A Call From 500 Miles

He hurled the brand new replacement for his 6-year-old phone against the wet concrete flow. He didn't care that he had just trashed a $1000 phone that was barely a few minutes old because the news that came through the first call he received on it was even worse.

Theo wasn't always violent to this degree. He was quite mellow actually. Much of that was probably because he had comfort and stability in the knowledge that being a town icon had its perks.

It was certainly a much better experience than the miserable conditions that he had gone through 5 years prior to his fame.

Theo had worked hard to pull himself to the top of his community as far as personal achievement was concerned. And he had done this through dance. Being a dancer is all he knew and he did it better than everyone else according to the polls and popular opinion.

He took comfort in the knowledge that this status afforded him a decent living where he had to struggle for survival no more.

But now the call he had just received had been made to inform him that all that was no more. Results had come that the pain in his right-angle joints was much worse than the doctor had originally anticipated.

Years of dancing his way to the top had caused irreparable damage to this part of his leg. The doctor not only informed him about his impending doom but he had also been called to the hospital immediately but before the doctor could explain the urgency, Theo's phone and the wet concrete floor had already touched surfaces.

After a few minutes of shock, Theo with all his thoughts sat in his car to go to the hospital and he applied the sense of urgency to his driving as well.

Red lights, jaywalkers, motorists, you name it. Nothing would stop him as he was buried in thoughts. It was not until he got out of the busy city and onto a stretch of road that ran through a woodland that he was forced to snap back to reality.

Glass shattering, airbags deploying, the smell of burnt rubber from the screeching of his car tyres were a violent awakening to the fact that he had just hit something. Forget the pain in his ankle joint because, on the same leg, he had just got a severe fracture too.

But he was more curious to find out what he had hit and luckily he didn't have to move out of his wrecked car to find out. For, in the fore distance, just before the headlights fell off lay a barn owl flapping its wings helplessly.

Theo was relieved that it wasn't a person. "Anyway what would anyone be doing in such a dark spot at this time?" He thought to himself as reached for the emergency button in his car to signal for help shortly before he passed out.

When the paramedics arrived, they quickly realized that they had to save not one but two casualties because unbeknownst to Theo, the accident and particularly the owl had actually saved his life. The paramedics wanted Theo to know so they decided to do their best to save the bird as well.

On recovery, Theo was told that had he not hit the owl, he was going into a curve where just after the turn, he would have hit the big log that had fallen across the road but since this was not a common route, Theo would have been the first person to come across it.

Theo felt indebted to the owl and decided to take it as a pet. An unusual pet for that matter. Everyone told him not to do that but his gratitude fueled his determination to have such a pet.

His accident and recovery left him with titanium rods supporting his leg which meant that even the little hope he had to dance again was now really gone.

All he was left with now was his new pet and a lot of sympathetic eyes for a talent wasted.

It got so bad that Theo felt like he no longer fit into the community he had once called home. He therefore packed his bags and moved 500 miles away with his owl hoping for a fresh start.

He found that start in another town where no one knew him except for maybe the local dancers and even then, he tried to disguise his identity so that it would be easier for him to start afresh.

He also dreamed of having his own house and this town had a particular abandoned house that he was so fascinated by and he determined that he would one day find a way to buy it, renovate and sleep in it. He liked how secluded it was among many other things.

His dream appeared very near when he came across an advertisement that was for a dance competition with a grand prize of $700,000. He knew he had to find a way to be part of the competition.

He figured that since he was an icon in the dance industry, he would use that to coach a few people for free who would become his team into the competition, and if they won, he would share the prize with them equally enough for him to get enough money to own the house as his new home.

He had only one problem which was that his popularity would have made it hard for him to source good talent so he chose a disguise instead. Tow truck driving was something that gave him so much time alone which he really needed.

It was this disguise that allowed him to scout the different neighborhoods for a diverse group of talented dancers. Soon enough he had his crew and the countless hours of training had them confident that they were ready for the shot at the grand prize.

The competition had a lot of talented teams from around the world but none was a match for the mighty Theo and his team. Theo knew that this win was his chance to get back on his feet.

But his share was used to pay respects to his pet that had saved his life. The barn owl never liked being a pet and neither would it's nature allow it to be. It had died a few weeks after Theo left hospital and people knew that it had an impact on him but no one knew how far that impact was.

Moving 500 miles to a new town too made his emotions more elusive as no body knew exactly what he had gone through.

That is why it suprised everyone when he decided to use his $200,000 share of the win to renovate the abandoned house and turn it into a home for captive-bred barn owls that had been released into the wild.

In a way, he found a lot of purpose helping these types of owls because in a way, he believed that the barn owl he knocked was not there to save his life alone. In return, it was also calling on him to help the barn owls 500 miles away from the town in which the accident had happened.

The owl he had knocked had been from the town with an abandoned house and it was just one of the many captive-bred barn owls in this town that had been released into the wild. In that, Theo found meaning in his new calling, and his lost life as an iconic dancer didn't hurt much anymore.