The Library’s Choice winners are…
The Br Gerry Faulkner Award is the College’s annual creative writing and illustrating competition that is open to all Trinity students. This year the Library Choice Award has been introduced to award one Junior School student and one Secondary School student the opportunity to have their work featured in the winter edition of Trinity News before official judging of the Br Gerry Faulkner Award commences. Like that of the Packing Room Prize, awarded as part of the Archibald Prize, the works to be featured are the choices of our library staff and may not be the same as the final judge’s choice for the Br Gerry Faulkner Award. Congratulations to Finn Stenning Alexander (9.1) and Kenneth Wu (5W) on being selected as the 2022 Library Choice Award winners. We hope you enjoy reading their entries.
Museum for the Lost - A Monologue BY FINN STENNING ALEXANDER (9.1)
This is a museum of the lost. Don’t ask me how they end up here, I just do the night shift. I’m staring at an empty spot on the floor. I blink, and then BAM! A new exhibit comes into existence. A new forgotten moment frozen in time. Fractured. Refracted. Viewed behind frosted glass, figures that seem familiar, but aren’t. The biggest exhibit we’ve got here is of a whole civilisation. An entire city, frozen in ‘eldritch horror’, every single man, woman and child staring agape westward. Some run. Some stand frozen – even more frozen than the exhibit if you can believe – but it’s no use. Whatever attacked that city did a good job. There were no survivors. No one to remember the names of the countless lost. No one to warn others. The scariest part? We haven’t the beast that committed the crime within our collections. It’s still out there. I wonder if it’s taken any other towns, somewhere anyone got out, to warn future victims.
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WINTER 2022 – TRINITY NEWS
Why can’t that be me? Why can’t I be the one to remember? I try, night after night, I stare at the exhibits, waiting for something to click. I wait for that moment where I understand. Maybe I can be the one to warn people of that monster. Maybe I can reinvent an innovation lost to time. Maybe I can change the world. Maybe I can form the world. I mean, look at this place! Thousands of secrets waiting to be discovered, thousands of locks without keys, thousands of opportunities for greatness. It’s torment. Being locked outside of an exclusive club, where the rest of the world stands, waiting to be amazed by the knowledge you find within. LOOK AT IT ALL. Eldritch abominations, rich aristocrats, lost languages, all waiting – nay, begging – for me to introduce them to the world. THIS IS JUST A GIANT SLUG. A ten-foot tall, slug with a monocle. Why is it here? What is its business? WHY IS IT WEARING A MONOCLE?
It would be no use. Even if I did remember, even if I did solve the riddle that is this museum, it would disappear. No one would ever know my genius. They wouldn’t believe me. If l break that lock, smash down that door, the world won’t applaud me. They will mock me. They will laugh at my ignorance, my futile battle to know what is destined to be forgotten. To find what is lost. Lost. LOST! That’s it! The only way to understand these creations, the only way to be immersed in this fantasy, to make it real again is to become lost. I’m halfway there anyways. I have no family, I’m unmarried, I sleep through the day, then stay here all night. No one would remember me. The only reason I’m remembered is through the name on my paycheck. So, I quit. Goodbye museum! May I see you again soon. The only way to see the light? Embrace the darkness.
