A Birthday Wish

Forty-seven year old Evelyn stared at herself in the mirror. Furrows getting deeper, wrinkles growing around her eyes and mouth, grey hairs on her former glossy black hair, sagging breasts and the awful scar down her abdomen. The only remaining evidence she gave birth to identical twin girls. She hated getting old and would give her soul to reverse the whole process.

Her depressing introspection was interrupted by a vicious banging on the door. There was only two people who thumped on the door. A cop or Anwyn, her best friend. Wrapping a dressing gown around herself she opened the door.

“Why do you keep banging on the door like that?” was her greeting.

“Because your always unconscious when I turn up,” was her answer, gliding in with her dress billowing about her. She could have been plucked straight out of a hippy photograph in the seventies. Anwyn went straight to the drinks cabinet.

“Vodka, bloody vodka. I don’t know how anyone could drink the stuff. Give me a good brandy any day. Where is it?”

“Back of the cabinet. What are you doing here, anyway?” She asked, pulling on a pair of panties.

“Your birthday isn’t it? I’ve come to grant you a birthday wish.”

Anwyn was a white witch who specialised in granting wishes. Why wishes, you ask? Because there a lot easier to fake than turning little boys into mice.

“Don’t give me that crap,” Evelyn snarled, struggling with her bra clips, “we both know you are a fake. How much are you charging for membership to your coven. Two thousand, no wait, five thousand isn’t it. Five thousand to take part in an orgy every full moon and dance naked round a bonfire at Halloween.”

“Everybody enjoys themselves. Do you want the wish or not?” asked Anwyn.

“I would love to see my daughters again.”

“Give me an easier one, please. The three of you fought every minute when you were together. You complained endlessly whenever you had to find a baby sitter so you could go out partying and they whined you never bought them second hand clothes.”

“They were good clothes. Nothing wrong with them.”

“Except they never fitted them. Poor Diana was constantly trying to stop her knickers from falling down and Mandy kept tripping over her dresses, they were that long and when they started bringing boyfriends home you would try to seduce them.”

“Oh be fair, Anwyn. It was only a couple of times and she wouldn’t have caught us in bed if you had done your job and kept her at your place.”

“What was I supposed to do? Chain her to the bed. No wonder the moment they turned eighteen they caught a plane to Europe.”

That hit Evelyn. She remembered that day, seven years ago. She had come home, drunk from a party to watch them get into a taxi. Not a word of goodbye and not a word in the last seven years.

“I really would like to see them,” she whispered. Anwyn sat down beside her and put her arm around her shoulder.

“I’ll do my best.”ere…