LITMIR.BIZ

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response.

      

      At home it was getting late and the darkness had already begun filtering through the sky. Mozart had decided to eat which eased my worry slightly as his instinct was usually accurate. I plucked a book from the shelf–it was a book about plants. But, much though I loved flora, I soon fell asleep.

      I woke to a fast squawking ring from the telephone that startled me.

      ‘Hello, Barretts’ residence…’

      ‘Barrett? I thought your name was Beam?’

      ‘It is Beam. Who is this?’

      ‘Well who is this? Are you having an identity crisis?’ It was Sally-Anne, I could tell.

      ‘No, no, not at all, I’m house sitting.’ I didn’t want her to think I was married with a family.

      ‘I’m joking. I gathered you weren’t from here, you don’t exactly fit in. It’s Sally-Anne, by the way.’

      ‘Yes, I know. I mean, I thought so.’

      ‘So, you’re in then.’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘When do you leave?’

      ‘The day after tomorrow.’

      ‘So I guess we’re in a bit of a hurry.’

      ‘I guess so.’

      ‘I’ll come round. Can you wait twenty-six minutes?’

      ‘Yes. Why twenty-six?’ But she had already hung up. What a bewitching woman. I pondered on the thought of such an entity being in my space, my comfy universe with Mozart and what it would feel like to have that ruptured. To tell you the truth, I couldn’t wait. I jumped up to bathe, put a bottle of wine in the fridge and then lit candles. I wanted to wash the sheets from last night but I didn’t want to get myself a reputation. The record began to turn and the latch released.

      

      Sally-Anne wore a long purple silk dress, her creamy arms sat in a heart-shaped clutch in her hands. I poured her wine and she enchanted me more with her cheekiness. She wasn’t like any other woman I had ever met; within moments her feet slipped naked from her heels and began squeezing my calves.

      ‘I brought you a present,’ she said. ‘Well, it’s more for Mozart, really. Where is that chap, anyway?’ she asked innocently.

      ‘I don’t know, but I’m sure if you have a gift for him he’d like to see it.’ I jumped up and called the dog’s name. ‘Mo! Mo!’ Nothing. ‘He sometimes curls up in the oddest of places; wherever there’s an inch of warmth, he’s usually snuggled up there.’ I started to climb the house, I wasn’t really in the mood for playing hide and seek with Mozart but I didn’t want to disappoint Sally-Anne. I called him in the bedrooms, searched on the beds, in the laundry baskets, under the radiator and, after finding nothing, climbed up the next set of stairs. This floor was home to the master bedroom, Mrs Barrett’s sewing room and the door to the attic. I peered for him in both rooms, he would normally come to a call.

      But while I was searching, a vile smell started to lurk up the staircase. I peered down, it was a burning smell, bitter and it hit the back of my throat. A fire! I rushed down the stairs in a panic, ‘Sally-Anne, are you okay?’ The smoke flooded up the stairs in a dark groggy fog, ‘Sally-Anne, have you got Mozart?’ As I reached the bottom of the stairs I was hit by a wall of black swirling smoke, thick like a screen of charcoal. I began to cough in deep chesty whoops.

      ‘Jim! Help! Help me!’ came a distant voice. It was Sally-Anne calling from the front room. ‘Jim! Please, come quick!’

      I couldn’t see what with all the smog so I got low on all fours and clambered round searching for Sally-Anne. I still couldn’t hear Mozart so I had to hope his instinct led him away from the house at the first sign of danger.

      ‘Sally-Anne, I’m coming, cry again if you can hear me so I can reach you faster. I can’t see.’

      ‘I’m in here, hurry!’ she shouted.

      I coughed in splutters as I concentrated the best I could. Damn candles, I thought as I reached the corner of the front room doorframe. I crawled as fast as possible towards the settee but was hit by the sound of licking flames from the fireplace, the crackling sound pounded my eardrums. I stayed low and found Sally’s feet. I grasped them with my hands and inched my way up her ankles and calves in short sharp grasps so as to not be inappropriate. ‘I’m here, I’m here, I’m here, don’t panic.’ I pulled myself up and reached her hands, her wrists, her arms, her shoulders. I held her close, lifted her into my arms like a child, turned with my back to the window and plummeted onto the front lawn, through the window.

      I threw her off me and turned over to tend to her, picking fragments of glass away from us. But, to my horror, she was not the same woman! Instead of almond-shaped petals, her eyes were sunken droopy rags over glassy black marbles. Her skin, once creamy and radiant, was saggy and wrinkled and covered in age spots. Her dress, not purple silk, but a shabby dirty nightdress, her hair, tufted, mangled and snowy. I gave her to the grass in terror and ran back into the flaming house to find Sally-Anne. I used my coat as a barricade as I went in but was trapped immediately by a barricade of screaming flames. I can remember no more.

      

      ‘Mr Beam, you have been very brave to have suffered this, we’re terribly sorry for your loss,’ the fireman said when I came to.

      ‘It was my fault, stupid candles. Have you seen my dog anywhere? I had a dog, Mozart, he was inside—’

      ‘Yes, Mr Beam, the dog was the cause of the fire, he was found in the fireplace with this.’ The fireman handed me the silver comb. ‘I’m sorry.’

      ‘I don’t believe it. Mozart is dead? Burnt? Dead? I can’t believe it. He was the…but what about Sally-Anne?’ I asked, on the brink of hysterics.

      ‘Mr Beam, you did say a woman was trapped inside the house with you, but no woman was found, I’m afraid,’ the fireman said. A line of ash under his left eye made him look like a warrior.

      ‘I’m sure I carried a woman out, an elderly one, not Sally-Anne but an older lady, I know I had her in my grasp. I threw her onto the lawn. She was wearing a nightdress and—’

      ‘Listen, Mr Beam, you are in a very bad state. Why don’t you wait until you are at the hospital to discuss this further. You should rest now. We are going to salvage as much of this house as possible and the Barretts are on their way home.’

      ‘No, you don’t understand. Sally-Anne, she was in my house, she was there, drinking wine, she wanted to give Mozart a gift. Please, let me have a look for myself, please.’

      

      Later, I hung myself on a willow, on the evening of the hottest day of the year, crying as the rope could not hold my weight and I fell, slippery like a cut tongue to the floor, not because I had failed but because I was and always will be in the wretched grasp of the banshee, forever in her debt.

       Isabella MocZareles Jezeballa Bumpington-Brown

      TAN

      Isabella Mozzarella Jezebella Bumpington-Brown was the youngest of seven sisters. Like Little Women they lived, except…err…they weren’t actually poor (in fact they were pretty rich), and except they weren’t properly artistic really (they weren’t fussed about nice old juicy books and dressing-up trunks and baking). They liked getting pedicures and sitting in Caffè Nero and scraping their way onto the London Fashion Week guest list and were really good at wearing expensive pash-minas, flipping their long blonde hair over from one side to the next and saying, ‘Wix’ (which I think means ‘wicked’).

      Now, where you are about to be craned into

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