Winner Takes All | Previous Challenge Entry

how it works

TITLE: Winner Takes All | Previous Challenge Entry
By Marlene Bonney
09/05/16
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The thief hones his craft into a fine art, attacking purposely those who are the most vulnerable. Some recognize him for the deranged enemy he is; others just try to survive his attacks. As one of his victims, I acknowledge his presence, but do not want to give in to his demands. Like a soldier going into battle, I arm myself with deflective armor to ward off his—sometimes, daily—advances. He thinks he will win in the end, but his diabolical plots will end up having the opposite effect. . .

Over the years, we have declared a truce, of sorts. I agree to recognize him for who he is, a concession that protects me from his more insidious acts. Nonetheless, as I watch his unscrupulous ambushes on my friends and family, I vow again not to be taken unaware.

Our first meeting is accidental on my part, purposely underhanded on his. I am only 50 years old, enjoying a full and satisfying life without him, thank-you-very-much. But time has a way of passing, and we act like strangers in the night at first. It is a cunning plot, beginning with my annual physical exam at the doctor’s office.

“Dr., I just can’t seem to shed these extra pounds. I’ve tried weight-loss programs, exercise, dieting and eating less, but nothing works!”

“This inevitably happens to all of us, my dear, sneaking up when we least expect it. You aren’t overweight, so don’t worry about it. Your metabolism is just naturally slowing down.”

I am supposed to be satisfied with this, but I refuse to accept what she is telling me in a roundabout way—I am getting older. That chance encounter with him is all it takes, an unhealthy relationship building with each year that passes. He’s shifty, I’ll give him that. His schemes to maim me into submission are as varied and cunning as a wolf’s loitering at a sheep pen’s gate. Slinging arrows like a trained marksman, he reveals physical flaws and deteriorations with glaring accuracy through the bright lights above my bathroom mirror. A grey hair here, a sagging chin there, brown spots on my skin erupting out of nowhere. Little crease lines deepen into widening and cavernous grooves my grandchildren like to trace with their little fingers. My beautician becomes less adept at concealing my thinning hair’s bald spots.

Another decade speeds by like a berserk race car. My head has more white hair than my natural color of brown. My enemy introduces me to Arthur Itis, I develop painful bunions attached to my toes like a warty toad, and my sagging neck resembles that of a turkey’s—to the delight of my great-granddaughter’s penchant to swinging its flaps back and forth to nursery rhyme chanting. My thinning skin produces easier bruising, I contract mysterious allergies, and my bone-on-bone knees have artificial replacements. And I see him grinning behind the stage curtain of my life. I want to shake my fists at him, but my joints will not cooperate, and my cataract-covered eyes will not focus enough to see him clearly, anyway.

He zaps me again in another five years, like a wicked stepmother waving her crafty magic wand—so deviously I don’t notice at first. Acid Reflux appears daily. Dishes in my kitchen cupboard are higher and out of my reach, my shortening height taking another hit, and I can’t remember what happened yesterday to record in my Journal today.

I have been living almost a century now and he has his way more than not. My voice is weak and lower pitched, my bones are fragile, and Mr. Alzx Heimer has paid me some visits. My address book has more doctors’ phone numbers than friends who are still living, several white-outs/erasures of ones who have departed this earth. Everything sags, and what doesn’t—isn’t. My face resembles a basset hound one day, and goes down in The Guinness Book of Records as most often read by a fortune teller the next. I’ve seen it all, done it all, and heard it all, but can’t remember most of it.

Old Age thinks he has won, claiming victory over my decrepit mind and body. But I smile at him victoriously with my watering eyes as my throat rattles under his chokehold while I enter heaven’s gates with a new body he cannot touch.

If it wasn’t for him, I could not have arrived here, and for that I thank him.

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