A Scary Thought

A few months ago, I peered over the cliff-edge of the afterlife... and was weirded out.

I should back track. One morning I awoke in dire straits, either as a reaction to something I ate or drank, or some super-fast-hitting-super-duper-virus I'd never heard of before. I awoke to delights like projectile vomiting, intense head and stomach pain, nausea, and hallucinations. Whenever I'd try to drink fluids or take medicine, I'd immediately throw them back up within 60 seconds of the attempt. Eventually I collapsed on my bed and hoped for the best, shadows darting across my vision, feeling my body fade.

The shadows focused into images. First I saw ribbons. Red. They slid out of a human hand, like a magic trick, spiraling into space as if pulled by an underwater current. The ribbons became the size of highways, stretching farther than I could gauge, and then blurred out of focus. Slowly, in that sludgy dream way, my gaze fell to the ground. Sickening, fleshy crunching noises followed every footstep that I heard nearing behind me.

Not seeing the body, but only the legs, I noticed that, to my horror, instead of human feet two wrinkled chicken heads were attached to the bottom of stick-like legs. The chicken heads cawed as bloody sores appeared on the top of their scalps (or the bottom of who or whatever's feet) from the journey. Like the ribbons, the legs receded into the distance.

I raised my head again, in time to sense, rather than directly see, a large face floating towards me from the darkness. To this day, I cannot recall what the face looked like, or even if it were really there at all, because by then my body started regaining control and a few hours later I was okay enough to drink water and recuperate somewhat.

My first thought was, "Man, if that was death, then it's no wonder why ghosts do all sorts of random, fucked-up stuff like levitating chairs and flailing around abandoned houses. They're probably all tripping out from these things!"

My second thought was concerning the hollow, scooped out feeling in my head. Where I usually "see" stories, felt like a dull, dead glob. This freaked me out even more. Had I lost the ability to make up stories? My previous script had involved a character who's occupation, memories, and even thoughts were taken from him. Had the same happened to me?

Eventually, after a few days and a little practice, I was able to return to normal. The few days it took to recover, though, I worried the whole time about not being able to write anymore. Were my concerns legitimate or paranoid, do you think?

To me, this was much scarier than the freaky hallucinations and death mirages. Losing the ability to write stories was terrifying for me. I've had a lot of people ask me why on Earth I'd want to pursue screenwriting and novel writing.

The answer is simple: because the thought of not doing those things is frightening to me.