Excerpt from Voodoo Betty
Betty Beasley is sitting at the bus stop outside the airport, waiting for the number 9 to take her homewards. She refuses to drive ever since Mama’s lethal sneeze.
A sneeze had killed Mama; a killer sneeze. Mama had sneezed whilst commandeering her Citroen Picasso that was about to look a lot like something out of a Picasso painting.
The first question everyone wanted to ask, and did ask after the grieving process, was how on Earth the Beasley family knew that Mama had been the victim of a killer sneeze? Betty, and her sister Dympna, went on to explain that Mama had been making a tragically cut short video for her daughters when the accident happened. People would later say that she should not have been making a video while driving.
Just as Mama is telling her two beautiful daughters, ‘I’m very proud of my two girls. I love you both very m—’ she sneezes and loses control of the car. The last thing Mama Beasley sees is the shiny chrome grille of a milk lorry.
From time to time, the Beasley sisters happen upon seeing a desiccated bird stuck in the shiny grille of a lorry and cannot help but openly weep. But at the end of the day, it was the sneeze that killed her, not making a video while driving. But who should they be angry at? True, the sneeze in question had brought about Mama’s death, but Betty was of the opinion that the family cat, Princess, was the real culprit here. Mama was allergic to the cat. But she knew how the sisters loved that fluffy white ball of fun, so she put up with her allergy, sneezing with dignity and grace. But the cat killed her in the end and nobody could change Betty’s take on it, which was why she humanely dispatched of that fluffy white ball of fur. Betty never spoke about the cat’s untimely fate, suffice to say that, ‘The cat wasn’t white by the time I finished with it.’
The Beasley sisters have come to dread sneezing. Betty had experimented by trying to find ways of keeping her eyelids open during a sneeze. But apparently the human being is not capable of keeping its eyes open during a sneeze, which is “a major flaw in our genetic makeup,” in Dympna’s Wikipedia opinion.
A sneeze had killed Mama; a killer sneeze. Mama had sneezed whilst commandeering her Citroen Picasso that was about to look a lot like something out of a Picasso painting.
The first question everyone wanted to ask, and did ask after the grieving process, was how on Earth the Beasley family knew that Mama had been the victim of a killer sneeze? Betty, and her sister Dympna, went on to explain that Mama had been making a tragically cut short video for her daughters when the accident happened. People would later say that she should not have been making a video while driving.
Just as Mama is telling her two beautiful daughters, ‘I’m very proud of my two girls. I love you both very m—’ she sneezes and loses control of the car. The last thing Mama Beasley sees is the shiny chrome grille of a milk lorry.
From time to time, the Beasley sisters happen upon seeing a desiccated bird stuck in the shiny grille of a lorry and cannot help but openly weep. But at the end of the day, it was the sneeze that killed her, not making a video while driving. But who should they be angry at? True, the sneeze in question had brought about Mama’s death, but Betty was of the opinion that the family cat, Princess, was the real culprit here. Mama was allergic to the cat. But she knew how the sisters loved that fluffy white ball of fun, so she put up with her allergy, sneezing with dignity and grace. But the cat killed her in the end and nobody could change Betty’s take on it, which was why she humanely dispatched of that fluffy white ball of fur. Betty never spoke about the cat’s untimely fate, suffice to say that, ‘The cat wasn’t white by the time I finished with it.’
The Beasley sisters have come to dread sneezing. Betty had experimented by trying to find ways of keeping her eyelids open during a sneeze. But apparently the human being is not capable of keeping its eyes open during a sneeze, which is “a major flaw in our genetic makeup,” in Dympna’s Wikipedia opinion.
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