Nineteen Year Old Pictures

Lately, it seems his days are strung on a wire; each dropping down to settle against its fellow in an inconsequential grey-rainy-day sort of way. James does not mind rainy days, and he enjoys midsummer chills and light, freezing rains. He is glad to think of peacetime now, because even after so many years he does not like the sharpness that lingers in the colours of the past.

“Shell shock,” they used to whisper in the hospitals. It had been 1945, hadn’t it, when they did not know how to cauterize a wound, let alone treat a man who shuddered feverishly at the sound of the word war. “Shell shocked, poor man. Let him go home. Let him rest.”

Let him rest, leave him be. And so James had been left to simply exist, developing a life for himself in a world of upcoming automobiles and engines, poring over car magazines with a desperation that belied sadness. He is an old man now, almost twenty years later, with hair that turned ungracefully grey at the temples and eyes that were bagged and blackened.

It is an inconsequential day. James is glad to have these, glad to brush off the trials and tribulations of his own life for a little while; glad to sip tea and think, there are better things to come. Still, it is lonely in his shabby grey dwelling, where things seem colourless even when they are happy in a dull light, and there is no one to talk to. These days, he keeps thinking with a peculiar sort of quickness inside him, there will never be another war such as that, and he feels somewhat better.

The teakettle grows insistent.

The newspaper clunks against the door, and he picks it up guiltily. He does not have sufficient funds to pay for it — no matter, he will not be this destitute after the veteran pension comes in, so he places the paper by his chair and goes to get his tea.

James tilts the kettle and watches the steaming dark liquid swirl into the cup; watches the milk settle in clouds as he stirs it in with the sugar. Then he goes to get his paper. He will sit down in the armchair and he will sip his tea and read the classifieds section. Tea in hand (he is becoming an astonishingly regulated old gentleman, he supposes ironically), he unrolls the paper.

And suddenly, he finds it increasingly difficult to breathe.

THE USA AT WAR WITH VIETNAM, roars the headline boldly.

He thinks, he thinks—he thinks he is sick. Or dreaming. Or drowning.

His face is sallow and empty suddenly but he does not notice (my face I don’t mind it – for I am behind it, screamed a limerick in his head.)

Nineteen years and a war have a way of changing a man.

He barely notices the teacup falling out of his suddenly limp hand.

He can only think in nineteen-year old pictures, but he doesn't want to see them again. He doesn't want to see.

USA AT WAR WITH VIETNAM! FIRST TROOPS TO BE DEPLOYED COME NOVEMBER!

“Shell-shock, poor man. Let him go. Let him rest.”
 
“Let him go home. He has seen far too much.”
 
“A medal of honour. Give him that, at least.”

He sees red light and white bombings. He was there.

He would have been so glad if he hadn’t.

He steps backward. The remains of the teacup crunch beneath his heel. He glances at them dimly and tries to pick them up, but the pieces remain pieces.

He thinks, vaguely, this is the first cup I've broken in years, because he does not want to think anything else. And he slumps down on the floor beside it with the newspaper still clutched in hands that will not stop trembling.

Written by Neha Shaji
Cambridge A-Levels

Creative Writing Competition : Grand Prize

Grand Prize Winner:
Name: Wilbur Bryant Dublin

Course: Cambridge A Levels

Title: Causality

Causality

 

15th May 2032.

A day remembered in infamy. A day that shocked nations and individuals alike.

Thirty years have passed since the incident but the memories are still as strong as ever. Now, where the disaster was, a park lies with a memorial, right in the middle of the park, which served as the collective tombstone of seven hundred and eighty-one thousand souls.

Now, on the thirtieth year, a memorial service was held right on the north face of the memorial where everyone affected by the disaster met up and people wanting to pay their respects. Aside from there, the rest of the park was empty.

Mostly empty.

On a bench on the south face, an old man sat. He had a simple tweed jacket and trousers on and beside him, a desert camouflaged cap sat. He sipped some coffee as he thought to himself.

“Hello there Professor,” called a voice behind him. The professor turned around to find a young woman, dressed a bit too formally for a casual meeting, standing with a clipboard in hand.

