IGGY & Litro International Short Story Competition: Shortlisted Stories

iggy & litrointernational Short Story Competition for young people

award Ceremony 2012

3Award Ceremony 2012

programme of eventSContentS

3 Programme of Events

4 Introduction to the Prize

5 Meet the Judges

8 Longlist

9 Ige Abimbola – Biography

10 Before We Call Them Monsters by Ige Abimbola

15 Isobel Hall – Biography

16 Flowers by Isobel Hall

19 Lindsey Nkem – Biography

20 I Hope There is Wi-Fi in Heaven by Lindsey Nkem

24 Fego Martins Ahia – Biography

25 Memory of a Distant Country by Fego Martins Ahia

32 Sophie Drukman-Feldstein – Biography

33 People of the Sunrise by Sophie Drukman-Feldstein

37 Lin Wang – Biography

38 The Man Who Had Everything by Lin Wang

46 About IGGY and Litro

Drinks reception from 6.30pm

Awards Ceremony 7.00pm

Welcome – Patrick Dunne

Introduction from IGGY – Janey Walker

Introduction from Litro – Eric Akoto

Announcement of winner – Patrick Dunne

Reading of excerpt from winning entry – Peter Blegvad

Award of Prize

Thanks and close – Patrick Dunne

IGGY and Litro would like to thank Patrick Dunne and John Rothenberg for their generous support.

2 IGGY & LITRO International Short Story Competition for Young People

introduCtion to the prize meet the judgeS

“InspIratIon doesn’t so much strIke as deposIt Itself, lIke sedIment.”will eaveS Competition judge

Inspiring, encouraging and acknowledging the creativity of young people is a common goal for the online educational community IGGY and Litro Magazine. We have come together for the third year of the IGGY and Litro International Short Story Award, open to young people from around the world aged 11 – 19.

The prize

£2500 for the winner

The winning short story to be published in Litro Magazine

Excerpts of the winning story to be displayed on a poster in a London Underground Station

The winner and runners-up to have their stories published on the IGGY website and on Litro online

5Award Ceremony 20124 IGGY & LITRO International Short Story Competition for Young People

Chika Unigwe was born and raised in Enugu, Nigeria.

She has been a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow, a UNESCO-Aschberg Fellow and a HALD Fellow among others. Her other writing awards include a Commonwealth Short Story Award, a BBC Short Story award and a Caine Prize Shortlist. She has most recently been shortlisted for the NLNG award, the highest Nigerian Literary award. Her novels include Black Sisters Street and Night Dancer.

Will Eaves was born in Bath in 1967. He joined the staff of The Times Literary Supplement in 1995 and was the paper’s arts editor until 2011. He now teaches in the English department at the University of Warwick. He has published three novels (The Oversight, shortlisted for the 2001 Whitbread First Novel Award; Nothing To Be Afraid Of and This Is Paradise) and one collection of poetry.

Damian Barr, is a writer, columnist, playwright and salonnière. He has co-written two plays for BBC Radio Four and his first book was published by Hodder. He has just finished a memoir for Bloomsbury entitled Maggie & Me. He is creator and host of the infamous Shoreditch House Literary Salon. He is on faculty at The School of Life and runs the Reading Weekend.

Gemma Weekes’ first publication was a short story at the age of 17. Since then, she’s released a critically-acclaimed debut novel, Love Me (Chatto & Windus, 2009) and performed/pieces as a poet/singer/songwriter/playwright for venues all over the UK and abroad. Currently she’s working on a commission for a full-length musical for Stratford East Theatre, a concept album and her second novel.

ChiKa unigwe will eaveS damian barr gemma weeKeS


I was born and have lived all my life in Lagos, Nigeria. When I was younger I lived in a fenced compound and there were always power cuts so I turned to books as an alternate source of entertainment. I started writing too, my tales would be inspired by the book I had just read. I never really finished a story instead I moved on to the next book and a new story. Reading was no longer enough for me, I believe there are still many untold stories and that was a reason to finish telling my stories. Stories have a tendency of conveying some sort of truth both to the writer and the reader, because usually they come, it seems, unassumingly and the world needs more truths.

I’m currently studying civil engineering at Covenant University, Nigeria. I have two sisters and I spend my semester breaks with my parents.

longliStige abimbola

nigeria (19)Ige Abimbola

Zamzam Ahmed Mohammed

Jess Ball

Jessica Brown

Hannah Campling

Molly Clark

Anne-Eléonore Deleersnyder

Sophie Drukman-Feldstein

Megan Evetts

Moshood Folorunsho Aremu

Jessica Frost

Isobel Hall

Atussa Hamamoto Mohtasham

Phoebe Hamilton-Jones

Fego Martins Ahia

Bojosi Morule

Lindsey Nkem

Susan Piwang

Marc Ricard

Julia Marie Santos

Rhiannon Shepherd

Lin Wang

Kashala Whittingham

Fiona Wing Fung Tam


t he school compound reeked. The wind, it seemed was against them. It carried the smell of stale fish, dead rodent, and sewage from the nearby canal and brought it closer to them, but no one complained. Sonia rested her head on the wall of a building. In the dark they were all the same – the buildings, she couldn’t

differentiate, it didn’t even matter. She closed her eyes but she knew sleep would not come. It wasn’t because of the women chatting around her. She could easily drown out the noises in her surroundings. She had lived near a church growing up. It was one of those small churches that had only one parish. The church had installed two large loudspeakers in front of the church – she didn’t know how many were inside she had never entered – so that the message that they preached could travel as far as possible. So every Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Thursday and on every last Friday of the month she heard the word of God being shouted out to her by the pastor, a short man whose lungs proved that big things come in small packages. Her mother had said that the man behaved like all short people did. “They are short, they have to scream so that you notice them.” Her father was short too and he shouted too but only at his wife. Anna and Sonia were convinced that it was because only her mother brought out the worst in him. So when the loudspeakers were turned on and when her parents began arguing, Sonia would hear but she would not listen. But now, she couldn’t sleep and it was because the noise was coming from inside her own head.

before we Call them monSterS by ige abimbola

So long as there shall exist, by reason of law and custom, a social condemnation, which, in the face of civilization, artificially creates hells on earth, and

complicates a destiny that is divine, with human fatality; so long as the three problems of the age – the degradation of man by poverty, the ruin of women by

starvation, and the dwarfing of childhood by physical and spiritual night – are not solved; so long as, in certain regions, social asphyxia shall be possible; in other words, and from a yet more extended point of view, so long as ignorance and

misery remain on earth, books like this cannot be useless.

From the preface of Les Misérables by Victor Hugo


She walked quietly, careful not to disturb any of the women that lay on the floor. She could barely make out the legs and arms that were sprawled about and was thankful for the full moon overhead. Sonia was amazed at how many women turned up, they were everywhere. Some slept on their scarf, others slept sitting down, their heads resting against a wall. She considered going back to her former sitting position but it had been taken by another much older woman. She found an empty spot by the school gates; she spread her wrapper on the floor slowly, sat and rested her head on the wall of the unpainted gatehouse. Sonia didn’t know when she fell asleep. She dreamt about her family – the one she was born into and the one she made; her father, her brother, her mother and her sister, her 14 year old son, Paul, her twin girls; Susan and Lisa, she saw her husband, James. She saw them every night in her dreams when she slept on her bed in her two bedroom apartment. She would wake and look at her children and it would hit her afresh each morning how she would never see her father or her sister’s face again, neither would she ever see her husband’s face again. The twins now slept on the bed with her, Paul slept on the couch in the other room. She had sent them to her brother’s place.

