#534 Torching the Dusties- Margaret Atwood
This is kind of a morbid story. Inside an assisted living
home, Ambrosia Manner, Wilma suffers with Charles Bonnet’s Syndrome, a
condition with very lively hallucinations. Her manifestations are benign
however, and all she sees are little people climbing around her things.
One day there appears outside her window a protest of people
wearing baby masks and signs saying “Our Turn.”
“Our Turn is a movement, it’s international, it appears
aimed at clearing away what one of the demonstrators refers to as ‘the
parasitic dead wood at the top’ and another one terms ‘the dustballs under the
bed.”
Old age homes across the world are being attacked and burned
to the ground, alleviating the world of an aging population that is selfishly
draining resources when they should acknowledge that their time has come. At
Ambrosia Manner, they have surrounded the compound, removed the staff and plan
on starving them out. When it seems like they plan on escalating the action to
arson, Wilma and Tobias head for an adjoining structure hoping to avoid the
attack. The Manner burns with them looking on.
Whether this happens for real or whether it’s a
manifestation of her Syndrome, it's still pretty morbid. This is the last of this
collection. I enjoyed some of it. There being a majority of stories about woman
in the advanced stages of their lives, I didn’t find much to connect with
personally. I’m not sure I see why the subtitle of this collection calls them
“nine wicked tales.”
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