We are pleased to announce the winners of the DARC’s Creative Writing Competition 2024! Students and staff were invited to enter their poems and short stories using the starter sentence or theme centred around ‘Without warning, everything changed’.
Congratulations to all of our winners and well done to all who took part. Extracts from the winning stories are listed below. Please visit the Darc to view the entries in full.
Joint 1st place - Without Warning by Michele Lillis
…As I push open the filthy, grime laden door, the foyer has remnants of blue cord carpet.
I swipe my hand over the second set of glass doors to peer in inside and take a peek to see what awaits me. My hands connect with icy cold glass and the glass squeals with the movement. It’s no good, I can’t see anything, the reception is consumed by the dark.
As I open the doors, they screech as if in pain from years of resting from retirement.
Stepping inside the reception, I flick on my torch and the room becomes alive. I feel like I’ve travelled back in time. The world moved on but Millwood remained in 1972 frozen in time…
Joint 2nd place - Letting Go by Arlo Griggs
…The days passed, she still wasn’t there, weeks flew by, the hole in his life never left, months and months came and went yet the oppressive nothingness still consumed him.
The man began to look hollow; the outline of his skull was protruding through his muted white face and his state was beyond weakened. The line between fabrication and reality became hazy to him, a fog obscured his sense of actuality, leaving him blind to the real world and stumbling senselessly in his insanity.
A ghostly apparition of his once beloved and departed sister had begun to taunt him; lurking in the corner of his eye and disappearing when he turned to look. She stood by his side in his every move; he saw her shadow dance across the floor, playing with the gentle glow of twilight each day.
He felt her breath on his neck, her hands in his, her thoughts in his head and her now cursed and twisted desires in his heart…
Joint 2nd place - The Lost Stone by Faniah Ratefiarison
…As I sat down to gather warmth from the fire, I began to slowly dig into the ground with some thick logs when suddenly I hit something in the ground. As I lifted the log back up, moonlight gracefully appeared in the night sky and I realised how far up the mountain I had climbed!
I shoved some of the earth to the side in the aim of obtaining a clearer sight of the object. Behold, it was a bright blue stone sparkling in the moonlight and a few stars that were slowly appearing one by one in the heavenly sky.
I was astonished as I was certain I had discovered a rare and precious part of Mother Earth! I ran back home, forgetting all about my mission to find Donny. ‘I must show this to my father!’, I gasped with excitement…
3rd place – Life-changing Love by Meral Ziyaeva
…The party ended and everyone had a lot of fun, even Adam. At the end of the evening he went back to his room and kept thinking about her.. about Kate. Deep down he liked her.. a lot. He still didn’t realize that this lady would change his life completely.
The thought of her lit him up. Adam began to go out and return to his favourite activities. One evening together with his sister Anna, they went to the theatre. There, among all those people, he saw her. She was alone, wearing a beautiful red dress, her hair was braided.
After the performance, Adam hurried to find her because he wanted to talk to her. Above all, to apologize for his behaviour at the party. She smiled back at him. The two talked for a while, and at the end of the conversation, Adam invited her to dinner.
Kate, who also liked him, happily accepted the invitation…
DARC's Top Pick – Swarms by Sonnie Walton
…He approached my house, making gargling noises, as if a knife was being dragged across a shed roof. As he got closer, I could see how decayed and mutated his body was. His ribs were stabbing out of his chest with every breath he took. His hands were no longer hands – they looked more like the prongs of a fork. His face peeling off like it was melting and the rancid smell coming off him made me gagHe limped towards my door. Staring at me as if he was somehow asking for help. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know if it was safe. I must have been thinking about it for a while because when I has snapped out of it, he was there. At my door. Staring.
Then before I could move, he smashed the door, returning to that terrifying gargling noise. I had to choose.. Fight or flight…
Staff Winner – The Asteroid's Journey
…The message, it was there. In plain English.
‘In 187 days, 1,675,248 of the planet’s population will die. You need not know how but be aware it is preventable. You must find and awaken the world guardian, should you want your planet and species to continues its existence. Use this asteroid to help shield the world, otherwise your terror will continue forever.
P.S. Do not knock these asteroids off course ever again, or you will suffer the consequences.’
Reading that message, made my heartbeat double, it may have even tripled. I felt ice rushing through my veins, and a cold sweat form on my skin. Puzzle pieces fell into place and suddenly some things were beginning to make sense. Disasters were attributed to asteroids warnings. Partial and loose translations seemed to back that up as the first asteroid was found to be a warning for the deaths in the French Alps.
The most frightening fact of all, whoever was sending these were watching, with technology that could not compare to us, and they were learning…