Micro-Fiction Winners Announced

As part of our week-long programme of activities celebrating World Book Day, our Library staff organised a Micro-Fiction competition.

The brief was to write a literary-themed piece of creative writing in a maximum of 300 words and the competition was open to students from all year groups. The entries were of such a high standard that it was impossible to select just one winner so instead the prestigious honour of first place was awarded to two incredibly talented students - Tashvi (Year 8) and Olivia (Year 9) – who each submitted beautiful, thought-provoking pieces of micro-fiction.

Congratulations to both of our winners. We hope you enjoy reading their entries below.

Entry from Tashvi (Year 8)

"People always thought he was strange. From the way he stared at them with large, glossy eyes, to the fact that he carried a book with him everywhere he went. Most people didn’t understand. They never would, he guessed.

But, sometimes, there were a few who could maybe empathize with him, with his life, his burden. He tried to explain. He did.

It rarely worked.

It was hard to say what the pages of a book meant to him. Why something that was made from dead life, that was so brittle, (like him) gave him hope. He could never explain it. The feeling of leaving his reality where he knew his time would come to an end, to a place where the unimaginable became possible. Where he could play alongside everyone else his age, not worrying about draining and fatiguing himself.

It was a childish fantasy. One that could never happen, and he had accepted that long ago. That he wouldn’t be able to sail a ship, or go to space, or soar in the sky, or leave this city.

When strangers saw him, they saw a boy, a child, with big, washed out eyes, sallow, pale skin, sunken cheeks, and cheekbones that looked a touch too prominent. They saw greasy, inky hair, and a shy demeanor.

When doctors saw him, they saw him as a lost case, a broken thing that they couldn’t help. Something to be pitied.

When his parents saw him, they saw another dead child, already something to grieve.

But when he read, all of that disappeared, floating into the sky, as light and unimportant as candyfloss, and he could lose himself in a world filled with fantastical creatures and entrancing places.

If all that was possible, then let him be strange. Let him be free."

Entry from Olivia (Year 9)

"There is a tree, somewhere, that you will not have seen before. There are probably many, depending on how well travelled you are, but this one is special. Singular. Unique. You won’t find its leaves in a grave of bound paper on an arborist’s desk. There are several reasons for this: they don’t know of its existence; they haven’t yet found it; it doesn’t have leaves. It only has large, triangular fruit hanging off its every wiry branch. Each fruit resembles a cluster of yellow grapes held in structure by wisps of cotton copper and, when you sink your teeth into one, you’ll learn of a scene. The tree is a story from which each fruit is an incomplete event held by the plot of the branches.

I pulled one off, one of the fruits. It tasted of a dyed-scarlet-haired girl who’s armour was a bit too tight. Her leaded arms hooked around a grotesquely masked opponent’s shoulders, jerking them downwards as one of her legs swept his up. Thump. Her guilty heart galloping she turned and distanced herself from the fallen soldier. Bam. Her head flicked to the right. Cri-clack. A corner of her brother’s smile lifted in the distance. Thump. He lay sprawled at his assassin’s dust-grey boots.

I grabbed another, from a branch further up and unceremoniously stuffed it into my mouth too. This time it was a flaky taste of dry dirt in the graveyard in which she sat. The same girl. Except this time, she bore blue flowers to the serene yet mournful grave of that brother lost. The fruit had an aftertaste this time, a bitter, stale taste of clotting tears and escaping dreams.

“Kalina!” Mother had called far off. I had not understood how important this tree was, so I had scampered away."