Developing voice through storytelling

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I entered the competition in grade 10 and in grade 12, but grade 12 is when I finished in the top 10. I am in my second year of the Criminology program at Laurier Brantford. I am currently working on a short story collection of my own (which I hope can someday be published). 

The Laurier Stedman Prize contest gave me the opportunity to develop my voice as a short story writer as I worked closely with my teachers who offered helpful feedback. I was lucky enough to attend one of the galas which allowed me to interact with fellow writers who have developed into life-long friends.

Read Mya's Stories

Written as a grade 12 student, for the 2022 competition, Mya's story, "Trapped" earned her a spot as a top 10 finalist. 

You can also ready the story, "Blank," which Mya wrote as a grade 10 student for the 2020 competition and see how her writing has changed over time.

Trapped

My wakefulness and sleep are infested with parasitic parts of my life—an abundance of traumas that relentlessly feed on my soul. I repeatedly find my self-control crumpling under the pressure of my life’s uncertainty and from the fear that refuses to loosen its vicious grip. Each breath that I take fills my shriveled shell with icy air. The cool penetrates my blood and turns it into a slush. My tattered, red pajama bottoms are the only piece of clothing that I have been permitted to wear and are the same ones that I have worn since I was a six-year-old child. I struggle to pull the pants off; their tightness stubbornly holds onto my calves and threatens to cut off the circulation to my legs. The matted fabric smells strongly of mildew which causes me to feel a slight queasiness as it assaults my senses.

I glare through a small piece of glass which can hardly be classified as a window. Half of the view outside is obstructed by a dense tangle of cunning backyard weeds, and most of the other is dominated by a flawlessly manicured garden that is filled with delicate pastel-coloured flowers. I wish to once again have my nostrils filled with the powerful aroma of evergreen and with the sweetness of a lilac bush. I begin to think to myself that I’d rather any scent over the foul stench of decomposing mice and black mold that obstinately lingers in my cell.

Some nights I am strong enough to balance on my weary legs for long enough to see a small segment of the navy-blue sky that is flecked with the dim light of what seems like an endless number of stars. I catch a glimpse of the full moon, and for a second I am tricked into forgetting my existence as I am mesmerized by its ethereal glow. But soon enough, anxiety crawls back underneath my skin and reclaims my body as its own. The moon’s glow pours into my cell and bathes me in its light. I hold up my skeletal wrists and my entire being is capsized by the treacherous waters of my reality. The shackles that I bare have become too small for me as I’ve matured into a man. My metal cuffs, which have been disguised with grime and congealed blood, have rubbed my skin into a fleshy mess. I can feel my soul leave my body as I discover the visitors to my wounds that are of the utmost unwelcome. Rice-sized maggots gorge themselves on my exposed, dying flesh, slowly eating me out of my existence. I can’t help but think that perhaps they should continue their feast. I want to let them eat and eat until there are no more of my innards to be snacked on. Let them take all that’s left of me down to the marrow of my bones. Please just put me out of my agony and let me die. I welcome death into my life with a warm smile and open arms.

To whomever may be listening, please rob me of my eyes so that I don’t have to see the disgust that permeates my mother’s eyes each time that she looks at me. Rob me of my ears so that my feeble heart no longer must ache when my mother tells me that I am a mistake, worthless, and that I should have been aborted. I’m a reminder of her pain but it’s not my fault; I’m a victim of circumstance.

The hatred that my mother has for me blossomed from the trauma that she endured as a teenager and was exacerbated by a loveless childhood. My mother was only sixteen when the atrocious crime was done to her. She was only a child, but a child whose innocence had been too easily burgled by a pedophilic stranger. My mom was an orphan; she was abandoned at the age of nine by her drug-addicted parents. They cared more about their next line of cocaine than for the wellbeing of their daughter. Living on the streets as a young girl exposed her to an endless number of risks. One of them was sexual abuse, which she suffered. Without any access to the proper resources to remedy the situation, my mother became pregnant with me, a child whom she never wanted but had no choice but to have.

