Nursing Home of Horrors

My father always told me that I was the result of a very, very lucky sperm. That any other sperm would have resulted in a very different child. I used to think he was just talking nonsense, but after he died, I learned just how much nonsense it was. Turns out, he had been a very evil person, and when he died, his hell was waiting for him. <br><br>He was put in the Nursing Home of Horrors. <br><br>Oh, from the outside, it looked like any other nursing home. The three story building was not particularly large, yet looked big enough to hold a thousand bedridden seniors. It had an elevator, and a grand staircase leading to the second floor, and a door for the stairs to the third floor. The right side was offices, the left was the dining room. <br><br>The very first thing my father noticed when he came in were the people. They looked...off. Not demonic, but not normal, either. Of course, the first person he met, the woman who gave him a tour of the place, was perfectly normal. <br><br>"Well," she said, "I know you're not a good person. That's how you end up here. We can't be too hard on you, however, because we also have the good people here. You'll have three meals a day, and snacks in your room. And your room, by the way, is on the third floor, room 301."<br><br>"Room 301?" he repeated. "Isn't that awfully close to room 314?"<br><br>"You don't need to worry about room 314, Mr. Smith. Now, let's go onto the dining room, shall we?"<br><br>"Dining room?"<br><br>"Yes. You'll be eating here for the next fifty years, after all, so you should probably be familiar with it."<br><br>"Fifty *years*? How long do you people live?"<br><br>"Oh, forever. You'll be here for a very long time, Mr. Smith. Let me explain how this place works. You see, the care­tak­ers, like myself, don't age. We are immor­tal. And so are you. You will never again be sick, or injured, or even tired. You will never age. And you will never die. Except you will. <br><br>"You'll be eating here for the next fifty years or so. Maybe a little longer, maybe a little less. You'll start with three meals a day. Some of them will be good, most of them will be bad. We will try to tailor your meals to what you would not like. <br><br>"After that fifty or so years, you'll stop eating. That is, you won't be *able* to eat. We will continue to feed you, but you will throw up. Don't worry, we have robed assigned to clean up after you, and your room will be nice and warm, to help with the nausea. After another fifty or so years, you will be moved to a different room, one that you can't leave. And then...then it will get really bad. <br><br>"After ten years in that room, you will be moved to another. In that room, you will have nothing. Water, a bed, and a toilet. Nothing else, for the next fifty years. And then...well, then it will get really, really bad. You'll stay there for another fifty years or so, and then...and then you will move again. <br><br>"After that, you will start going back through the rooms. Some of you lucky ones will end up back in your first rooms, eating and being taken care of. Some of you will not be so lucky, and will end up in even worse rooms. But no matter what, it will take a thousand years for you to get back where you started. <br><br>"Now, would you like to see the game room?"<br><br>"No, thank you. I think I'll just go to my room, if you don't mind."<br><br>"Oh, not at all, Mr. Smith. If you'll follow me...?"<br><br>"I know where it is."<br><br>My father turned around and walked down the hallway, to the stairs, and up them to the second floor. He continued down the hallway, to the door blocking the stairs to the third floor. <br><br>"I'm sorry, sir, but you can't go up there just yet."<br><br>"Oh, I'm sorry," he said. "I forgot. *Tell* me, where is my room?"<br><br>"Up the stairs, sir, third door on your right," she replied, emphasizing his mistake. <br><br>My father nodded and trudged up the stairs. <br><br>And there, on the third floor, he stayed. <br><br>For ten years, he stayed in that room, with a window and a chair and a table and a bookshelf and a television. And good food, three times a day. And a private bathroom. <br><br>After ten years, they took him away, to the dining room. <br><br>He ate, and he ate, and he ate, and yet he was always hungry. He was so hungry, in fact, that he would eat anything. He would eat spoiled food, rotted food, moldy food. He would eat foods that were raw. He would eat foods that were burnt. He would eat anything, no matter what it was. <br><br>And yet, he was always hungry. <br><br>After another ten years, they moved him to a smaller room. It was almost identical to his first room, except there was only a Murphy bed. That Murphy bed was a good thing, too. It hid the bloodstains on the carpet. <br><br>You see, my father had to open up his own veins to feed himself. He would bleed, and he would drink his own blood, and he would survive. He was hungry for the rest of his new life. <br><br>I never visited him, but from what the caretaker said, he went downhill fast. He stopped moving, he stopped talking. He would just sit, on his bed, staring at the wall. He'd eat sometimes, but not often. He'd lick his arms, where he'd scratched himself, trying to get to the blood. <br><br>He was gone, mentally and almost physically, after only a year. His spirit remained, but it was broken. <br><br>The caretaker only told me all this a few weeks ago. I was amazed. Fifty years until the first stage of his new life was over. Fifty more years until the second stage was over. And he'd been gone, mentally, for almost twenty years. <br><br>But he still had thirty years until he'd be moved to the next room. Thirty years alone, in pain, starving. <br><br>After that, who knows? A thousand years of hell, of suffering, of bad food and no food, of being alone. <br><br>But he would never actually be alone. <br><br>The caretaker told me that there was one resident who had been there longer than any other, who had gone through the entire cycle already, and had ended up...different. <br><br>She lived in room 314.