A Complex Situation

MAGPIE TALES

http://magpietales.blogspot.com/2011/02/mag-55.html

chose the illustration

A COMPLEX SITUATION

(A story that calls for prose.)

I hadn't any choice. She'd broken a promise, and that was that.

Of course, I should have been used to it; after all, I was forty-two, and, in all those forty-two years, I have never found anyone to be reliable. Someone would pretend to be my friend, but their hatred soon revealed itself. Everyone was out to get me.

It started when I went to school. Other children always chose the pencil I wanted,  just to hurt me. As they took it from the pencil-tin they would look me in the eye with utter hatred and triumph. Over the years I grew to expect 'that look'. Everyone I met was out to get me. Every day I woke up in a sweat wondering whether today would be the day I was stabbed in a dark alley, pushed under a train or just......looked at.

I never got a job. How could I, when all possible employers looked at me and decided to 'cut me down to size'? How I loved that phrase! It summed it up so well. The whole world was trying to 'cut me down to size.'

In the end I was just another vagrant on the street. Even then, 'they' were out to get me. Those poor, gaunt creatures would try to grab my one blanket, my stolen crust, all the while looking at me with hatred.

But She was different. She was a large, blousy woman in a tasteless dress who brought us sandwiches and tea at night. 'Motherly', they called her. She would actually talk to me! 'I don't judge anyone' She once said. I began to feel I could trust her. 'I have a spare room' She said; 'Come home with me and I'll look after you'. It would be so good to escape persecution, I thought.

'I promise you I'll never harm you' She said. And I believed her.

But my relief only lasted a few hours. I wandered into her kitchen that first night. She was cutting -up a lemon. 'I do like a squeeze of lemon with my fish' She said. 'Don't you?'

Oh, it sounded such a harmless little phrase. But the knife was in her hand and I could tell from the glint in her eye that She wanted to plunge it into my flesh. How that woman hated me! And how She had fooled me! She shouldn't be allowed to get-away with it. I grabbed the knife.

I hadn't any choice. She'd broken a promise, and that was that.

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DAZZLE-DARK

Here, in the dazzle-dark of day,

Between the shadow and the shimmer,

My arm encircles the moment.

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PS

Life has been rather hectic lately. We enjoyed Mike's final few days with us and here are the flowers he bought me, along with a gift token, as a parting gift. Lovely, aren't they. As I write Mike is high above the clouds on a 36 hour journey to his own front door...... and chilly weather. He'll be pleased to hear that, in Newcastle, the temperature has been about 35 degrees today, culminating in a storm

Yesterday we put-on another melodrama. This time there were only four of us available, so two of us had to play five parts! Olwyn played the two men and I played the three women. We had a large audience and they were very vocal and enthusiastic.

Here are two members of the audience hamming-it-up as Villain and unwilling Virgin!

And here is my lovely friend, Caroline, who came along to play the tape. She's not a member of the group (yet), but she stood-in for members of the Probus Club, who were all at a meeting.

                                      

  And, today, the Choir has performed for Malcolm's Club. I slept for two hours when I got home!

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