He took out his glasses out of his coat pocket and once he recognised her, he responded. “Ah! Amanda.” The professor shifted a bit to the left and Amanda sat down next to him. “What brings you here?”

“Oh, just reopening a cold case,” she said.

“And how does it involve me?” the professor asked, taking another sip from his coffee.

“It’s regarding the disappearance of Thomas Springer twenty years ago,” she said gravely. The professor froze as if he was in a trance as memories flooded back to him. “Some new evidence has come to light and you were the last person to see him.”

The professor snapped back to reality. “What is this new evidence you speak of?” he said stumbling over his words slightly. Amanda flipped through her clipboard filled with rows and rows of unintelligible writing.

“The new owners of his residence found a canister of neurotoxins under the floorboards.” She continued flipping through the notes. “In addition, a few notes were found with this writing on it.” She pointed to a page with symbols that look more like a cat just stepped on the paper. “Do you recognise it?”

The professor took a closer look at the scribbles. “Yes,” he said.

“Can you tell me what they mean?” asked Amanda hopefully. The professor just shook his head.

“I need my notes in order to tell you that.” Amanda sighed in disapproval. “In the meantime, tell me, what are your current conclusions about his disappearance?”

She flipped through her notes again. “We assume he took his own life via poisoning.”

The professor chuckled. “Yes and no,” he said sombrely.

“What do you mean yes an-,” she said quizzically before she stopped. There was silence as she put two and two together before she spoke again. “You know what happened to him?” The professor simply nodded in response.

Amanda was stunned for a moment. “Why didn’t you tell anyone before?” she said. The professor kept quiet, staring blankly into oblivion.

“Look,” she said, agitatedly, “I want to know what happened to my uncle, okay.”

The professor leaned closer to her and whispered.

“It’s best we talk in private,” he said. “Follow me.” He stood up, put his coffee on the bench and headed for the memorial. Amanda quietly followed him, clipboard in hand.

The professor stopped in front of the foliage covered building. He looked at it, scratching his chin before pushing on random areas of the monument in a seemingly orderly manner. He stepped back and a loud creaking sound was made which made Amanda jump slightly. The professor pushed through the foliage and Amanda followed him into a dark corridor.

“What is this place?” Amanda asked. The professor kept quiet as he flicked a switch somewhere in the darkness and the corridor lit up. As a large vault door creaked closed behind them, the professor spoke.

“What I’m about to tell you are government secrets,” he said. “You are not to publish them just yet. Understand?”

Amanda nodded.

“Okay,” said the professor. He thought of how he would word his sentence wisely before he spoke. “Your uncle was a happy man right?” He started to walk down the corridor, the iron floor creaking under his weight.

“Yes,” Amanda said. “At least until the expl…”

“The explosion,” continued the professor. Amanda felt a shiver up her spine as the disaster was mentioned.

“Do you remember the reported cause of the explosion?” he asked.

“Terrorist attack.”

“He enlisted in the army,” said the professor, “Only to destroy the people who killed the people he loved.” Amanda was stunned at this relegation.

“He slowly became the man he swore to destroy.”

They walked until they reached a spiral staircase, desperately in need of repair, that led down into a foggy abyss.

As they descended, Amanda could start to hear whispers that almost seemed to be coming from the walls and with every step down, they got louder.

Just as Amanda was about to ask the professor about the whispers, the professor spoke. “Ignore it,” he said, “They would just get louder as we get closer.”

“Closer to what?” Amanda asked but her question got no reply from the professor.
“Your uncle left the army for he felt it was pointless. He knew he will never defeat the terrorists so he joined my research team.”

“What research would that be?” Amanda asked. The whispers were now starting to get louder to a conversation-like volume. It was still incoherent though.

“Time travel,” the professor said. Amanda was at a loss for words. At first she thought it was a joke but the seriousness in his tone quickly disproved that theory.

“Time travel?” she asked, mind still spinning.

“Yes.”

