Pippa’s Toy Shop

Miss Jessop asked us to do a piece of creative writing in class. I like days when we’re given creative writing tasks, because by the time afternoon break is over I find my work back on my desk with an A+ written on the top. This makes me happy.

Today she asked us to write about what we would do if we had the power to do anything. I thought this was a very peculiar thing to ask us to do. It was in response to the story she had read us yesterday about the boy who turned invisible, and got up to all sorts of mischief. But she hadn’t even mentioned the word ‘invisible’. I didn’t understand.

I asked Molly, and she said she’d go the funfair and ride the carousel over and over again without having to pay, and then get the man at the snack shack to give her all his candyfloss. I thought this was a waste, so I ignored her. I sat for a while before I finally decided.

It would start with daddy. I don’t love my daddy. He is very big and very mean – when he gets angry he takes off his belt and tries to hit me with it. When he gets like this I hide in my wardrobe, and afterwards mummy tells me I mustn’t tell anyone because it’s just daddy’s blood pressure and the doctors are already helping him. Mummy doesn’t tell me why blood pressure affects him badly after he’s been drinking from the bottles I’m not allowed to go near.

Sometimes when I crawl out the wardrobe daddy is asleep on the couch in the living room, because mummy doesn’t like him lying next to her on these nights. So, I would start off by tiptoeing up to the couch, and I would make a long cut across his throat with the big knife mummy uses to chop meat (I’ll need to stand on a chair to reach it). This will mean he can’t breathe anymore, and although I will probably get very bloody its okay, because I’ll wear my pink chequered dress that Aunty Geraldine bought me last year for my birthday, which I don’t like.

When I was little I thought my daddy was big and cuddly like a teddy bear. But last year, on my 9th birthday, he ate a lot of my cake and I realised he was fat because he ate too much, not because he was like a teddy bear. I was upset, because I liked having a daddy who was really a teddy bear. Because I still want a teddy-daddy I will make one myself. My biggest teddy bear is not very big, and a 6-foot man certainly wouldn’t be able to fit inside. So I will have to dismember him. Seeing as I’ve already made a cut at the neck I will take his head off first, followed by his arms, then his big legs, as they will be hard work. By this time I will like the sound of crunching bones, so I will cut off his fingers and toes as well. Once I have many more, smaller pieces I shall use the scissors from my stationary kit to cut along the stomach of my big bear. I will remove the stuffing (some of it will stick to the blood on my hands) and put my daddy’s body parts in to replace it. Using mummy’s sewing kit, which she keeps in the cupboard under the television, I will stitch the line back up. I learnt how to do cross stitch and running stitch when I was in Yr 2. Because I sometimes hear mummy shouting at daddy and telling him he’s an ogre, I think I’ll use my green felt tip and colour over the daddy-bear’s animal face. Then he’ll be the perfect daddy, the way we all see him.

Because I can do anything, I will move on to mummy next. Everyone says I have mummy’s big green eyes, but her eyes scare me. When she shouts they go ever so big and the pupils get tiny, so it’s just a circle of green. I make sure I don’t ever scream at anyone, not even my little brother when he’s being really annoying, because I don’t want to scare him too.

Daddy told me that when he first met mummy she looked like an angel. I asked him if he thought she still looked like an angel, and he laughed and said “Yeah, the one that fell. Whats-his-name…Lucifer.” I don’t know what a Lucifer looks like, but in the school nativity plays we always dress up as angels, so I can do them. I will make mum an angel next. All the angels in my storybooks are really pale, but mummy has very tanned skin because she spends a lot of time in the Sun. I will use the knife again, and cut a big hole in her to make all the blood come out so that she’s pale enough. She’ll wake up and begin to scream, so I’ll have to stab her in the heart so she’s quiet and doesn’t wake up my brother.

Mummy has brown hair, so when I use my gold paint her halo will show up very well. Because she’ll be lying in bed I can use the white sheets for her dress (It will be a problem if there’s blood on them though. Maybe this Lucifer angel wears red, so it might be okay). I don’t have any angel wings, but I do have some from my fairy costume. I like my fairy costume a lot, but I think mummy will look better with the wings. I don’t have any white thread, so I won’t be able to sew them on to her back nicely. I shall have to use superglue instead.

My little brother poses a more difficult problem. He is very hyperactive, so if he wakes up first I probably won’t be able to catch him. But if mummy hasn’t screamed too loud, it will be easy enough to go into his room and chop off his head. I don’t know why I’ll chop of his head…but it’s given me an idea. We have an old toy Jack-in-the-box that used to belong to my daddy. He played with it when he was little. I will rip off the old Jack’s head and put on a new Toby’s head. His head won’t just balance on the spring, so I’ll need to wind it on, a bit like a corkscrew. Daddy always said that if it weren’t for Toby’s smart little brain he’d be useless, running about as he does. So I won’t want to use his body now that I’ll have his smart head.

Because I’m all-powerful I’ll be allowed to open a shop all of my own. It will be a toy shop, because out of a toy shop and a sweet shop, I’d prefer to have a toy shop. I will display my daddy, my mummy and my brother on the shelves there, and then I will advertise.

I will not advertise the toys. I will advertise the shelf space, so that other children can display their parents here too. It will be the best toy shop in the World.

The End.

Miss Jessop didn’t give me an A+ for my creative writing, which I thought was very unfair considering I put a lot of effort into it, and I even wrote in my favourite red pen. Instead she sent me to a man called Mr Blake, who I found out was a doctor but didn’t want me to call him that because he thought it would scare me. He asked me why I wrote the story, and I told him it was because Miss Jessop said we were able to do anything we wanted to do. Then he asked me if what I wrote about my parents was true, and I laughed and said “Of course not! I’m not really old enough to own a toy shop!”

Mr Blake talked to me for the rest of the day, and I didn’t like the things he was asking me. They made me scared, and I looked around but then I remembered I was at school, and I couldn’t crawl into a wardrobe – Molly would laugh at me. Instead I tried not to listen to him, and pictured something happy instead.

I pictured my toy shop.

I pictured all the children queuing up outside with their toys for me.

I would let them in one by one, and help to set them on display.

But I wouldn’t let them take the space reserved for Mr Blake.

“Are you even listening to me Pippa”

“Yes Mr Blake” I lied, and then I changed the subject, “What’s that?” I pointed to something on his desk.

He sighed, “It’s a letter opener, now-“

“It looks sharp.”

“Yes…” He looked at me. No, he stared at me. I stared back, and then reached for the letter opener.

“Mr Blake” I said, as he reached out to stop me, “What’s your favourite toy?

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