Sonia woke to the sound of someone chanting. It took her a few seconds to figure where she was. It was the gateman, when she listened more closely she realised he was praying. He was begging God to do something quickly. “Now” he said. “God do something. Lord you work in mysterious ways please do something.” Sonia wondered where God was, people had been calling him for a long while now and still nothing... She looked at the moon overhead and thought that God had done his part, he had created everything and left it to mankind. Man had taken these good things and turned them to pain and tears, and now it was time for women to take it back even if it meant losing their lives. Even the bible said that the ‘violent taketh it by force’.

Ojoju prayed, he had been praying sporadically for about an hour now. He would start then stop, the anxiety in his chest made it impossible to keep still. He would stand to pray but the words would not come out, he kept thinking about the women in the compound. He paced the 6 by 6 feet that were his home. Everything he had was in this four walls. He would look out of his small window and see the multitude of women that were in the school compound and he would feel the tug in his heart and he would try to pray but the urgency of the situation demanded a quick response before the cock crowed. He looked at the wall clock that had been given to him by the principal of the school, It was fifteen minutes past four. He tried to forget that she was out there with the other women and that she was embarking on a suicide mission and so he chanted the words that came to his mind. “God do something now.”

Ojoju heard the bell the same time Sonia did. Looking out of his window he saw her stand, she shook the dust off her wrapper and then folded it. “Good morning” she said noticing him looking at her.

He wanted to shout at her that the morning wasn’t good, that it was cursed. “Good

morning madam” he said as she walked away from him towards the school auditorium with the other women. Ojoju came out of his small gateman post and paced, chanting “God do something now!”

It was time. It wasn’t something to be proud of – that it had to get to this. It wasn’t something that they were comfortable with but desperate times did call for desperate measures; it wasn’t meant to be comfortable or easy. The women began taking off their clothes. Sonia watched and she became scared, it felt like betrayal – what she was doing, going to protest in her nakedness. She felt like she was betraying James, yet it was because of him she had to do what she had to do, before they took her son or her twins too. She wasn’t the only one not removing her clothes; several other women were looking around too. Sonia caught the eyes of a young girl that couldn’t be more than 20. The girl looked away quickly. An older woman beside the young girl was talking to her. The older woman seemed agitated. As she spoke she pointed at the other women taking off their clothes. The young girl looked at Sonia again and then started taking off her clothes. Sonia too began taking off her clothes.

The principal of the school, Mrs Victoria climbed on the stage. She was naked. “It is time” she said in her loud raspy voice. “We’ve been here for a long time, sitting

in the background while the men took the wheels. Well, look where they’ve driven us to.” She said spreading her hands to indicate. The women around Sonia nodded and shouted “Yes.”

“See what we’ve been reduced to”. She paused. “We’ve lost our friends, our sisters; we lost our brothers, our husbands, our daughters, our sons! We can’t keep quiet no more. We have to be heard, to be seen. We will show them what they have refused to see; the inhumanity they have reduced us too. Look around you, look!” Victoria looked around too. The women were getting excited “We will march to the office and we shall put in their faces what they chose to neglect. We will show them what they have done.” Victoria knelt down and shouted at the top of her voice “My God do not leave us now!”

“Amen” the women shouted. “My God do us good.”“Amen.”“MY God be with us.”“Amen.”“JESUS take control.”“Amen.” Sonia shouted her Amen too from the top of her lungs and she felt something break

deep within her. She didn’t realise that tears had started dripping down her face as she sang along to the song that Victoria had started. The cock crowed.

Ojoju heard the chants getting louder. He looked towards the auditorium and saw the women marching out. Victoria was the one in front and she was naked. It struck a chord


in him, these women with no weapons, bare, protesting. He couldn’t look; he ran into the small house and locked himself in, not breathing till they passed the gate house.

They chanted all the way. Sonia didn’t know what would come out of this. There were two options; they could bring about change and the other one was the one she didn’t want to think about but it was the one that had been inside her head since she had decided to do this. She imagined the story that might be in the papers tomorrow.

Their breasts danced in front of them as they ran, they neglected it, their hands in the air as the bullets rained on their nakedness. It was inhumane. These men were killing their wives, their mothers, their sisters, and they watched as they fell on the muddy bloody ground. They screamed, they ran, and they wept. It is official. We are no longer human, we’ve become monsters.

Sonia stopped thinking and began chanting at the top of her lungs with the other women.

So, me: currently studying for a degree in psychology at Warwick University. I’m originally from Crawley, a town in West Sussex – but I’m pretty sure I was meant to be born at Jane Austen’s Longbourn and raised with a brood of properly improper Bennets! I love clashes, contrast; they’re what inspire my writing. For a girl, being too easy is wrong, but being difficult is wrong too. My story is based on me, and my experiences with a panic disorder that meant it was hard for me to touch physically – I wrote to touch people with my feelings instead. I think that makes you feel with me and want to understand me. To be understood is probably the deepest desire of every human heart.

iSobel hall uK (19)


flowerS by iSobel hall

w e are without touch. We have four senses – or more than four. We can tell when we’re dizzy, tired, hungry, and surely those are more than four, and still we’re without touch. I couldn’t tell you a reason why because I can’t tell myself. This is the plight of the young woman without kids clinging to her

school skirt, without a cigarette rolling back and forth across her sugar-cherry-candy-bomb lip. I’ve never been held at gunpoint, abused, talent scouted, lauded.

This is the plight of the virgins.People say we make a choice and call us out on it, call us frigid; we haven’t made

a choice to be choosy. You touch me, and my skin crawls. I wash, wash, wash, brush my teeth, rinse my hair. You touch me and I become unclean. Someday, my prince will come (I hope, I pray, I doubt). I grew out of princes years ago, but it’s developed into something more: what kind of people need this kind of rescue, a skin-on-skin rescue, a head turning, toe curling rescue?

Us.She is me, she in the mirror, long legs, lack of smile. Black war paint around the

eyes, big and blue. I’ve made an outfit out of a black top and skirt, made them into a dress, but I’m wearing stockings because I want to be like Jane Russell. I want to be Grace Kelly, Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe. Who’s going to catcall Audrey Hepburn? You take her out to dinner, Audrey Hepburn, sex with Audrey Hepburn happens after weeks and weeks of tension building, hearts speaking words without words across a white clothed table. She’s not the Snog, Marry, Avoid type. She’s part of a dying breed that I’ve bought into, me with my big eyes.

Me with my big ideas.


She is me and I go out. Top grades and top manners don’t show in my short skirt, I am another face and another place. I am a get one over, show off to your mates, I am not a me with a name. It won’t ever occur to you that your sister is my age, has my hair colour, my nose. Or that your mum was my age, you don’t think about that, do you? Mums and sisters don’t dance with you, but short skirts do. They promise without saying a word.

