Writer's Competition - Entry No 1

[Juan Aneiros]

Dial 'M' for Mother!
By Greg Harris

Mothers are supposed to be warm and affectionate people that would without hesitation sacrifice anything for their cherished children. The thought of putting your daughter through hell would leave any typical mother feeling very remorseful indeed, but for Sylvia and Doreen Underwood it is tragically a very different story.

Doreen Underwood, a middle-aged cleaner for the local school has lived with her mother Sylvia for her entire life now. Doreen has had to put up with an incomprehensible life of suffering and misery that anyone else would not have lived with, but the strength of Sylvia's grasp on Doreen was so powerful that all she could do was to give in without even a hope of standing up to her, and without even trying to escape.

Last week, when Doreen wanted to go out to a friends wedding she was continuously stopped when her mother reached for the hose and soaked her from head to toe ruining her dress every time she attempted to leave the house. There was even a time when Doreen wanted to get a pet dog but ended up with only the wild squirrels to keep her company when Sylvia threatened to poison it.

One morning Doreen was beginning to hate her mother so much that she was thinking of taking her own life in order to finally get some rest from all the chores, all the heartache, and all the unhappiness her mother gave to her. There was a knife on the kitchen table. One moment Doreen thought about all the times her mother told her she was ugly. Her hands were beginning to clasp the knife. The next moment she was remembering the time her mother refused to let her go into the garden because she wanted her to clean the toilette instead. The knife was gradually beginning to lift off the table but Doreen knew she wasn't strong enough to perform such a mutilating task on herself. That evening, when Doreen had finished her day at the school she went back home to get dinner prepared, but when she arrived was greeted by the family doctor.

'I'm afraid your mothers very ill. She has cancer and has only weeks to live'

Doreen didn't know what to do. Was she to be happy with a smile or without?

As days went by, Doreen was getting better while Sylvia was getting worse, but Doreen didn't show her happiness to anyone, and especially not to her mother.

All of a sudden while Doreen was preparing her mothers medicine she heard her name being screeched across the house by a frail aged voice. Her mother was calling.

'I want you to sit on the floor and watch me sleeping tonight. I want you to watch me suffer. If I wake up and find your not there I will kill you! You hear? I will find you and I will kill you!'

'Why are you so horrid to me mother? What did I do to upset you?'

'You were born, that's what you did!'
'When I die I want you to continue cleaning my false teeth for me. I want them spotless!'

Doreen just nodded while her mother let of one more hair-raising cry before she painfully passed away that very same minute. 'Spotless!' she said.

Sylvia had gone, and Doreen could finally start to enjoy life, as she should have been for all those lost years.

The very next day without any waiting around Doreen's mother was being prepared for burial, that evening at the local cemetery Doreen and the Vicar said what they had to say and Sylvia's body was lowered into the ground, covered with earth, and laid to rest. Everyone from the village was at the funeral, it was something of an event for them.

Before Doreen and the other guests made their way home, the Mortician was asking everyone if they had seen his mobile phone, because he had recently lost it after making a phone call and cant find it anywhere. No one had seen it, and Doreen went back home to begin her new life without her mothers wickedness shrouding her.

Three days later, Doreen heard the phone ring in the living room. She put her new dog down, and got up to answer it while wondering whom it could be. She picked up the phone and placed it towards her ear. At first everything was silent, but then a quiet voice emerged and someone's breathing could be heard on the other end. Doreen was getting scared and her heart was beginning to beat faster. The breathing on the other end of the phone and the racing of Doreen's heart seemed to get heavier simultaneously. Doreen thought she had a stalker on the phone and stood there with a clammed up body not knowing what to do. Suddenly Doreen let off a loud heart-stopping scream as she heard the voice of her mother telling her to clean her false teeth.

'Have you been cleaning my false teeth? I know your not! I am going to KILL you. When you least expected I will get you! I wont rest until I see you dead!'

Doreen slammed the phone on the floor and was walking around the room in circles shaking like a leaf, putting her hands up on her face wishing it all to be a dream, but she was not waking up. Her heart seemed to race every time she sore a shadow, or a gap in the curtains. If there was an owl hooting outside Doreen jumped and was dripping sweat like a pig that had been running round its pen all night long.

The next morning after a long night of sweating in the corner of her room Doreen rang the police, told them what had happened, and demanded that the coffin supposedly containing her dead mothers body was to be exhumed from the graveyard immediately so she could see if Sylvia was inside. The police didn't believe the phone calls were from her mother but gave in after much shouting and finally agreed to meat Doreen at the cemetery in the evening.

As Doreen approached the cemetery gates she felt an unsettling chill go down the back of her neck, and she didn't know weather digging up her mothers grave was the best thing to do. 'What if she wasn't there? How would I ever sleep at night then?' Doreen thought 'And maybe those phone calls were a dream, or a prank?'
None of these thoughts stopped Doreen from what she had to do, so she shook her head and went to her mothers grave where two policemen accompanied by the gravedigger where waiting. It was dark, and all the graves seemed to frighten her. She felt like she was staring in an old horror movie and wondered if she would ever be leaving the cemetery alive.

The gravedigger dug up the coffin and placed it on the grass besides the grave. While everyone was waiting in suspense the lid was slowly wrenched off the dirt-infested box and Doreen was slowly leaning towards her mothers body. Once the lid was finally off, Doreen smiled as she could see that her mother was peacefully resting inside. The smile quickly lifted of Doreen's cheeks when she could see something that shouldn't have been there. Sylvia wasn't the only presence. There was a mobile phone also resting inside the coffin next to her mothers ear.

The police were amazed at this revelation and one officer thought 'God, everyone has a mobile phone these days, even the dead!' But then remembered that the Mortician had been asking for his mobile phone at the funeral only a short while ago. Suddenly there was a gentle breeze passing the cemetery that even gave the gates a slight chilling feeling as they creaked back and forth. After one final glare at her mothers face, Doreen began to move away from the coffin, she slowly lifted herself further and further away, but then unexpectedly the skeletal remains of her mothers body leapt forward and grabbed Doreen's neck, while saying

'I told you I would get you, I told you I would kill you!'

The next thing Doreen saw when she finally regained consciousness were the walls of the hospital and a cast surrounding her neck.

Was that real? Did it happen? Or was it just a vivid dream, a night terror conjured up by Doreen's fear of her mother, her fears of her coming back from the grave to kill her.

The dead policemen and the dead gravedigger resting in the hospital morgue seemed to prove otherwise. It seems that Sylvia's final gift of terror for Doreen was a life of fear. A life of worrying what was going to happen next!


THE END