A Child's Simple Dream

• Alexandra Hurden, Grade 9
• Short Story
• 2013

There was once a child who made all the wrong choices.

Or so everyone thought.

Born to a family of hate and anger.

Brought up in a world of crime and war and violence.

Taught to be cruel and short and direct.

To never dream.

When society asked this child,
“What do you want for yourself?”

The child answered, quite simply, tears in his eyes,

“I want to be able to dream”

And he waited for an answer, a reply, something to let himself hope.

He had never hoped much before then,

……he shouldn’t of gotten his hopes up.

And society answered, the child.

Twenty years later, sitting in a single cell of the world’s most fortified prison, the man remembered the response he received all those years ago…

“No”