“He was a major contributor to the project.” Looking down, the bottom of the staircase could vaguely be seen through the mist. “Until he discovered the full potential of the invention.”

“That being?”

“He could change the past.”

Right at the bottom of the stairwell, was yet another long corridor but unlike the rusty iron interior of the staircase, it was covered with foliage.

“He never dared to attempt anything of the sort but when his daughter died, his mind snapped,” the professor said but at this point, the voices were deafeningly loud and Amanda cupped her hands around her ears as they walked on.

They reached the end of the corridor and as they walked through the doorway, the room suddenly became silent. The massive plant covered room was circular with a plaque on the far end of the room.

“Why is it suddenly so quiet?” she asked, removing her hands from her head.

“The eye of the storm is almost always calm,” he said, slowly walking to the plaque.

“Anyway,” he continued, “After the death of his daughter by another attack, he went mad. Thoroughly bent on changing the past.”

“If all of this is true,” said Amanda, looking through her notes for any correlation between them and his story. “How does it explain all that we found?”

“Knowing that he would not return, he made it seem like he committed suicide but the notes,” he said, pausing to catch his breath, “were actually part of his greater plan.”

“I found this place where he was about to launch a time machine into the past to alter it.” The professor stopped in his tracks, right in front of the plaque. “But I failed to talk him out of it.”

“But if he went to the past,” wondered Amanda, “Why are we still here?”

“He may have built the machine but he can’t fly it,” responded the professor, brushing off the plant matter off the plaque so it clearly read: ‘Final resting place of Thomas Springer.’

“I made this in his memory,” he said, trying to hold back tears.

“So what happened?” Amanda took out her pen and flipped to a fresh page on her clipboard,

The professor took a deep berth and continued. “There was a failure and he had to make a forced landing.”

After scribbling down some notes, Amanda made a realization. “If he made a forced landing, then he could still be alive,” she said, beaming with hope. The professor just sighed and shook his head.

“The transponder on the machine was deactivated and a catastrophic failure was detected,” he said, “He would have been destroyed on exit.”

“But even so,” argued Amanda, “Even the slightest change in the past can lead to large differences in the future. I’m sure you are familiar with the Butterfly Effect.” The professor only nodded.

She scratched her head, trying to understand. “I still don’t get how history was not altered.”

“The answer you are looking for is right on that plaque,” he said, pointing at it before he walked back to the corridor. Amanda turned back to the plaque for a moment and when she turned back, the professor had disappeared into the fog.

“And one final thing,” said the professor from the distance, “The true number is seven hundred and eighty-one thousand and one.”

“What does he mean?” she wondered. She brushed off more of the foliage to reveal more of the plaque.

‘Loving father, husband and friend to all’

Amanda worked her way down, revealing a long list of surviving relatives he left, her name included,

‘Born: 24th October 2001’

‘Disappeared on the 26th of April 2042’

As she saw the final piece of the plaque, the whole image became clear. She gasped at what she had uncovered before scribbling the last bits of her conclusion on her notes before she took off, the last few words still echoing in her mind.

‘Died: 15th May 2032.’

 

Creative Writing Competition : 1st Runner Up

1st Runner Up:
Name: Andrea Yip Shu Yin
Course: Cambridge A Levels

Title: Marked

Marked 

I stare at the group of people in front of us as they shuffle to the cafeteria. My eyes settle on the set of letters inked onto our arms – a code that differentiates us from the rest and a symbol of a chain right above it. A man in front of me – his movements the most lively of the lot as he doesn’t slouch and drag his feet as the rest of us do – suddenly turns around to sneer at me, revealing a set of ashen teeth. Hygiene isn’t terribly important here so most of the prisoners stink from the lack of a badly needed shower – including the one standing in front of me. 

He breaks away from the monotonous movement of the crowd and they make way for him. His fingers brush my jaw; dirty, unwashed and beaten up hands enter my line of sight. But I don’t react. I won’t. This is not the first time that a fellow prisoner has taken interest in me. My blonde hair that I inherited from my mother has a habit of attracting the attention of others.
 

“My, my. What is a beauty like you doing in a place like this?”
 

