The Tale of Addie Rayman

I was walking back from the coffee shop, buzzing from the seven shots of espresso I drank after work to help me come up with ideas for the story I was supposed to be writing. I hoped I would go into some weird, caffeine-induced coma and while I was in it I would magically come up with ideas. I’m a writer and I’ve been trying to publish a book but writing at home and only working weekdays at a coffee shop with a minimum wage pay is not a livable situation. After hours of thinking about how to fix this problem, I came up with the idea to enter a writing contest for money. I researched and I found one with a huge prize, a couple thousand dollars I think, and the winner would get their book published and recommended in the magazine sponsoring the contest. The contest was you had to write a novel in a genre of your choice. My favorite is science fiction. I also really love Norse mythology. I was trying to figure out a good way to combine those two when someone knocked me off my feet.

I was on the ground, surrounded by all my stuff that had fallen out of my hands during my descent. One of them had been my Powerbook titanium G4 (a super old Macbook that had been a hand-me-down from my mom when I was a kid), which is something I cannot afford to replace, not because it’s expensive but because I’m broke. I scrambled to make sure it wasn’t broken. I opened it up to find the screen shattered and when it turned on the screen was all static and pressure cracked. I started tearing up when I heard a voice say,

“Hey! Sorry I bumped into you. I wasn't paying attention… Are you crying?” I looked up to find a young man, maybe 24 or somewhere around there, looking down at me with a worried look.

“Oh my gosh, are you hurt? Do you need help? Let me help!” He scrambled down to the ground and started picking up my stuff. When he got to the shattered computer in my hands that I had been staring at in shock he gasped and asked if I wanted him to buy me a new one. I shook my head side to side slowly but he started looking at the computer and mentioned how old it was.

“Dang, this computer is really old, a 2001 model right? I bet you needed an upgrade anyway. I’m gonna get you a new one. Come on get up! ” He pulled me to my feet and I was mumbling a thank you when he started walking really fast and talking excitedly about the different models of computers that we could find at the store. I had to jog to catch up to him. While I was jogging I found myself thinking about how surprised I was that someone was being so nice. People don’t tend to buy you a computer when they knock you down and break yours, they usually just walk past or mumble sorry and continue walking.

We finally stopped in front of this old little electronics store. I was kind of disappointed, thinking that I wasn’t going to get something much better quality than what I had before. The shop looked like a little antique store with rusted door hinges and old-looking wood on the outside. It was kind of charming, if you’re buying antique chairs not when you’re trying to buy a usable laptop. We walked in and an old man greeted us with a smile and the guy who knocked me over waved at the cashier.

“Hey Carl!”, he said in a friendly voice.

“Hey, Andrew! Found a new friend?” The old man, Carl, said motioning behind Andrew and towards me.

“Of course! We’re looking for a new computer because I might have accidentally broken hers.” Andrew said with a sheepish look, trying not to make eye contact with me or Carl. Carl gave him a disappointed look, which made Andrew change the subject to actually finding me a computer. Carl noticed this subject change but just let it slide. He walked us to the back of the store and showed us some different computers. Most of them were pretty dull-looking, except one. It was a light blue laptop with a logo I hadn’t seen before. Carl caught me looking at it.

“Great choice! That’s an excellent model. It’s very unique.” he said, picking it up and showing me what it does and explaining the different features it has.

“How much is it?” Andrew asked, looking a little worried. Carl caught the look and told him that it was usually $700 but for an old friend he would lower it to $300. Andrew looked a little relieved and said that was fine. We all walked up to the counter and Carl rang up the laptop. After that was all done and we were walking out of the store I thanked Andrew again and he said it was no problem. We went our separate ways and hurried to my apartment to start writing. I got to my apartment and went inside. As I was stepping in my cat, Lucifer, walked up to me and rubbed against my leg. I picked her up and walked over to my desk.

