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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/nazisharks on 2024-10-28 11:54:58+00:00.
One of the weirder things I fantasize about is handling the deaths of people I care about. Like, when one of my aunts was very ill, I imagined the extremely moving eulogy I could deliver. I would talk about the meaning she had in our lives, what made her special and unique, and everyone would cry and laugh.
In a way I hate that I do this because I don’t want these people to die. But there’s a chance they will. I guess I want to be prepared so I can help others handle the deaths too. I can be that comfort for everyone in those times and I feel a little pride in that.
When I got with my girlfriend Tracie, I imagined being a support to her when her grandfather passed away. She was close to him. Without a father in her life, he had brought that stability. He was now in his eightes, having a lot of trouble with his heart, and everyday there was a sense of ‘Today could be the day.’
I didn’t want anything to happen to him. I hoped he’d live another decade if possible. Yet I thought a lot about the ways in which I could be there to get her through it when he did. It’s kind of a hero fantasy. It’s also kind of a planning fantasy. Like when you imagine how you’d escape a building if a crazed shooter showed up. You imagine the places you’d hide, exits you’d take. Or you think about how you’d sneak and conceal your identity to steal something you want to steal from a store or home.
All of my fantasizing put me in a good place to jump into action when we got the news that Grandpa Terry was on his deathbed. It was a matter of days. He was coming in and out of consciousness. During his lucid moments he was talking and seemed in good spirits, they said.
I barely knew Grandpa Terry. He’d been sick for years before I got with Tracie. She introduced me to him when we drove upstate once. He was a nice man. He still smoked cigars. He used to work in the jukebox business. Before he met Tracie’s grandmother, he used to live with two women. He also claimed he got in a fist-fight with Harry Belafonte. So Grandpa Terry was cool from what I saw. But I must’ve been just background noise to him, some guy dating his granddaughter for 3 months.
When we got to the hospital, the fifth floor where they put folks who are expected to die, we found Tracie’s entire family had gathered. Some I’d met and some had come from all over the country to give their farewell.Bringing in coffee pots and donuts to stay as long as they needed to stay, they’d practically taken over the sitting room on the floor
Tracie asked her mother what was going on. They were speaking in whispers, but I overheard bits, enough to get the idea: he had spoken to everyone as a group and now just wanted some peace. He had had the nurse bring his brother in for a one-on-one chat and his oldest daughter. That was it. Everyone had to wait outside ever since.
I was stroking Tracie’s hair and letting her talk about her feelings when the nurse stepped out again. As she walked down the hallway, every family member’s head raised or swiveled to her as if wondering if they would be the chosen one to receive Grandpa Terry’s last words. She walked past them all to me and Tracie. I tapped Tracie gently and smiled at her. But the nurse looked at me and said, “He wants to talk to you.”
I explained to her that I wasn’t family and she had me mixed up with someone else. Tracie was readily agreeing with me and looking around for who I could possibly have been mistaken for.
“You’re Douglas?” the nurse asked. When she saw me nod she added, “Come along.”
I followed her sure that she was making a mistake and I would have to come awkwardly walking back out in a few seconds. I saw the family members staring at me with incredulity and maybe resentment. If it wasn’t a mistake, then I assumed I would be getting threatened with haunting if I didn’t treat Tracie right.
The nurse opened the door slightly, enough to allow me to squeeze in, then entered behind me shutting the door. Inside, Grandpa Terry was propped up in bed wearing a fancy, red smoking jacket. He had a strange look about him. His skin seemed stiff and his eyes an empty black. He was like a wax figure of himself or ventriloquist’s dummy. His feet stuck straight up in their hard-soled slippers. Other than his eyes and his mouth, his body didn’t move. It was just dressed and propped there.
“Douglas,” he said in clear but weakened voice, “have a seat.”
Well, now I knew it was me he wanted, at least.
“Douglas, I’ve been wanting to talk to you about your ASMR videos.”
Of all the things he could have said to me at that moment, that wasn’t even on the radar. For one, I don’t talk about my ASMR videos. I didn’t want anybody knowing. I hadn’t even told Tracie or my friends. So how did he know about them? Two, how did this old man who still had a landline phone and used a typewriter to send letters know about ASMR videos at all?
