Winners Revealed in Writing Contest!
The time has finally come for us to announce the winners of our Short Story and Poetry Writing Contest. To be fair, we’ve selected a winner from each category since we didn’t feel they could be appropriately compared to each other. We’d like to thank everyone that entered, and encourage them to continue writing.
Announcement: This holiday season we will be conducting a giveaway! Two copies will be available of the book we’re reading and reviewing over Winter Break. More details to come soon, but be on the lookout for this free opportunity to win a book!
Poetry Winner: Reflection by C. E. Galdi
Tumblr: @maudgone
REFLECTION
wonder if I am
the pair of eyes I wake up to every morning.
there is a mirror above my bed.
I snap myself into focus to confirm
that it is my reflection, and nothing more.
wonder if I am
the glittery powders caked onto shiny skin
that I apply methodically, like painting.
they say painting is calming, that it doesn’t matter
what the finished product looks like.
wonder if I am
the hollowed-out gremlin in the gas station bathroom
mirror, reflected like a demon, yellow skin and
pockmarks like an antiquated plague.
I smell of antibacterial soap and death.
wonder if I am
the lopsided grin in an old photo
smile stretched too wide, unknowing.
everybody else composes their faces,
knows how to stand.
wonder if I am
the girl in the front camera
who smiles mysteriously and has no blemishes.
she is too pretty to be me, really,
the screen is lying. she’s fake and so am I.
wonder if I am
something real, or if they all just
see right through me. maybe they can’t
look at me, maybe I’m just
background noise, a faceless shape.
Short Story Winner: Guardian by Charlotte H.
Tumblr: @treepengui
Guardian
I am her guardian, and I have been since she was small. No, I was never bigger than her. I only remember a short time where I was not with her and the others.
My mother, she was gone, and the nice woman had taken us in. I don’t remember the name of the nice woman. Maybe Cynthia. Human names are weird like that. But while I was there, Maybe Cynthia gave me the name of ‘Chloe’. Chloe is not my name.
Her mother and her father came to see us, eventually. They were not the first to visit us, to look at our ears and our paws and to smile and coo. But they were the only ones to take us home.
They did not take my brothers and sisters. In the car, in that dark box, I was alone.
I don’t like being in the car. It moves unnaturally fast. It’s too small. The humans, they are relaxed there. They are at ease, listening to music and talking.
I don’t understand how they are. Maybe because they are not put into cages. Dark, plastic cages.
The mother’s name was Jennifer, but she is not the only Jennifer I have met. The father’s name was Trevor. I have never met another Trevor in person, but I know they exist.
What is the point of names if there is someone else who shares one? Names are something to mark you as being you, so why share?
Humans are strange like that.
Her name was Christine. She had one sister and one brother, both older than her. Her sister’s name was Chloe, so they gave me a new name, thankfully. Her brother’s name was Alex.
They named me Zoe.
Zoe, Chloe, Zoe, Chloe. They sound practically the same, except Zoe is by far better. I don’t know a human by the name of Zoe. I am the Only Zoe.
Zoe is a nice name.
Christine had her seventh birthday a week after I turned one. They burned eight candles and ate cake and sang a song that they would sing, ritually, every year. They gave her presents.
“When’s Zoe’s birthday?” She asked after all the other small humans had left. “We don’t actually know,” her mother answered. “They found her in the wild.” Chloe frowned. “That’s not fair. She can have my birthday, too.” She picked me up and held me above her head while her parents rushed to grab me.
“You’re one year old now, Zoe!” She said, beaming. Then she sang the ritual song for me.
I slept in her bed, hers alone. Chloe and Alex had tried to set me down on their beds, have me warm them, but I left them.
Christine often woke up in the middle of the night, silently terrified. I would go to her and lick her face, and she would pet my head.
She’d dry her tears and shakily tell me her dreams. I would stay by her, guarding her. I am her guardian, after all.
While she slept, I would fight the darkness around her bed. They would attack me while they tried to get to her. In the early days, they often beat me and got to her.
As time went on, I learned how to fight them. They don’t like light, I learned. I also learned that humans don’t like light in the middle of the night either. They despise noise, but so do humans when they rest.
In the end, I resorted to movement. The darkness couldn’t reach her if they were constantly being disrupted by my tail, or paws, or head.
Christine grew and grew. Maybe a month or so after her tenth birthday, Alex left home and rarely visited.
“He’s at school, Zoe. Don’t worry about him.” Chloe had told me when she found me looking around Alex’s abandoned room.
I wasn’t searching for him, though. I had found light in his room and was trying to take it to Christine. Chloe picked me up and carried me out of his room before closing the door and cutting off my access.
Christine cried as she hugged a friend, at least a year later. They stood in our front yard just weeping. Finally, Christine’s parents and the friend’s parents came to take them both away. Jennifer and Trevor hugged Christine as she continued to cry, now inside. Christine picked me up and held me to her chest and cried.
