Hours after the saint had left, the woman cowered on her bed. As the evening had progressed and she could no longer bear to hear the sound from her walls, she had stopped listening to them and stayed away. But now those sounds stalked her- they had come out from the walls and shadowed her every move!! They clung to her like a second skin and they wouldn’t leave her alone. And when she thought she couldn’t take it anymore, it all stopped. She waited for the screaming and the sobbing to start again, but it didn’t, and then slumped back on the pillow, relieved.
The clock downstairs chimed eleven times.
“Mama.”
That soft little word stopped her beating heart for a moment. No, no, it couldn’t be happening, this only happens in serials and books. Take a deep breath. Just close your eyes and pretend it didn’t happen.
But the stone cold palm on her forehead felt so real.
“Open your eyes, Mama, I am not going to hurt you. Be a good Mama and sit up.”
She had to obey, she had to be a good Mama, and there stood her eleven year old girl in her short frock, looking at her with her big brown eyes.
“I finally did become a good girl, Mama. Finally I wasn’t a burden to anyone.”
The girl sat in her Mama’s lap, and the woman could feel the weight of dead stone.
“But you are being such a bad Mama to my brothers. Have you forgotten what you always taught me?”
What was this girl saying to her?
“You are sinning against them, Mama. You are being so selfish.”
Red-hot anger boiled in the woman’s mind, momentarily eclipsing the cold fear in her gut. SHE was being selfish? She had sacrificed all joys that life had to offer for those stupid sons, and now they could not even thank her for it, let alone allow her to live peacefully. They had taken over her house and took her money and jewellery; they would not let her sleep at night while they had their rowdy parties; their fat wives would stuff themselves with sweets and wouldn’t make dinner for her and make false complaints to their even fatter husba-
“Mama, do you think it is their fault? You give nothing to them now, you do nothing for them. You are just a burden, one that’s sucking away their money and all their resources.” The cold tug on her plait brought her wandering mind back to her room with the dead girl, and the fear came rushing back like the waves on a shore. Why had this girl returned? Was she going to kill her?
“I am here to make u a good Mama. I am going to teach you what you forgot.”
Yes, the girl had come back as a ghost to kill her painfully. The woman tried so hard to scream. But as hard as she tried to shout and call for help, no sound came from her throat. She pushed and pushed, but to no avail, the dead girl wouldn’t even budge from her lap.
“Are you trying to call your sons? They won’t come, Mama, they won’t listen to what you say anyway. Nobody listens to a bad woman.”
Tears streamed down the woman’s cheeks- is this how her life would end? Would the girl tear her body off limb by limb, would she grow sharp nails and shred her stomach to ribbons? The girl did not seem to see those tears.
“Why are you being so stubborn? Why don’t you want to change? Even now you are being selfish, Mama. You are thinking about yourself only. It is not going to have good results. Let me show you.”
The ethereal ghost pressed a small palm to her Mama’s forehead.
The room disappeared in a whirlwind of colours and the old woman found herself travelling through a blurry of images- images where she saw her strength waning and her health worsening. Her face looked haggard and her hair grew wispy and lank as the days flashed by. Her daughters-in-law yelled at her and hit her, her granddaughters abused her, her sons ignored her. Suddenly she was lying in her bed, having lost the inability to walk ever again. She constantly called for someone to come to her bed, her stomach rumbled for food and her parched throat begged for water, but they never came. She saw her own self lying on the same bed as she had been sitting a few moments ago, only this time she was lying on the bed, dead. They would still not come, and her body had rotted in places and smelled worse than death, and maggots had started laying eggs in a festering wound on her cheek---
“No, no , please God, no..”, the girl’s mother sobbed hopelessly, her body shaking with despair. She wished for someone, anyone to rip away that image from the walls of her skull. Realisation set in that this was what the future had in store for her. Her end would be in a dark room, she would die a horrible death, all alone, with no one at her side.
“This is what happens to selfish people, Mama.”
The girl lovingly stroked her Mama’s hair and held her tear streaked face between her hands.
“Come with me, Mama, there is a way to be good. I saw it and I will show you too.”
The little girl held her mother’s hand and led the woman out into the cold dark night, past the locked doors and the sleeping family.
THE NEXT DAY-
The entire village stood by the rock beside the well. The cold stony body of the old woman who lived in the house facing the well lay on the rock. She had died from the cold in the night. On her face was a small smile.
As the entire village stood and gossiped, the sons of the woman in question stood on the balcony facing the well.
“Huh. Good riddance to bad rubbish!”
“I was getting sick paying for her medicines and food!”
“Thank God we didn’t have to call a doctor- she made it all the more easy for us. But the funeral still has to be taken care of.”
“Just dump the body for all you care! I am pretty glad that we all get her jewellery now! I want the diamond set for my wife!”
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