Page 60 - 2024-2025 Creative Writing

The Prize

The people weeping and screaming is just a usual sight on the 30th of October, “the selection.”

The government selects a total of exactly 34 people randomly to compete for an unknown prize.

They say that the prize is everything that you could wish for in this lifetime but no one in the past

15 years knew what the prize really was. Every single person who won the competition never really

came back and no one knew why. This year, I was one of the competitors.

On the day of the competition, we were given black boxes that made a dull buzzing sound with a

simple instruction; “Follow the path and find the truth. The tasks werereally complicated, like

climbing mountains to take down the terrifying dragon with three heads or diving into oceans to
find the remains of the unknown city. Everything seemed surreal; the places around me seemed to

be falling apart.

That’s when I started seeing cracks. Trees bent impossibly, voices distorted unnaturally, and the

sun gleaming in the same spot. The others didn’t seem to notice but I couldn’t let it go. After a

short period of time, I came across something that didn’t fit with the rest of the surroundings, a

door.

I opened it and everything fell apart. The sky shattered, the earth disappeared and I was lost in
space. “Contestant 14, you have exceeded the limits of the game. Do you wish to continue

playing?” That was the voice and all my life started playing on a big screen surrounding me,
except that it wasn’t real. Everything was different, emotionless, and meaningless.

“This is the beginning of your journey, everything happened to you was all just a simulation. You

have won the competition by figuring this out so as your prize, you can go out of this. Do you wish

to go outside?” The terrible possibilities of what may happen flashed through my mind, but I

understood the truth. The word “year” was all I managed to say and I waited for the light to tear

me apart.
M. Enkhjin 11C