ABSTRACT

NUM Éditeur's Young Authors Challenge is a fantastic short story contest aimed at high school students across Quebec. For this sixth edition , young students have taken up writing in order to share a part of their imagination. This collection offers a selection of the best texts which, by their style and originality, have stood out from the many  news submitted. So, get ready for a one-of-a-kind literary adventure.  ! Let yourself be transported by a breath of magic and discover a new generation of writers who have taken up the most beautiful of challenges: to make us dream.

​

EXTRACT

He stole my childhood from me. He stole me from my parents. He locked me in his cellar. The air there is toxic. I can even see the beginnings of mold on the walls. I can smell the dastardly mixture of humidity and sweat and I can see the reflection of a young woman with a dull face, big purple rings, a dirty face bordering on filth. In the blond hair of the woman, I see stains of blood and multitudes of knots. This woman looks desperate. This woman is me. Without a shower, with little food and the limited amount of clean water, he tries to keep me alive ... Why? Does he protect me or help me enter the long road of death? I must admit that it has been five months since I last saw the exterior. Why is he keeping me trapped like an animal in his cage? Am I really a threat to the rest of the population? I circle the room, not knowing what to do to fill my days. I started to collect the utensils that accompany my meals. I plan to use them for several things  : start a new kind of art and dream that one day it will make me famous or make weapons to defend myself if he dares to come back to see me one of these days ... I hope that my parents, the leaders of our city, have launched an investigation to find me. Don't they have access to all the files? Why has so much time gone by without me being found? Am I really a threat to the rest of the population? Alone, in the dismal room, I let my thoughts invade me. They fill my brain with horror.

​

- The Red Kingdom  by Chloé Corbeil, Collège Saint-Sacrement.