My mind refused to think clearly, almost as if someone had grabbed my thoughts and scattered them, leaving me to pick up the pieces. Photo / 123rf
My mind refused to think clearly, almost as if someone had grabbed my thoughts and scattered them, leaving me to pick up the pieces. Photo / 123rf
Judges in the 2023 school short story competition run by the Northland Branch of the New Zealand Society of Authors said the winning writers had them hooked from the first sentences.
Deborah Jowitt and Sue Barker said the stories continued to develop from this point, with tension and anticipation rising. They thought these three works were tight and spare in their use of language, using engaging voice and strong emotion leading to poignant endings.
There were two sections - Year Seven and Eight, and High Schools. Here are the High School winners:
He leaned forward, his forearms resting on his knees as he gazed into my eyes. I became acutely aware of how closely he was watching me. Normally, I would begin to feel uncomfortable if someone was staring at me, yet his presence felt so calm and safe. But that didn’t stop a part of me from still feeling suspicious of him, even if it was only because he might be insane.
My mind drifted back to the man before me, his eyes piercing mine, flecks of green visible in his otherwise warm caramel eyes.
My thoughts blurred together, and everything around me seemed to go fuzzy. I tried to remain focused, but my mind refused to think clearly, almost as if someone had grabbed my thoughts and scattered them, leaving me to pick up the pieces. Suddenly a memory blazed in my head, of the two of us laughing and eating in a cafe, yet something felt off about it.
Amber Lorrigan
A loud snap brought me back to reality and the man sitting opposite me. My smile disappeared, along with my false sense of trust in him. A grin pulled on his lips at my sudden mood change, and he tilted his head at me playfully.
“Still don’t believe in my power?” he murmured teasingly.
“What did you do?” I whispered. “How did you bring up that memory?”
His grin grew wider still, but that only frustrated me all the more. “Oh, don’t you remember where that memory came from?” He asked, frowning with concern. Or perhaps he was mocking me. His eyes were throwing off my sense of reasoning.
“No … what are you talking about?” I looked at him uncertainly. He chuckled, humoured by my confused reaction. Okay, he was definitely mocking me.
“Well, it’s pretty simple, darling. A little thing you might refer to as … mind manipulation. He arched his eyebrow for the grand effect, taking in my bewilderment. I shut my gaping mouth, feeling a scowl form at his smug expression.
“That’s not possible.” Dear Lord, why did I almost believe him?
“Well, what else do you think that was?” he whispered, reaching forward and tucking a rogue lock of hair behind my ear.
In any other situation, I would’ve rapped his knuckles, but my mind was still whirling from the abrupt memory. Surely, there was a reasonable explanation for it, right? Some sort of psychological trick, perhaps. But I couldn’t shake the feeling of uneasiness that lingered around the edges of my mind.
SECOND PLACE
A Serendipitous Meeting Between Two Former Classmates in a Coffee Shop
Emma Philips, Ruāwai College
The shadows smooth her face and the woman sitting across from me could be the girl I knew. When she looks away, into the golden morning sun, she is unrecognisable. It could be a whole other branch of archaeology, scraping back the time-worn changes on someone’s face. Wondering who gave her those worry lines. The bags under her eyes.
“It was great, back then when we were young,” she sighs.
I remember words like knives. Lacerations in my psyche. A bag on the last chair. Salt in a wound. I sat on my own by the window.
The lines and dark eyes aren’t from haunted nights then. She is all wistfulness and fond memories. To her I’m not even a ghost from the yawning maw of the past. Just some girl she knew.
“It’s better now, " I say, “no due dates for history essays I forgot to write.”
She laughs and I join in. The sensation is disjointing. To be laughing with her.
They leered around me. Mouths wide, flicking saliva. Like stretched-out shadows in the midday sun. I couldn’t outrun them. I’d tripped and now they had me. Specks of concrete were embedded in my hands. I smelt the blood of my skinned knee.
“Thank you,” she says, “it’s just so good to catch up with someone from school again.”
“Yeah.”
“Everything was so simple and light-hearted then.”
Basking in nostalgia, she reclines in the pool of golden light. If I reached out could I hold the sunlight in my hand, drink it in, replace the darkness?
The library was noisy when the weather was poor. I hid out behind the swimming pool, coat pulled round myself and my book. It was a mistake. My resistance was swallowed by the wind. Her nails burrowed into the spine of my book. Paper tore. Frankenstein, scattered to the wind, turning translucent in the puddles. It takes a while for inky words to break down.
I bring back her coffee. Distracted by her phone, she is oblivious to my clumsy emptying of a small silver packet into the cup. She recoils at the bitterness of the coffee, not realising the taste masks something far more unpleasant.
I remember the echoes inside my head at night. Some words live forever.
A piercing wail shatters the lethargy of the cold December night. There is a moment more of darkness, then it is slowly overtaken as, one by one, powerful spotlights light up the heavens, searching. Anxiety laces the air so thickly that I can taste it.
Beside me, Clyde is peering into the sky. “Nae a thing ‘sides th’ clouds, far as ah kin see,” he says, his thick accent rendering the words almost unintelligible. He shoves his hands deeper into his jacket. I keep my numb hands gripped onto the handles of my anti-aircraft gun. “Ach, calm doon, man,” says Clyde, “ye look like ye—” Whatever comparison was to be made is cut off by a sound that sends shouts of alarm up from every gunner in the city.
At first, it is barely distinguishable from the air raid alarms. As it grows louder, however, it becomes clear that this sound is quite different. Its pitch continuously heightens, an ugly tortured drone that climbs toward a terrifying scream of triumph. As the cacophony of the first bombs reaches our post, Clyde curses, hands no longer in his pockets. “Stukas!”
My mouth is dry and my knuckles white as I search the sky, finger a feather’s weight from pulling the trigger. Nothing. Clyde’s spotlight catches only fog until—
“There!” Clyde yells. I turn to see a dark shape exposed for a moment in his beam.
The demonic shriek of the Stuka’s dive rises above all other sounds. I can feel it in my mind, that shriek. It freezes me in place and liquefies every muscle in my frail, mortal body.
“Look lively, lad! Hit ‘im already!” screams Clyde, voice cracking. His reproach wrests me away from my terrified trance. I bring the bomber into my scope’s line of sight and pull the trigger. Flame erupts from the gun as shells are launched towards the Stuka. Lit sporadically by Clyde’s searchlight, the plane weaves through the barrage and continues its course. As it draws near, it releases its payload and levels out—
One of my shells takes out its right wing. The Stuka flails for a moment, then it hits the ground and is enveloped in a burst of orange fire. One triumphal second passes before his bomb detonates beside me.