That night, I laid on top of her back. Christine, unlike the other humans, always slept on her front.
I had found that if I stayed with her all night, the darkness wouldn’t attack her. So I did.
“Emmy’s moving back to London,” she whispered to me. “So I’ll never see her again.”
I wished she hadn’t said it, because the darkness would always use it against her. I liked knowing, though.
The next year came and my Christine was twelve. Jennifer, Trevor, Chloe, and Christine packed everything into boxes. Strange men and women came into our house and took the boxes and packed them into a large truck.
Christine’s family left the house for hours, then came back with more things (Christine was given a bag full of writing and pictures). Christine cried again, much more than when her friend had left. Even Chloe cried, though not very much. By the time Christine was twelve, Chloe was already cold.
Then came the car trip.
It was a longer trip than I had had ever been on. It took us two days to reach ‘Michigan’, our new home.
I hated the entire time. I hated the car and I hated the cramped space. I hated the plastic box they put me in and I hated the music they played. I hissed and peed, and then everyone was annoyed and angry and I hated that too.
I have never been as hateful as those two days.
Christine was thirteen when she had her First Boyfriend. She told me all about him during the days and nights. I liked the new home much better than the old home. There was less darkness.
“He’s… alright. He’s nice and funny, and cute, I guess? And he asked me out, and my friends told me to say yes, so I did? I don’t know.” I wondered then if Christine even liked him at all. And now, thinking back, maybe she did. Just not in the way everyone was hoping.
Trevor hated the First Boyfriend in a very confusing way. Jennifer liked the First Boyfriend, but not enough to keep Trevor from making the First Boyfriend into the First Ex-Boyfriend.
Christine didn’t cry for him like Chloe thought she would. Chloe had brought her cookie-dough ice cream, her favorite, and a movie she thought she liked. Christine liked it well enough.
“Why aren’t you sad?” “I guess I’m sad.”
“I cried over my First Boyfriend.” Too much name sharing.
“Well, I guess I didn’t. We can still have the ice cream, right? Even if I didn’t cry?”
Chloe had laughed. “Of course.”
Christine had her Second Boyfriend, or her Justin, when she was fifteen. Trevor and Jennifer let her keep him, and they dated for a while.
I never liked Justin. Justin, to me, was the human equivalent of a car trip to some, unknown location.
When Christine came back home crying, with a mark on her face, I knew that Justin was the human version of a car ride to the vet.
There was lots of yelling in the Days After Justin. Christine yelled at her phone and Trevor and Jennifer yelled at Justin when he came to visit, then Chloe yelled at him too as well as her phone.
Chloe left, just like Alex, when Christine turned sixteen.
The house was more empty with Chloe gone. Christine didn’t cry as much anymore. She was just there.
There was even more darkness to fight in the nights.
Jennifer and Trevor came back home with a dog, Jacob.
Jacob looked different from me. I have cream colored fur, while he had brown. He liked the name Jacob.
I have met many people named Jacob.
Jacob helped me defend Christine.
Christine smiled more in the days after Jacob came.
When Christine turned seventeen, she had a small sleepover with just her closest friends.
Christine, I am proud to say, has many friends. She is not a loner like Chloe was.
I stayed in Christine’s room with them. They pet me while they gossiped.
The next morning, after breakfast but before the other girls left, they returned to Christine’s room.
Christine closed her door and sat on the floor, gesturing the others to gather around her. There was darkness, even in the middle of the day, and Christine was scared. More than scared, terrified. I sat on her lap and fought the darkness.
“I have something to say, and you guys can’t tell anyone else. Seriously. Not your parents, not your siblings. None of our others friends. Alright?” The other girls agreed, and Christine hesitated. She made them all shake her small finger with their small finger (pinky swear, she had declared).
“I think that I’m gay.” Christine whispered.
There was silence, then suddenly, the girls grouped around her. They pat her shoulder, and hugged her, and whispered encouragements. I did my best to do the same.
Christine smiled, crying a little. But good tears, not moving-to-Michigan tears or Emmy’s-going-back tears. Happy tears. Before then, I didn’t know that happy tears could exist.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
When Christine turned eighteen, there was the First Girlfriend. Christine liked the First Girlfriend a lot more then her First Boyfriend.
Unlike her First Boyfriend, her First Girlfriend was a Secret Girlfriend. It wasn’t until they graduated high school that her Secret Girlfriend turned into her Girlfriend.
It was at the graduation party that Trevor and Jennifer hosted when they came out. Like the party, there was silence. The silence lasted a lot longer than the silence at the party.
Jacob barked in an attempt to break the silence.
They ignored him.
I sat between Christine and Girlfriend and meowed.
The silence broke.
