I am SO excited to share the winning entries from our Hourglass Time-Travel Writing Contest. For this contest — inspired by Myra McEntire’s novel — we asked you to write a short story about time travel. We often to writing contests here at Novel Novice, and these entries were by far some of the best I’ve seen in a long time. You guys completely blew us away!! In fact, it was so hard to choose only two winners, that I picked a third winner.
Click after the jump to read all of the amazing winning stories!
First place: Sandy L., who will receive a copy of Hourglass and an Hourglass poster:
It first happened on the eve of her second birthday.
She was a sprinter. Her parents always locked the backyard door to keep her from running into the streets. And then there came That One Time They Forgot, and she took off – running as fast as she could. Like she needed to run, to speed ahead. Like she didn’t know how to stay still.
Her birth family never saw her again. Next to their graves lies another marked for a supposed child of theirs, but the coffin underneath is empty.
Her second family found her inside their grand piano. She was eleven years old then, rolled up in a ball, soundly asleep until the son shrieked upon finding her. They were kindly and rich, and quickly took her up as their own.
She was pampered. She was loved. She was their darling, their baby, their precious – until she disappeared at her twelfth birthday.
It got harder at age twenty-one. She had grown aware of the change. A sense of foreboding settling in the pit of her stomach as her birthday neared, though she couldn’t pinpoint exactly what it was. There was a feeling in her gut telling her to go – but where? But when?
“Are you okay?” Someone beside her squeezed her hand.
“Yeah,” she said. She clasped onto that hand. “I’m fine.” And she blew out the candles of her birthday cake, all the light flooding out of her world.
She awoke again in pain. Hands restrained her, pushing her back. There was beeping, the stringent smell of anesthesia in the air.
“We need you to push!” The words came faintly from beside her, even though whoever said it was yelling.
So she pushed and screamed in frantic frenzy, still clinging onto that same calloused hand from before. The hand was slightly larger now, but she knew this touch. And to find familiarity in this new awakening was odd, but it tethered her to something for the first time in her four years of life.
And in this year, she raised a family of her own. All the while full of dread as her thirty-second birthday approached. Her fifth year was nearing, and even though she knew the skip would come… she didn’t know if she could stop it. Only prepare for it.
So when her husband comes home tonight, she takes him aside. She whispers to him, as their baby sleeps.
“There’s something I need to tell you,” she says. She’s trembling. He gauges her expression warily, almost afraid to come near her when she’s this volatile. But he takes her hands in his, because it’s the only thing that ever stops her from shaking.
“What?” he asks. “What’s wrong?”
She sucks in a deep breath, braving herself to speak.
“This may be strange,” she begins, “but…”
“Honey,” he interrupts, pulling away from her slightly. “Where’s the baby?”
“The…baby?”
She whips around.
The cradle is empty.
Second place: Sarena T., who will receive an Hourglass poster:
Whump! Clink! Whoosh!
Lovely. I’ve just walked into the middle of a bar brawl in Victorian London. Probably not my best wormhole traveling, but I’m still learning. Since I’m the only Wayfarer in here, no one else can see the swirling vortex that’s already fading away. My powers of time traveling have disguised my entrance, anyways.
Before the drunken patrons can mistake me for someone I’m not by attempting to buy my services, I hurry out the doors and into a day heavy with fog from the Thames River. My skirts snag on a nail protruding from the ground and I remember why I hate traveling back in time. I’ll choose jeans any day over obnoxious corseted dresses. But forget the fashion of the past; I have a job to do.
It’s March 31, 1888. I’ve traveled to the Whitechapel district of London in an attempt to stop Jack the Ripper… or Rippers. Messing with the past usually isn’t a smart idea, because then you tend to rewrite parts of the future, but when your boss gives you orders, you’d be stupid not to follow them.
Hurrying along the dusty streets, I keep my head down, hoping to look like a maid on an errand. The only thing I like about this dress is that the wide, flowing sleeves are perfect for hiding a dagger. A small comfort is better than none.
After a few minutes, I tug open the door to The Monarch and the Rose Inn, a building that also doubles as a brothel. As expected, my mentor Julian is already behind the counter in his bartender disguise. We’ve rehearsed this about twenty times, not including the trips we took to scout all of Whitechapel to find suspected Rippers.
“Isabel?” he whispers from the side of his mouth. He nods towards the stairs. “First room on the left.”
With a tiny nod, I head to the room upstairs, closing the door behind me. Nervously smoothing my dress, I perch on the bed and move my dagger to an ingenious hidden pocket on my skirt for easier access.
My heart races faster and faster until I think it’ll burst out of my chest. I don’t know about you, but I personally wouldn’t want to have my throat slit and my organs ripped out of my stomach.
Third place: Regina B., who will receive a set of Novel Novice bookmarks & buttons:
Fifteen Precious Minutes
She was too late, that’s what bothered her the most. She was someone who had always set every clock fifteen minutes ahead, just to be on time. It had always worked in the past, but now rushing time just seemed silly. No matter how far ahead your clock is you can never change what you missed during those precious minutes, minutes that could change a person’s life forever.
“Go back and change it,” he demanded.
“You know I can’t do that, it’s against the rules. Something can only be changed in the moment it happens. You can’t change the past, it’s impossible.”
The wind whirled around seventeen year old Meredith Montgomery’s hair. It sounded like she had been sucked deep into the vortex of a horrific storm. She could hear her brother Kyle’s voice just barely above all the noise.
“If you don’t believe me then why are you trying,” those were the last words she heard as the vortex sucked her through back to the morning of the meeting.
Meredith knew the risks when it came to Professor Valentine, he couldn’t be trusted but she didn’t care. She needed answers about her ability, and he had them.
One hour until the meeting and she was nervous all over again. She bit her nails the same way she’d done, and sat in the same orange chair. She wore the same clothes, dark jeans and a black t-shirt. Then she twirled her hair in the same direction. A knot in her stomach reminded her of what she had to do. That was the glitch in her time-traveling, every time she tried to change something in the past she couldn’t, her body would take charge and she’d just repeat step-by-step the exact moment.
Deep down she knew she had to change it, her body thought other-wise. It felt like being a puppet on a string. She wasn’t the only one with these abilities, hundreds of people had them, but around here it was only three. There was Meredith, her brother Kyle and her best friend Logan.
Kyle was telekinetic, and Logan couldn’t time travel, but he had the ability to change time by a few minutes to stall someone. The knot in her stomach pulsed at the thought of Logan’s ability. He’d known about the meeting and had tried to stop her more than once. That’s when she realized he moved time; he changed her clocks so she would be late.
Meredith peered up at the clock, 11:35. The meeting was at noon, and in the past she left at 11:38, and it had been too late then. She wasn’t going to let that happen this time. Fighting the urge to wait, she shut her eyes tight and slowly inhaled as deep as she could go. The vortex had come back for her.
“No,” she screamed.
“You can’t take me yet.”
The vortex didn’t care; the wind around her grew louder, and louder until there was only silence.
Once again, congrats to all our winners — and thank you to everyone who entered. Your stories were truly brilliant, and it was SO hard choosing only three winners.
Novel Novice 
Leave a comment