Your May Creativity Mini-Challenge + New, Exclusive Short Story by Me!
A quick, 5-minute creative hit to take you into the weekend
Hello, Protagonists! In this post, you’ll find:
🤓 Reader’s Corner: What I’m Reading this Week
🎉 5-minute Creativity Mini-Challenge
✍🏼 A new short story by me (published exclusively here on CREATIVE. INSPIRED. HAPPY)
📸 Where is the photo from?
🤓 Reader’s Corner: What I’m Reading This Week
Emily Wilde’s Compendium of Lost Tales by Heather Fawcett - (novel, fantasy) - I love this series featuring a very grumpy female professor who studies fairies and her endearingly cheerful colleague who keeps bumbling into her research projects and winning over everyone’s hearts (including her grudging one). This one is Book 3, but if you haven’t read any of them, definitely grab Book 1!
“The Real Reason You Always Have Room for Dessert” - (article, Reader’s Digest) - I’ve always joked that I have a second stomach for cake, pie, ice cream, you name it… and now I know why!
“High Falutin’ Poet Voice” - (article, Atlas Obscura) - I didn’t know that “Poet Voice” was a thing! While this piece is a little judgy for my tastes, I do find it fascinating to think about the personas we inhabit when we feel that we need to perform.
🎉 5-minute Creativity Mini-Challenge
It’s a common myth that creativity has to be a huge undertaking. I actually believe we can spark it with just small moments, and anyone can do it, not just professional artists.
Also, these little bursts of creativity can lead to larger inspiration or simply bring a smile. Both are wonderful and enough in their own ways.
So here is your Creativity Mini-Challenge for this month. It’s based on a picture from my life and will only take you five minutes. (Below, you’ll find my take on it, although I admit time gets away from me once I get going.)
Look at the photo below (alt text available for accessibility).
Tell yourself a super short story or doodle something about it.
(optional) Share your story in the Comments below!
REMEMBER—This is supposed to be whimsically rough! It’s not about perfection. It’s five minutes to dream—just for you. Have fun!
CREATIVE.INSPIRED.HAPPY is a warm, vibrant community of nearly 25,000 readers and writers who believe that EVERYONE can spark creativity and build an inspired, happier life.
✍🏼 A new short story by me (published exclusively here on CREATIVE. INSPIRED. HAPPY)
Wren didn’t mean to steal the skull. One minute, she was wandering through The Curious Cactus, a gift shop wedged between a vape store and a metaphysical bookstore, and the next, she was stashing the glittering thing under her arm like it had always belonged there.
The shopkeeper, a woman in her sixties who wore her gray hair in a single, thick braid down her back, didn’t even look up from her tarot deck. But as Wren was tiptoeing past a singing cactus near the door, the woman said, “You’ll return the skull when it’s done with you.”
“Um…” Wren froze. She didn’t do fortunetelling. She did spreadsheets and paid subscriptions to meditation apps she never used. She also did heartbreak—her divorce papers still sat unsigned on her kitchen table next to a fossilized croissant. But since the shopkeeper continued not caring about Wren’s theft, Wren just… took the skull home.
Late that night, three drinks into a pity-party-for-one, the skull started humming. It was a low, metallic vibration that shimmered against the silence of Wren’s apartment, like a disco ball might sound if it could hum—a little tinny, but sparkly.
She poked it.
It blinked. A mirror tile shifted like an eyelid.
Wren dropped her wine.
The skull didn’t explain itself, but the rules quickly became clear:
It only hummed after sunset,
Sometimes it sang, but it didn’t take requests, and
Most importantly, it attracted people.
A week after bringing it home, Wren opened her door to find her neighbor, Marta, holding a bundt cake and looking vaguely enchanted.
“Is that ABBA?” Marta asked, stepping inside uninvited.
“It’s… the skull.”
From that moment, they were bound. Marta, a retired DJ with a penchant for kaftans and conspiracy theories, began visiting nightly. Soon, Rish, a twenty-something skateboarder who worked at the corner deli, started popping in, too—he supplied the savory snacks, since he was allowed to take home anything in the deli case that was about to be tossed anyway.
