Sweet Satisfaction (Purple UGC Winner 2014)

Sweet Satisfaction - Twenty-Five

Twenty-Five

All I can remember was the rush of wind piercing my eardrums and force hammering into my chest and sides like invisible iron blocks. Our legs moved in perfect slow-motion sync, warriors, step by step, moving towards the glinting armour of the opposition.

A smoky dragon’s breath glided through the air, plastering onto our faces like cobwebs. Felicity dropped behind but Beatrice and Susanna were by my side, faces blasted with determination. Arms and legs moving like stick men, we wrenched open the bakery door.

“Bobby!” I screamed, before the smoke spiralled down my throat. I squinted, shielding myself from the billows of grey and ripples of orangey-red.

“Elsie, don’t go any further!” The roar of the blaze drowned out Susanna’s yell, which was a lethally beautiful but quickly spreading honey.

I stumbled further into the mirk, crying internally for Bobby. If he has been swallowed up- I thought my heart might smash.

He was worth ten of John. John, with his money and promises – and Bobby with wishes and sweet words and freckled cheeks who I barely knew but had crumbled my wall. If I didn’t find him, it would be my fault.

I cried his name, then sobbed it as a glowing piece of wood crashed metres away. Inhaling more and more smoke by the second, I sunk to my knees. Everything around me was so blurry. The heat was so painful, diminishing. All I could see were the flames.

*****

“‘I thought I was going to die,’ the heiress Elsie Kingston proclaimed at the scene. Her family would also like to announce her engagement to John Nobody Knowlbodye,” Beatrice invented dramatically as if reading from a newspaper. I was huddled in a rocking chair in a borrowed dressing gown and was now glaring at Beatrice.

“It isn’t funny, I did think I would die!” I reproached and looked up at Bobby with a warm smile, “Until you saved me.”

“Let’s hope the real newspapers don’t find out you were there,” Susanna said darkly, placing her cup of tea rather abruptly on the already chipped table.

We were in Bobby and Eliza’s house, after the fire. Bobby had found me and pulled us both out, ‘rather heroically’, as Beatrice put it. I was still recovering from the shock of death almost tugging us into its clutches. And not for the first time either. I lamented on many things and by the end, was shocked with the sheer horror of my accusation.

“There is someone with a grudge against us, Bobby,” I whispered, “The bridge- now this fire.” Eliza’s face turned pale.

“It may be just a coincidence,” Susanna suggested but fell short, defeated. No, I corrected, Beatrice had tried to defeat us. She was a deceitful little minx.

I think Beatrice read my thoughts because her body froze up and eyes became wide like the china saucer in her shaking hands.

“No. No. Elsie, I didn’t do anything.”

“If I broke my neck falling off the bridge, if I died trying to save Bobby…” I trailed off, “You like Bobby, don’t you?”

“What about the whisky?” Beatrice stood up, fists clenched.

By now, everyone was looking at us. The tension in the room was unbreakable. Eliza, Susanna and Bobby shifted uncomfortably in their seats, not daring to make eye contact with one another.

Tears dripped slowly down my cheeks and into my hands. Why was I accusing Beatrice, why was I seeking an answer, if a wild one? Susanna came and wrapped her arms around me, sensing that inside, my heart was sobbing silently.