Not hearts speaking words, something far less flowery.So what is the point to us, the virgins, the virgins with our plight who are waiting for

Mr Right but who wear out short skirts but obviously, eminently want you need you have to have you? Shouldn’t we just fall in line? Be like everybody else, do as they do?

We haven’t made a choice to be choosy.I don’t want the kids, the cigarette, the tugging on my heartstrings.Not yet.I don’t even want to be ordinary.Is it so much to ask for the things that I’ve been promised? The things Jane Austen

promised me, that Meg Cabot promised me? Darcy in a wet shirt doesn’t matter half so much as the idea that I, me, might be something. Something more than a skirt and what lies beneath it (skip over the suspenders, I doubt anyone’s going to get the Audrey Hepburn thing anyway). Maybe just the idea that I could have power that had nothing to do with that.

I’ve never been held at gunpoint, abused, talent scouted, lauded.So I don’t have a story for the popular press like the teenage mother and the girl

with the drug habit. I am middle class and all that entails. Yet we few – we, unhappy few, we band of non-touchables – have something that you don’t.

We are free.We, the unremarkable, are free.I was never imprisoned, never persecuted, never beaten.But I am free nonetheless.I’ll remind myself of this next time you see my long legs and I see me. Even as I

wash, wash, wash your idea of me away, brush my teeth, rinse my hair, I am free.We, remarkable for being unremarkable, are free.

Lindsey Nkem was 5538 days old when she started writing this. She’s been told, however, that she first opened her eyes in a hospital in Cameroon 15 years ago, and that by the tender age of six months was already jet-setting around the world. Along the way, she started reading and writing about things that unfortunately aren’t possible (as far as she knows). The inspiration for said stories lies in what she sees and experiences, the people around her, and herself. Sometimes they even turn out well.

Currently she resides, once again, in ‘E-town’ (Edmonton) Alberta, Canada where she reads, writes, draws, and burns away at her corneas with her beloved MacBook Pro while downing ginger tea. When she’s not at home, you can find her getting through 11th Grade, perfecting her roundhouse kicks at the dojo, or occasionally actually hanging out with her friends face to face.

lindSey nKem Canada (15)


i hope there iS wifi in heaven by lindSey nKem

h ello.

First thing’s first: I know I don’t know you very well, but I don’t have to. This isn’t about you.

Chances are you’re an old, blind, Bangladeshi man, or a small illiterate child in Indonesia. But it’s more likely you’re that crazy lady with the squeaky trolley who I know has been the one snooping through our garbage. It’s even more likely that you’re my mum. If you are my mother, or a certain snooty brother, just put this letter back where you found it and quit going through my stuff in the name of all that is moderately sacred.

Okay, I guess I do care who you are. Not a lot though. Only enough to hope with all I’ve got that whoever is reading this isn’t my mother. But that shouldn’t have anything to do with you.

I didn’t write this in search of sympathy or attention. Not really. Besides, I’ve never met you. Your day-to-day life probably sucks more than mine in one way or another. I don’t really care what you do with this letter. I don’t know where it will end up or if it produces the desired effect. But I will know that I did my best to save the world in my own little way. I tried to tell people about a dilemma that is not as rare as it seems anymore. And although I probably won’t be around to see what comes of this, I’d like to die knowing I tried.

Yes. I’m dying. We all are. It’s a known fact. However like a few billion people in this world, I’m dying

a little faster. I don’t like to call what I have a disease, but after hours of research (courtesy of our public library) I accepted that there is no other term closer in accuracy. Encyclopedia Britannica, and (when my mum wasn’t looking) web.md have all confirmed my suspicions: I am dying of boredom.


I suffer from prolonged exposure to dull, unexciting days that pass by me indistinguishably, and I’ve come to the point where, at any moment my bleak suffering isn’t likely to give in to a miraculous recovery.

I’ve been dying for a while now, since the summer I turned fourteen. Fourteen wasn’t even special. Not like 13 or 18 or 21. Yet everything around me was, for a while, new and different.

Some people started treating me differently while others treated me the same. Suddenly girls were supposed to have boobs and boys were supposed to look and pretend they weren’t. While all this happened, I can only assume that I changed as well. But unlike breasts, I didn’t really draw people to me. Instead, all my friends began to distance themselves.

Soon enough the only physical friends I had were my precious, beloved laptop, my bed, and Dr. Spock and Mr. Tubbs (both rabbits; unstuffed, stuffed respectively).

Food became more than just sustenance or mild, hormonal cravings. It became a seductive mistress that called to me even in the early hours of the morning. When I wasn’t eating or sleeping horribly (as opposed to joyous naps), I was watching cat videos on Youtube.com, updating my blog, or playing Massive Multiplayer Online Roleplaying Games.

The games, cat videos and general web surfing in itself weren’t so much boring. Not that I perceived anyways. Instead it was all like medicine. I did it because I had to. It was my protection from boredom. I was comfortable during that time, happy. And it’s not like I was hurting anyone.

I think it’s unwise to directly name who it was that stole away our router in the middle of the night during one of my Call of Duty marathons. It would also be wrong to accuse that same person of purposely refusing me all possible Internet connections, and even setting up a password for the Wi-Fi of the old lady next door. However I’ll still point out that it was this person who pushed me over the edge. This person tore down my immune system and ripped out my happiness and let boredom fester in that cavernous hole.

Thanks mum. I remember the game just stopping and then throwing me off the server all together.

A sound, like the cross between a siren and a starving vulture rang true through my ears. I could feel my eyes welling in tears as I tried everything I could. But with every ‘Internet Connection Not Found’, it became harder and harder to deny it.

Withdrawal was a nightmare. I’m actually still quite ashamed of what happened that morning so I won’t go into detail. Let’s just say that I didn’t JUST cry and hug my laptop while singing along with Celine Dion.

But what can I say? It was like someone had taken away my clothes and made me walk through a mall on a Saturday afternoon. Then had me lie down on a block of dry ice. Then proceed to remove my skin to make a skirt. I felt like I’d been completely and totally

violated. It was an attack of the worst kind. My equilibrium has been thrown completely out of whack. I am no longer satisfyingly

bored. I’m more than that. The extent to which I am bored will actually kill me. I probably only have six weeks left in me before I cave.

It took me ten rounds of spider solitaire until I finally decided that I wasn’t going to take it lying down. I would lie when I die. But until then, I decided I would do as my father does when he is dissatisfied with the system of things: Write an angry letter.

Only my letter wouldn’t be angry, and would actually make it to the post office. Fatal Boredom (FB) is a problem that is threatening our generation, and must be

further prevented. So, I wish that this letter – and the 4 others like it – will make their way around the world. That everyone who can even vaguely read English comes across this message and translates it for a friend or reads it to an illiterate human being or something.

The knowledge of this disease should be passed across the rolling glens of Scotland, to the most remote people in the Sahara, to those government research facilities at the South Pole, to the cosplayers of Japan. I hope, that one day a cure will be found so that thousands of people’s lives can be saved.