The skull sang songs only they could hear, usually disco remixes of life advice. “Don’t text him back,” it would croon. “Buy the velvet pants,” it insisted another night.
Wren, Marta, and Rish started calling themselves The Disco Skull Society. They took turns hosting dinner and made a pact to always dance when the skull sang. Wren laughed more with her new friends than she had in the last five years. Marta told them about her late wife, about her brief, regrettable affair with a cult leader, and about the time she accidentally locked herself in a CVS overnight. And Rish brought his friends from time to time, young people who livened things up and taught Wren and Marta how to skateboard (very badly).
A year later, after a particularly cathartic kitchen dance to “Le Freak,” the skull went silent. It didn’t blink. It didn’t sing. Everyone stared at it for a minute, then looked at each other, sweat still on their brows.
“Is it tired?” Rish asked.
“I think… maybe it’s done,” Marta said.
Wren remembered then what the shopkeeper had said, so many months ago: You’ll return it when it’s done with you.
“Maybe it was never about the skull,” she said.
The next morning, Wren took it back to The Curious Cactus. The braid lady winked as she set it gently among crocheted gnomes and lavender sachets.
“Someone else’ll find it when they need it,” she said.
As Wren turned to leave, Marta and Rish stood waiting at the door with three iced coffees and smiles on their face. The skull gave one final shimmer.
And somewhere in the distance, faint but unmistakable, the beat dropped.
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📸 Where is the photo from?
A family member was recently at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival and snapped a shot of this disco skull, which I assume is a prop from a more sparkly version of Hamlet? How fitting, since I actually just saw a production of Hamlet (not at the Shakespeare Festival, though).
“Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy.”
I'm very late since the next one is posted already but in my defence, my subscription for Microsoft ran out and they gave me a hassle with renewing.
Postponed Dreams
Kenzie pulls her car to the side of the highway as a police car flies by, breathing a sigh of relief the sirens aren’t for her. She’s not quite sure how she would explain her friend in the passenger’s seat to the officer. She could make a joke and hope for the best, she could lie and say it’s a present, she could tell the truth and tell him she’d bedazzled the mask she’d worn during her radiation treatments. It’s weird, she knows, but it had felt right.
She has her plan, the same plan that had kept her going through her treatments. Her parents aren’t a fan of her solo road trip, but after months and months of them, family and friends, doctors and nurses, all hovering over her every move, she really just wants to be alone. She has her list of places to visit, some popular tourist places with a lot of underrated gems, at least according to the internet; she has a tank full of gas and a car that just recently passed inspection; her cell phone fully charged; her wallet with her ID, credit and debit cards. This trip will cost a lot but that’s a problem for a later day.
She’s open to her plans changing. She’s actually hoping they change. She wants to arrive in some of the small towns, talk to the locals, and get guided to their favourite spots if they’re willing to share with her. She wants those little hole-in-the-wall cafes no one but locals know, has many months of not being able to eat her favourite foods to make up for, wants to try new foods in her travels.
Right now, she’s on the road to one of her cousin’s place. She had tried to plan her trip to stay with as many friends and family along the way to save money. After so many days in a hospital bed, one night on some couches will be a breeze. As much as she does want her alone time, she has to be practical about her money. Plus, these are people who will report back to her parents that when she tells them she’s doing well, she means it.
This trip is special to her, more than anyone knows. After high school, she’d wanted to take time before college to travel but her parents had talked her into postponing those plans. After graduation, she’d begun working and never really slowed down until she became sick. It’s part of the reason she’s refused to allow her parents to talk her out of it this time. She might leave her jeweled mask in the car though, just in case people think it’s weird.
After last call — drunk, buzzed— but she wanted to keep dancing. Swirling and swaying in the center of the floor …
Others were exiting and going to the curb to wait for an uber.
She looked up at the disco ball. As if looking up into the sun and she saw, looking down at her thru the mirrored glass a laughing skull …she was under a spell. She tried to stop dancing, but nothing worked.
Her skin went numb as her soul lifted out of her body to join the others … taking her place in a tile of the mirrored skull.