We are incredibly pleased to announce the four winners of our annual 350 for 50 writing contest! Young writers were challenged to compose a short, 350-word story that included the sentence, “Every movement was in slow motion.” Winners from our four age categories each enjoyed a $50 shopping spree on Amazon. Congratulations to this year’s winners!

Illustrations by Aliisa Lee

OUT IN THE DARK
by Stella Zeng, age 10

“Are you ready?” the scientist asked, pressing a few red buttons on the machine, “Three, two, one, GO!” A blue chair spun around twice, and then she was gone.

“W-where am I? I thought I was supposed to be at my house, not hanging on a branch in some random place two hundred feet above the ground!” She cried for help, and tried to get down from the tree, “Help, help! I’m stuck!” She cried, but her words just drained away into the silence of the night. She was lost, in a gigantic, thick, forest, hanging off a massive rainforest tree. She started to make her way down, but it was taking forever. Every movement was in slow motion.

For a brief moment she looked down to the bottom of the tree and saw a glimpse of her skin. It was brown and furry! Oh no she thought. “I-I’m a sloth. Oh how the heck am I supposed to get back?” She said aloud, “I’m 22 and already getting lost in a bunch of trees in the middle of nowhere. I wish I could have a normal life sometimes.” Around her was filled with wet leaves and light brown tree trunks. She was definitely a sloth. “Wait, how will I get back to the science lab?” She wondered, afraid, “A giant teleporter and shape shifter isn’t going to appear out of nowhere ri… AHHH”

A giant, flying object came soaring through the sky. It looked familiar, like the one she had sat in to teleport here in the first place. It had the same blue chair, red buttons, and it had the same shape. She wondered, is this my way back home? With no hesitation she slowly made her way to the familiar machine, one claw at a time. She was right, it was her way back home.

Slowly, while making her way to the seat, she wondered whether this machine would work or not. Then, with a push of a few red buttons, the blue chair spun around twice and the sloth who was on the chair was gone.

THE HEIST
By Zachary Wen, age 11

Penelope was about to complete her legendary heist of the famed Zephyr Diamond, and her eyes widened at the dazzling diamond. Geometrical-shaped light glinted off the Alice Blue walls. Penelope’s hand trembled. Carefully, she placed her gloved hands on it, and quickly stuffed it in her bag. But something strange happened the second she did. Every movement was in slow motion.

What…? Penelope thought and turned around to see if anyone was behind her. No one. The sensation was unreal. Her skin tingled, her muscles stiffened. She could feel her heart pumping.

I need to get out of here! Her mind yelled. She started to run toward the exit with all her might but had barely moved from her original position.

And that’s when the alarm sounded. It deafened her, and the guards moved in, guns blazing. It was like a scene from The Matrix. Penelope weaved and dodged the bullets, and she felt a drop of sweat start to venture down her neck. The stakes were nothing like she’d ever experienced.

She disarmed the first guard and elbowed him in the face. Slowly falling like an injured bird, his body gave a jerk when he hit the floor and bounced up an inch. Ok, maybe you don’t have to do that for every guard, she chided herself: she was running out of precious time.
The door out was only a couple of meters away, but it felt like kilometers. She ran with all her strength, but still moved slow as a slug. Adrenaline was the only thing fueling her now, and her legs were close to giving out. She turned around to see the guards catching up and willed herself to run even faster. Her muscles burned and her bones ached.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, she made it through the archway, and looked back, to find, to her terror, a silver bullet zooming right toward her. Suddenly she realized it was the magic of the diamond. Now she had a choice: drop the diamond and live, or hold on to it and take what was coming.

MIRRORED FEARS
By Sofia Lachmann, age 13

“Five minutes to curtain!”

Our director’s voice sounded distant compared to the ringing in my ears and the lines I had practiced for weeks spiraling in my head. Every movement was in slow motion. The people around me, putting finishing touches on their costumes. The whispers of everyone backstage, reciting lines. My thoughts seemed to be the only thing in the room that was running a mile a minute. How could they be so calm, knowing they were about to go out on stage in front of hundreds of people, knowing they could ruin the night with one wrong word?

A tug on my dress brought me back from my maze of a mind. I turned to the young girl, who like me, was wearing the blue and white dress that hinted at our role in Alice in Wonderland. With her blond ringlets and round eyes that were filled with worry, I was transported to the memory of when I had worn that dress, feeling the same anxiety.

“I’m scared,” the girl whispered. “I don’t think I can do this.”

I could see the fear radiating off of her, her fingers fidgeting with the hem of her skirt and her downcast eyes. It was impossible not to see myself in her, when I was about to go on stage for my first ever performance all those years ago. I softened, smiling as I pulled her in for a tight embrace. Her small arms hugging my waist, I told her the same words I had been told.

“It’s normal to be afraid. The only thing you can do is remind yourself that your fear does not control you. As we go on stage, just remember that being brave is being able to continue, even with your fear.”

As I encouraged her, I felt the words calm my own fears, settling my mind. I smiled again at the little girl, taking her hand as our act began. Together, we took a deep breath as the curtain rose, walking hand in hand onto the stage.

Fearless, even with all eyes on us.

IF THAT MOCKINGBIRD WON’T SING
By Claire Tang, age 16

In Kansas, the land-locked heart of America, fathers like to sing a song about mockingbirds: If that mockingbird won’t sing, Papa’s gonna buy you a diamond ring. It’s a song about replacing good things lost with new and better things, a litany of warranties.

On my eleventh birthday, my Papa gifts me a birdcage painted poppy-pink. Inside is a mockingbird with eyes like night pinned to glass. Papa tells me how he caught it with his two hands, how he climbed a mulberry tree and lay so still on one of the branches the bird mistook him for the sky. He had inched toward it quietly. Every movement was in slow motion. When the avian neared enough, he hugged it with a cold fist. It flailed against his palms with erratic simplicity.

I hang the birdcage up in my room, next to the window that the night fills with stars. The mockingbird doesn’t sing a note for weeks, and I joke with Papa that he owes me a diamond ring.

During the last dregs of summer, Papa tells me about the high-position job he received at a startup company in Singapore. He’ll be leaving Kansas indefinitely; his flight is on Monday.

“How could you leave?” My futile protests catch on tear-salted syllables. “Don’t you owe anything to the people who love you?”

But Papa doesn’t breathe a note. He just walks outside, his arms tight to his sides like folded wings. From my window, I can see him breathing in hard, beating pulses of air, like the flapping of wings. He’s crying. Every now and then, he raises his head to look at the trees or clouds or airplanes. At one point I think of dragging him inside, but it seems too rude. So I only wait, a small thing watching.

Night falls like a soundless film of gasoline, the sun bursting into a million flames of gold, leaving behind a diamond-studded horizon. Papa’s shadow grows longer and longer. I call for him to come home, but he doesn’t respond. Just slants his head back, a creature considering the sky.