And if you do know who I am, or you are my mum and ignored my earlier demand, tell my Facebook friends I’m sorry I never got to actually meet any of them. Tell my Twitter followers the same. Update my status with the words ‘is dead’ and make sure my brother doesn’t touch my stuff.

Oh, and I love you mum. But you still suck for getting rid of our Internet. Have my body preserved like they did in ancient Egypt, and my coffin lined royal blue

fabric that is 50% silk, 50% pure cotton and imported from India. Do not dress my corpse in royal blue (or any shade of blue for that matter). Entomb me with the very walls of my bedroom and everything that was in it except Dr. Spock because he’d smell once he died. Place my laptop and charger in the coffin with me.

With Mr. Tubbs and Dr. Spock as my witnesses, these are my final words. I hope there’s Wi-Fi in heaven.


memory of a diStant Country by fego martinS ahia

Fego Martins Ahia was born in Lagos, Nigeria in the middle of 1995 when the angry rains of July still pelted down from the skies above the coastal city. Aside from this, what inspires him is his drive to tell stories from a different point of view. At fifteen, he was shortlisted for the Litro & IGGY International Young Person’s Short Story Award 2010 and later won a bronze award in the Commonwealth Essay Competition 2011 for his essay, “The Shadow of a Woman’s Dream.” Although a passionate story-teller who also won the Ugreen Foundation’s Creative Wings Short Story Prize 2011, his interests found solace in the sciences when he was still a child. Naturally, Fego enjoys visiting art galleries, writing mainstream fiction, reading books that matter and touching lives in his beautiful community.

fego martinS ahia nigeria (17)


t he camp was lifeless, except for jacaranda leaves rustling in the gentle morning air. A silence followed them everywhere. My newfound life began here: in the woods of my motherland, Africa. Twenty of us were stolen from faraway. Clad in dead green leaves crispy with age. Rifles were draped across our shoulders like hunters’

games. Time faded like the rays of an ancient sun, bright-yellow and full of life.

* * *Rebels never die. They are legends of a distant country.General Colombo’s voice melted into my head like the famished mosquito which

pierced my skin, carrying memories of a place I once called home. My tongue tasted of rainwater droplets and my heart still pulsed like an overused contraption, waiting to split apart. It said I was not alone in this half-darkness and that the skies weren’t naked blue anymore or dark green like the eyes of General Colombo, a man with a heart made of sandstone.

Mali was beside me, asleep or probably dead. His eyes were large and full, reminding me of those of my one-armed grandfather. Gentle breeze crawled across his face. The smell of it twitched Mali’s nostrils which seemed too aquiline to be African.

“I’m not fighting the war again, Tega,” is the first thing he said to me, without opening his owlish eyes.“I’m leaving for the city. Are you coming with me?” His voice was soft and silky, muffled from hours of quietness. Until he finally said, “General Colombo is going to kill us.”

“Escape? Mali, are you dreaming?” The voice came from behind us, because I was speechless. “I swear you don’t know the road to the city. By the way, which city? Do you know where we are?” I turned to see Fela, the short mamba boy, roaming his fingers across fading grasses beneath us.

“What if they find out? What if anything happens?” I asked him, raising my head from the sheepskin-sheltered grass. My fingers were quivering beside me, the way they did the first time I pulled the trigger of a rifle, days ago. All I remembered was the sound which could deafen a day-old baby. Captain Musa said soldiers don’t have to remember.

Fela turned silent, as if with pity or anger, or both. In a voice choked from waiting, Mali said, “They took everything I had left. They burnt

our house in broad daylight. The smoke curled into the skies that evening. They threw my parents into the great Atlantic and stole me away under the angry rains of December.” He looked at me, shifting his eyes in their sockets like half-melted butter. Then, he said to me, “There’s no such thing as home, Tega. Now, we must find one.”

Mali closed his eyes again and perched his head on the safety of the sheepskin whose mustiness didn’t seem to ever disappear. The purple tinge of dawn crept across our faces in the shadow of the sun which climbed over the horizon a distance away. Before it

disappeared, the voice of Captain Musa shrilled from the shack hidden beneath a hoary-looking trumpet tree. His voice was like thunder. It crashed into the morning air, but there was no lightning.

“Wake up! Wake up! Morning has finally come. Sleepers die young, soldiers don’t,” he said, clapping his hands or killing mosquitoes. His pimply face almost seemed like a Picasso painting.

In a small moment, other voices rose around us. Eyes fluttered open to the gleaming, golden sun hanging above us and the sight of morning in a foreign land. The voices resembled murmurs of the lost and hopeless.

“Quick! Quick! Time is no man’s friend,” he said in an accent which sounded Indian, yet unnatural. Behind him was the gap-toothed Captain Boniface whose cigarette was trapped between swollen lips almost the color of charcoal.

Mali finally rose to his feet and so did the rest of us, the ceiling of the shanty nearly scraping our dark disheveled hair.

“Walk like men. Like soldiers who want nothing but freedom,” Captain Musa said, adjusting his oversized khaki trousers on his tiny waist. “The General has something for you. Now, you must make him proud.” Just then, Mali’s eyes met mine. He smiled like a grown man and touched my left shoulder, but Fela’s eyes wandered away, trailing a cicada whose right wing had broken off. The next time I lifted my eyes, Mali’s face had changed colour. My heart thumped inside my chest, then stopped. Surely, there was something else he hadn’t told us.

* * *When I was a child, I wanted to rule the world. Walking past the flowing stream, all we saw were trees and more trees, rising above

our heads like Liberian soldiers not willing to die. They were full of leaves perched along their half-nude branches and the morning breeze carried them away when no one was looking.

Fela was walking in front of me and a bald beanpole stumbled behind me every now and again. Too much order made us resemble slaves. At the sound of Captain Boniface’s voice, the line paused.

As I dropped to my knees, the raffia sponge landed on the ground. Fela looked at me, then drowned his face in the water in a cold splatter.

“I used to take my bath in a shower,” someone said almost behind me. Laughter rose in the air like a cloud of dust around us. Perhaps, he didn’t remember that rebels don’t.

In another moment, it was all over and the shanty was our home again. It would remain our home forever, except we die in the war. In the middle of waiting, we heard General Colombo’s footsteps pound towards us. The age of his boots told from the way it killed silence. Everyone stood and saluted the man who rendered us homeless. That burning thought would not disappear from my mind in a long while.

The General’s eyes were shaped like those of the father I never saw. The man who


ran away fourteen years ago, when I hadn’t even imagined he could exist. Mama said he is a white man, and that our great grandparents thought white men were gods sent to enslave us with chains and religion. I promised that if I saw him, I would slap him in the face for leaving me fatherless for so long.

“We’re going in the spirit of our forefathers,” General Colombo started to say, wearing his glasses again and cradling his pistol like a lost child. “Rebels are born once, but never die. Is anyone of you afraid of dying?”

“No, General.” “They took away our parents to fight the World War in Burma,” he continued, hands

balled into fists. “They blindfolded our leaders and stole away our dignity, our pride. What do we have left?”

