A CASE OF TWO BOWS

 

A case of two bows

Helen was a cleaning lady and worked for all sorts of people.

“It keeps me fit,” she would tell folk. “I sometimes work way up in flats that are sky scrapers. It’s not too bad when the lifts are working. However a lot more exercise when the lifts break down. I do get out of breath when I have to get to the top of the sky scraper and the cleaning stuff gets a bit awkward.”

“I don’t know how you manage!” her friend Ann declared.

“Well, it’s a case of needs must.” Helen thought about this statement and sort of questioned how she did manage?

“I must go, or I will be late, and I am on top floor today,” Helen commented, looking at her watch.

Helen let herself in and got busy. Over by the window she glanced out and took a deep breath. There was a double rainbow, snow-white clouds sat beside it, and they were so still. The vivid colours of the bow and the pure whiteness of the clouds were a sight to remember. Wish I had brought my camera, the awe-struck woman thought.

Helen came back to earth when she heard a buzzing coming from behind her. It was a bumble bee and it headed for the light in the window. Helen let the bee out, which took a bit longer than she thought. Hurrying to get finished she looked out of the window again.

Now it was snowing, and quite hard. As she left the building she saw the bird footprints and a cat’s paw prints. There were no feathers. Good, so the cat had lost his opportunity, Joan thought. This pleased her. It was then she noticed a tiny blue flower; a grape hyacinth was in bloom. Great, spring is on its way, she thought with a sudden excitement. Joan felt joyful.

She headed to the next job which was a semi-detached house. Primroses were out in bloom and the pansies looked so cheerful with their tiny little faces.

Helen felt something brush past her ear. It startled her and then she felt angry.

A small boy had let fly an arrow and it had just missed her. “You should not be playing bows and arrows where people are, as you could hurt someone.”

The boy’s mother came out and screamed at her, “Don’t shout at my kid like that or I’ll smack your face!”

“Come ahead and try it,”Helen calmly answered back.

Then Helen saw the scarab beetle tattooed on the mother’s arm. This beetle always gave Helen the creeps, as she thought it to be a menace. Typical, she thought. No brains, not the child’s fault, but hers.

Josephine Smith

Another story inspired by Rory's Story Cubes: the rainbow, the arrow, the high-rise building, footprints, a scarab beetle, an ordinary house, the flower and the bee... Fascinating, to see how the same images produce different ideas in different people!