Wither Creative Writing Contest Winners

We are SO excited to share with you the winning short stories from our Wither Creative Writing Contest — first, because they are just so good! And second, because author Lauren DeStefano helped us choose the winners. We narrowed down the entries from the many we received, and sent the best of the best off to Lauren — who chose the 3 winners.

Lauren wrote:

Okay, these were all just astonishing! But three did stand out to me as favorites … And I have to add that the writing was very polished and clean in these; color me impressed.

All three winners will receive a copy of Wither and a prize pack, courtesy of S&S. In no particular order, here are the three winners:

Jenni R.:

I spend my waking hours in a dream-like state, living lives of other, stronger girls who weren’t sold into marriage at 16. They’re strong because they always escape, elude the danger and find a new life in beautiful splendor of their own making in hidden gardens or jungle ruins where they are queens.

Then I sleep and he visits. He. My husband. My imposed marital match for purposes of procreation.

Oh, wonderful amnesia brought by the fiery liquid he injects into me. He says nothing but I hear the susurration of his sighs as the amber fire leaves my veins and he leaves my bed.

Karl Bannerman IV is not a monster. Drugging his wives is his mercy. He is as ugly as the devil, I’m told. I and my five sister wives have never seen him. There are stories of one wife who killed herself rather than be visited by him in her bed before I came to stay.

Soon his brother Luc will steal in and soothe my tears with his own kisses, chastely given on forehead and fingers. Luc is beauty personified. Beauty of heart and soul. He whispers his love to me before sliding into the night once more.

I am alone now and yet not alone. A life grows inside of me. I can hear her whispering deep in my soul to spend more time in reality. Encouraging me to find a way to escape this house. She teaches me of far away lands, archaic magics, and ancient princesses.

She promises a life like those in my daydreams. This life inside me is a brand new possibility and she tells me I can’t let her life dissolve into mine, and her daughter’s into hers, as it’s been for so long since the genetic virus cut our lives so short. She is too important.

She sings to me through my own lips, which are raw and dry from Karl’s kisses, as I open my eyes to morning light and pull my robe about my shoulders. Today is the beginning of my life.

On the air is a scream. One of my sister wives wailing. I know what her cries mean and I walk slowly, my hand resting on my abdomen and a smile on my lips. I know what I will see when I reach her.

Our husband lies in the hall before the large picture window, the faint blue light of daybreak upon his face. Poor Karl. Karl who tasted the ancient elixir on my lips last night in the darkness. I walk closer to discover just how ugly he truly is and my heart sinks into my stomach.

Not Karl.

Luc lies at my feet. And I remember that in my haste last night I wasn’t able to wash the poison from my fingers after applying it to my lips because I could hear Karl in the hallway.

Reality rushes away and the life inside me mourns tears through my eyes. Her screams unheard.

Holly D.:

The screaming began the moment the truck stopped. When the doors were opened, chaos spilled onto the driveway, the noisy taint roiling through the estate. Servants paused, heads cocked as they glanced towards the front hall. It sounded as if the ruckus was going to burst through the double doors like a tornado. They continued as if they hadn’t heard anything.

Sherry heard every whimper and sob. The cries were all too familiar to her. The paperback book she was reading was tossed aside, and she hurried towards the terrace. Throwing open the French-style doors, the girl leaned out and over the wrought iron balcony.

A half a dozen girls shivered in the driveway. While the younger ones were drowsy, requiring the Gatherers to carry them inside, the elder ones were alert after shaking off the delirium-inducing drugs. They were the ones wailing, screaming as they were led into the house—their freedom snatched away.

They were victims of their genetic curse, just like Sherry was.

The footsteps behind her had been muted by the plush carpeting in her bedroom, but the moment he stepped onto the balcony she heard him. His hand-tailored shoes scraped over the bone white stone.

Sherry turned, tears glittering like stars in her eyes–the color so blue they looked like fire kilned china.

“Are they all for Pieter?” Sherry asked.

A flicker of shame imbued the House Governor’s wrinkled face, before it was doused by guilt, guilt that he was pushing fifty-five, and his teen-aged children were withering on the vine of life. No parent should have to carry the burden of outliving their progeny. He took a position next to Sherry, watching the girls who were being herded like cattle.

“He only has a few more years left,” her father said.

“So do I, are you going to treat me like them?” Her fingers waved like doves as she fluttered them about the empty lawn.

“It isn’t the same for you,” he said. He was visibly upset by her question, imagining his only daughter in place of those poor girls.

“I know.”

Sherry turned away and stared down into the garden. Though the roses weren’t real, they looked like it from where she stood. She felt like a prisoner in her own home, and even walking around the manicured grounds required an escort. There was a rueful twist to her sumptuous pink mouth. “I’m one of the lucky ones,” she said mechanically, repeating the oft said phrase. Who were the lucky ones? The girls who had lived their lives and got snatched? Or the ones kept in gilded cages by fathers too afraid to let them outside alone. For a heartbeat Sherry wished she could change places with the girls, just to have a day of freedom. Then, she walked back inside and quietly closed the doors.

J. P. W.:

There is something to be said for chalk-white fingernails.  Especially, when they travel across your skin, skipping over your freckles and tangling your hair.  When those fingernails are the ones that your son inherited–the ones that he secretly loves you to paint red when Father isn’t awake.

And it’s something to be said when Father is the one curled around you–when his atrophied arms are trying to hold you down, and you let him, because you’re tired of fighting his teeth and his sweat. You’re tired of being pinned under the covers, and now you just let him do whatever he wants to, because he won’t be in bed much longer anyway.

You’ve spent five years smelling another wife’s perfume on your pillow.  You’ve spent five years curling your hair, and wearing red lace.  You’ve spent half a decade shuttered in paradise, being shuttled from party to party, hiding your growing belly under layers of blue gauze.  Blue, the old color of fertility. Blue, the color of your son’s eyes.

Father wanted a little girl.

So, because you were the one who gave him a warrior instead of a worrier, he takes you every night, and patterns you under the starry dome of his bedroom. And every morning when you braid your hair, you scratch another day off the calendar, until there are no more days left.

And he lingers.

You can smell the death creeping up his neck like a collar.  It wreaths his face, and thins his hair.  And you’ve been able to smell it for months, every time he takes off his shirt, or has you unfasten his cufflinks.  Even as the gala crowds part when he walks through, whispering that he could be a legend if he could just hold on a few more months, he trails death behind him like opium smoke.  Oh, how you’ve wept with the other wives when he’s had a bad day; how you’ve felt a heavy sort of joy when your son comes close and says how he doesn’t want Father to die.

In your mind you’ve heard it a thousand times–the death rattle.  The sound of a rope burning the skin around his collar bone, or the hungry lisp of an empty bullet casing. You’ve imagined his face going as white–as white as those fingernails resting on your hip.

You rise and braid your hair, just like any other morning.

And in the bed, Father goes cold.

Congrats to all our winners — and thanks to EVERYONE who submitted a story. You guys made it hard for us to choose just three stories; there were so many great entries!