“How could you think of doing such a thing?”
Mildred was appalled that her son, Percy, had suggested that she should move into a care home and had taken her to see one, much against her will. At 72, she was perfectly compos mentis. After all, she was still able to code computer programs, having run her own successful IT business since she was thirty years old. The profits had enabled her to buy an enormous country house in a sought-after part of the county and she was now very well-provided for by her handsome pension plan. She was certainly in no mood to leave her own home.
Her son, on the other hand, was a feckless sponger, a confirmed bachelor who had been living off his mother since the day he was born. He had failed at whatever he had turned his hand to. And she was damned sure he was going to fail at dumping her in a care home.
“You’ll love it here,” he wheedled as he showed her round the E.G. Sunset Home for the Elderly, “and I’ll visit you regularly, don’t worry.”
“What does the E.G. stand for? Elephants’ Graveyard?” she snapped.
“No mother, it stands for European Group. The firm runs a number of such homes around the county as well as abroad.”
“But just look at the people in here! Talk about dried arrangements! I’m not gaga, thank you very much, and have no intention of going along with your idea and that’s that!”
So, Percy had no option but to drive his mother back home to her country pile. Once she got there, Mildred set about dealing with the ‘Percy problem’. It was obvious to her that his intention all along had been to shuffle her out of the way so that he could then apply for power of attorney on the grounds that his mother was no longer capable of coping with her affairs. The cheek of the man!
“Well, we’ll see about that,” fumed Mildred. As her entire career had been in IT, in no time at all she had hacked into various bank accounts belonging to people that neither she nor Percy knew and siphoned off copious amounts of their money into the account that she had set up for Percy’s allowance years before. She made it look as if those people had invested in a Ponzi scheme run by her son. She also made sure that the digital trail would lead back to Percy’s computer.
Within a week, the cyber police had hunted Percy down and hauled him off to the police cells where he was held on remand until his case came up. His ‘shocked’ mother refused to pay for an expensive lawyer for her wayward son. Percy had to make do with a wet-behind-the-ears pro bono junior lawyer who turned out to be as inept as his client, who was eventually sentenced to 10 years in prison for robbery and fraud.
“Don’t worry,” smiled Mildred at the end of the trial, “I’ll visit you regularly.”
Tony Dawson is an English writer living in Seville. He took up writing during the pandemic and has since published about a hundred poems both in print and online in the USA, the UK and Australia. He has recently published three small collections of poetry: Afterthoughts ISBN 9788119 228348, Musings ISBN 97819115 819666 and Reflections in a Dirty Mirror ISBN 9781915819949 as well as a selection of flash fiction, Curiouser and Curiouser ISBN 9788119 654932.
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