I hear a ‘pop’ sound from the right and a few moments later the man collapses to the ground, his eyes rolled to the back of his head. The letters ‘G7-690’ peek out from beneath the sleeve of his gray T-shirt. It is the only identification that us prisoners have. I step over the man, too used to the presence of corpses to even blink an eye. All around me, the rest of the prisoners do the same. A voice on the intercom gives an order to the guards surrounding us a few moments later.
 

“Someone clear G20-690 off the floor.”
 

A group of people cloaked in white approach the fallen figure and pick him up like a rag doll. The crowd parts from them and continue walking in unison as if nothing out of the ordinary had just happened – and nothing probably did. Although only the worst prisoners are handcuffed, freedom is a word that ceases to exist around here.
 

I crane my neck to look back at the man known as G20-690 but he is already too far gone for me to spot him. He is the fourth man that I have known to have died today. Soon, I will lose count and stop keeping track. I have seen too many lives being snatched away from their bodies to even care anymore at this point of time. I look at the letters tattooed onto my right arm and the symbol above it. The memory of the day that I got marked flashes into my mind and I swallow bile to keep it at bay. It is not a day that I want to remember.
 

My name is G10-950, 10 symbolize the age that I was marked. That was the name that they gave me. But if I try hard enough, I can still remember a woman’s voice- my mother’s – in my memory.
 

What did she call me again?
 

Ah yes… Lexi. That was the name that was on the edge of her lips every time she spoke to me. I try speaking it to myself but the name feels strange on my lips, like an ancient name that should be forgotten. I have long gotten accustomed to the names that they have given us to mark us as theirs. It is unwise to remember. It will only open up old wounds, old memories that will do nothing but gnaw on the gaping hole inside of me, making it worse.
 

I never knew the man which was my father. The prisoners are kept separate with a cell just about the size of a person to contain us. The prison is deep underground, set in rock, so I have never seen what my mother used to call the ‘sun’ or ‘daylight’. Even the colours in my vocabulary are limited to shades of black , grey and white with an occasional red- crimson red, the colour of blood. My mother used to tell me about the ‘blue sea’ and the ‘green trees’ but those words were – and still are – alien to me. After all, how can I know what something is without ever having seen it in my whole life? The rock in which my small cell was carved from was cold and uninviting. But it was in this very same cell that my mother used to sit me on her lap and tell me stories of the magical land above. Those times were my only escape from the horrible truth that awaited us at the end of the day. Prisoners disappeared on a daily basis – we would never know who was next. I witnessed my first killing at the age of three. Mother tried to shield the dead man from my line of sight but as she hugged me, I could see his cold and empty eyes and even feel the life leave his body.
 

Mother was a prisoner like me. She wasn’t born here, unlike me, so she knew how the world above looked like. She said that during the war, it all changed when they kidnapped her and took her here. She was already pregnant with me by then. They might have gotten my father too – that, she did not know. They tried multiple experiments on her while I was still in her womb. I do not know if those experiments made me deformed or not. After all, most of the prisoners here are already broken. But mother used to always call me beautiful. She became a target of the leaders because she was with child. I can only begin to imagine the tortures they must have put her through just because I was in her womb.
 

If only I didn’t exist… would that have made it a little easier for her?
 

I remember when my mother used to joke by saying that we were lucky that neither of us were claustrophobic or we wouldn’t be able to survive in here – if this could even be called surviving. I didn’t understand though.
 

How could I be afraid of containment if this is the only thing that I have ever known?
 

I grew up in this tight and dark place, a child born in the underground world. I would never know what it feels like to be free.
 

On the eve of my fifth birthday, my mother’s sickness took a turn for the worse. She was always sick – the experiments that they did on her made sure of that. But on that day, she was coughing up so much blood that I thought that she would really die. There was a commotion outside our tiny cell when suddenly a man wearing white burst in. He sneered when he saw me and brought his foot back to hit mother in her side. I threw myself against him but he just shoved me off. I felt something hard hit me in the head and when I awoke, mother was already gone. I never found out where she went after that, but I didn’t need to. I knew that she was already dead.
 

