We write so others can read. Literally!
By Tena Laing
2014 Winner: Adult
“You’re gonna have t’ face it, Veronica. You knows you are.”
Dad broke the silence he’d held all the way from the airport as we came around the bend off the winding Viking Trail, and took the turnoff for Tickle Point. As the car edged closer to the dip in the high road that would reveal the scenic bay and community spread below, despite myself, I felt that old magnetic pull in my guts. [Read more…]
By Ruth Walker
2014 Winner: Young Adult
Keep low, tight to the ground.
Lesser sun is still high but soon prime sun will set and I haven’t enough to fill my tell. I stop. Listen. Lift my nose just high enough to catch what’s on the air.
Undeserving animal. Close by. The sweatstink as clear as Blessed Leader’s vision.
I hold my breath. Wait. And then I hear it. Breath of one in a struggle. Trying to keep still, knowing something’s near.
Truetell, I’m coming anyway. [Read more…]
By Lenore Butcher
2014 Honourable Mention: Young Adult
She was facing a long night alone in the house and she didn’t think she could take it anymore. She had to get out. If she stuck around the house, she thought she might end up getting drunk again and she didn’t want to be that pathetic loser who got drunk by herself every night. That was someone else entirely, definitely not Katie Byron.
She put her jacket on and left the house. She had no idea where she was going, just she couldn’t stay home tonight. [Read more…]
by Kevin Craig
2014 Honourable Mention: Young Adult
I’m trapped in my bedroom again, impatiently waiting for the screaming to end. I know it won’t. I sit cross-legged in the middle of the bed and rock back and forth. My therapy position.
Mom and Dad are down the hall in the living room, screaming about dividing assets. Again. She claims the contents of the den, and he gets the credenza in the dining room. Sheer madness. Not once in the hour since the blow up began have either one of them volunteered to take me. Through the whole entire list of the inventory of their lives, I have been left off the tally. In fact, my name—my existence—hasn’t even come up. [Read more…]