UN-Blocked

Several writers I know say writing is a type of temporary insanity. Yet, I never experienced this quite as profoundly as I did on this beautiful March day. I sat down ready to do a litany of work when out of idle curiosity I looked at one of my favorite writing contests. Reading the prompts, I was grabbed in a vise. The words pelted me like hail, pummeling me into submission. Each individual prompt screamed at me to write the story it told.

The first prompt, ‘a cat’, the idea jumped up on my desk flickering its tail, letting me know it was not a black cat, it was white. It imparted to me the havoc it would cause were I to let this story drift away. "Invalid Item"   by A Guest Visitor

The second prompt, ‘Missing an eye’, threatened to leave me with only one should I fail to write, ‘The Eyes that See You’. A story about a killer who is driven past the brink of insanity by the eyes of his victims. How in a fatal attempt to get rid of them staring at him he put out his own eyes thinking he was putting out theirs.

The third prompt, walled in. My imagination on such a fine day took me to all the beautiful flowers in bloom and the bright shining sun. How ironic would it be, to be entombed in flowers? The lonely lady only wishing for a little affection starts mysteriously receiving so many flowers that they wall her in.

The fourth prompt, an imprint on a wall, had me looking at the patterns in the plaster of the walls. I could see the shapes and impressions of pictures, imagining the insanity of someone staring at the walls for hours. The person thinking that the walls were speaking to him.

The fifth and final prompt, a scar that changes shape. The story that flew to mind reeked of my own fear. A man sits looking at a burn scar on his arm the burn that almost took his life. Every since the fire he sees things in his scar. Things he interprets as, ‘signs from God’. He sees the face of a burly man in his scar just as a large man leaves the club. He quickly leans forward in his seat a needle in his hand. He jumps from the car stabbing the needle into the man as he pretends to be a drunk stumbling around. The man never knows he is drawing his last breaths.

The stories ensnare me as they claw their way across my mind. My imagination darkening at each prompts maddening story. Some stories begging me. While, others threaten to leave me in the most horrifying state of a writer’s deepest pit of despair, with the ultimate nightmare of writers block if I heed them not. I can now see how writers block is nothing compared to this alternate state of being completely unblocked.