A daffodil... Magpie Tales #7

How can this flower of beauty be in the same world as war?

Its frilly petals so delicate and pure;

It grows from earth, and yet in other climes that earth hides the blood of young men,

Where the sun beats down and no flowers grow.

How can the colour be so pale,

The stamen so bright?

How can it be that it’s here and blooming and there, boys are dying?

Such loveliness, that brings such joy of a promised spring,

for living and love
and
Hope.

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Magpie Tales 6 .......' Nails??'

It was just a card box of nails but they had been the cause of their break up and yet she thought nails are supposed to join two things together.

How had it happened? More importantly, how did it happen? Her mind was hazy and her memory dimmed.

There they were on the shelf; she reached up and lifted the box down.

They were still very straight, still very shiny and still very sharp, all four of them.... only four? Wasn’t the box full? What had happened to the others?

Her finger touched the tip of one and she pressed down hard till a small drop of blood fell to the dusty floor. Suddenly her mind jerked back to a more bloody scene and as she looked at that single drop of blood, she remembered the floor swimming in blood. She made a soft sound almost like a cat mewing.

She hadn’t meant to strike him, but he had so enraged her.

The nails were there beside him, why did he buy them?

She had asked for screws; he came back with nails.

She wanted screws; he bought nails.

She only wanted screws; he thought she wanted nails;

She needed the screws, he had no idea they were so important.

She was without the screws and he had just a box of nails.

Stupid man she thought as she brought the hammer down on the head of first nail, soft in the head she mused as she brought down the hammer again on the second nail. The hammer came down time after time until there were only 4 nails left and the pool of blood covered most of the garage floor.

How silly to bring nails when all she wanted was.... what was it she wanted? But one thing she did know and now he knew too, that she hated the nails.

Magpie Tales 5.. The Hand

Who’d have thought when they took over the theatre that Brian would get involved with that stupid puppeteer? ‘Stupid, stupid, stupid!’ she screamed in her mind. But then Brian was always ready to earn an extra penny or two and when the old man had asked him for help taking down his puppet theatre, Brian had said ‘Yes’ right away.

Earlier in the week, Marge and Brian had been transfixed when the old man had brought out the large wooden puppet from the crate. Its clothes slightly shabby and faded where it had been used over the years, but when the old man pulled its wires it was almost as though it was alive. The theatre audience had laughed and cheered and the cash at the tills rolled in. Brian’s eyes had lit up when he saw the total and he tried to persuade the owner of the doll to stay an extra week. But the puppeteer had said that it wasn’t possible as there were other theatres booked and his puppet needed to be repaired, showing Brian that one hand was slightly damaged where on one occasion it hadn’t quite gone into the crate and it had been trapped by the heavy lid.

Bent and wiry the old man had been all smiles as he and Brian had loaded all the staging and crates onto his cart and that’s when he had asked Brian to ‘Lend him a hand?’ Foolishly Brian had thought, that there were other jobs to do and more money to be earned, as the old man had paid him handsomely for helping to dismantle the puppet theatre, so he answered without a qualm.. ‘Yes, what is it you want?’

‘Thank you, you’ve already given it to me.’ Was the reply and mounting the cart and clicking his tongue he flicked the reigns and his horse walked on and he and the cart lurched forward and was gone.

It was the next day, early morning that Marge heard Brian screaming and she rushed back to their bedroom where Brian was still in bed, a look of horror on his face, holding up at his right arm....... and that was all that was there, just his arm. His hand had gone, quite neatly and cleanly, just the wrist and then nothing!

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Elephants Never Forget : Magpie Tales 4

He put his hand in his pocket and felt the smooth hard little elephant and tears glistened in the corners of his eyes. He glanced quickly around the cafe to see if anyone had noticed his wet eyes,  hardly the act of a grown man.
It was stupid to cry but it had meant so much, ‘elephants never forget,’ she had said when she had given it to him that first wedding night, with a light kiss that promised more. She was quite upset when he remarked that it was an odd looking little fella and then, when her smile turned to tears, he felt mean that he had made fun of the look of it. It had meant a lot to her and she had promised that like elephants never forgot, she would never forget and love him forever and ever.

All those years ago, but she had forgotten that odd looking carved elephant and her promise and left him.

He left the warmth of the coffee shop and wrapped his scarf tight against the bitter wind.
Walking fast he arrived just behind the cars that drove slowly past the tall granite stones. He stood a little way off watching the sad little group till they had gone.

Then standing over the sweet smelling flowers, he bent down and with the white rose let the little elephant fall and whispered, ‘ I never forgot you.’

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Magpie Tales 3 (A kilo weight being the picture prompt)

Her big eyes stared out from her pinched white face and pain showed in the creases of her brow. The sheets were taut against her chest and the green coverlet that matched the five others in the ward had slipped to one side.


‘Don’t touch my leg,’ she groaned. I looked at her leg with the large evil looking apparatus attached to it, stretched out from under the half cover, and swallowed when I saw the pulleys and weights that hung off the wire attachments.

‘My broken fibula was out of place so it needs to be stretched back into position,’ she said.

I felt sick just looking at it and sat down in the chair beside the bed.

‘So you didn’t get to France, I think your hubby said you were on the local dry practice run, preparing for your skiing holiday?’ I replied.

Tears glistened in the corners of her eyes as she sobbed. ‘Oh no I didn’t do this on the slopes, I fell over that bloody thing I bought on Saturday as a doorstop and went flying, without skis I might add, down the back steps into our kitchen.‘

We looked at each other and without another word being said, her sobs turned to laughter and before I knew it I had joined in. Then her laughter turned to moans as her shaking body moved her leg and the weights hanging off the contraption swung. I smiled sympathetically and looked at her face as she winced in pain.

And to think I had been envious of her find in the junk shop, thinking how it would polish up and match the colour of my grey stained floor boards, as obviously Jen had done. ‘What a find,’ she had said, when she had turned towards me showing me the kilo weight, ‘isn’t it great, so, so kitsch?’

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