Gunning For Trouble.

It was the night before Christmas and everything was calm and quiet. Not a creature stirred, oh, none except Nelly, ofcourse, who had woken up because of a sore throat. She gazed at the Christmas tree she had so paintakingly dressed up and then at the gifts below it. Hubby dearest had been designated ‘Santa’ this year as Nelly had been sick since the 22nd of December. She only hoped Rob had stuck to the plan and bought their 6 year -old terror, erm.. son.. some board games, or ‘bored games’ as Rob liked to called them.

Christmas morning dawned and Nelly was burning with fever. Rob also had an itchy throat. A Covid-19 home test revealed that both Nelly and Rob had contracted the dreaded virus. Ten days of home quarantine was their doctor’s advise.

Suddenly, THWACK, something hit Nelly’s arm. It bounced off and lay on the soft, furry blanket. It was a BULLET, a toy bullet at that! Nelly felt hot, suddenly very, very hot. No, it wasn’t  because of the fever she was running. 

It was because Rob, who was by now cowering under the blankets, had ignored her instructions. He had gone and bought their terror…erm…son, Gabe, a toy gun.

  THWACK, and their Persian cat, Snow, hissed in pain. THUMP, down went Nelly’s expensive crystal vase. THWUMP, lord only knows what had fallen in the kitchen.

‘Rob, you and your ideas of masculinity. You just had to buy our Gabe a gun!  You purposely ignored my suggestion and got him..of all things, a gun and it’s not even a *Nerf gun. It’s a gun with bullets that actually can hurt someone.  I am so mad I could cough on you, but you’ve already caught the virus’, Nelly complained. ‘Now we are stuck, under compulsory home quarantine and Gabe…good God, has a gun!’

‘H-how was I to know we would be cooped up for the Christmas holidays? Gabe was supposed to visit your mother on the 26th and stay with your folks till New Year’s. Did you forget? So I thought he w-would take the gun there and p-p-practise on a real live, walking, t-talking target’, muttered Rob, all the time not daring to come out from under the blanket.

Suddenly, the blanket was yanked away and  THWACK, Rob felt something land on his head. 

‘Ouch, what did you do that for, Nelly. You nearly broke the mosquito racket on my head. Gabe is making a nuisance of himself with his Christmas present. I am not doing anything,’ cried Rob.

‘IT IS NOT WHO FIRED THE SHOT BUT WHO PAID FOR THE BULLET, that matters, my dear Rob’, said Nelly. Then she pulled herself out of bed and willed herself to detatch Gabe’s fat fingers from his treasured gun.

Pic credit: Unsplash: Sir Manuel

*Nerf gun: toy gun with soft, foam bullets.

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