{"id":14276,"date":"2017-07-18T08:00:09","date_gmt":"2017-07-18T08:00:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=14276"},"modified":"2020-12-09T14:52:38","modified_gmt":"2020-12-09T14:52:38","slug":"uea-fly-festival-2017-short-story-competition-winner-15-18-yr-olds-charlotte-finch-18","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/uea-fly-festival-2017-short-story-competition-winner-15-18-yr-olds-charlotte-finch-18\/","title":{"rendered":"UEA FLY Festival 2017 Short Story Competition Winner 15-18 yr olds: Charlotte Finch (18)"},"content":{"rendered":"

More from the UEA FLY Festival today with the winner of the 15-18 yr old category in the Short Story Competition: A poignant and evocative work that belies Charlotte Finch’s 18 years. (Introduction by YA author\u00a0Alexander Gordon Smith<\/a> and author and festival organiser Antoinette Moses<\/a> in italics.)<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

FLY Festival 2017 Short Story Competition:
\nFirst Place 15-18 year olds: Charlotte Finch (18), The Priory Witham Academy<\/h4>\n

 <\/p>\n

It was a rainy Tuesday afternoon when Ollie saw the mammoth trundle past his bedroom window.<\/em>
\n Ollie dropped his phone and jumped off the bed, wondering if he had imagined it. But it was still there, its massive, furry flank lumbering down the road.<\/em>
\n \u2018Lisa!\u2019 he yelled, running down the hall and bursting into his sister\u2019s room. \u2018Lisa! There\u2019s a mammoth outside the window!\u2019<\/em>
\n Lisa peered up over the top of her book, unimpressed. Ollie ran to her window so fast he almost tripped, pushing his face against the cold glass.<\/em>
\n The mammoth had gone.<\/em>
\n \u2018Wow,\u2019 said Lisa, who had walked to his side. \u2018You really are a weirdo.\u2019<\/em>
\n \u2018But it was there,\u2019 Ollie said. \u2018I saw it.\u2019<\/em>
\n Lisa returned to her chair and continued to read. Ollie frowned; there was no sign that anything unusual had happened, just Mrs Midgley tootling along on her mobile scooter. Surely if there had been a mammoth the police would be on their way, or even a fire engine.<\/em>
\n \u2018I saw it,\u2019 he muttered again. He was just about to turn away when something dropped<\/em> from the roof and landed on the window ledge, startling him. It was a squirrel, but there was something odd about it. Its fur wasn\u2019t grey, it was a deep, russet red. It studied Ollie for a moment with its big, black eyes.<\/em>
\n \u2018But, that\u2019s impossible,\u2019 he said.<\/em>
\n \u2018What?\u2019 asked Lisa.<\/em>
\n \u2018There\u2019s a squirrel on the window ledge,\u2019 he replied.
\n\u2018Whoa,\u2019 said Lisa. \u2018A squirrel! No way!\u2019
\n\u2018But it\u2019s red,\u2019 said Ollie, ignoring her sarcasm. \u2018In school they said there aren\u2019t any red squirrels left in southern England.\u2019
\n\u2018Maybe it escaped from a zoo or something,\u2019 said Lisa. \u2018Like you did.\u2019
\nThe squirrel bounded from the window ledge onto the branch of the walnut tree in their front garden. Ollie watched it jump again, out over the street, but this time it seemed to disappear into thin air.
\n\u2018Huh?\u2019 said Ollie. \u2018It vanished too.\u2019
\nHe clattered down the stairs, heading for the front door.<\/em><\/p>\n

Lisa heard the clack of the lock and looked up from her book again. What on earth was Ollie doing? If he had gone outside without her, Mum would be furious, and she would get the blame. She walked to the window and, sure enough, there he was, standing in the rain in just his T-shirt and shorts.<\/em>
\n \u2018Ollie!\u2019 Lisa yelled, rapping the glass. \u2018Get back in here!\u2019<\/em>
\n If he could hear her, he showed no sign of it. Lisa grunted with frustration. She slouched out of the room and made her way downstairs. Why were brothers so annoying?<\/em>
\n The front door was still open and, as she walked onto the porch she could see Ollie now out of the gate, shielding his face with his hand as he looked one way and then the next.<\/em>
\n \u2018Ollie!\u2019 Lisa yelled. \u2018You are in so much…\u2019<\/em>
\n Ollie seemed to shimmer, like a reflection in a rain drenched puddle.<\/em>
\n Then, just like that, he vanished…<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

