The following is a featured 100-word story from the June Writing Challenge.
This is everything. I recount the hours of blood, sweat, and tears leading up to this instant, all the practice drills and exercises. I balance my weapon with nervous determination, its tip honed to a lethal glint. I’m a warrior facing the battlefield. Around me, my fellow soldiers also look down at their personal hells, and there we sit under a fluorescent sky in stoic companionship. They say only the grittiest and wittiest will survive. When the clock strikes 9, armed with Number 2 pencils, we start scribbling against the enemy’s relentless onslaught. The war for our futures has begun.