Words

• Chris Ahn, Grade 6, North Rocks Public School
• Short Story
• 2016

Excellence Award in the 'Word Zone 2016' competition

The writer carefully etched the word “I”, before contemplating the rest of the sentence. Little did he know that his letter was also considering.
It looked around. Of course, being two-dimensional, it couldn’t know where it had come from, or in fact see beyond the paper. He only knew that he was an “I”, and a rather neat one too. He could see lots of thin blue lines and a white background. He wondered what the rest of the sentence was. “Am I a story, or a report?” he asked aloud. Not that it mattered, since no one could hear him, but it was still somewhat better to voice his thoughts. Then he could feel some new presence on his sheet.
A new consciousness was building, soon integrating with his mind. It was the word “arrived”. “Look at me!” his thought travelled to the “I” they were connected. “I’m arrived.” The “I” suddenly felt a deep loss; he felt like his personality had been shallow, somewhat overused. Then something else appeared, and attached itself to the hive mind. “I’m at!” he greeted them. Then something strange arrived. It twisted around your tongue like a snake and them you would suffer the effect of the venom: instantaneous and paralysing confusion. “Hello,” said the new word, rendezvous, somewhat pompously. The two other words groaned. “The writer just included you for marks,” they moaned.
More minds appeared. Sentences wove into paragraphs, and those into pages. It was all balderdash to them; they chatted and yawned. The “I” felt different to the others. He realised something, then. He was only one letter, they were several more. It felt like a birth defect. He felt different, isolated.
Suddenly a strange sensation wrapped all of them. New appearances had stopped. They had thought they were connected before; now their individual consciences were fading away. They began to understand what they meant and also what everyone else was, too. But not the “I”. No one really knew what it meant. It was just there. Gradually they willingly fell away, and lost their consciences. But not the “I”. He wondered.
Then a horrible, juddering sensation filled him. He was being removed. So he was taken away from his short life. He was replaced. Forgotten. But he never lost himself in others, and that was most important. Most important indeed.