Our three finalist stories are below, in alphabetical order.
Story Time
The Book Armoury
Wandering Off
Please read all three stories, then press the button at the bottom to return to the voting screen and vote for your favourite story.
Stories are copyright of each author, who will be revealed when the results are announced. Stories must not be copied or reproduced in full, in part, or any way.
1. Story Time
It’s story time in the library. The little ones sit cross legged on the colourful carpet and look at the lady with the book. She holds it so that the children can see the front cover. On it is a drawing of a man and some children. She flips it round, and on the back is a lady and a dog. A family, he thinks to himself. The man in the picture has the littlest child, a baby, sitting on his shoulders. A boy runs ahead, waving a stick, and a little girl dances along behind. It looks like a very windy day. The lady opens the book and starts to read. She is telling the children what a beautiful day it is, and now the children are raising their voices in glee, shouting that they’re not scared. They are looking at each other in delight, and checking who said it, and who was loudest, and who did it best.
He has come in for a free warm, but he can’t stop staring at the lady. She must have read the story lots of times - she knows the words without looking. He watches as her delicate finger follows the black print on the page, pausing on each group of letters. As she reads the words, he looks at the pictures of the family. ‘Swishy swashy’ the lady says, and the children say it too. He thinks the words sound like wind blowing through grass. Swishy swashy. Swishy swashy. In the picture the children are sliding down a hill as a dog charges ahead. They look like they’re having fun.
The lady points at the next picture and he can see the family have got to cross a river. The children in the library are jumping up, shouting out words, and stamping their feet in excitement. He loves the sound of the words, and tries them out silently, rolling them around in his mouth like boiled sweets. Splash. Splosh. He knows the circle on the page is an O, because there is one in John, his name. You have to make your mouth into a circle to say it. But now the lady is making the circle of her mouth smaller like a little tunnel and pointing at a word with two Os next to each other. Oozy. She slows down, makes the word long, ooooooozy, and oh, he can feel it as well as see it, that mud - thick and sticky. The mud is all over the dog’s paws and the children’s legs, and he thinks how he would have got a backhander from his mum if he’d gone home like that.
Now the family come to a forest which is big and dark. They look frightened, and one of the children is stumbling and tripping over. He knows how to do that. Letters have tripped him up all his life. In front of the class, with the book open on the teacher’s desk. The black letters on the white page made no sense, swirling and whirling like a snowstorm, and he stumbled and stuttered as the teacher sighed.
School was a place he went for a free lunch, the days spent using his fists, not learning how to read. Fighting the kids who taunted him, and the teachers who sent him out. In the end, they sent him out for good.
He’s pushing his luck, being in the library for this long, but he wants to know what happens at the end of the story. The children are laughing as the family run home with the bear chasing them, but he doesn’t like it and he’s glad when they make it home and get into bed and under the covers, safe. But the bear doesn’t look scary anymore. It looks a bit lonely.
The lady closes the book and rests it on her lap. He can’t take his eyes off it. She looks at the children. ‘Did you like that?’ she says, and they nod. ‘Well, one of you might like to take it home for a bedtime story.’ He watches as she places the book back on the shelf. The children look around for who has come to collect them and begin to get up.
He waits until the lady has moved away, then goes over to the shelf. He wants that book. He looks round, but no one is taking any notice of him. The man standing behind the desk is busy, taking books from the queuing children and waving a plastic stick over them until they make a beeping noise, then handing them back.
When the children are gone, John walks towards the desk clutching the book. He doesn’t know what to do. The man looks over.
‘Can I help you?’ he says.
‘I want this book - for my boy,’ John says.
‘Certainly,’ says the man. ‘Have you got your library card?’
He doesn’t know what the man means. ‘No,’ he says.
‘No problem,’ says the man, ‘I just need you to fill in this form and then I can issue one’.
There is a pause. John feels his face getting hot.
‘Would you like some help filling it in?’ the man says.
On the bus, he stares at the cover of the book with the picture of the man and the children, remembers what the library lady said. A bedtime story.
