The Writer's Voice Competition

Name: Dani Nau

Title: Give Me Ears To Hear Me Speak

Genre: Young Adult Fantasy

Prologue

            “Jules. Welcome to the world of the sinner; the world of the lost souls, the ones who were left vulnerable and found no solace with anything in life.”

Her voice echoed in my mind, those words repeating themselves over and over again. After all of the months that I had spent contemplating the afterlife, I never really thought this was how I would die. When I was younger, I used to be terrified of death. So terrified that my mother would snap at me to just stop thinking about it and move on. I distinctly remember sitting in the fetal position and rocking back and forth because Johnny Forgelsong had described, in detail, just how awful death would be at second recess. And I had always been plagued with an obsessively creative mind that dwelled far too long on things, which was most likely why Mother became so irritated with me back then.

            I did push it from my mind for years, but recently it had flooded my mind once more. And as before, I became obsessive, though not in the frightened way I had. I considered every possibility, every way that I could die and how easy it would be not to feel again. How simple it would be, how less draining.

            But I never thought it would be like this.

            I could see the surface now, reflecting the world before me. There were trees ten feet tall, their emerald green leaves heightened by the soft, rolling waves of the tide.

Query Plot summary:

Welcome to the world of the sinner; the world of the lost souls, the ones who were left vulnerable and found no solace with anything in life.

These are the first words that depressed, 20-year-old Jules hears after accidentally falling into the river near her home. After contemplating suicide for quite some time, Jules follows in her literary hero’s footsteps. She fills an overcoat with stones and climbs onto the edge of a bridge, preparing to jump just as Virginia Woolf had so many years before. However, at the last second she chickens out and turns to leave, but as fate would have it, she stumbles upon her coat and slips backwards into the river. However, she quickly realizes that perhaps she hasn’t died. In fact, she can breathe normally and as she travels downwards, she discovers a world created for suicidal people. This world, which mimics the world she just left, seems almost magical at the beginning. Here she finds company with the bubbly Norah and the solemn, sunglass-wearing Sid who offers insight and a pair of ears to hear her suffering. While still alive, Jules discovers that she has lost more than she originally thought. Not only is she stuck in this new world that seems to hold secrets just out of her reach, but she also can’t physically feel anything except for her emotions, which unfortunately are all pointed in the depressed direction. As she struggles with her past demons and her utter confusion of what she is really meant to do in this world, she discovers that in order to be seen and heard, she has to reach out herself.