These entries from February's challenge were selected as Honorable Mentions. Those who completed this challenge are now encouraged to share their stories in the comments section of the "February Writing Challenge."
Jessica Zimmerman
15
USA
The Void
It’s a dark and stormy night, as far as nights in deep space go.
A nearby star burnt out, and its dust leaks through the darkness, clouding out the other stars. Even the Sun itself is dulled by the dispersing particles. I shiver in my suit and wipe a hand across my helmet’s viewing pane for the third time in the last five minutes. My white glove comes away coated with purple grime.
It’s not that I don’t notice Mar behind me. It’s only that the longer I put off acknowledging his presence, the longer it will be before I have to… talk to him. So I let him sit a few meters away. He’s watching me, and it’s too late to hide the fact that I’m wallowing in self-pity.
He can watch all he wants. I don’t care.
And, yeah, I switched my helmet speaker off, so I can’t hear his voice. I’m not as stoic as I pretend to be. I wouldn’t be able to ignore him if I knew what he was saying.
His words are probably poetic. They are probably flowing from his lips in that effortless way I’ve come to envy so much – because it seems envy is precisely all I am capable of. Love is not a gift I know how to bestow. I’ve proven that much, for sure.
God, why won’t he leave me alone?
He’s in front of me now. He wipes the gathered dust off my helmet, and I see his lips moving.
I finally can’t help myself. I fumble with the controls on my glove and switch on the transmitter signal. There’s a second of static, and then his voice comes across loud and clear.
“You alive in there?”
“Barely,” I reply.
He sits beside me but doesn’t make a sound.
Even his silence is more eloquent than my own.
At last, he speaks.
“She knows you didn’t mean it.”
I shake my head. Thinking about it makes my skin crawl.
“Tell me a story,” he says. It’s a command, but it’s gentle, like I’m some skittish animal that will retreat into its shell if he moves too suddenly.
“Star N-563 exploded yesterday at approximately 12:06 p.m. All neighboring planets can expect cloudy skies and dust storms, particularly in the color purple, until late afternoon, early evening this Wednesday.”
I don’t have to look. I can hear the smile in his breath.
I’m a finicky creature, and he’s coaxing me out of my shell.
He’s clearing the dust from my helmet so I can see.
“Open your eyes, darling. I can’t see the worlds you’re creating when they’re closed.”
“There’s nothing to see.”
“What about the stars?”
“I told you, it exploded yesterday.”
“The other stars? And the planets and galaxies and people and stories living in that brain of yours?”
“Maybe they exploded too. Anyway, what gives me the right to tell stories when I can’t even get my own life right?”
“What are you looking at right now?”
“A black hole. An empty, thoughtless, emotionless void.”
“Sounds cold.”
“It is.”
“I want to see the universe your painting. Open your eyes.”
So I open them, letting him pull me from my fantasies.
My ears pop. He wipes tears from my glasses, then from my checks. I untangle my fingers from the quilt and stare blankly out the window.
“That’s better,” he says. “It’s not so bad here in the real world.”
He taps my forehead with his finger. “And don’t let anyone tell you it’s wrong to use the words in there to make sense of what’s out here.”
Lyra Zapanta
20
Philippines
The Void
The music switches to something quieter. I lay awake in the darkness of my room, tracing shadow patterns on my ceiling with my fingers. The house breathed quietly to the rhythm of its sleeping occupants’ breaths.
One.
Two.
Three.
I pick up the phone beside me and dial number 1.
Hello. This is Patrick speaking. I’m probably in class or somewhere I can’t speak. Leave your message and I’ll call you back later. Click.
Next week, they’re finally cutting his line. Apparently, dead people don’t need phones anymore. I haven’t had a good sleep since three months ago, when the drowning accident happened, but this night and the next three are special. Every moment spent awake could be spent memorizing how his voice sounded. I have nothing else to listen to and a lifetime left to live. Brains are tricky, I know, and memories fade just as easily as a ripple in the water.
I take deep breaths. Calming breaths that I don’t need. I feel as if my heart has stopped beating three months ago. Or, more accurately, like someone hollowed out my chest, took the heart, left a hole, then stitched me back up. I listen to the music, trying to make out the lyrics. It’s in Korean and, unconsciously, I translate it in my head. More than a year of Korean lessons are finally paying off.