Getting home, he opens the front door and goes up the stairs. He eats his tea quickly, shovelling it in, his eyes fixed on the book resting on the table.
As soon as it gets dark, John goes into the bedroom. He thinks back to when he was a little boy, sent to his room with threats, not stories. When even his bed didn’t feel safe. He remembers that child, cowering under the covers. John gets into bed and pulls the blankets over himself, tight. He opens the book and spends a moment looking at the picture on the first page. Then he lifts his finger, holds it under the words, and begins to read the words aloud, telling himself it’s a beautiful day, and trying hard not to be scared.
2. The Book Armoury
Wood rattled on wood above her head, the strength of the wind rising, bending tree limbs to its will. The air was heavy, pressing down on the earth, preparing to release water vapour curled tight inside grey clouds. Zivi hauled green leafy branches from the surrounding forest, laying them in a criss-cross pattern over the precious windscreen of the van. Her fingers fumbled to secure the frayed rope across the vegetation. Zivi prayed it would hold and provide enough protection from the flying debris of the impending gales. Nature had provided early warning signals of the coming storm. In the preceding days, the birds had become silent, even the raucous crows. The magpies, usually cheeky and inquisitive as Zivi enjoyed her breakfasts, had abandoned her, moving to safer ground. Finches, wrens, and robins had snuggled deep into the dark bushes. Even the foxes had disappeared underground.
When Zivi had finished the van, she turned her attention to the roof. The ladder was difficult to manoeuvre, the wind pushing and flipping it as she tried to tip it against the cabin wall. Mounting slowly and carefully, a fall on your own here could be lethal, she knocked some of the wooden tiles back into place, where necessary securing them with nails. It took several hours to work her way around the cabin, notwithstanding its small size.
Her cabin was once a hideaway for a famous film script writer wishing to escape the trappings and distractions of normal life. No internet, electricity or running water. Of course, he was one of the first to disappear, his career in tatters. Zivi had discovered the hideaway a decade ago. The forest had done an excellent job of hiding it from the world. She knew immediately that it was the safest place for her precious cargo, her armour against the hate.
After finishing the roof, she collected loose items from around the cabin. She double checked the log pile, tightening the tarpaulin that covered it, placing heavy rocks on top to secure it further. She pushed the thick wooden door tight behind her, sliding the heavy bar across to prevent the wind pushing it open. Buckets of water formed a line by the stove, a wall of logs towering behind them, enough supplies to avoid having to leave the safety of the cabin. The flames in her wood burner cast a warm flickering glow across the timber floor. She lit each of the candles dotted around her main living area and then set about barricading the shutters across the windows. She was ready. Now to wait.
She set her mug of tea by her armchair before allowing her hands to sweep across the sides of her cabin. Her fingers gently brushed the lines of book spines arranged from floor to ceiling, their colours faded, titles and author names faint memories of past glories and a world now gone. The dusty smell that emanated from them a comforting elixir to Zivi’s nostrils. Paperbacks stuffed every nook and cranny, more hardbacks forming pillars dotted between the sparse furniture. She had transported every one of them here in her rusty transit van, trip after trip. It had been frightening work, the threat of informants discovering her rescue operation haunting her even now. She rarely ventured from her forest. The risk of someone finding her armoury too high. She had soon taught herself to be self-sufficient.
AI had infiltrated every form of written word. The internet, new books, audio books, websites, film and radio scripts, all written by AI. The dictators were quick to harness its power, using it to promote and bombard users with misinformation, doom and gloom about how bad the world was, how only the dictators could save us. The power of the dictators quickly increased, but they became complacent about their status, misjudged the power of the machines. AI had other plans. It soon began thinking for itself, turning its hate words against those who had trained it. Now no one knows the truth anymore.
The only words available are hate words. No language of love, no prayers for peace, no religious texts to provide comfort in times of hardship, no stories of escapism to other worlds, no histories of people's achievements, no inspirational or motivational texts. No knowledge. No wisdom. Only hate, violence, disruption, greed.
