The Creative Process

Chapter Three: A Good Deed

    The next day, a Wednesday in February if you want to get specific, started exactly the same as every other day, but this time with a certain bounce in my step, like there was permanent cheerful music playing in my head. I practically skipped to the coffee shop and my writing had such a kick I barely even glanced is over before uploading.

     I planned to skip my daily "patrol" that day, for lack of a better word, in exchange for some errands and shopping that needed to get done. I made my way down the street happily, bouncing along to the music in my head. The sun seemed to shine a little brighter; until it didn't. We as human beings know that its impossible to turn off your brain, you are always thinking of something. When combining that facet of human nature with the other facet; 'old habits die hard', you find me completely ignoring my original plan of a patrol free and stress free afternoon and speeding up down the street towards a tall man who was hiding a weapon beneath his coat.

     The man turned with purpose into a shop. An antiques shop that was in almost constant danger of going out of business, despite the store almost always being packed. The tiny shop was run by a little old lady who checked out each and every customer herself, I saw her standing there behind the counter with her usual small smile as I crashed into the shop behind the man. He was already standing in the center of the shop by the time I was through the doorway so I couldn't stop him before he had the weapon out and was firing around the shop. Glass shattered as a bullet crashed though the glass on the jewelry counter, screams bounced off the walls and flew back at their sources. Everyone in the shop threw themselves to the ground and ducked behind the shelves. The fear and the panicked thoughts threw themselves at me and reaching out to telepathically pull the gun from the shooters hand felt like wading through a knee high swamp of jell-o. But I managed.

    I pulled the gun across the store to me and stepped through the shop towards the man. He was a few inches shorter than me and as I looked down into his face I couldn't make out any life in his eyes, he was simply the shell of a man by now. I placed one finger on his temple and he crumpled back against the shattered frame of the jewelry counter, unconscious but surely still breathing.

    Since the silence had settled over the store, I began to see faces peeking out from behind counters or from their positions flattened against the floor.

    "It's okay everyone-" I went to raise my hands to calm them but when I did I realized that my right hand was clenched around the handle of a gun. Panic shot through my body and I stood completely still for a few seconds before I had the common sense to through the damned gun to the ground. I heard peoples confusion, read it as clearly as if a book was propped open on a shelf in front of me. I saw phone cameras aimed at me from every direction.

    I could run. I could wipe every one of those cameras and run, but changing everyone's memories and making a dash isn't exactly the most honest move to make. If you've ever heard the saying "you either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain" well this is my opportunity to pick my path on that road and if I'm honest, dying a hero doesn't seem too bad. So stand there, hands raised, watching the cops flood into the store.

    I'm sweating and panting from fear so the cold from the handcuffs takes me majorly off guard. They walk me out of the shop and into a cop car in the street. The sidewalk in-front of the antiques shop is strung up with caution tape and scattered with police officers. The scene feels like a surprise party that I already knew about, a surprise party where the guests are not my friends and It looks to them like I committed a crime that I did not commit and now I'm being arrested. I may have lost my metaphor in the middle of that but that's what makes it accurate. There are no situations equal to telepathically stopping a shooting and screwing it up so bad that now you're the one in the cop car. That's a way that only I would cause my own death with.