After that, the cell seemed so lonely without her. I would wake up in the middle of the night, clawing at my skin and driving invisible hands away. Nightmares invaded my sleep without mercy and I would often cry out but there was no one there to hear me. Time passed slowly in this place. There was no clock for me to tell time- even if there was, I wouldn’t know how to read it as I had never seen one. Every day was the same to me in this abyss of time.
 

Then everything hanged on the day that I turned ten. I only know that because the man in the white cloak told me. I had stopped keeping track by that time. They called that man the ‘doctor’. He showed up in my cell when I was still half asleep. I still remember what he had said to me.
 

“Happy birthday, child. Today is a very happy day!”
 

I watched in fear as he took out a needle as long as my pinkie, the edge smeared with blue ink and grabbed my arm. He then began to pierce my arm repeatedly, over and over again. When I lashed out at him, someone threw a bag over my head and invisible hands held me down like they did in my nightmares. I screamed, but my screams were muffled and I doubt that they even cared. Finally, when the pain was over, I heard the voice again. His breath stank of acid and when they pulled the bag off my head, I could see that his teeth were spotted with dirt. Blood was dripping off my arm and when I looked, I could see the letters G10-950 inked on it.
 

“Now, G10-950, that wasn’t so bad now, was it?”
 

His eyes were cruel like a snake. They dared me to challenge him. I kept quiet.
 

“One more thing before you finally become one of us.”
 

He motioned with his head towards something as the hands began to hold me down again. I then saw a piece of metal glowing brightly. When he pressed it against me, it felt like he was peeling my skin apart, layer by layer. I lashed out ever harder than before but the hands that were holding me kept me still. When he took it away, I could smell my skin burning and my arm was black where he pressed it. A symbol of a chain was carved into my right arm, just above where he had inked my earlier. He grinned and left as the others began to crowd around me.
 

“It’s time for celebrations, little girl.”
 

One of them had said. Before I knew what was happening, they began to tear my clothes off with a wild and uncontained ferocity. I blacked out soon after.
 

When I awoke in the morning, I felt like an elephant had stampeded all over me. That day, I went for my first ‘experiment’. They walked me down a maze of hallways only to stick numerous needles and tubes into me at the end. It was too bright for me to see anything but whatever they were doing, it hurt. Sometimes they cut me too. As I got older, the experiments grew harsher and my body began to grow ill quickly, like my mother. I once saw a little girl get cut open – she didn’t survive that one though. Lucky her. She didn’t have to go through the same torture that I did.
 

I watched a few other prisoners take their own lives too. It wasn’t difficult. All you needed to do was act out of place and they would kill you on sight. Sometimes I wonder how my mother kept living… and why.
 

What did she have here that death was not a solution?
 

Then I soon came to realize the answer. She had me. She continued living for the sake of me.
 

As my condition worsened, I knew that death was approaching. Yet, the thought of it frightened me. My mother brought me up with tales of the land above and beyond it.
 

Would I never be able to see it before I die?
 

That night I had a dream of my mother. That was when I realized that when my mother was talking about the land above, she didn’t mean the land where she came from. She meant the land that we all go to after passing on, the land where I get to see her again.
 

The next day, I walked into the experiment room for the last time with a smile on my face. It was finally time for me to go.

 

Creative Writing Competition: 2nd Runner Up

2nd Runner Up:
Name: Jamie Kok Yixin
Course: Cambridge A Levels
Title: Footprints in the Sand

Footprints in the Sand

   Stretched over the endless sparkling ocean, the sky mirrored the water in a gentle hue of light blue. As I took in the picturesque view before me, the sea breeze playfully tousled my hair and the smooth sand sank beneath my toes. These precious hours would mark my fifteenth birthday, a new chapter of my life, signifying that it was time to move on from the past. I could almost hear the chorus for the song ‘Happy Birthday’ being sung by nature around me, with the waves lapping at the shore and the wind whistling past my ear.