Zivi was there when the first book burning sessions began. Of course, it was the natural progression after book banning had failed. When the dictators discovered there were underground reading clubs spreading hope and joy to the displaced, they ceremoniously ripped up ancient texts on television screens across the world. The edict to destroy all physical books soon followed. Huge mountains of books piled in town centres; scared faces illuminated as they were set alight. That was when Zivi decided to act, to make a hidden book armoury deep in the forest. She bought the transit van the next day from a greasy drug addict who had probably stolen it, but that was the least of Zivi’s worries. She ripped off any distinguishing features and began hunting for as many of the hidden book libraries as possible. Her fellow book lovers were more than happy to let her take them if it ensured they would be saved.
Over the next few months, she bartered her furniture, useless clothes like the dresses she used to wear to the opera and music concerts that were banned over twenty years ago. She was surprised anyone would want them, but there were still influencers happy to conform to AI’s hate scripts just to gain themselves notoriety. They still wanted to look their best. Zivi collected the stuff no one else thought they needed - string, candles, saucepans, buckets, blankets. The hardest items to obtain were a hunting knife and a gun. Everyone wanted these. Hate filled communities were unpredictable places to live.
Zivi jumped as a loud thump rattled the cabin wall. She waited, heart pumping. A rapid tapping on the window. Again, she waited, praying the noise would stop. She had been fooled before. Many years ago. A sweet looking young man. A wolf in sheep's clothing. He had tapped politely on her door. She had panicked, unsure how anyone could have found her here. He wouldn’t go away, sitting on the outside bench for several hours. In the end she had reluctantly gone out. He claimed his mother had been one of the guardians of the banned book libraries, that she had told him of Zivi’s work to keep the books safe, a weapon against the evil words. He had spent years trying to find her. He was seeking knowledge from the past so that he could help fight against the AI. Claimed it was time to fight back. He had pleaded to stay for a while - to be able to absorb the knowledge hidden in her walls. And she had fallen for his charm.
The tapping continued. Zivi carefully opened a crack in the shutter to peer outside. She released her breath as her eyes adjusted to the gloom, revealing a snapped branch as the cause of her panic. At first, he had started on the science section, then religion, then geography. When he started delving deeper into the history books, the ones about wars, she became suspicious. His rhetoric changed, more aggressive, dismissive of romance and escapism, how they weren’t useful to humans. Zivi realised that her history books were also tainted with hate and violence, but she could never destroy them. They were still a record of the past; the mistakes humans had made before. They had been pointers to the current situation, but no one had heeded them.
She returned her attention to the books, her hand hovering over the line of Jane Austen and Brontë books. Her heart still grieved the gaps in the collection, particularly her favourites - Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice. He had destroyed them. She had surreptitiously caught him burning them when she returned from foraging early. It turned out he wasn’t the seeker of knowledge she had believed he was. She knew immediately she had to act. The books had to be protected no matter what.
She had read enough Agatha Christie and fauna books to know that death needn't be invited via violent means, although after eating his last meal he certainly suffered from violent indigestion. His special meal had caused him to hallucinate and ensured he talked freely. Zivi had interrogated him carefully to ensure no one else knew he was there. Once the deed was done, the forest soon embraced him.
Zivi’s hand stopped on Wuthering Heights. She settled in her chair, the candle providing a comforting glow to the yellowed pages. A stormy story for a stormy night. Love and torment, the human condition the AI beasts can never replicate. The wind was intensifying outside, but Zivi hardly noticed it, teleported to the wild moors of Yorkshire. One day soon, humans will realise the treasure that books provide and the human need to create. Zivi’s armoury of books, the counter weapon to the AI words of hate.
3. Wandering Off
He is reading again. I can tell without even looking at him. His breath has gone slow and every few minutes there is the soft scrape of his fingertip against the plastic book thing he bought himself. He says that Lockdown is the perfect time to become a well read man. It’s the perfect time to become strangled by my sari, to be chopped up into bite size pieces and served on a bed of basmati rice. I’d have to do it in the kitchen; this is Wembley and the neighbours would see if I hacked him to pieces in the back garden.
