Every summer, UMF hosts the Longfellow Writer’s Camp. Editor Anabelle hosted a contest for the students. The following excerpt comes from the winning piece, Oliver C.D., a profound short story about a young individual named Daniel who is grappling with OCD. Congratulations, Shayla!
It was the summer after third grade. Back when the sky still looked like an untouchable piece of eternal blue. Back when I wore rose-colored glasses. Back when my shoulders didn’t sag with the weight of my thoughts. Back when things were perfect—at least they were before I met him.
It started when I was playing in the sandbox. I had been building an imaginary world inside my mind. The mountains of poorly shaped sand were a castle to the princess who had married the dragon. The summer sun was staining my pale Irish face.
“You should destroy that.”
“What?”
I whipped around to see a boy a bit younger than me standing ominously over my back, a big freckled grin on his tiny face. His features were distorted—almost entirely blurred together. A case of alphabet soup. Something I now blame on my memory.
“I said, you should destroy that,” he repeated, pointing to my sandcastle.
“And why would I do that?” I barked out laughing. Too harsh. He probably hated me now, there was a reason I was alone in the sandbox.
“Well if you don’t…something could happen,” he whispered forebodingly, sitting down next to me, his pants getting covered in the itchy sand. I had been sitting outside the sandbox; I didn’t like the grainy feeling of the material against my legs. Unlike him, I was wearing shorts.
“Like what?” I asked, mildly intrigued. There was something about his words that enthralled me. A siren’s call that I couldn’t ignore. A deep-seated fear started to bubble within my chest. Alarm bells ringing all throughout my brain. Intuition? Impossible. That was for girls.
After all, my mother always berated my father for the fact he was stupid as a pig, muttering, “Men have no intuition, no sense of perception.”
“Well…I don’t know…you could…lose all your oreos at snack time.”
I wasn’t worried about this; we never ran out of food. My mother was a bit of a hoarder.
She was always afraid of the rapture, always fearing that Jesus would come down to earth and rip her from our arms, and we’d be stuck on earth, too young to prove we had devotion in our hearts.
She always overstocked the pantry so we’d be able to provide for ourselves when she wasn’t there. I suppose she was right. She died a year later. I don’t believe anymore; the church took too much from me.
I hope she was right. I hope she’s in Heaven somewhere. I hope she’s not alone.
“You’re weird,” I muttered under my breath, watching as he slid closer to me, kicking sand up in my direction.
“I’m right. You should do it now.” His tone grew deeper with every word. He was trying to hypnotize me with his voice. Strangely, it was working. I couldn’t explain it. I felt compelled to follow his words. Was that how the children felt in Hocus Pocus? Having no sense of self? Unable to control their own actions? Forced to follow a voice they didn’t even know existed?
“B-but…I worked so hard on it,” I whimpered.
“Doesn’t matter.” His bottom lip came out for a brief moment as he shook his head. “Do you need me to help you?”
I nodded slowly. What was I doing? I didn’t want to destroy my sandcastle, yet something was compelling me to do it. To protect those Oreos that I didn’t care that much about. Before I could even move, he leapt onto me, gripping my wrist tightly. I froze and couldn’t speak. My body was a marionette doll for his movement. He raised my hand into the air and slammed it down onto the castle.
I ran away coughing, my eyes strained and red, glancing around desperately for some intervention, some chance at safety. My senses burned, my mind fought against itself desperately.
Before I knew it, I was blubbering like a baby. My head curled into my lap as I rocked back and forth, the world blurring around me. I knew I had given into some incomprehensible urge and I could not process the gravity of it at that moment.
Among the cloud of dust, there was a sense of security. I had just saved my oreos from the fate they had been doomed to. There was also the boy’s voice. “My name’s Oliver. You’re my friend now.”
He disappeared into the shadow of the trees just as quickly as he appeared. Like a figment of my own imagination. And I didn’t understand it then that he truly wasn’t real. I sighed with relief. I was finally rid of him. I stayed there curled up into a ball until the burning orb in the sky had hidden itself behind dark clouds. Pellets of condensation had fallen down as if the sky was crying with me. My hair and clothes were soaked cold with the earth’s sadness. I stayed there until my mother came home from work, brought my shaking body inside, and dried me off.
Shayla is a rising senior at Pinkerton Academy. She wants to major in creative writing, and has a love for the arts. Her favorite musicals are Hadestown and The Great Gatsby. She is currently working on a longform fantasy novel.
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