me and we both shrugged and nodded at the hardships of old age.