Creative writing competition 2023

Creative Writing Competition – Awarded to Angelica Brook 

Angelica Brook from Perth Grammar School was presented with her award by Anna Martin, President of Perth Rotary Club as the winner of the Creative Writing Competition with her moving and thought-provoking essay entitled “6 Weeks”. She received the Neil McCorkindale Silver Salver for Perth Grammar School on Thursday 1 st June, 2023. There were many entrants, listed below, this year from four schools and the judges were very impressed with the high standard of essays which engendered a lot of discussion. Finally, Angelica was unanimously selected as the winner. All participants received the book “Creativity Matters. Find your Passion for Writing” by Wendy H. Jones. The participating schools were Perth Grammar, Perth High, Bertha Park and Crieff High. The winning essay by Angelica Brook entitled “6 weeks” is attached together with the photograph of her award presentation.

2023 Participants: Bertha Park: Lucy Allan, Isla Bethune, Arran Robertson Perth High School: Ella Boal, Molly Sands, Lina Alsmaan Perth Grammar School: Angelica Brook, Jenna Martin, Dorian Siembida Crieff High School: Sara Inglis

Angelica Brook, Perth Grammar School Six Weeks 

“I think I’ll get a share box.” 

The endless beeping like a bomb counting down as ceaseless orders are placed. “Twenty nuggets please.” Order number six. 

 ****** 

Six weeks. Little do I know that’s how long I have to fulfil my dreams, live my life. Beginning the first week. Craaack! I draw my first breath of oxygen, making my imprint on the world. My pointed beak, a skyscraper reaching out to the painted blue canvas above. Life has begun. Pulling back inside my comforting calcium cave I submerge my pink naked body in thick yolk. I know I need to get out – but it is safe in here. Hesitantly pecking at the thin membrane encasing me, I can only dream of the vast, open, grassy greens I'm going to belong to. Shards of sharp, yellowed, stained flakes begin flying off as I reveal myself to the world. Clear liquid as thick as paste begins oozing and dribbling as I kick out. Finally. I am free. Well, free I thought. Emerging from the homeliness of my shell reveals a sad contrast of my hopes. Encased in a dark room, surrounded by rows as far as the eye can see of others no different from myself, like aisles in a supermarket forcibly pressed up against my carbon copies. I fumble my first steps forward with gnarly yellow talons forked in three. The ground is not so grassy: hard and cold. Far less than desirable. I begin searching for the fields, but they are merely a fragment of my imagination. I'm cruelly chased back to reality with several injections piercing my virgin body; I am reduced to a possession. Deafening clucking as lonesome chicks crying out for their mothers rings in my ears, fattened, tied up to laying pens and battery cages, confined to four walls. Drowning in darkness and disease-ridden enclosures. What have I done to deserve this? Scooped up and squashed. I've been lifted forcefully from the ground, I can feel my insides churning like a towel being wrung out, dripping. My second week begins harshly. Pressed between a fat gloved finger and thumb my head is held taught as I am raised to a greying rusted monster. My eyelids are fixed shut with fear as I'm hurled forward and my beak is clamped brutally by this machine. Rubble remains of what was once a proud standing skyscraper mounded upon my now deconstructed face. Mutilation. I am in pain. Week three: slowly the days crawl. Monotonous. The same fattening feed every day. I long for freedom as I feel myself succumbing to weakness. I can hear them coming, the large beasts bellowing footsteps. Fear. Each drawing stomp closing in shakes the littered, grey concrete ground like an earthquake as the distance minimizes. Between masses of barely feathered chicks the size of tennis balls, their legs sticks quivering at an attempt to hold them upright, I can see big black boots beckoning. Despairingly, I can only watch as they mindlessly stomp through crowds of cowering chickens hoping I do not meet the unfortunate fate of the underside of their dirtied welly as they parade through my prison. Another painstaking week drags by. Forced to molt, I watch with disgust as they starve what I can only assume to be my mother. A sizeable hen restricted to a pen no larger than a sheet of paper. Denial of yet another life necessity for their own gain. They do this to amplify her egg production: quantity over quality is engrained into their twisted brains as they pluck our needs like they do our feathers. I watch hopelessly as nature is altered and life is inferior to profit. The fourth week drags and stretches out like an eager dog on a leash pulling to sniff at a urine coated lamppost. Gaining weight rapidly, my legs wrestle with gravity to keep me upright. They want my meat and they want it in masses. It is obvious I am little more than dirt to them, yet I am so obviously sentient as I express my agony to the torture that is my life, the pain in my eyes is obvious as I long for the horizons... freedom. Continuous suffering sees out my fifth week. I've barely moved half a dozen paces since birth as this crammed wasteland filthy with bacteria ridden faeces presses me wing to wing with other broilers who’ve met the same unforgiving fate. My insides begin to depress as my immune system weakens with the physical and mental stress of the environment I'm forced to call home. The final week, week six. Arguably the worst. But I feel it is the best. My time to escape, even if escape means death. Those familiar black boots encroach my (little) space as they’ve deemed me slaughter weight. My worth is defined by my benefits to those who dictate my fate, an unjust end to an unfortunate tale as I'm hoisted from the filthy ground I will not miss and stuffed into a cupboard like a sock, ready for transport. Drowning in air - and feathers - as masses of birds are relentlessly piled tight into the arid dusty drawer before being slung away carelessly into the unknown. A little light seeps in briefly like a golden dagger through a fine gap as any chance to escape and forget is suppressed as the drawer closes. Somehow even darker than before. Is that possible? Black as night, blacker even. Submerging my sorrows just when the penitentiary arises, it sways back and forth before being moved for transit. I want to cower, but I can't as I'm too tired. Blinding light seeps in for the second but final time, shedding little hope as my less homely cave overturns and I plummet into familiar manned black gloves for the final time. Conscious as ever my toothpick legs are clamped into place as I'm rag dolled, dangling from snapped twigs held in place by unforgiving metal stirrups. The journey to my end begins. Cogs churn, casting callous clunks echoing through my poor eardrums. The machine crawls to a start as lines of petrified poultry dangle helplessly flapping their patchworked wings. Nearing closer and closer to a mysterious water bath, I begin to stress violently as I visualize those before me being stunned by electrical currents in the aquatic. However, edging closer to the vat of liquid my turn to be stunned approaches... wincing I close my eyes and swing my head frantically as if it’s a bauble strung upon a blazing tree. Peeling my eyes open, one by one... I've surpassed the bath. I'd like to think that’s good but I can see chickens before me… clucking, squawking, gargling as others who’ve missed the baths throats are slit. A limp body and a trickle of dark liquid falls to the ground of those that will not be missed. Slaughtered. A callous practice he has endured. The carcass once holding his soul is disregarded as he is tossed into a boiling cistern to spew what few feathers remain on his girthy body. Ready for production. Knife through the throat, I am just a vessel for your every desire. 

*****

20 nuggets?” I collect my order, excited to indulge and indulge I do as I eagerly shovel nugget after nugget into my mouth. It's just food to me. Nothing more nothing less.