“Nothing, General,” a cauliflower-eared boy said, then breathed deeply. His name was Nelson.

“Is anyone of you afraid of facing the rifle when it sounds?”“No, General,” our voices rang louder in unison. “Now, let me warn you. If you try to run away, you will be shot. If you want to be

like me, then you mustn’t take cover when the bullets come. Walk towards them. They will never find you.”

Before he said anything else, Fela looked at me, his hand twirled around a wooden support holding the thatch roof above us. “Where is Mali?” I whispered into his left ear.

“Away at the stream,” he murmured back. My heart lifted in my chest. Before long, he added, “Mali is not afraid of dying. Those village people would teach him a lesson, I swear.”

“Is he leaving us here?” I asked, though my voice was so soft I barely heard it myself. “Does he want us to die?”

“Maybe,” he said in a tone of voice which kept me trembling. Once I looked away, the General had left the shed. Both Captains followed him with

hands twisted away behind them. They were whispering to each other in a way the other boys didn’t understand. Instead, these ones talked about eagles and tigers they wished to see in the woods. But the look on Fela’s face did not give me any hope. It took everything else I had away.

“Get ready to die, Tega,” he finally muttered in my ear. “Some rebels do.”

* * *After a meal of rice mixed with too much water, we were marching up and down

the stream, chanting war songs and stamping the grass-littered soil to the rhythm. All of a sudden, Mali stood behind me, his rifle slung across his right shoulder like everyone else. Something jumped inside me.

“Quick! Quick! Take your positions,” Captain Musa yelled. “This is the time to regain our freedom. Hold your weapons. Move like gazelles with speed and energy. Across the tall

bushes. Through the open streams. They’re as hungry as you are. Make space where there is none. Rule your world like Charles Taylor.” He paused and looked into our eyes, one by one, as if searching for something that wasn’t missing at all.

Then, he singled out three of us. They were in front of me, hands shivering like leaves fluttering in an evening wind. When he walked up to me, his smile had left his face. His breath smelled of tobacco mixed with liquor. He quickly turned toward them and relief reflected in my eyes.

“Are you so tired you want to rest?” he asked them.Nelson nodded gently, but did not say anything else. Immediately, a rifle blasted his

leg from a distance. I shivered, my heart pounding harder. There was wetness in my eyes. The smoke from Captain Boniface’s rifle swirled upwards as we watched it.

Nelson landed on the grass with his gun still hanging down his shoulder. His groaning resembled that of a woman in labour for the first time.

“Take him away,” Captain Musa said and the two others obeyed without question.“Now, who’s next?” he asked, but nobody replied. He shot in the air and shrilled

even louder, “I said who is next?” When nobody responded, he went on, “We need food, don’t we? We’re going to the village to take them away. We’re not going to steal. We’re taking them because they are ours too. Go and prepare yourselves. Dismiss.”

So we marched away, one trembling foot after the other. In the shanty, Mali’s voice jolted me from my reverie. He said, “This is our chance, Tega. Nelson never saw it coming.”

“Mali, I can’t,” I managed to say. “I’m afraid of what is going to happen.”“Listen. Our deepest fear is not that we’re inadequate.” He looked into my eyes

and added, “Tega, we’re powerful and truly, what kills a man is his fear for the unseen.” He placed the bowl beside the duffel bag they handed him on arrival in the camp and fastened the zipper.

“Do you even know which way leads to the city?” Fela asked from behind me.“I don’t,” Mali said. “The air breathes. It will tell us.”Fela then burst into laughter, unmindful of the eyes watching him already. “I knew it

from the beginning. It was only a dream, wasn’t it?” Mali turned speechless, perhaps not because he had no words. I didn’t know why. But his shadow followed him out of the shed. The sun baked the air into stillness and splashed yellows everywhere.

In the middle of our journey, a handful of minutes after, General Colombo ordered us to shoot at some innocent men who scampered away from us. My single shot didn’t reach anywhere. The tree it struck had a hole in its trunk. After miles of walking and walking, a market finally appeared. The sight of rifles made women abandon their stalls in search of safety. The rumpus rose when Captain Musa shot into the air again and again.

“Take everything you can,” he said to us. “It’s ours.” His eyes were so sharp he noticed every movement, even the perch of houseflies on the barrel of his rifle.


I trotted into the stall which faced me. There, a little child wailed and wailed. His mother probably left him. Beside him was the basket of oranges which Captain Musa said belonged to us. My breathing was ragged and shallow with pity. I looked into his eyes, searching for hope. As I rose again from the floor, someone’s shadow crept over me. The boots resembled those of Captain Musa. I didn’t realize my rifle had dropped from my hands which were quivering already.

“It’s me,” Mali said in a voice which I knew wasn’t his. “We’re going that way. That gate leads somewhere.”

“What about the oranges? Where is Fela?” “The two of you. How long is it taking you to plunder that stall?” Captain Boniface

asked as he approached. So Mali lifted the basket in the air and placed it on my head. Once I picked my rifle from the ground, the child stopped to watch us. But the Captain didn’t anymore. He turned away.

After another moment, General Colombo reminded us that we were soldiers, not thieves. That meant we’d stolen enough. Despair glimmered in my eyes as we journeyed home, through a different route.

This path was so narrow the bushes rubbed against our faces as we passed by them. Before we reached the sharp turn in a small distance, a gunshot sounded in the air from somewhere not too far away.

“Wait a minute,” Captain Musa said to us, roaming his eyes around us, as if listening to something, as if the air truly breathes. “Drop your goods and hold your weapons. They are government troops. They came for us. Hide in the bushes.” On Mali’s face, I saw a longing to escape.

He clasped my palm in his as we retreated into the thick of the forest on either side of the path. The moment we hid away from fate, another gunshot kindled the air. It was then that Mali whispered into my ear. “When I say the word, follow me.”

“Alright, Mali,” I replied, my brows furrowed a little. Before anything else, someone shot in the air. This time, from beside me!“Run,” Mali yelled and turned away. In one moment, confusion swept across my

face. My head plowed through tree branches in my way. My legs seemed too heavy to hold the ground beneath me.

And as if he woke up from a trance, Captain Musa shot in our direction and ordered the rest of them after us. Fela followed me, firing into the space behind us. Like a true soldier.

“Keep running, Tega,” he screamed, but the footsteps still pounded toward us. They grew fewer as time passed away, but Fela continued to say, “The bullets will never find you until you walk toward them.” But, inside me, everything was shaking. That was before he disappeared from behind me.

“The stream,” Mali finally said, clutching his rifle which was draped across his shoulder as ever. “Don’t jump into the stream. Don’t look behind you.”

“Fela is gone,” I told him. “They’ll kill him, Mali. He’s one of us. Have you forgotten?” I struggled to catch my breath, to trap more air in my nostrils. But before anything could happen, I collapsed onto the leaf-littered forest floor, panting harder, as if I was going to die. The gunshots began to disappear too. I wondered if Mali would wait. Flat on my back, my rifle clinging to my chest, the sunlight shimmered against my face, piercing through the leaves hanging above me.

