ONE-SENTENCE STORY COMPETITION

1 st PLACE

Beautiful | Annabelle Eaton ’25

Make me beautiful, make me beautiful, she said softly to the fairy godmother on the dark Sony television, pixelated discs of blue, gray, pink swirling across the screen and a pumpkin carriage rolls into focus across the pixels that seem to swallow the wide world that now seems so small in comparison to the big, bright characters on the screen—so much more real—vibrant vivid lives lived taxing my eyes against the screen, and they are so much much better because Cinderella can have a carriage and a prince and a ball, fantasy gold speckled across the walls, she is so so so much better and look at her beauty such golden flaxseed hair cultivated across the the painting of pixels that glints on her eyes and she is so enamored with it beyond anything she’s seen and those sunny day eyes—so blue like the ocean is calm after a long storm and the ship is finally safe, no harm done, until the water is flat and the sun makes rainbows across the froth of the ocean—my eyes are blue too, but mine are not so kind—like the ugly stepsisters, and I can’t really sing either, not as if my voice were the air and my heart had wings that could lift me to fairyland, but I will try, and I will croak and choke on the chords and the chorus that does not make a melody, make me beautiful, make me beautiful, if not in art, then in sound, because I can’t really see myself in a perfect princess picture that pulls my hair into a bubbling bouquet of curls and string and swishes, tantalizing seduction on her lips that are dripping with the candy, the sweet sugar of the soul, the rush of their sour tingling lemon drop sound smoking the air, smacking her lips together, and the song rings out, she appears, riding on the crimson of the ocean, she wears a fierce grey battle ballgown and is swept away by the magical night—that is until the clock strikes midnight—she is now wearing a different kind of dress, but not like mine painted with fake glitter and crowned as a clown—she looks as if she is in rags, but she is draped with the soft cellar door sheets of a ghost, and she is more beautiful than pixels on an elevated screen, she is as the woodland animals flock to her side —more graceful and much more graceful than me, so if she is so much more good, so much kinder, so much better, but no more than pixels dancing in convoluted turns across HDMI-3, then what am I, am I just nothing at all?

RUNNER-UP

Home | Marley Thornson ’25

Dust fairies floated through the heavy air, glowing golden in the midday light, sending a message of magic, to remind us of a time long gone, a time of opening these rusting windows, of breathing in the scent of magic, so i gently push the worn flaps open once again, getting used to a motion of something so familiar to me, now i listen to its excited shrieks pitched loud and high with joy, as if it’s letting the world know that it’s still valiantly creaking, with the the rush of cold wind coming through the window, i reminisce of the many times these gates open and shut, revealing a drop of magic so heavy and slow, dripping like warm honey, the sweetness is an addiction, it’s an emotion i crave so desperately to escape a world where every time i blink it shifts away, but on this day of mourning i can bask in old magic letting my bones relax, my skin sag, my eyelids flutter shut, the relief i feel to sit in quiet overwhelms me to tears and they drip down my rosy cheeks leaving tracks for everyone to see, so i lick the saltiness and savor the taste, it feels like release, a cleanse of the world outside this burrow, and the tears leave me feeling so light that i know i could walk on pink and purple clouds at dreamy dusk, floating away in happiness because this forgotten place is a magical home where i can feel the fairies kissing my forehead, tickling my skin, holding me in their warmth, i finally feel loved.