In order for me to meet you,
So I can recognize you
You, who I’ve never seen before,
When I finally meet you on a day I can’t predict…
So, I won’t just pass by you…
Please stay that way.
Eastern tradition believes in the concept of reincarnation. That our lives are a wheel of births and rebirths. But if souls get reborn, recycled, right after they die, then that means we’ll have a fifteen-year difference in age. I wonder if he’ll mind the age gap. Or if he’ll find someone close to his age instead. Or if he’ll even notice me in the streets and feel a jolt of déjà vu. I want to think that his soul is tied to mine; that, like what they say, he’ll be related to me somehow in every incarnation of our lives. As if our paths have always been meant to cross. As if they don’t, the voids in our chests get bigger and we live the rest of our short lives looking for something missing, only to never find it. I know some people live like that. The wanderers. The idealists. The lost dreamers.
Me.
If I put my hand against my chest, I can feel my heartbeat, and even hear it on quiet nights. A lonely thump thump that tries to make up for the other half that has stopped. But the void…
I used to imagine this hole he left was fist-sized. Then slowly, my hands and fingers splay outwards, growing along with that hole until I can follow it no more. Until it grows so huge it transcends my whole body, soul, and being. Like the unfathomable universe that keeps expanding endlessly. A black hole. An unfillable void. That’s all I’m left as.
Three more days. Three more days and he’ll truly be gone. Despite– or perhaps because of– the emptiness I feel, I cry myself to sleep again.
Michaela Perkel
14
South Africa
The Void
I want to kill him.
God, I know how messed up that sounds. I’m not a psychopath, despite what everyone now thinks. I get it. It’s messed up to have a real desire to murder your ex. Most people just don’t think like that.
I never used to. I used to be that regular girl, who daydreamed about her future and going to college and getting married. Not anymore.
Now I only dream about one thing, day and night: His blood being spilled.
The date that changed everything was a Friday night. He took me to a street club. Lights were flashing, and unlabelled bottles filled with a thick dark liquid lined every counter. Most of them were half empty. The music was pumping through my body, and I could hardly make out other sounds apart from the constant yelling and slurring of broken conversation. The deeper in we went, the more unsettled I became.
He slung an arm loosely around my waist as he led me to the pool tables at the back. Sitting me down on the edge of an empty table, he leaned in and muttered something about drinks. I tried to tell him that I would come too, but he vanished into the crowd. I bit my lip. This place was strangely sinister.
I didn’t notice the man beside me until he spoke.
“You seem a little fresh to be here. Are you lost?”
I was momentarily startled and stared straight ahead, pretending I hadn’t heard him. I had no idea how to respond.
“You’re alive,” he told me, something like bewilderment was hanging off his features.
“Excellent observation,” I muttered. Uneasiness was expanding in my chest like a balloon.
“You shouldn’t be here,” he said again, moving to stand in front of me. Even though he was taller than me, his face made him look young.
I tried looking over the man’s shoulder for a familiar face, but the crowd and smoke were thick. My date had still not returned.
Sitting on the edge of the pool table, I looked up at the man still standing before me. He was smiling. I yelped and jumped back as my brain caught up to what my eyes were seeing. My heart started to thunder.
With his lips pulled back over his smiling mouth, I could see with a sickening lurch in my stomach that two of his teeth were elongated like fangs, sharp as needles. He moved silently towards me, and I realised I was cornered.
I started screaming for help, hoping that someone, anyone, would hear me over the pounding music.
Raw, flaming panic broke through me like a beast as someone else, a woman I’d seen by the entrance, approached us, her mouth open, and I caught an eyeful of her razor pointed teeth.
Rational thoughts escaped me. The two fanged people were blocking any escape route.
She moved forward and pressed me against the wall. “This won’t hurt, darling.” Her mouth was on my neck.
The last thing I saw was my boyfriend standing behind her. His teeth gleamed in the flashing lights. Fury boiled up inside me. He’s one of them. He did this to me.
I felt a rush of pain in my throat, and then my thoughts chased themselves away.
This is it. That void the others talk about. It’s the emptiness inside my head where everything, my dreams and memories and feelings, once were kept. Now, it is all overshadowed by one thing.
A want, a desire, a need. An anger.
I want him dead. I want blood.