Free Dead Scared by Tommy Donbavand

CHAPTER 1
Gary
    I was with my mum when she died. Sitting at the side of her hospital bed with the rest of my family – the very same hospital she used to work in. We took turns holding her hand as we watched the blips on her heart and oxygen monitors slowly reducing. Then, with one final, exaggerated breath – almost a last gasp at clinging on to life – she was gone. The lines on the screen were all flat. And the only thing I could think about, after all these months of failing chemotherapy sessions, of watching her grow weaker and weaker as the cancer ate away at her, was that the first dead body I’d ever seen was my own mum’s.
    The next time I saw my mum, she was in her coffin. It was the morning of her funeral. I had a new suit and stood patiently while my sister tacked up the slightly-too-long trouser legs before my older brother drove me up to the funeral home. He’d been in to visit earlier in the week, but I couldn’t bear to go with him. I can’t say why. Too upset? Too scared? Who knows? What I did know was that this was my last chance to see her face, so I pushed away the gnawing sensation in my stomach and sat silently in the passenger seat as Ben parked the car.
    â€œToby,” he said, “she’s… she’s not how you remember her.”
    â€œWhat do you mean?”
    â€œMum doesn’t look like Mum any more. The undertaker said it’s because the muscles in your face relax after… you know… so she looks a little different.”
    I felt like jumping out of the car and runningaway there and then. This shouldn’t be happening to me. I was only fifteen. Kids don’t lose one of their parents while they’re still teenagers. Not when they still need them so much. That’s all stuff that’s supposed to happen way off in the future. The gnawing in my stomach quickly returned.
    Ben kept his hand on my shoulder right up until I stepped into the room. And there it was: a polished wooden coffin with the body of my mum inside. I realised that I was trembling. Nervous to be alone with my own mother.
    The funeral director had dressed my mum in a pale blue outfit, like a kind of nightdress. And he’d tied a white ribbon in her hair. That made me smile. He didn’t have to do that. It was kind.
    Ben was right. My mum didn’t look quite like herself, but nothing near as different as I had been expecting. I backed away from the coffin and stood at the far end of the room so that I could just see her profile rising up above thewooden casket. That was better. Now she looked like my mum again. And that’s when I lost it.
    Everything just hit me at once. All the memories, the happy times – and the bad ones. If there was one thing you could say about my mum it’s that she had quite a temper. When we fell out, we really fell out. The arguments could last for days. But we always made up. She was my mum, after all.
    I suddenly wanted to say sorry for everything I’d ever done to upset or annoy her. All the stupid stuff like staying out all night and not calling, or throwing eggs at our old headteacher’s house at Halloween. Pointless, selfish stuff that I’d done thinking that she’d always be there to clean up the mess for me. That she’d be there for her patients at the hospital. That she’d be there forever.
    Tears were streaming down my face now. I reached into my pocket for the tissues my sister had given me and pulled out a photograph along with them. It was a snap of me and my mumbackstage at last year’s school play. I’d been given the lead part and would never forget how, as the curtain rose, I instantly spotted my mum and dad sitting in the middle of the audience. My mum waved to me, even though she knew I couldn’t wave back. They’d been so proud of me that night.
    Stepping back up to the coffin, I tucked the photograph into my mum’s hand, kissed her ice-cold cheek and