100-word-story competition: Vote for the winning 12-18

by Aaysha Ahmad, 15

"Your stitches come undone, so you pick up a needle and begin sewing with your heartstrings.

Honey as adhesive, silk as tape, your slits bind together, until fresh planes of skin begin emerging. Bit by bit. Layer by layer. And moment by moment, you're healing.

Heartbreaks are just surgery. Grazes are just stories. Somehow you have managed to turn destruction into a delicate piece of art. You bleed with a smile and then paint with the red, as the phantasmagoria you romantically call life repeats itself: your stitches come undone again. But your heart can only offer so much string."

by Catherine Kerr

"The woman walked slowly down the aisle. Up ahead, she could see the man she loved, looking down at his hands, thinking. Her own hands were wrapped around flowers: red roses. Pretty. She smiled.

All around her were people, and in the background, she could hear soft music playing. A piano, humming through the air. A love song. 

She reached her fiancé at last and looked deep into his kind, loving eyes… 'Baked beans for tea?' He asked, holding up a Heinz tin.

'Sure,' she replied, placing the flowers in the shopping trolley. Together, they walked slowly down the aisle."

by Evie Mclean, 16

"Once, a girl told policemen the Indian neighbours had stones thrown through their windows. She defended the boy with dreadlocks when others tried to cut his hair. She got punched for stopping a bully removing a girl's hijab

When people have no issue with another's skin colour, or the style of their clothes, are they colour blind or are they living in a world where everything around them is as multicoloured as multicultural?

When she came out, her parents disowned her. But those she had stood by stood by her. It didn't matter that she was white and they weren't."