When I was younger, I’d observe each man who would walk by me, wondering if perhaps he could be the man who corrupted my mother, which consequently has led to my existential crisis. I often stumble over the fact that in some messed up way, that whoever it was, would be the man whom I would call “father”; but it’s debatable if such a deadbeat is even worthy of that title. A past version of my mother thought that despite her impossible situation, she could learn to love her child, even if it was the result of her most damaging life experience. As time went on, her nightmares worsened, her depression deepened, and her love for me quickly started to morph into hatred and resentment. Every time that she looked into my eyes, I could tell that she saw her rapist staring back at her. She looked too terrified to think she was only gazing into her son’s eyes. When I was just six, she finally decided that I was too much of a psychological burden and that her best option, without murdering me, was to isolate me in the confines of our basement with the least amount of contact possible. I was thrown into a prison cell and my hands were shackled to long chains. My happiness can be found on the cool, cracked floor, shattered into a million unfixable fragments. I will never be able to seek acceptance from the woman who birthed me, the woman who was supposed to smother me with warm, motherly love just because I’m her child.

Sometimes I’ll wrap my arms around myself and imagine that the arms belong to anyone else but me. I haven’t felt what it is like to be hugged for such a long time that it seems to have become nothing more than a fantastical dream. I can’t grasp the unfairness in life; I never asked to be born, yet here I am, a ball of oblivion with death on its mind. I desperately need someone to wrap their arms around me and to tell me that everything is going to be okay. But instead of having a person to guide me, I am forced to turn inward to find a false sense of comfort by listening to the made-up voices inside my head that tell me, “I love you”. Am I a little insane? Maybe. But this is what I call scraping by.

“Callan!” The raspy voice calls out my name from outside of my locked metal door, but it lacks its usual force. My body immediately cowers in a corner of my cell and gets into the smallest ball that’s possible for a 6’0 male. These movements happen instinctively and are muscle memory; every inch of my body is anticipating being beaten. As my mom unlocks the door, I see that the usual revulsion in her eyes has been replaced with an intense stress that seems to have aged her ten years in just one night. She has deep wrinkles in her forehead and prominent frown lines that I have never noticed before. Are those strands of gray hair that I see peeking from beneath her blue baseball cap? I am so intrigued by this new, almost unrecognizable version of my mother that I fail to notice the handful of police officers who trail behind her whose faces are painted with disbelief at the sight of my withered body. I cannot determine if this is a delusion from dehydration or a bitter dream that is teasing me with my innermost yearnings. My entire body tenses and I begin to hyperventilate with a force that makes all of me tremor.

A warm, reassuring hand lies gently on my back and I start to breathe again. It’s like suddenly the weight of the world has been removed from off my shoulders. The rigidness in my body leaves and encourages me to stretch out my spine. The officer gently unlocks me from my chains. I spin around and burrow my entire body into the officer with a forceful hug. This is what I need.

“Are you ready to leave?” asks a voice from behind me.

It is these words that give me the strength to stand once again and that encourage me to proudly walk out of my dungeon and take a breath of warm air, air that begins to melt my icy insides and speed the flow of my blood.

Blank

I’ve awoken from what I can assume is a trauma-induced sleep. I have an excruciating headache and my arms are freshly scraped and blood-spattered— I was put to sleep by more than just some sleep-provoking hormone.

Awareness— it makes me tremor, shudder uncontrollably.

Abnormal blankness.

Malignant cold, emptiness.

I don’t remember, I can’t remember.

I’ve been psychologically burgled. The thief’s name? Well, meet Amnesia. The fragments of my life that I once cherished and loathed have disappeared without a trace; it is almost as if they never existed. All lives are a chaotic fusion of highs and lows, but I cannot find mine. Let the exploration commence.

I want to be freed from the invisible restraints that are preventing me from leaving a psychological gas chamber where the air is filled with uncertainty and each breath pushes me further from understanding. My mind hosts information that doesn’t have any emotional worth; I feel bleak and monotonous, one dimensional. My family and my friends are no longer a part of my mind, and most disturbingly my heart, but were they ever?

I’m surrounded by great snow-capped mountains. The land beyond me is blanketed with thick coniferous trees and there is a small lake in front of me that is coated with a thin layer of ice. It’s breathtaking, but in more than one way. The serenity of my view does little to calm my evolving nerves. What am I doing in this rugged landscape by myself? 