Trevor and Jennifer hugged Christine and Girlfriend, and there was a Long Talk that I didn’t get to hear, and the party continued as before. Christine and her Girlfriend were with each other a lot more though, with more hugs and laughter.
Then, in the months after, Christine left, just as Chloe and Alex had, and Jacob and I were alone.
Trevor and Jennifer weren’t good replacements for our (my, really, but I can share) girl. They both stopped leaving early in the morning for work and instead they stayed at home.
Trevor took up gardening and Jennifer started to bake. They went on long walks with Jacob, leaving me alone.
Chloe, Alex, and Christine all visited us. Alex and Christine both brought home Girlfriends. Chloe brought home nobody.
And, as nature would declare it, I started aching more and more in my thirteenth year. As did Jacob, actually. He would come home from walks tired and would lie with me. When our people visited, I had to fight Christine’s darkness alone.
That caused lots of frowning from our people, and Jacob was taken away from home (and me!) for several days.
In my fourteenth year, Trevor and Jennifer brought home a small black and white cat, (smaller than me, at least) that they named Andrew.
Andrew was three when they took him in, much older than I had been when they took me home. According to Andrew, he had been sick and wasn’t allowed to leave the house he was in. A likely story for being an unlikable cat, but we pretended to believe him.
Andrew warmed up to us pretty quickly, actually. Jacob and I trained him on how to best fight the shadows. There was rarely darkness when it was just Jennifer and Trevor, but whenever the others visited, they always brought at least a little. We told Andrew about the times before him. I told him about the Old House, and about Christine’s Justin.
We waited for our Christine to return to us.
In the next year, we were struck by two Tragedies. I learned about the first from Andrew. Andrew told us both about the Death of Chloe, and then we learned more. People visited, unfamiliar people dressed in black. Christine and Alex returned. Everyone cried, not just Christine. Christine dressed in black, which I had never seen her do.
I was very glad to have Andrew with us. There was too much darkness to fight alone.
The Second Tragedy came three months later in the form of ‘Jacob Has Cancer’. That was just the beginning, however. The true tragedy came about a month later, when Jacob died.
Cats can’t cry the same way humans can. But sometimes it felt like we should be able to.
In the next year, when I was sixteen, Christine came back with a Fiancée. This was the same woman she had brought home the last few times, expect this time, she wasn’t Alana the Girlfriend, she was Alana the Fiancée.
Over the course of that year, the Wedding was planned. The two didn’t want anything too extravagant, apparently. Christine fought her Trevor and Jennifer on it, but they arranged for the wedding to be shortly after Christine’s twenty-second birthday.
While they planned, my health got progressively worse. I learned that some cats lose their vision when they get old. I was one of them.
Andrew helped me as much as he could, and fought the darkness as well as he could alone.
Christine would hold me close to her chest and I could feel her heartbeat, steady and alive. Most humans live so much longer than we do, so I know that her heart will keep beating for many years to come.
After my seventeenth birthday, the Family left Andrew and I to go to the Wedding. A strange girl visited us twice a day to feed us and pet us. Andrew fought her darkness while I watched, and when she left, he would return to me.
Trevor and Jennifer came back to us after two weeks. They took me to the vet many times and each time took me back home looking more worried than when we had left.
When the Last Day came, I knew it would be. I stayed near them, but wouldn’t crawl into their laps. They pet me while crouched on the floor.
Andrew told me that they were trying to get Christine and Alex to come back. I didn’t care that much about Alex. I wanted my Christine.
By the time Christine came, my breathing had become more laborious. She pet me gently while crying softly and whispering memories to me.
Andrew fought the darkness around us while we waited for my Last Day to end. But by the time it was my Last Day, my vision had deteriorated so much that I could barely see Christine’s face.
They picked me up and wrapped me gently in a towel. All of their movements were gentle, which I appreciated. The Last Day hurts.
I hated the car ride less than I hated the other car rides. I stayed in Christine’s lap while we drove, and when she carried me I didn’t resist.
They had taken me to the vet.
My Last Day ended with a pin prick while surrounded by the humans that loved me. As Last Days go, it wasn’t the worst. They got their tears in my fur, though, and I didn't get to see Andrew again. But it didn’t hurt more than the hurt that I was already feeling.
My Christine will have to be protected by Andrew, and then another cat or dog. But I know that she will forever remember me as her Guardian.
Thank you again to all who entered and congratulations to our winners!
Better Read than Dead,
Geneva & Addie
Like what you see? Subscribe and never miss a post. It’s easy, free, and we won’t bombard you with emails!
Have you read any of the books we’ve reviewed? Do you have a book recommendation for us? We now have a forum for that! It’s free and an easy way to join the conversation with fellow members of the Better Read than Dead Book Club! Just hit the button that says “Forum” at the top of the page! All you need is an email to sign up!