Author: Grace Dee – Second Place Senior Division 2025
Grade 10 (Calumet High School) Sponsor: Julie Antilla
I blink, and the sky is red.
The rust-colored moon hangs heavy overhead, flame tinted clouds lazily drifting past. The sky glows a deep crimson, and the water at my feet glistens like blood. Soft waves crest, one after another, rising and falling and rising again in a never ending cycle. They lap at the smooth black stones of the beach, cool water biting into my feet like needles. Strong winds blow my hair in front of my face, obscuring the view.
When it clears, the moon is smiling.
It’s been shaped into a cat-like mask, but that’s not quite right. Softly rounded triangular ears point up from the oval face, clouds circling into two eyes, black as tar. The eyes gleam, and the smile widens, showing fangs, and a large wave crests before me.
The stones beneath my feet turn to water, and I slip beneath the surface.
I fall, and fall, and fall, arms reaching up towards the sky as bubbles race past me. The ripples above me obscure the moon, which suddenly looks like a moon again.
Water weaves its way around me, tangling my arms and legs, wrapping around my ribs. It drags me down and down and down, holding me in its arms even as I fight to swim. I fight– attempt to kick my legs and stroke with my arms—struggling to reach the ever fading air for even a single breath.
But the water finds its way through my nose and mouth, filling my lungs and drowning my cries.
My feet strike the bottom of the sea, soft sand melds into grey cobblestone, and I’m standing in a library. Books rise around me, shelves holding titles in strange languages. Water drips from my hair and pools beneath my feet. I walk through the space, listening to the drip drip drip of water striking the stone, liquid pooling on the tiles in the shape of my footsteps.
The shelves frame my path, guiding me one step after another, through a winding maze of paper and words. It seems endless, until it doesn’t. Shelves rise in a circle, walling off the way back, and a single book rests on a podium. I step forward, water still cascading down my back, and open the book.
Words greet me, words I’ve forgotten how to read. The letters are arranged perfectly into their neat, orderly rows, separated by commas and periods, just like the ones on this page.
Drip
Drip
Drip
* * *
Silence follows. It’s loud, drowning out the dripping of the water. I turn the page, and the parchment doesn’t rustle. The cold stone grows sharp, thorns digging into my calves as red vines creep up my legs. The water feeds them, running over the floor in bloody rivulets, seeping from the shelves and air and stone, running up the scarlet leaves and thorns and growing leaves and thorns of its own.
Vermillion vines wrap themselves around my waist as the words on the page turn fluid, slipping over the parchment and folding themselves into the shape of a mask, with gently pointed ears and a catlike expression and eyes glistening in the light. The thorns wind over my neck and face. They tangle around my shoulders and arms. I wear them like bracelets, like shackles, chains, as they pull me down.
Down
Dow
Do
D
Down, until my feet sink into soft dirt. Brick colored branches lace together overhead in a wooden, haphazard latticework, speckled here and there with leaves shining like the droplets of blood resting on the thorns. The vines prod me forward, onward, into the depths of the ruby jungle, clearing the steps before me and blocking the ones behind. Chills race down my spine with every inch, growing in frequency and intensity as I place one foot in front of the other.
The air is heavy, warm, damp, hanging on my skin and sticking in my throat. The leaves wave and rustle in a breeze I can’t feel. My heartbeat echoes in my ears, pounding in a rhythm at odds with my footsteps. My hands clench at my sides, nails digging into my palms and turning my hands damp with the color of the leaves.
Branches shift, pulling apart, revealing the way forward. They open to show me a seam where dirt meets uneven stone. The thorns press against my back, urging me to meet the beckoning openness.
The breeze blows through my hair, now, as I step into a courtyard. Sandstone forms the base, deathly cliffs the walls, a wine colored sky with a rose for a moon shaping the roof. The way behind me is sealed in a wall of brambles, and a figure cloaked all in black turns to face me.
Its garments whip around it, revealing gnarled fingers. Its hood falls back—
A mask.
It smiles at me, lifts its arm, points a single twisted finger at where I stand.
The ground beneath me is obliterated, and I’m falling again.
Air whips around me, and my hands reach out. They scrape against stone and wood, all made slick by the red cascading around me. It flows and falls down the rough walls around me.
With a splash, I sit upright in my bed. I know it’s mine—my posters are on the wall, and it’s my plush carpet that I curl my toes into as I stand up—but I never would’ve painted the walls this garish vermillion, would I? I suddenly can’t remember.
I step over to the window, the unfamiliar landscape painted with the same red light. Mountains rise in the distance, a rust-colored moon hangs in the sky, and ash falls, collecting in a thin film over the scarlet grass.
I blink, and the sky is blue.
The silver crescent is outlined by the city around me, cars streaming past, headlights catching the snowflakes drifting past. My cream-colored walls smile with the faces of my favorite singers and actresses, and I smile with them when the golden light on my nightstand guides me back to my warm bed.
It’s as my hand lands on the switch of that lamp that I see it. There, unmoving, smiling on my desk—
A mask.