Anxiety digs its cruel teeth into my body. I’m lost. I’m so completely lost in my mind and the landscape. Suddenly it’s like I’m no longer in my body; the all-consuming fear leaves no room for me in my shell. Behind me, and such a blemish in this picture-perfect landscape, is a small plane that has been demolished and that has begun to burrow itself into the ground. Behind it is a trail of destruction of snapped trees and flattened shrubbery. Dead passengers who are hanging out of holes in the plane’s damaged body and who lay scattered on the forest’s floor add to the nightmare. I desperately wish to wake up and discover that it is a sick dream, but I know that even if I pinch myself, I will never wake up because what I am facing is more than just a show that is being put on by my subconscious— it’s real life.

A distant barking fills my ears and wakes me from my stupor. Suddenly, a memory from my ‘secret’ life is no longer a hostage and has reclaimed its home. The bark is so familiar and beautiful. Will its owner be my saviour? What I need to draw myself out of this mental coma? Kelowna, Kelowna, Kelowna, the memory erupts in my mind. Kelowna is my dog. I remember. I remember! The memories are so vibrant and vivid. My cheeks hurt from the enormous smile that is painted onto my face. I can almost feel her lush golden fur against my fingertips and her bumpy pink tongue leaving trails of slobber on my face. I see her, I see an actual living, breathing animal that is identical to the one I “remember” in my mind. She is so cherubic and joyful, and her tail is recklessly wagging. My heart nearly explodes at the sight of Kelowna. She wasn’t my mind’s fabrication, not something I only imagined as a tactic to try to calm my insanity, but a real memory that until now was cruelly stripped from my mind. I’m addicted to the exuberant feeling of knowing a part of my life. I want more. I desperately need more. Let the floodgates open! 

“Kelowna!” The word clumsily falls out of my mouth because of my frantic tears. I’m desperate to hug her and to feel comfort from her. She limps to my open arms; happiness expels any coldness from my body. I bury my face in the softness of her long fur and savour this moment of hope and relief.

“It’s you. It’s really you. You’re a miracle. You’re barely scratched and have a slight li—. ” My sentence is cut off by a reality that cripples me. My parents could have been on the plane with me and are now dead. But do I even have parents? The mystery clenches my throat and makes it difficult for me to breath. How can head trauma erase nearly two decades of memories— memories that I may have promised I would never forget? Every person who is dead on the plane is a stranger to me. Should they be?

I’m desperate to recognize someone. I carefully make my way onto the plane, making an unconventional entrance through a hole in the fuselage. Although nauseating and perhaps a bit irrational, I open the eyes of one of the dead female passengers. I hold her gray wrinkled face in my trembling hands, carefully searching her empty eyes for something that I will recognize. There is nothing except for two cold, faded blue eyes that stare back at me. I do this with every passenger I can until I feel even more alone in this world.

I look past the eradicated people and look out into the vast land that lies just beyond me. My sight is captured by a fragile snowflake that erratically dances in the air and falls to the ground, immediately followed by many others. I wonder how something so beautiful could land in a place that is so deeply stained with tragedy. I exit the plane and feel renewed as I walk through the flurries and feel their pricks of coldness on my face. I close my eyes and blindly continue to walk. Each snowflake acts like a christening. The tranquility invites me into a world where happiness doesn’t seem like an impossibility, but rather a foreseeable destination. I’m suddenly rid of strong emotion that, only moments ago, ruthlessly weighed down each step that I took.

The plane wreckage will eventually be found, but I want a different ending. I don’t want to be a face on the evening news that is waiting to be claimed by a family, as if I were just some object in a ‘Lost and Found’ box. I’ve been given an opportunity to make my life the way that I want it without the burden of my past. It is a true fresh start.

I find a basic black backpack and empty its contents, refilling it with whatever supplies I can find while sifting through the debris in the plane: matches, a jackknife, packages of food, blankets, some bottles of water, and by some small miracle, a loaded handgun with extra ammunition. I put the bag on my shoulders and I smile auspiciously despite the horror that is only several metres behind me and I begin to walk away. I’m ready. I’m ready to leave today’s atrocities behind me and to sculpt a life of my own— I want to be the commander of my own life.

“Let’s go, Kelowna! I’m ready to paint my canvas which is terribly blank.”