…Lisa stared out into the mist. The rain continued to pour and the droplets refracted off the ground in tiny, disappearing shards. \u201cOllie,\u201d she breathed. But the rain didn\u2019t falter and her younger brother didn\u2019t reappear. In a trance-like state, Lisa crept from under the shelter of the porch. The rain hammered upon her head, drenching her hair so that it matted and stuck to her skull. Lisa felt none of this though, so numb from the shock. \u201cOllie?\u201d As she stood in the downpour calling his name, the garden around her began to shift. First was the front gate. The iron bars began to flex and bend. Then, the gate contorted and then vanished altogether.
\nFrom around where she stood, the grass began to darken and separate, wafting. Strange lights began to dance on the ground. The chestnut tree began to shrink, the branches shrivelling into thin wisps. They floated and quivered as if caught in a current. Eventually, the house had crumbled to the ground in a pile of mossy rocks and the earth had concaved into a deep trench. As she stood there, entranced, Lisa suddenly realised she could no longer feel the rain and the world around her had grown deafeningly quiet. The air felt thicker, cold against her skin. She opened her mouth to call Ollie\u2019s name again, only for it to fill before she could speak. The water tasted stale and green. She tried to run to one of the banks to climb upwards, but her legs were slow. Her lungs began to burn and she fought harder, kicking her legs and pulling at the water with her arms. She rose, and as she looked up, she could see the surface, the raindrops crashing into the river and speckling the cloudy sunlight from above.
\nHer head burst above the rapids, and she took long gulps of air, choking. The water crashed around her and she was swept along with the currents, icy hands dragging her under the water again and again. \u201cOllie!\u201d Lisa screamed. She looked to the riverbanks, hoping an onlooker would come to her rescue. There was a girl on a bank. She was running alongside the water\u2019s edge, chasing Lisa as she flailed and screamed for help.
\n\u201cOllie! Ollie! I\u2019m coming!\u201d The girl on the bank was shrieking Ollie\u2019s name, but looking at Lisa.
\n\u201cHelp me!\u201d Water rushed into Lisa\u2019s mouth once more, and she sank. Her lungs burned and her skin itched with the feeling of cold and moss. The current swept her along the river bed, until her head hit upon something hard- and then everything went dark\u2026
\nWhen Lisa opened her eyes, she was sitting on the edge of Ollie\u2019s bed, staring at his mural on the wall. Her teary eyes traced along the giant tusks of the painted Woolly Mammoth, swept along the magnificent brush of the red squirrels tail and admire the abundance of wildlife captured in the scene. It had been nearly a month since Ollie\u2019s death, but the guilt still weighed on her as heavy as the day he\u2019d drowned. He\u2019d been playing in the valley, alongside a river on some rocks when he\u2019d slipped and fallen into the rapids. Lisa tried her best to get him, but she was too late. Ollie now lived on, immortalised in his mural, riding his Woolly Mammoth into the distance.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Runner-up: Madeline Patrick<\/strong> (15), Ashfield Post 16. Find her story ending here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Highly Commended: Dana Wilson<\/strong> (17), Billy White<\/strong> (15) Norwich School and Sam Groves<\/strong>, Priory Academies<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

More from the UEA FLY Festival today with the winner of the 15-18 yr old category in the Short Story Competition: A poignant and evocative work that belies Charlotte Finch’s 18 years. (Introduction by YA author\u00a0Alexander Gordon Smith and author and festival organiser Antoinette Moses in italics.)   FLY Festival 2017 Short Story Competition: First […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14276","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uea-fly-festival"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14276","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14276"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14276\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14378,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14276\/revisions\/14378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14276"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14276"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14276"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}