“Yes sir,” was what I managed to say.
“They make me feel strange things, Douglas.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“Your ASMR videos make me feel strange things, Douglas. Things I’m not supposed to feel. I’m scared of these strange things I’m feeling watching your videos, Douglas.”
I looked over to the nurse to see if she would intervene or explain. The nurse stood impassively in the corner of the room with a towel over one arm. She resembled more a bathroom attendant. Her presence unnerved me further.
“Yes, I talked to the nurse about ASMR and she has told me that I am supposed to feel a pleasant tingling sensation that starts at my scalp. When I watch your ASMR videos, I don’t feel a pleasant tingling sensation that starts at my scalp. When I watch your ASMR videos, I feel strange things I can’t explain or describe. Like that feeling when you say a word so many times it doesn’t sound like the right word anymore, but about everything. Worse and stranger. These are strange things, Douglas, strange things to feel. They make me afraid.”
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“I’m not supposed to feel these strange things watching your videos, Douglas. I’m not supposed to feel these strange things ever, I don’t think. I’m not supposed to have these feelings.
“Your ASMR videos make me remember things I haven’t remembered since I was a little boy. It has been so long since I remembered these things. I only know they’re memories because it’s all so familiar. If they aren’t memories, how can it feel like I’ve been there? If they aren’t memories, how are these places in my head? These places and things I remember give me those strange feelings, Douglas.”
The nurse still stood with the towel saying nothing. I didn’t like the things Grandpa was saying and I didn’t like that I had no support in this room from the only professional.
“I don’t think I can help you, sir,” I answered. “Maybe just watch someone else’s videos?”
“No, you did something in those videos to make me feel strange things. Why? What did you do?”
I stood up to leave. I felt at this point I should get the family involved. I was only agitating a poor, dying man. This man had fist-fought Harry Belafonte, he shouldn’t be arguing with me about ASMR videos.
“I need to go further in,” he said. “Your videos take me part of the way, to where I’m slipping between, a bit awake and a bit asleep. That’s when these memories and strange feelings come down. It’s sudden. Like my head nodding as I’m falling asleep. Just like when my head nods, it makes me snap back out. I lose it. It’s just a hazy impression. I need to go further in, Douglas. I don’t have much longer. If I die now… If I die without going in… I need you to do your ASMR to help me.”
There was a knock on the door. I heard Tracie asking, “Is everything okay in there?”
The nurse sprang like a beartrap, darting across the twelve feet or so to the door and announced, “Everything is fine, ma’am, please don’t disturb the patient any further.”
I heard a stifled sob, I think, but there were no further ‘disturbances.’ The nurse remained at the door, effectively blocking me if I tried to escape.
“I can show you my other videos, sure, but wouldn’t you rather spend your last moments with your family? They’re out there–”
“I know, Douglas, I know,” he said in an agonized voice. “But I can’t do that until I understand.”
I pulled out my phone and was getting YouTube up when he said, “Come over here and pretend you’re applying makeup on me. There’s a makeup kit in the drawer there, the nurse got it.”
I walked over to the stand he was pointing out. In the drawer, I found a compact with some different eye shadow colors, foundation in a few skin tones, blush and bronze, two different sizes of brush, some eyebrow pencils, mascara and lipstick in the shade ‘pina colada.’
“Take me further in, Douglas,” Grandpa Terry said.
I felt really weird about this. I felt trapped because it seemed like this was a man’s dying wish. But it’s like he had this planned. How did he know I would even be here? Tracie asked me at the last minute. She said she had intended to go with her sister. How long had he been waiting for this? Plus he was an old man who had done manly stuff all his life. I didn’t want to pretend to apply makeup on him. It was weird.
“Maybe I should just do a fake eye exam or–”
“Just bring that stuff over here, set it on my belly and start,” he said, his patience clearly wearing thin.
I did as he asked, loading up the items and setting them gently on the old man’s smoking jacket. I looked over to the nurse at the door to see if she was watc...
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