Oxford creative writers

In 2017 EF Academy students took part in a short story competition.
There’s a yearly creative writing competition and this year’s theme was ‘Rebellion’.

Here is the winning entry – Utopia by Marianne Muller.

It was a sunny morning. As usual, the sky was bright blue and there was not a cloud in sight. At six thirty, the first car rolled out from under an automated garage door. At seven, bikes accompanied by schoolboys rolled along with the bright mansions and shiny office buildings, all lined up in perfect symmetry. At seven thirty, the streets were slowly filling with men, women, and children in tailored suits and skirts and polished shoes, walking cheerfully over perfectly smooth pavement. By eight o’clock, the wheels of Utopia were turning, and a new day had begun.

Sally, a woman in her late twenties, had awoken to the sound of classical music, as she did any other morning. It was long ago decided that nothing was better for the citizens of Utopia than classical music to lull them to sleep and help them rise in the morning. Now, Sally was sitting by her marble top kitchen counter, humming and eating cereal. Stepping outside her door ten minutes later, Sally felt light and happy. How could she not? The sun was high and the birds were singing. “Chirp, chirp, chirp!”

In the center of the city stood a peculiar monument. Four brick walls, on their own. The citizens of Utopia passed it every day, not knowing what was inside. Most likely, they did not care either. As Sally passed the construction that morning, however, she felt a momentary curiousness. What did these walls conceal? Then she looked at her wristwatch, realized she was late and forgot all about it.

In the same way, they had left, the people of Utopia slowly retracted back into their homes as the night fell. Every woman, man, and child once again fell into a deep sleep to the sound of music, tired from the day, yet excitedly awaiting another. Everyone, that is, except Sally. As she stepped into her home that evening, her eyebrows tightened worriedly for the first time in months. The house was quiet. Not a note of music sounded from the speakers. For a second, the house appeared to be dead. Puzzled, and shaky with anxiety, Sally went to bed. After thirty minutes, she decided she could not sleep. The music had to play.

Wrapping a robe tightly around her shaking self, she went down to the basement. She did not like the basement. It was a cold and dusty place and only existed to house one thing: the fuse box, the technical center of her home. She swung open the box, and realized she was in trouble; a tangled lump of tiny wires filled the space inside. She reached into the pocket of her night robe and pulled out a pair of scissors. I heard somewhere, she thought, that you need to cut the red wire in case the speakers are faulty. Her hands were shaking. This was something she had never had to do before. The scissor blades reached out for a bright red wire, ready to halve it. Cold and afraid, a spasm shot through Sally’s hand, and before she could stop it, the scissor had pierced the lump of plastic. The speakers woke up again. Instead of classical, wavy music, a high-pitched, shrieking noise filled the rooms of the once so peaceful house. Her mind blinded by the horrid sound, Sally fell to the floor.

She awoke the next morning, clutching her head. The noise had finally ceased, but Sally swore she could still hear it somewhere deep in her mind. Standing up on the chilled basement floor, an uneasy feeling dawned on her. She quickly headed outside. A sight met her that made her feel as though she might pass out again. The world beyond her doorstep was unrecognizable. Transfixed, she stepped onto the pavement. It was cracking under her feet. Between the cracks, thick metal cables could be seen. Wires hung from the houses, houses whose bright color had been replaced by a decaying grey. Withered leaves lay collected in a gutter otherwise filled with muddy water. The sky was no longer clear. Brown-red clouds polluted it. From every lamppost hung great speakers. “Chirp, chirp, chirp!” they sang. “Chirp, chirp, chirp!”

In the midst of this wasteland, the people of Utopia walked. They carried the same smiles they always did and acted as if they were walking in a world equal to that of yesterday. Sally could only look with terror at their indifferent faces, as they passed her by, on their way to work and school. The uneasiness she carried now grew into anger and suspicion. She noticed suddenly her scissors were still clutched in her hand. An idea struck her mind. Whatever was happening to her once-so-perfect Utopia, its source was at the center of the city.

She did not know how she had made to the city center. Neither did she know how she had climbed the massive brick wall. But, there it was. Every cable and every wire led to this spot. A tangle of metal and plastic carefully put together into something of a machine. This is where it all began. The monster’s brain.  Still, in her night robe, she watched the beast for a few minutes. It grumbled, its metal veins pulsing as it worked. Oil dams surrounded it, and smoke rose from it. The petrol stung her nose and the smoke blurred her vision. Then, before the monster could see it coming, Sally drove the pair of scissors into its stomach.

All around the city, the speakers started shrieking. The terrible, high-pitched noise bore into the ears of every citizen. Perhaps they too saw the cracks in the pavement, the mud in the gutter and the polluted sky, before an electric explosion struck outwards from the center of the city square and turned the whole of Utopia into nothing.

Thick, heavy fog engulfed the streets of the city of Utopia the next morning. At six thirty, the smoke was still rising from the ashes of what used to be brightly colored mansions, lined up perfectly along the street. At seven, the wind started picking up from the east. At seven thirty, the ashes had become dusty clouds, whirling rapidly in a stream of air. By eight, the smothered city of Utopia had blown away. Left behind were only a vast wasteland of smoke and a broken illusion of paradise.

Originally published April 19, 2017.