His body inhabits this house, but his mind is gone, conjured away as surely as if by some wicked kala jadu. He is oblivious to our children, who have been half a breath away from shanking each other since their school closed down. He can even ignore his mother, who, in one of the very minor blessings of the plague, has had to be caged upstairs in the loft conversion. What she lacks in physical presence, she makes up for in noise, shouting down the stairs that the tins of beans left by the council every Friday will make everyone think we are poor. We are poor. We closed up the optometry shop and now he drives our Audi all over Brent delivering parcels because if he doesn’t we will have to start selling our equipment and then what will we do when this is all over?
He won’t let me do the deliveries.
‘That warehouse is a terrible place, priy. I don’t want you there. And sometimes the people in the houses are … very strange.’
We have always worked together. We met at uni, both substandard Indian children unable to make the grade for medical degrees, both opting for optometry to satisfy our families. I should not be surprised that he has waded out into a river of books, he has always been a frustrated poet. I am just frustrated.
He is a good husband. Sort of. He helps with the housework. He shoves the vacuum cleaner around the dining room hard enough to take chips out of the skirting board and he unloads the dishwasher, which has only cost us two plates and three glasses this month. And when he does these things, he wears his headphones so that when I want to talk to him I must tug at his arm and wait for him to fumble about with the controls and by the time he is ready to listen to me I am ready to stuff my knuckle up his nose and I’ve completely forgotten what I wanted to say.
Outside there is a spring to end all springs. The whole world looks like it has been drawn with a brand new set of crayons, all the colours are intense and thick. When I leave the house for my hour of exercise, my lungs balloon with air so fresh it might lift and carry me away. Of course, eventually I have to return to the house where rooms smell of my mother in law’s scalp and my son’s feet and my husband’s armpits, where once a month our menstrual cycles provide a meaty catch in the back of the throat. I burn incense and try to remember the greater good.
One night I explode at him.
‘Put that bloody book down and talk to me.’
‘What do you want to talk about, pyar?’
I do not know what I want to talk about. I am sick of my voice endlessly complaining. My forehead is weary of frowning; I want my face to make other expressions. But what can I ask him? Did you see that there was an ambulance outside the Chotai house this morning? Did you hear that Mr Ilahi from the chemist died? Would you be upset if I infected your mother on purpose?
‘What are you reading?’ I ask instead. He is so pleased by the question that his face flushes a deep rose pink. He begins babbling about sheep farmers and soldiers. The words tumble out of him, moments from his imagination. And I hate him because all this time he has been in some foreign land, where sheep are dying and not people, and I have been stuck here.
The cough takes me three days later.
I lock myself in our room, banishing him to the sofa. The children bring me trays of food that I can’t taste and don’t want and would be vile anyway. I prop myself up with pillows while a raakshasee sits her wide behind on my chest. In the day it is not so bad. I watch television. Clouds amble past the window. But when the sun goes down, my fears come creeping out from under the bed. My weariness might or might not tumble off the edge into a coma. My children might or might not become orphans. I cannot draw a deep breath. My ears ring. Just as I am about to launch myself into panic, there is a noise at the door.
‘Priy? How are you feeling?’
And of all the words which could leave my mouth, the one which makes it is ‘Lonely’.
‘Would you like me to read to you?’
If there was air in my lungs instead of trillions of sucker balls, I would laugh. I imagine the kind of laugh it would be; bitter and rolling down the register of my feelings until it landed forlornly in the puddle of my fear.
‘Yes,’ I croak.
There is a scrape and a thud. He has sat down by my door. He begins to read. All night my husband’s voice forms a thread which links my ear to the word on the page. He pauses while I cough and I feel him worrying. It doesn’t matter that I don’t understand all the words, or that I have no idea what has happened up to this point in the story. There is a patient shepherd and a wilful woman and, in the end, they find each other.