Young Writers Society

Dad pulls the car over onto the shoulder of a dirt road. I swing out my door cautiously, ducking as I do so to make sure it’s not still hailing - it’s not - and join him at the edge of the field.

An immense wall cloud looms in front of us, descending from the sky in a huge and dark mass. “Wow,” I breathe, watching the winds pick up leaves and whipping them through the air. Thunder rumbles angrily above me, chastising us for entering its territory.

Dad pats my shoulder and strides deeper into the tall grass of the field. “This is going to be a strong one, Zee. Stay there.”

I don’t listen - if it’s okay for him, why shouldn’t it be okay for me? - and walk after him into the field.

I look up just in time to see it slice open the sky, shattering the world into a million little pieces that rain down like stars, singing my skin. I am glowing. I am fire. Something is ripping off my skin, all over my whole body, tickling and burrowing into my muscle like a thousand stinging ants.

I try to scream, but the ants swallow the words before they can leave my mouth.

Everything is white.

And then, suddenly, it is just black.



“What happened to my dad?” I yell. No one answers; they just stare at me like I am psychotic. “Tell me!” I scream. “Tell me!”

The doctor grabs my hand slowly. “Honey,” he says. “We did everything we could-”

“No! No! You’re lying to me!”

“He’s-”

“Stop it! Just stop it!”

The nurse and doctor look at each other and the nurse grabs another one off those syringes from a nearby drawer. She starts to come toward me with it, but I scream and kick it out of her hands.

“I’m sorry,” the doctor says, even though I am the one who should be apologizing. “He’s gone.”

“No!” I sob. “No! He’s here! He is! He’s...”

I see it, then, the world growing black. It starts in the corners of my eyes, turning dark in spots and radiating outward, until all I can see is those fading dots all across my field of vision.



A field. A beautiful field that is like the thick night sky, dotted with flowers that glow like a million stars. They are velvety soft.

The world is lit by a wonderful moon, smiling softly like she and I have a secret that she won’t tell anyone. She smiles at me and illuminates a path deeper into the field. I walk forward - I am barefoot and the ground is cool on the bottoms of my feet - and find myself facing Cole in a clearing.

“I knew I would find you here,” he whispers, grabbing my hand in a fairy-tale way, like I am a maiden and he is a prince. He is twirling me around in the middle of the field and the moon is still smiling down at us when there is a huge crack and I look up to see the moon break into a thousand pieces. There is a dramatic white flash - a harmless kind of lightning - and the flowers glow even brighter, lighting up the universe.

Cole picks one of them and hands it to me; as soon as it’s severed from its stem the glowing disappears, leaving in its place a black ashen core.

He looks at me and smiles. “Isn’t it beautiful?”