Congratulations to Healy-Murphy senior Christian C. for winning the Three Minute Fiction contest sponsored by English instructor, Sr. Mary Fagan.   The competition is modeled after NPR’s Three Minute Fiction contest in which writers are given the first and last sentence of a story.

Here is Christian’s Three Minute Fiction story, “My Love”.

Love walked into my house one day. It entered with warmth and tenderness. Its touch, soft and subtle, greeted me with endearment. The smile on its face lured my heart to become blissful. It slowly spread through my body every time we met eyes. She couldn’t have been any more perfect, but change was soon to break through the doors and uninvitingly approach.

I lived with Love for quite a while. She was delicate to my fragile heart and promised to never harm it. I embraced and held on tight to everything we had. Oh, the affection beating between our hearts!

Then one day Love asked if we could take a walk. I knew it wasn’t safe for us to leave from the house but I risked it for her happiness. As we walked down the sidewalk we saw a tall and slender man passing by. He stopped, pulled me aside and said, “Hi my name’s Deceit. Are you sure this woman loves you?”

I glanced at her, looked back and said, “Why of course, she’s Love. What could be any better than that?”

Deceit gave me an intimidating smile then whispered, “Sure she does.”, then continued with his journey. My mind was puzzled and I couldn’t get his words out of my head.   I removed my arm from her shoulder that was holding on tightly and held her hand. She smiled still and we kept walking on.

We then got to the park and Love was having such a wonderful time but my mind was still luring me to think things, though I smiled as if everything was fine. Love was on the swing and I was watching her from afar admiring her beauty. A short, menacing man crept from behind and mumbled, “Hello there, my name’s Anger. Bet you haven’t heard about me since you’ve been with that liar over there.”

I looked back in surprise and said, “Liar? Who are you calling a liar?”

He looked at me and laughed, then blurted, “That woman is too good for you.  She doesn’t love you!” I got up and by the time I knew it Anger entered my body. I went up to Love and started yelling at her about the problems I’ve been thinking about and she looked at me sadly. I had never seen her like that before and it broke my heart. We quietly continued walking on with no contact.

We were getting closer to the house and Love was walking ahead of me with an unhappy expression. A woman popped up from the corner and came up to and whispered, “Hey how are you? I’m Lust.  It’s a pleasure to meet you.” I looked at her with a crooked smile and she said, “Why the sad face? Come with me I’ll make it all go away.” She pulled me, leaving Love standing there with a sickened face. I went with Lust and she made me happy but not like Love did. I couldn’t get my mind off of her so I left rudely and ran back home in sorrow for leaving her.

As I walked inside Love was gone. Everything she had was gone and I was absolutely shocked. I picked up a note and it read, “You never appreciate what you have until its gone.- L” I couldn’t believe she was gone. And as I fell to the floor in sorrow, Depression and Regret pulled me up arm and arm and said, “It’s okay, pal.  We’re here to help when things like this happen.” Nothing was ever the same again.