Connections and Random Acts of Creativity

Samantha over at The Marble Jar had a great idea last week for a Random Acts of Creativity Round Up where she is encouraging risk, bravery and creativity. I agree wholeheartedly about embracing risk. I love challenges and risk, so this seemed like a perfect chance to make connections while taking a huge leap.


Last week, I mentioned HitRECord. I've been signed up there for over a month and never added anything to the site. I was quite intimidated. Anyone can use my story for whatever they like. When you contribute, you release the rights to your work, so someone could use my story to add music or pictures or whatever. They still have to attribute the work to you. It's not like they could claim they'd written it, but I have no control over what happens to it on the site! Scary stuff, but exciting.

I uploaded a short story to the site.

I'll include a link for proof, but here's the story I wrote.

Anxiety

A small woman crossed my path today.

On an ordinary day, I wouldn't have noticed her, but today wasn't ordinary. I woke early with a headache that wouldn't quit. The pain spawned bizarre dreams that caused me to wake disoriented and full of anxiety. All through my morning coffee, shower and dressing, that anxiety wouldn't leave me so when she crossed my path, I leaped back in fear.

I'd almost barreled right into her on my way to the subway entrance. When I say small, I don't mean petite or thin or child-like, I mean pixie small. She fluttered three feet off the ground and slipped past me leaving behind a streak of green in the air like the trails of light you see at night when you wave a lighted cigarette.

The instant I walked into the streak, the pain in my head flared like a bright beacon of light blocking my vision and hearing. My body felt weightless, floating in a warm cushion of air. No thoughts crossed my mind. The entirety of my being was focused on the pain in my head until with a thunk and shift, I was standing on the sidewalk.

The moment was quicker than it's taken me to describe. It lasted perhaps a fifth of a second. As I turned in the direction she'd flitted, the trail was still there beckoning me to follow. And follow it, I did. The pain might have wrenched thought from my head, but my body was working on autopilot. There was an urgency to my movements.

I had to find her.

As I entered the mouth of the alley, she was gone, but the light still remained. It arched like a rainbow into a folded piece of paper lying neatly in the middle of the alley. On the cover, my name was scrawled in beautiful, flowing calligraphy.

With shaking hands, I bent over to collect the paper.

My head exploded in another flash of pain and light. When I thudded back into existence, I was already unfolding the paper.

"Dear, dear Michael,

You have been ignoring the pain in your head for far too long. It's the result of a cluster of burst blood vessels. Visit your doctor right this instant, or I'm afraid you won't live to see another sunrise.

Your guardian,

Trina"

The pain. It was making me loopy. My guardian?

I turned from the alley, stumbling slightly as I entered the stream of morning commuters on the sidewalk. I was jostled from the left, and it sent my brain whirling on an axis that made me dizzy. Perhaps a doctor visit might not be the worst thing in the world.

Thirty days later, I was out of the hospital and on the mend. The shaved bit of skin was starting to itch as the hair grew back and the incision scar healed. The first days were a blur of pain and confusion. I never saw the neatly written note again. Who knows if it was my brain finding a creative way to alert me to danger, or whether I really have a guardian.

Does it matter?