    It had been a while since I was last here. Nostalgia washed over me. My lonely trail of footprints in the sand did not seem right. My hands unconsciously searched for the comforting touch of another, but instead swiped the empty air. I glanced down at my collection of seashells and picked out the smoothest, smallest conch shell, letting it sit on the palm of my hand. I quickly closed my palm around it and closed my eyes. Small and insignificant as it was, it was able to unlock distant memories I had long thought I had forgotten. Its polished surface pressed against my palm, and I fell into a reverie as bittersweet recollections flashed before my eyes.

    “ That’s no fair!” I giggled as my older brother ran past me and did a silly triumphant dance at the ‘finish line’. I laughed even harder as he chased me across the water’s edge, mimicking monsters from the wild bedtime stories he always told me, then tickling me as best as he could until I wormed my way out of his grasp. Finally, we collapsed on the sand together, still laughing and clutching our aching sides, exhausted from a fun day. He reached over, with his eyes twinkling and a bright smile lighting up his face, and said: “ Happy birthday, little sis, I’m proud of you.” I remember telling myself that I never wanted that day to end.
  
    I recall the orange-red streak across the sky as the sun set, and how the waves grew quiet as my eyes scanned the shore for more seashells I could add to my collection. I proudly showed my glassy assortment of seashells to my brother, who admired it and praised me for my find. I asked him what I should do with it, and he thought about it for a moment. He took a few from my hand, bent down and carefully placed one in my footprint. Then he took another, and another, and another, until there were exactly six , gleaming seashells in my small footprint.

    “There,” he said resolutely, as if finishing a masterpiece. “That’s six seashells for one six-year-old sized footprint of a big six-year-old girl.” “They look pretty!” I said, admiring the glinting seashells huddled together against the soft white sand. Then, bending down, I began to place sixteen seashells into his much larger footprint beside mine. “One, two, three, four.....” Right after I reached six, he suddenly stopped me. Puzzled, I looked up and asked him why.

    He pointed at my tiny footprint, nearly full with the seashells in, and said: “That’s six seashells for the number of years you’ve entered this world.” Then, he pointed to his footprint, hardly filled up with the six small seashells in it and dwarfing my little footprint beside it, and said: “That’s six seashells for the number of years you’ve entered my world.”  Beaming, I laced my wet, stubby fingers with his, clutching his calloused palm tightly as brother and sister watched the gentle evening sun go down together.

    It soon became a tradition of ours. Year after year on my birthday, we would beg our parents to bring us to the beach and just forget ourselves as we splashed in the sea and raced on the shore. We loved the beach, not just for the shining sun beating down on our backs or the cool water soaking our bodies, but for the time we shared there that made it a fond place in our hearts. Silly as it may seem, we always ended the day by placing seashells into our footprints, and every year, I had to find more as the number of seashells in my footprints grew as I grew.

    Before long, we had made up our own specific rules to our little game. On my 8th birthday, my final seashell in my ever-growing footprint was a Pink Conch, because that year I sang a solo for my school’s choir showcase to thunderous applause. Then on my 9th birthday, a Buttercup Lucine, because the flowers at our tiny flourishing garden at the backyard were blossoming beautifully. Time passed and I began to treasure those days more and more as I got to see my brother less and less. The last birthday I had with him was my 10th birthday, and that was the last time I had been to the beach, till now.

    I remember the utter devastation. That brief visit from the police officer, followed by nights of crying with my mother as her shaking shoulders shook my body. The deep crinkles on my father’s face and the dark circles beneath his eyes too marked how badly our family took the news. I could hardly believe it. A post mortem examination showed the cause to be Leptospirosis, or rat urine poisoning from something he ate from his army camps. But it only confirmed the worst for us.

    My brother was gone.
    That was five painful years ago. As I stare blankly out into the ocean now, I watch the pounding waves crash over each other, like how the memories have crashed over me. Years ago, the tide washed away two sets of footprints, not one. My hand would be clasped in the reassuring hands of another, and a beautiful day at the beach was a treat meant to be enjoyed by two. The daily collection of seashells, no matter yellow, purple, white or blue, big or small, was the proud achievement of both brother and sister. And finally, the satisfaction of adding a single shell to my footprint every year, was a deeply significant moment shared and understood only by my brother and I.

