Title: “The Mother Instinct”
Series: Monsters
Season: 1
Year: 1989
Writer(s): D. Emerson Smith
Storyline: A woman who is in a wheelchair is feeding and talking to her plants in the conservatory when her daughter comes to visit with her no-good husband, who appears to be violent towards her. Yeah, I can see where this is going already. Sorry, sorry. Nelson has come looking for money, but the mother refuses. She’s tired of bailing out this lowlife gambler, and when he threatens her daughter she jumps out of her wheelchair and pins the guy to the wall. Amazed, her daughter asks how? And she tells her it’s the juice of her melons (ooer!) that she drinks, the enzymes in the mixture rejuvenate the body, but only for a short while. When he sees firsthand the effect, wheels begin to turn in Nelson’s greedy little mind; golden, sparkly wheels as he sees what money could be made from such a venture.
He offers to go into business with his wife’s mother, but she turns him down flat. He’s not done yet though. If she won’t team up with him he’ll steal the melons himself and make the juice, then he won’t have to share the profits with anyone. His wife is of course reluctant, but she’s weak and easily led, and in awe of her horrible husband, and so she helps him. In the conservatory as they try to harvest the melons something comes alive though, and starts attacking them, and they barely get out alive. The next morning, her mother shows her what she calls giant bloodworms her father brought back from the Amazon (no, nothing to do with Bezos!) which she says can change any plant they interact with. It's not the melons that are special - without the bloodworms they’re nothing - it’s the worms themselves. She foresees all sorts of medical advances due to them, but guess who’s been listening in at the door?
So the next night he steals two of the worms - a breeding pair - and tells his wife he no longer needs her. The mother is there though, and gloats as she tells him she knew he was listening; she set it all up so he would steal the two worms. Unfortunately, he’s not just stealing two worms, he’s stealing two children, and their mother might have something to say about that. A huge bloodworm rears up, three or four times his size, and takes him out. That’s the end of him and his wife is free of the bastard. As her mother warned him, “don’t ever mess with the mother instinct!”
Comments: Okay well I wasn’t quite right (I assumed the plants were going to come to life and kill the guy to protect the mother) but it was close. Good twist though, and great to see the arsehole getting his comeuppance. Good story, not totally predictable, good ending.
Rating: A+
__________________
Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018
|