“What should my story be about?” I asked out loud, partly to myself, partly to the air around me half-hoping it would respond. It didn’t. I got a meow from Lucifer but obviously, that wasn’t helpful. I sat for a second thinking about what to write about, remembering my previous idea about Norse mythology and science fiction. I started writing a little bit just to try and find some ideas. The first thing I typed on the page was ‘In the middle of a bloody battle, Thor, excitedly letting out a war cry, was holding his hammer high in the air about to pummel one of his foes’. I clicked the spacebar and I immediately heard a loud yell coming from behind me. I whipped around and found a red-headed, 6’5ft man dressed like a Viking holding a hammer above his head. The hammer was crackling with energy. The man seemed to notice that he was not in fact wherever he was before and he was now in a one-bedroom apartment with a 5’2ft 23-year-old woman sitting in a purple swivel chair staring at him in shock and a spooked calico cat hissing at him. He lowered his hammer, all the sparks disappearing and cocked his head to the side.

“Who are you?” He asked confusedly in a thick Scandinavian accent. I looked at him slightly stunned.

“Who am I?” The AUDACITY! He’s the one in MY house. “Who are you!? And what are you doing in my house?!” I asked, slightly yelling. He told me that he was in the middle of a battle and was about to beat someone in a war when he appeared at my house. I slowly looked back at my computer. That's… what I just typed into my computer. I pressed the delete button, just to see what would happen and got rid of the whole sentence. After I did that I turned back around to find that the man, Thor, was gone.

“Oh My God. That… that was Thor! “ I said aloud to no one in particular. I decided to test the computer again, just to see what would happen. I wrote, ‘ $1000’. I looked around and on the desk next to my computer, there was a stack of money. I counted it and it was, in fact, one thousand dollars. OH MY GOSH. I paced around my room thinking about what I should do with this new information. I probably don’t even need to enter the writing contest anymore! I can just write down whatever I want. Wait, that’s kind of selfish, I thought to myself. I mean I could fix the world and the first thing I think of is to make myself rich. I contemplated what I should do. I decided to write out solutions to everything that was wrong with the world. I fixed every single problem I could think of. I made all of the amazing and fantastical creatures and beings real and made sure they would live with the humans in harmony. Then I made myself a successful and published author. I made it so that every book I wrote was successful, past and future.

10 years later I was living my best life. I became rich, had a loving family, and was able to do anything and everything I wanted. When the doorbell rang, my butler opened the door and I looked out onto the porch to find… Andrew. The guy who bought me the computer that changed my life. I ran over and hugged him. I teared up and told him he changed my life for the better and that it gave me everything I ever wanted. I pulled away and he looked… sad.

“I’m sorry I have to do this,” He said. He snapped his fingers and a computer, MY computer appeared in his hand. How did he do that? He took both sides of the computer in his hands and started bending it.

“Wait! What are you doing?” I asked completely shocked that he was about to destroy all the good I did. “What is wrong with you why are you destroying all my hard work?”

“Everything you did was not supposed to happen. I know it changed your world for the better, but it ruined mine.” He said sadly. His world?

“I live in a world, well more specifically a dimension, where all of those magical and extraordinary creatures exist. When you wrote them into this world, onto this planet, They were stripped away from our world, ruining the balance and almost destroying my planet completely. Your world was always supposed to die. If it doesn’t, it will destroy the balance of every other world in existence.” After he said all of that I apologized and deleted everything, making everything around me disappear. Earth turned back into a dismal and disgusting place. Andrew stood in front of me while I was curled up on the floor, crying. He told me I did the right thing and said that he would see me again soon and then dissolved into the wind.

I wake up with a gasp. I look around to find that I’m in a white room with fluorescent lighting. I’m lying on a hospital bed with flowers and ‘get well soon’ cards on the table next to me. A nurse walks into the room.

“Finally woke up? You gave all your friends such a scare, passing out like that.” The nurse says in a sweet voice.

“I guess seven shots of espresso do knock people out. You were in a coma for a week!” She says while getting stats from all the machines connected to me through wires. Coma?! For a week?! I sit there for 10 minutes just staring into space. Wait, none of that stuff happened with Andrew and the computer and any of the other stuff? That was all just a dream? My brain can’t handle much more thinking about the coma so I grab the get-well cards and read them. The first one was from my best friend, Carly. According to the card she sat with me for a long time but had to leave for work and a shower. The other ones were from friends and family… except one. It was from Andrew, like Andrew from my coma. I know it was him because in his card he wrote details from the Coma dream that I haven’t told anyone yet, seeing as I just woke up. As I read the card, he walked into the room.