This year’s winner: Mohammad Malik
Everywhere I go I see its face. It’s… smiling at me. At the bus stop, at school, at home even when I’m dreaming. It’s the most insane psychotic smile I’ve ever seen, it reminds me of the worst moments in my life. In its gaze I see my substance-abusing dad. I barely remember the day. He fell and the scene still haunts my nightmares, my waking moments, my life. The reason it’s smiling is because… he’s calling to me, and he’s going to kill me.
It started out like any other day. I joined my friends in the tree house after school and we messed around for a bit. It was only when my friend Henry spoke that I froze.
“Have you guys seen that creepy house up over that hill?”
I had never told anyone about it. We used to live in that house. I tried to veer the subject away but my friends would not let it go.
“Why are you so afraid?”
“It’s not that I’m scared, it’s because, AHHHHHHHHHHHH.” I let out a blood curdling scream in terror. I had seen it again right there in the tree house. My friends stared at me in shock and I excused myself saying that I wasn’t feeling well. I was sick of seeing him everywhere. I wouldn’t let him terrorize me anymore. I was gonna face him.
Then I saw him again. He was inviting me. Fine. I opened the door and was met with complete darkness except for a tiny light coming from our dining room. I was suddenly aware of how hungry I was. It exceeded all my other emotions and I found myself heading towards the light. In the room I found an entire meal and it was as if I was watching someone else devouring it. My hunger satiated, and I decided to go back to where it had happened. I saw a mirror. I walked into its embrace and saw my own reflection. And then I remembered. I never had a father, he had died before I was born. Horror seized at every corner of my body as all my instincts screamed at me to run but I couldn’t. Before my eyes my reflection transformed into him. Not my dad, he had never been real. This was something else. It smiled at me and I understood. Of course, where else would that strange meat have come from. I prepared a new meal for the next unfortunate soul to meet these walls. I will wait patiently for decades if I must. Now I smile because no thought has made me happier.
Runner up: Annabel Toum