All of a sudden, there was a small stillness curling upwards like a wisp of smoke. I heaved a deeper breath, holding my gun closer to my heartbeats.

To die a soldier is to die a hero, I muttered to myself, trying not to think like General Colombo. As I closed my eyes, something gripped my foot. I gasped, but Fela’s face emerged out of nowhere.

“I thought…”“We’ve run out of time, Tega. Mali is waiting,” he said to me. “But where are the others?” I asked him, listening to the rhythm of my heartbeat

which for once resembled tiny gunshots. “We are the others,” he said without a glint of innocence in his expression. The smile

on his face reminded me of Mama. It reminded me of the day they whisked me away in a pickup truck, when her smile finally melted away.

“Are we safe now?” I asked him, first with disbelief. “Soldiers are never safe, Tega,” he said, and then started to creep away, while I hurried

after him. “The government troops won’t forgive us. They would kill us for other people’s sins. They wouldn’t mind how small we are. Once you hold a rifle, you’re now a man.”

“Why would they want to kill us? We’re fighting for their freedom, not ours.”“There’s no such thing as freedom, Tega,” he said. Almost immediately, Mali rose

from his hiding in a shrub which was half his evening shadow. The scars hadn’t left his face. His gun hadn’t left his shoulder.

“So, which way leads to the city?” was the first thing I asked him, my skin feeling as lifeless as a jacket around me.

“I still don’t know,” he said, then wiped away the mud across his forehead. “Someday, it would come to us. Mama used to say a man cannot be lost forever. Either he finds his way or his way finds him.”

* * *We slept on forest floor that evening, waiting for morning to find us amidst dead

green leaves and silence. When it finally came, the dew had disappeared from our faces, but the rifles still clung to us. In the middle of nowhere, our journey to the city began. But the days passed away under the same sun, each one trailing the other like footsteps on sheepskin-sheltered grass.

One day, we would find Monrovia. By then, everything else would be a memory.


people of the SunriSe by Sophie druKman-feldStein

My name is Sophie Drukman-Feldstein and I’m from San Francisco. My favourite thing in the world is writing, and I want to be an author. Beyond that, I love to read, and I do several different crafts, such as sewing, carpentry, jewelry making and cooking. I do activism, mainly environmental conservation and gay rights. I also love street art, because I think that’s what art should be: not shut away in a museum or belonging to the wealthy. It’s for everyone, and it’s constantly changing.

I get inspiration from just about everything: poems, stories, and articles, visual art and music, personal experiences, and sometimes writing prompts when I’m really stuck. In the case of People of the Sunrise (my entry in the competition), I wasn’t inspired by anything specific. I just started with an abstract concept – the impossibility of absolute freedom– and turned it into a dystopian story.

Sophie druKman-feldStein uSa (14)


t he boy sits, hunched over, his head in his hands, on the stone floor outside of the jail cell. He doesn’t want to leave his parents, not yet. But he can’t bear to look at them either. So he sits, hunched over, too stunned to cry, as the minutes crawl by. They are the minutes of the week he most looks forward to, and those he most

dreads.He gets up and walks to the door. “Someday,” he vows to himself, “I will live in a place where no one is locked up.

Everyone will be free. Completely free.” A triangle of sunlight enters the dark prison as he opens the door, then is quickly banished by the hungry shadows as he leaves.

* * *Aurora is a town smothered in smog thicker than anywhere else in the world. The

inhabitants struggling through it are joyless, lifeless, purposeless people, numb and free of desire. It is said that this town was built from a young man’s dream of freedom. When he was a child, his parents were imprisoned, and he had vowed to make a place where everyone was free.

The youth had sought out the oppressed. He had promised them freedom, and had led them, drunk on inspiring words, into the lost barren depths of the desert. They had called their town Aurora, after the rising sun of their hopes and aspirations.

Time went by. Intent on preserving his people’s liberty, the young man began to make decisions. Small ones at first. But then, he started going insane. He started to be consumed by his dream. A dream can do that sometimes.

He began to see everyone and everything as an enemy of freedom. And one of his greatest enemies was nature. Nature with all its unbreakable laws, was preventing his people from achieving their dreams...

Flight.The thought followed him everywhere, becoming an obsession. He lusted after it.

Flight. So long as his people could not fly, they were not free.

Did he ever doubt, deep down in the part of the mind given to thoughts one cannot allow oneself to think, that perhaps not even flight could set his people free?

The air had been filled with heavy, horrible smog, in the hopes that, if he made it thick enough, his people could soar through it. They pumped more and more of it into the once-clear desert sky, until the air was almost unbreathable and he was forced to stop. The birds and dragonflies had all fled the toxic atmosphere, but still the people could not fly.

* * *In a cold, damp basement, a woman taught her children to read by the light of a

flickering fluorescent bulb. The woman’s name is Mira. The children are nameless. They had been born after it was decided that names were a way of deciding what your children would become, which should be the child’s decision. A child named Faith might not want to be faithful. A child named Freedom might not want to be free. So naming a child became illegal. Under penalty of death.

As was educating a child. From schooling, they learned one view of the world, that might be wrong, and that oppressed their creative minds. All the schools had been closed down. Children lived in a perpetual, miserable summerland.

Mira chose her battles: her kids could live without names, but not without an education.

Mira’s husband, Tom, entered the room, carrying a mug of tea for his wife, who had a sore throat. He put it on the floor next to her, embraced her, buried his head in her hair.

“Sweetheart, I fear for your life,” he murmured.“I fear for our children’s future,” she replied, staring straight ahead.Then the radio turned on.Every household was required to keep a radio in every room of their house. They

were used to announce when new enemies of freedom were discovered.Their great leader had figured out, the radio informed them, that anything that made

them do something they wouldn’t have done otherwise was an oppressor. And what causes all of our actions? Emotions. Emotions must therefore be obliterated.

Scientists, the radio announced, had already created a shot that, if taken monthly, would destroy all emotions. Everyone was expected to go to his or her doctor at 3:00 that day to receive his or her injection. Skipping an injection, or deliberately inspiring emotions in others (by means of music, poetry, art, theatre, etc.) was punishable by death.

No expression crossed Mira’s face as she heard the news. She continued to stare intently at the blank wall in front of her. Anyone would have thought that she had already received her injection.

Tom was terrified of the depression and cynicism that had consumed his once vibrant wife.

A nameless child wimpered.Mira stared.


“This is madness,” Tom spluttered, in a desperate attempt to break the frightening silence.

“We must leave here at once,” Mira said in the soft, firm, steady voice of someone stating the only thing there is to be done. “All this time, we’ve lived in fear. As soon as we receive those injections, even that will be gone. We won’t even be able to tell what is so wrong with this system. We will lose any reason for wanting to escape or rebel, and then we’ll truly be trapped. We must escape!” In those last few words, her voice rose, becoming the cry of a trapped animal.

“If we’re caught trying to escape, we’ll be killed.”“If we stay everything that makes us who we are will be killed. We’ll be dehumanized!

Our beings will be torn from us, and we’ll become hollow shells! If we stay here, we’ll never dream or hope or love or cry again. We must leave.”