    Coming back here was both painful and calming. I have always loved the beach and the sights and sounds of nature. Yet, this place harbours so many memories, so many that I do not know whether to laugh or cry. Nonetheless, a single tear rolls down my cheek, landing beside the indentation of my foot on the sand, reminding me of the reason why I came here again.

    I take seashells out from my bucket, one by one, and gently place fifteen into my footprint. For a moment, I admire the glinting seashells, colourful and each one different. Fifteen seashells, no longer to signify the years of my life on this world, but placed there in hopes that these fifteen years I have spent can bring justice to the impact and immeasurable influence he has made on my life. If his footprint was beside mine right now, he would still put fifteen seashells in, and he would say that only the time I’ve been in this family, in his world would matter to him rather than his full twenty-five years. Well, in the same way, these seashells symbolize the time he’s been in mine. Even though he’s no longer here, he’ll never stop being with me, and I’ll never stop counting and adding the years he has.

    Ever since day one, my life has been defined by countless moments of brotherly love. I remember the time his eyes lit up when I knew my ABCs perfectly by heart, the time I baked my first cupcake and forced him to eat it, the time I cried myself till I couldn’t cry anymore, and tried to hide his military uniform from him, the time he gave his last wave and threw his last smile over his shoulder at the airport.

    My brother is my hero, through and through. I am grateful for the day I met him, as he told me many times, it was the day he first took me into his arms and called me his little sister- the day I was born. 

    The sun is setting as my birthday comes to an end. As I walk back to meet my parents, I take one last look behind me, and watch the waves gradually lapping away at my trail of footprints.
I can’t help but smile. 

Johannes

He is not their child, not biologically; he has nobody’s bright golden hair, and nobody’s shining blue eyes, but they make him a beautiful, angelic child. He is only two months old when they adopt him. He has chubby elbows and full of gurgling smiles. With food rubbed all over his face, he is the sun; he is their sun. He has ten tiny fingers, ten tiny toes, and with every smile and squawk, he makes their hearts bloom and burn.

They ride on the lapels of parenthood by instinct; they wake at three A.M., feed him with bottles and the boy, the little boy with his wet eyes and white toes, he brings the sun with him; pulls it into their dark life. They sing songs to him that they make up on the verge of sleep, and he blows bubbles, and pulls their hair. He is clothed for the day by Laura, who only stands for Baby GAP, and fed by William, who never minds the countless stains on his shirt.

They name him Johannes.

Johannes is one, and he begins to walk with teetering, nervous steps.  He mutters useless, meaningless words, and it is safe for Laura and William to tell him about their lives, about their terrible, terrible days, because Johannes does not understand; he only listens with a foot in his mouth and his fists beating at a plate of peas. Sometimes, after Laura has accidentally lost the life of a patient, she goes to Johannes; holds him against her chest and wonders at the baby’s pulse, and she thinks alive alive alive.

William walks with a smile on his face. He swims in a world of baby strollers and milk bottles, furthermore he never drinks. He and Laura - they have begun to make love again, and they are happy. They study Johannes together. They wait until he cries or until he laughs in the milky manner of one waiting to be called home.

Johannes does not cry at night. He simply whines softly; a keening, soft weeping that makes William sit up at night feeling cold because this sort of strained sobbing – it seems grievous; too old. And so they bring the child into their bedroom, where he sucks his toes happily. He was a happy child, see. It was only when he cried.

Johannes is six, and there is always light where he is - a strange, wonderful light, seeping under doors like a flood and dancing around the boy. He is always smiling, he loves to sing, and he is like a sun. Laura holds the light of Johannes close and it burns her, bright and tart, like citrus. She hears Johannes singing when he is playing, wild and light, and she knows the boy has a wonderfully bright future.  Their son is almost an angel, with fevered stars for eyes and a twinkling cloud of golden hair. Almost an angel.

