Previous Challenge Entry (Level 4 – Masters)
Topic: HANDIWORK (01/14/21)
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TITLE: Shattered Rainbows | Previous Challenge Entry
By Jack Taylor
01/19/21 -
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The flashing lights of the ambulance ride poked through the fog and the weeks of pushing through the medicated coma into consciousness felt like someone else’s story. When the police and doctors talked about the stray bullet that had severed her spinal column it still didn’t seem real. She had dreams to paint the world onto canvas. The world seemed dark and lonely.
Maggie was the first saint to break into her valley of shadows. The diminutive teen was wheeled into the room and waited patiently while an orderly set up an easel and a small card table with paints. A nurse brushed her raven hair and set it into a ponytail. Contorting herself in the chair Maggie used her toes to grab a brush, dip into a palate of blue and start blobbing paint onto a canvas.
At first, Rene was stunned at someone invading her space. It was clear what the doctors were doing. “It won’t work you know,” she said. “I can’t use my feet to paint. I can’t move. I don’t appreciate having someone in here mocking me.”
Maggie kept brushing the blue across the canvas. The sunlight from the open window almost made the scene shimmer.
“I don’t want you here!” Renee said.
Maggie nodded. “In case you hadn’t noticed, I can’t take myself out of here and you can’t make me leave.” She dabbed her brush in white paint and shaped out a few cloud forms.
“What happened to you?” Rene asked.
“Diving accident.” The attendant pulled her away from her canvas until she nodded to move forward again. More white was added.
“Where did you learn to paint?” Rene asked.
“Still learning. It gets tiring trying to hold my foot up just right.” She lowered the brush into a tray on the floor. “They told me you were the professional who might give me a few pointers.”
Rene waggled her head. “As you can see, I’m nothing close to a professional.”
“I see your mouth still works.” Maggie reached for another brush in her tray and gripped it between her toes.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Rene probed.
Maggie smeared a blob of Prussian blue onto the canvas and carefully drew it along the horizon. “Joni Eareckson-Tada paints using her mouth.”
Rene frowned. “Yes, and her God is the one who put her into a situation where she had to.”
“I always smile at that thought,” Maggie said.
“What do you mean?” Rene asked.
“Before she learned to paint with her mouth and to take risks to share her thoughts with the world she could have grown up with an unknown life and an untold story. Now her handiwork is seen everywhere. I smile because in my head I say her ‘mouthiwork’ and my ‘footiwork.’”
“You need some aqua near the bottom,” Rene said. “How do you reach the top?”
Maggie nodded to the attendant who turned the painting upside down. “Where there’s a will there’s a way,” she said. “Maybe if you admit that painting can be a team sport then you might produce something you can be proud of.”
“I’ve got no reason to paint anything.”
“Did you know the society for foot and mouth painters is holding an auction to raise resources to help disadvantaged kids?” Maggie asked. “You could submit some of your handiwork, or rather mouthiwork.”
“You’re not going to let me get away with feeling sorry for myself are you?” Rene asked.
Maggie brushed in a lake. “Whether you feel like it or not, there’s a Master artist who has made you his masterpiece and he’s not finished with you yet. You might as well show the world that you’ve still got something to offer.”
Rene nodded. “Maybe you should paint in a rainbow to give some sense of hope to those who have lost a sense of God’s handiwork in them.”
Maggie smiled. “Maybe that’s something you can do.”
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Your enjoyable and descriptive writing style has managed to make a sad event (an accident and long rehabilitation) somehow seem pleasant!
I wasn't able to see anything that could improve what you have already written :)