And they did. They walked until the sand wore through the soles of their shoes, and then kept walking. Miles of desert stretched out before them. Behind them, a desperate man watched from his window as his people, joyless, lifeless, purposeless, struggled through smog thicker than anywhere else in the world – the great, free people of Aurora.

Lin Wang is fond of writing poetry and reading prose. A graduate of the Alabama School of Fine Arts, she is currently a student at the University of Alabama. Her work has been published in various literary magazines, including Inscape, The Journal of Compressed Creative Arts and Ice Diver: New Zealand’s Poetry Anthology of 2011. She dreams best in June and writes best in October.

lin wang uSa (19)


the man who had everything by lin wang

w hen he was a child, he wanted nothing.

He lived in Arzan, a village in the country of Kaseia. Before he was old enough to split wood, he walked to the river each day. He picked up sticks to throw from the bridge two songs away from his house – usually The Moon

is a Piece of a Lover’s Heart and The Man in an Underwater Boat, if he didn’t sing too fast. He gave crumbs to birds and candies to children on summer days.

He sang when he walked to keep track of time. He wanted to lose as many minutes as possible, letting time spill from him like water from a bucket. He thought if he lost enough time, if he waited for it to unravel like tightly wound string, everything would stop. Perhaps then peace would come, the restless urge to shake off the sense of chains would leave him.

He liked the quiet sense of releasing something after he had absorbed the feeling of it belonging to him, like holding a mourning dove before opening his hands and letting it go. It gave him a light, sinking feeling, the way a feather flutters to earth when the bird, unaware, lets it go.

He named the types of ownership. Esfira – fleeting belonging that swept across hands like grey silk scarves, found in discarded branches after walks and fresh-baked bread. Ahjab, the warm feeling that settled in his stomach like brandy, stemming from outgrown blankets and the hair that fell away from scissors’ blades every March. Then there was ukram, possession of things as old as the forest and sky – things that had been and always would be. The kind he could not fully grasp, the way his arms could not enclose an oak’s trunk.

And the types of loss: milarmi, the feeling of reaching for something that wasn’t there, of missed steps and gaps. Takehl, giving something for love. Takohn, giving something for duty. Sepov – unnoticed loss, like a button falling out or paper slipping from books. Dursna, discarding unwanted objects. Khaustus, the bitter pang of giving something up.

Thoughts, ideas, and songs were what he kept. Everything else would leave him—his clothes would separate until they were too tattered to wear, and he would throw them away (dursna) for new ones (ahjab). People moved away from the village (dutiful takohn), returning when they feared they had lost too many memories (milarmi).

* * *


i’m not sure all day simple-mind let him sleep missing

* * *The war was a torrential affair between two countries that drew in others, like curious

neighbours around a quarrelling couple. Countries picked sides between the two lands that had once been brothers. He enlisted before he could fall in love with the girl who wore lilies in her hair, who met him at the bridge each morning.

He did this so she would not mourn him. He did this because his mother had fallen in love with a soldier and the women said he had stolen her smile, only to have it reappear on her son. Better to lose the ribbon she wrapped around his arm (takehl, for love, in a rice paddy on the way to camp) or her name (takohn, for duty, dropped in the footprints men left behind) than to lose the memory of her lips (khaustus, bitter loss, between hot blood and glassy eyes). Love, his mother said, was a loss that stole more happiness than it brought.

He joined a squadron whose leader did not want to fight, losing the map (careless sepov or unwanted dursna, it was unclear) to vandals. They had gone too far north, the squad would discover later – but their leader decided they were the only army left and declared there would be no war, for what land could fight if their hands would not obey?

So they moved into a village. The leader enlisted his soldiers to build houses, declaring they wanted to live in peace. Some nights, soldiers burned huts to ensure they would always be needed. The ones who wanted to leave claimed responsibility and were exiled. They were given a pack of food and clothing; they never came back.

They did not know how long it was until the war was over; for the squad had crossed the border to neutral territory. A messenger came through the village with news before trundling on to his next destination. The quarrelling countries, like lovers, quietly swept the dead away, exchanging treaties like sorrowful kisses.

* * *He returned to Arzan in a rattling Jeep, temple adorned with a scar from a knife;

his hollow eyes drank in the landscape and let it slip out, like a cracked bowl that could not carry water. The village carried marks of soldiers: boot prints and tobacco stains and ashes where houses had been. His mother was gone; she had been ejected from her house because the soldiers needed a place near the river. She sat in the snow, refusing to leave until she became violently sick and feverish. They said when her body was laid on the pyre, it needed no match and burned on its own.

Only the general lived in the house now so he could woo the girl with the lilies. That night, the man with the scar slept on the riverbank; the next day, he took out the pistol he had not used and sang the two songs back to his house. His voice was hoarse; he had

almost forgotten the words. The winter bit at his arms, seeking to take everything he had.The general was smoking outside. He stood up quickly before the shot rang out,

arms almost out in surrender. The girl with the lilies ran outside, hair freshly brushed, petals falling from her hair. She screamed and screamed (khaustus). The man with the scar watched her look at him, look away.

He shot her. He married her. He left.

* * * losing doctor said recognize worried he’s not the same anymore the plant’s dead

* * *The inside of the apartment glows stiffly from the television. He disentangles himself

from the couch, winding the bathrobe around his waist. Makes his way to the bedroom. Climbs in between sleek cold sheets and lets his warmth pool into his bed.

His breath rattles through teeth. His shoulders instinctively want to move, shiver heat back into his bones, like a body anticipating hiccups that have stopped. He looks at the ceiling. Holds his breath. Wonders how long he spent sitting on the couch – sometimes he tries to count the seconds but stops, afraid he will lose his breath in the string of numbers.

Outside, the traffic keeps him awake. The window is angled and sharp and is not like the window back home. But nothing has been like home. He cannot remember it.

* * *Nobody from Arzan reported any murder; they counted the general’s body as one of

their own, mistaking his smooth face and uniform-clad body for the young man who had left them all those years ago. When they brought the body to the girl with the lilies, she covered her face and sobbed, so they knew it was the boy she had loved. Nobody recognized the man with the scar, for the winter wind had stolen his youth alongside his mother.

So he left for America, which was different, new. The streets were paved and shadowed. People shouted, words pecking each other like irate birds. He worked at a bakery and slept above the shop; the owner’s six-year-old daughter taught him English. On his days off, he went to the library, awed at all that the books contained. He felt sure they could always find what he wanted to say.

One day, he felt a hand on his shoulder. A young woman leaned in and asked, Is it you? Her short blonde hair curled in at her ears; he stared at it, stilled his fingers from reaching out. He did not know how to tell her she was beautiful; he opened a book and tried to find the right words. She was speaking in a language he did not understand. He shook his head.


Her face wavered. I understand. Maybe it hurts to remember your language.He held on to the word he understood: remember.I remember, she was saying, when we were on the lake – you said, the mirrors

will tell us we are in love. She laughed. Silly, but I remember. You said love turned people inside out, and only in mirrors could we see our true faces. Smiling shyly, she took him by the elbow and led him to the one-stall restroom. They stood side-by-side and he dropped his eyes, careful not to look at the man across from him. She drew his lips to hers while he shut his eyes, careful to ignore the couple across from them that kissed like they could not breathe, like they were creating a memory that never existed.