The three of them fit together with clicks and hums, and they are so, so happy when they speak of things they do not care of, and things they do care of.  Laura and William speak to Johannes of everything, but they never mention how his coming saved their lives, and their love.

When Laura wakes, she is in a cell, and the bed under her is cold, and the room is windy and whistling. She is in a cell, a cell that has glass in front of it, and she rises, pressing her hands against it.

Why am I here? She thinks. Where is William? Where is Johannes?

“Johannes?” Her voice is strained, and her hair is grey, almost white. “Johannes?”

“Stop.” An orderly nurse strides up, large and dark, in the uniform of a state hospital. “Please, Laura Clement. You do this every morning. There is nobody called Johannes.”

“Where is my son?” Laura frowns.

“There is nobody called Johannes, Ms. Clement. Please, please go back to sleep.”

She does.

Johannes is seven, and she is happy ------

Written by Neha Shaji
Cambridge A-Levels Program,
Editorial Board Writing Department.
 

Scarlet

    The fogged-up window blocked the beautiful scenery behind the glass. Morning dew still lingered on the windowpane and the sun’s warmth was slowly evaporating it. I smiled. Looking downward, youngsters could be seen scattered along the dwelling. The shop downstairs attracted residents of all ages as they bought their daily goods. Chirping birds circled the gardens and the greenery was incredibly lovely. Cats roamed the grounds leisurely, without the supervision of their owners.

    In the teeming crowd, soft beautiful humming could be heard. Isaac knew exactly where it came from. He spotted her almost instantly, hair crimson and iridescent under the sunlight, caramel skin and mesmeric dark eyes. “Scarlet,” he whispered to himself - and as though she heard him she looked up and found his eyes, holding them both in place. As cliché as it may sound, the world around them seemed to stop at that very moment, there was stillness in the air. Isaac found himself hurrying down the steps and within moments they were in each others' arms, causing disorientation and amusement to the crowd but the couple seemed unfazed. Her head was buried in his chest; she inhaled and smiled, taking comfort in the fact that he always smelled of the same musky of old spice.  Unwillingly, he pulled away, his hands on her waist, and pointed behind her. Without even asking, she quickly nodded her head mouthing ‘the lake’ and they started running off in the opposite direction.

    The lake was the paramount of beauty. The color of the lake reflected the azure pebbles that decorated the bottom, switching between blue and a silvery hue. There were also huge dark russet rocks that stood at the edges of the lake as a form of embellishment; towels and slippers sat by the sides. The paddlers’ relentless movement made the water’s calmness turn into unusual waves. Splashing and diving added to those waves and the sunlight that reflected off the faces of each individual almost made the scene appear like a painting. Looking beyond the water there were mountains that stood tall and firm, circling the back as if they were shielding the town from lands beyond; the peaks a lighter hue, slightly hidden behind the clouds. The weighty and murky clouds suddenly released the multitude of droplets they were holding in. Just like that, the compact streets quickly emptied as the villagers hurried off to find shelter while others danced in the rain and to their liking the pool was soon left unoccupied.

    Worried they’d be caught in the rain, they swam, each arm moving in and out of the water consistently without looking at each other, knowing they were right by each other. Fortunately, it was only a short spell and it was finished by the time they emerged from the water, inhaling the sweet air. They gazed at the enthralling sky. The colors of the skies mingled and merged with the colors of the stunning sun that had started to set, resulting in a magnificent sight.

    “Years from now,” Isaac mused.

    “Years from now,” continued Scarlet gazing pensively into the sundry mix of the beautiful colors painted on the canvas ahead of her, “We might reach an age when all we have is our memories. How distressing will it be when all there is to reminisce about are ‘what ifs’ and ‘I should’ve’.”

    “Indeed. The worst regret, I think, would be the moments in time you wish you could change.” Isaac added, “We should live in the little moments which makes everything worthwhile.”

    “Little moments like this...” Scarlet smiled and trailed off, ending their philosophical and mawkish discussion like she always did.


Written by Leena Osman
Cambridge A-Levels Program,
Editorial Board Writing Department.