Sascha Martin's Ripping News, the Podcast: Episode 5

Gather round, listeners, and tiptoe into the secret lab beneath the Martins' house.

There, a conflict Sascha and Luca don’t know they’re part of will launch Mary-Alice Cooper, drama queen and not-friend, on an epic journey of humiliation, angry squeaks and lame discoveries she doesn’t want to make.

What a legend she is! And it’s called ‘Sascha Martins' Pitchy Witch’.

Sascha Martins' Pitchy Witch, Befana with a la, was an accident, as many of his best inventions are.

He was working in the holidays, on January 6, on a broom that you could fly on, but he had a bug to fix.

Luca Blanco sat beside him, writing recipes on cards, at a table full of pencils, paper, silicon, and shards.

He was adding to his recipes from Portugal, with care, knowing, several generations back, his family came from there.

Well, he hadn’t done a lot as yet, and now he’d lost his zeal, but he’d written down the names and had a card for every meal.

Sascha also had a set of cards, the same as Luca’s brand, and was writing down the broom controls, a card for each command.

They were both ignoring Mary-Alice Cooper being loud, as she hovered all around them like an angry little cloud. So they didn’t even notice when she flounced across the room, with a glare at them ignoring her, and took off with the broom.

And she took the broom instructions that she’d need to make it fly, cause she knew she’d get a really stunning selfie in the sky.

At the door she paused a moment, just to study each command.

‘Oh, how obvious!’ she muttered, reading, Take Off, Start, and Land.

There was Loop the Loop, which sounded fun, and one peculiar word, which was easy to pronounce, although it wasn’t one she’d heard.

‘Yeah, whatever,’ Mary-Alice said, and, ‘Broom,’ she ordered, ‘Start!’

It exploded, and it nearly blew the neighborhood apart.

There were objects flying round her in a greasy cloud of soot.

It was thick and black and covered Mary-Alice head to foot. And her clothes were blown to tatters, and her hair was just, oh wow! And she made a mental note to skip the selfie, just for now.

Then a traffic cone stopped flying up, and tumbled down instead, with a bang that made her wonky as it landed on her head.

But the broom took off, undaunted, raced through darkness, into light, and a place she’d never seen before came suddenly in sight.

Far below her lay an island, and a bigger one beside, and a spit of sand that joined them, with a bridge above the tide.

Then the broom was diving, steeply, though she’d given no command, and was plunging her to ruin on the nameless spit of sand.

Mary-Alice slipped and slithered, and she very nearly fell, but she wrapped her fingers tight and used her feet to grip as well.

It was only as her life began to flash before her eyes that the rotten broom relented, and its nose began to rise.

It levelled out but like, just barely, flicking sand up in her face, and it shot away with Mary-Alice trapped in its embrace.

They were flying over vineyards, and some orchards, and a farm, and some people who were pointing at her screeching in alarm.

Dead ahead, though, was a villa, and its walls were made of stone.

She was bound for a collision that would break her every bone.

This couldn’t be.

She had to stop it.

How?

With words … beyond recall.

Oh, she had to find the cards before she splattered on the wall.

But her pockets were in tatters, and the words had blown away, leaving just a single card and just a single word to say.

So she said it long.

‘Bifa-a-a-a-a-a-a-na!’

Then she said it really quick, cause the villa was approaching with a speed that made her sick … and the broom - paid no attention, like it didn’t know the word.

Oh, the things she said to Sascha’s broom were something to be heard.

Out of nowhere came a man in fancy dress, who had a shield, which deflected Mary-Alice from the villa to a field, where she struck and tumbled down the side of someone’s pile of coal.

There were lumps all through her clothing, and the broom stuck in a hole up near the top.

She lay there, covered in a second sooty crust.

All these people wearing silly clothes were peering through the dust.

She was climbing up the coal pile to retrieve the stupid broom, but a footstep had her turning round, and peering in the gloom, at someone watching in a toga, with a stick, perhaps to whack.

Mary-Alice grabbed some coal to throw, in case he should attack.

But he took a step behind him, so she knew that he would not, and he said, ‘Quid est befana?’

Mary-Alice said, ‘Qu-what?’

Once again he said, ‘Befana?’

with a question mark and all, and she knew he meant the word that she’d been screaming at the wall.

‘It’s bifana, with an I. It’s not befana, with an E.

Mr. Toga didn’t get it.

It was obvious to see.

‘Well, I wasn’t even saying it to you.

‘It’s a command.

‘I was talking to the broom, but it’s too dumb to understand!’

Mr. Toga stood there, silent.

Mary-Alice didn’t move.

She was waiting, just in case the conversation might improve.

But it didn’t, so she heaved a sigh and headed for the broom.

As her fingers closed around it, oh, it took off with a boom!

And with a cat! It leapt, all sooty, from the dusty pile of coal, and it clung to Mary-Alice as the broom performed a roll.

Mr. Toga’s voice came drifting up.

‘Befana, quid est hoc?’

‘Learn to talk!’ said Mary-Alice, as the broom began to rock.

‘He was saying,’ said the broom, and Mary-Alice shouted, ‘Wo! You can speak?’

‘No, don’t be silly.

‘I’m a broom, as well you know.

‘But I was detecting Latin,’ it continued, nonchalant, ‘which I don’t suppose you speak, but I’ll translate it if you want.’

‘Yeah, well, obviously!’ Mary-Alice struggled with the cat.

‘He was asking you,’ the broom said, ‘this befana, what is that?’

‘Cloth-eared man,’ said Mary-Alice. ‘I could not have been more clear.

‘Just go back, you stupid broom, because I’ve had enough of here.’

But the broom was noncompliant, and continued on its course, into darkness, into light, and, ‘Oh my God!’ she said with force, as she saw the pair of islands and the strip of land between, for the broom had brought her back to where they only just had been; and it was diving.

‘Pull up now!’ she yelled. ‘Go backwards! Turn around!’ and the clinging cat was howling at the fast-approaching ground.

Here we take our leave, as Mary-Alice plunges from the sky.

You may possibly have questions.

Will she live or will she die?

Will the cat become her friend?

Will Mary-Alice find a comb?

Will she ever make it back to her beloved Landfill home?

Will her impact on the world be all she’d dreamed, or just a splat?

Well, the next enthralling episode will answer some of that.

To be continued …