In Arzan, he never truly saw his face. Sometimes on clear days, he could see it in the river or puddles of water after heavy rains. America was different – people walked across shop windows and drifted through the bathrooms like water wraiths, dancing out of the dripping pipes.

Mirrors, he thought, stole from you – stray eyelashes, skin from bitten lips, almost-forgotten memories. The mirrored man had a scar on his temple, a white gash that pointed to the corner of his eye. They said eyes were the windows to the soul; he was afraid if his soul saw someone so similar, it would escape to live in silver sheens.

She broke away and said, How did you escape? How did you find me?Her eyes flickered over him.So the war is over. We’ll have to catch up, she laughed, kissing him again. He tasted

memory on her lips, sweet like honey, like a love that died beneath a broken building, an affair in a country he had never been to, mistaken identities.

He kissed her. He forgot her. He married her.

* * * leave him angry memory loss excuse same again?

* * *Sometimes he met people in the streets who followed him home. They were always

missing someone – a father, a lover, a friend. He could see their raw need to be recognized as they pleaded; America was strange, full of ghosts that needed permission to haunt you. One day a young man clutched his arm and pulled him in the direction of home.

Dad, Dad, what are you doing outside? The doctor said – and he replied, I’m sorry, who are you? and the young man shook his head and the man with the scar blinked and thought he had found a mirror – he jumped back and the young man’s face shifted into an expression he did not recognize – Dad, I’m sorry – No, no, young man, it’s all right, I hope

you find your father. He waited for the ghost to unlock his apartment.He smiled in gratitude, picking up a book and placing it in the refrigerator. He moved

a half-filled coffee mug to the cabinet. Turning around, he found a stranger in his room. His smile vanished – get out! he cried. He picked up a bar of soap from the table and threw it, residue digging under his nails. The stranger left, forgetting to close the door.

He opened it. He locked it. He embraced his son.

* * *He is sitting in a house he doesn’t believe in. Outside the snow howls. His hip aches.

He stands up slowly, reaches in, and pulls out a leather wallet. He studies the picture; a man with a scar stares back at him. A familiar feeling tickles his neck, a forgetful word, a word that feels like missing a step on a staircase.

He gets up. Stretches. Paces. Through the window, the storm flickers past. A faint song reaches his ears, playing from across the street. It echoes in his ears as he leaves in search for someplace to go.

A memory comes back, stinging his eye like a fleck of snow:The wedding. Her father gave her away; her mother had died years ago. Her hair

reached her shoulders; it danced beneath her veil like uncaught sunlight. They waltzed while songs played, even when the music’s beats collided with slow legs.

The phone ringing. Her voice: I’m coming home. She always called before she left work; he pictured her walking to the car, rubbing her feet as she removed her heels. Her feet against the pedal, the slippery ice beneath the tires, the white powder that refused to yield. He lost her to the winter, its desolate snow and whispers that melted when you listened.

It was years after they had married, after he had learned enough English to lie. Have you changed your name since the war? she asked, and he nodded. Have you ever loved anyone else? she asked, and he bought her a bouquet of tiger lilies.

For an anniversary, they were to visit the country where she met the stranger he was pretending to be. He could not bear her happiness, chattering about the cities, the language he could not speak. He confessed where he was from, who he had been. He was sorry to have deceived her. Confused, she asked him what Kaseia was and he said, My country.

There was fear in her face. You were born here, she said. So he did not need to lie anymore.

He lost her to the winter, always the winter: the crystals had reflected her beauty like a mirror and hungered for her, stolen her for its own. He knew this like he knew when a stranger was in love. He told the police she had brown hair worn in a braid. He told them who he was not. Apologies, he said, but is it a crime to impersonate a lover so I will not be lonely?

They buried her. They burned her. They closed her case.

* * *


wandering blizzard could have died doctor says not my fault! senile stop

* * *After the funeral, he thought that would be it; khaustus would descend and leave

a burnt taste in his mouth. But there was milarmi: forgetting how her hair fell against her shoulders, her laughter when tipsy, her scent after an afternoon nap. Sepov descended, gripping his shoulders like a hasty vulture, waiting to pick apart the carrion of his memories, and he gritted his teeth because he had not held her, had not cradled her in his arms and felt ukram.

The woman who took care of him after his wife’s death looked so much like her, but older; wrinkles clustered at the corner of her eyes on the rare occasions she smiled. This was her mother, he thought. It could not be his wife; her eyes were too tainted with sadness. The way she looked at him made him wonder if he had ever broken her heart.

He treated her with deference, not letting her see his grief. One day he woke up to find her beside him; in shock and disgust he pushed her away. Your daughter’s memory! he shouted, covering himself, while she huddled in the corner and cried.

We had no daughter.I married her, he said coldly.Oh, remember me, she said, touching his scar. He pushed her away.He believed his memories were not lost, but stolen. So a new loss was formed;

vakyrt, forcible taking. He watched riots on television, fires consuming buildings and mothers clutching bloody rags to their chest. He made up memories instead of words – remembering first meetings: laughter in a dusty meadow, or two shadows flitting through a forgotten street.

So he lost what he thought he could not lose – ukram, his thoughts. Memories crumpled, creasing with the line between truth and lies, sodden with scrutiny. They scattered – his mother into the girl with lilies, who froze while baking bread, the owner’s daughter into the girl who followed him home from war, and they married beside a pond whose tiger lilies wilted.

He weakened. He waited. He lost.

* * *In sleep, he spoke to a void. He remembered the man he shot, mourning him as

a treasured friend; how tragic it was to die in a fire, he thought, how tragic it was to lose. Memories filled his head like rising bread. He walked through a library whose books detailed

a history of loss. He waited patiently for his mind to be soaked in remembrance. Names were jealously guarded, stories about their origins built and broken like houses of cards.

He awoke with a name on his lips, but it vanished before he tasted the first syllable. With a sense of sureness, he put on his robe with shaking fingers, humming. The window was bright, dust motes waltzing between panes.

On this day, he received everything, but soon realized he had been tricked and had nothing, for he had always measured the worth of everything by what he did not have. Everything was heavy and unforgettable; it weighed on his mind, clamouring to be counted. So he set about the task of assigning worth, but quickly ran into problems—how many pounds of bread were a child’s tears worth?

In this way he lost his sense of right and wrong, forgetting to bathe because he could no longer discern whether the smells he gave off were pleasant or foul. He rocked in his chair and counted, skipping numbers the way the wind bounded between trees, letting tea spill from his lips. Ghosts tiptoed through the house, but he paid no mind—so long as there were no mirrors, he was safe.

* * * the moon is a piece of a lover’s heart the sun is a mother’s song and together they sing what a beautiful morning and Kaseia, Kaseia, we will love


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46 IGGY & LITRO International Short Story Competition for Young People

IGGY & Litro International Short Story Competition: Shortlisted Stories

Documents

Transcript of IGGY & Litro International Short Story Competition: Shortlisted Stories