One Page Contest 2025
Shortlist & Winners
SMALL TOWN STORY
by Odin Vetsch
When we were boys, we owned everything.
All day we squirmed through school and fought with our parents and siblings over chores, over dinner. But at night we swept down the empty streets on our bikes, yelling at the top of our lungs, rushing through the fuzzy cones of streetlamps, over lawns. At the edge of town we ran through fields of September grass till the grass whipped so fast under our arms we were flying into the starry ink above and never, never were we coming back.
Then, exhausted, faces flayed and hair filled with brome seed, we would tackle each other to the ground and lay there, staring up at the night. One day, I’ll fly to the moon, one of us would say; I’ll be the first to walk on it. And we would all laugh. Better start getting better grades. You’re gonna be too tall and skinny; they won’t take you. Then another one of us would say; I’m gonna be a singer. I’ll be famous and marry an actress like Loralee Tide, so we would punch him in the stomach and steal his shirt and tell him he was uglier than a pig.
Those nights are bright in my mind like the stars which we lay under, twinkling and pure, so distant they were untouchable.
But of course, they didn’t last. No, we started growing up and getting jobs. Our fights with our parents grew angrier, sharper. I think it really started when that train hit Danny. Who knows if it was an accident. Could’ve been, but more likely he stepped out on the tracks and just stood there while the light grew and grew, till he drowned in it. All these years later, I wonder if he didn’t see what was in store for us. What was waiting beyond the warm night-breeze and empty asphalt of our youth.
We graduated and stared at each other in the milky light of the bathroom mirror, eyes glazed. What were we supposed to do now?
Drink! someone said, and we did.
Henry went off to an oil rig. James beat a pretty girl and then moved away. And I? I just woke up every morning to sit on the couch and stare at the wall thinking, what now what now what now? Until mom and dad kicked me out and I went to live at my girlfriend’s.
I went to a psychiatrist and she told me I suffered from depression and panic. It’s strange, she said, you usually see symptoms like yours in struggling superstars. You know, coke addicts, people from the limelight.
And I told her I was all of these things.
I went on like this for years. I worked in a gas station. My girlfriend left me, I lived on the streets for a few weeks somewhere in there, until I found a place with roommates who took bong tokes on weeknights and stole my change.
Somewhere along the way I realized I was the last. Everyone else had gone, left me wondering where it all went, or maybe they hadn’t left but just faded and faded until they were indistinguishable from the oatmeal grey of everything. I remember walking out to the field and laying down, staring up at the sky like we used to, wishing the stars would peek through the midnight clouds just for a moment.
But there was only black above me, and the next week I moved away.
Odin Vetsch is a 2nd year undergraduate student studying Writing at UVic. He enjoys mountain biking, playing the piano, boardgames, math, and of course; writing! He first caught the writing bug when he was eight, inspired by the books he was reading, and hasn’t looked back. He hopes one day for his work to move people and inspire them the same way those first novels did for him.
Some Sort of Elegy
by Josephine Mills
Josephine Mills is a poet, songwriter, and artist from Victoria, BC. Her debut poetry chapbook, “Migraine,” was self-published in 2025. Previously, she worked as Copyeditor for EggBox Publishing, and she currently serves as Poetry Editor for The Warren Undergraduate Review. Her poem “Some Sort of Elegy” is a reflection on the transition out of girlhood and the significance of sisterhood during this time.
Annotated Bibliography (a toast)
by Harriet Burns
Harriet Burns is currently completing her bachelor’s degree in writing and history. They primarily write literary fiction often featuring queer perspectives, and unconventional social bonds (as well as weird jobs, freaky animals, ocean-inspired introspection). Her work has appeared and is forthcoming in Disco Kitchen, Sundew, and Nimrod International Journal, and her short fiction was shortlisted for This Side of West’s 2024 Prose and Poetry Contest. They are currently an editor of the Warren Undergraduate Review and a card-carrying member of the United Steelworkers union.
Watermelon in October
by Samantha Johnson
Samantha Johnson is from the unceded territory of the Tsleil Waututh Nation, also known as North Vancouver. She now lives in a basement in Fernwood, and is Finally in her last year of a theatre degree with a minor in art history. She has worked as a costume designer around town, most recently on “The Box” at the Phoenix Theatre. Her poem, “Watermelon in October” was inspired by an overreaction to a bad produce delivery.
DEOR
by Archer Nelson
Archer Nelson is in his 3rd year of Medieval Studies at the University of Victoria. He lives downtown with a friend and spends much of his free time writing. His passion for Medieval Studies frequently inspires his work, including his poem DEOR, which was inspired by the Old English lament of the same name.
Blue Belle Aflame
by Annabelle Scarlett
My demise began in a field of buzzing flowers. The petals of bluebells dared to match my shimmering wings, but I know I am the sight people will fixate on. I am marvellous. I flap my wings and feel a pair of eyes fall on me. The next second, the bluebells are gone, crushed under a heavy black boot. A finger lowers gently in front of me; I land on it.
“Incredible!” The voice reverberates through the tips of my wings. “I’m Robert. I shall call you… Natalie.”
I smile as wide as a butterfly can. What it is to be admired. I’ve never been given a name before. Then the world distorts, and I try to fly away, but slam into something solid. Robert’s voice becomes muffled and the ground lifts away, becoming a kaleidoscope of colours.
I’m still spinning even when the world stops. I batter against the glass cage with every bit of strength I have until it lifts away. But just as fast, a pain shoots down the fibers of my left wing, tearing as a pin stabs into it. Then another one in my right.
“If you had’ve just held still and posed, it wouldn’t have to be this way,” Robert huffs. I watch him hold a smooth stick tipped with blue up to a wall of white. There is no grass nor flowers here.
An eternity of agony passes before the human speaks again.
“This’ll go in a museum someday,” he says. “We’ll both be immortalized.”
I crack open my heavy eyes to find… me. Well, a depiction of me. But my wings are too big, the blue too bright, and I have no eyes. Nothing is right. Take me back to the bluebells, no matter how crushed they are. I feel crushed too. A shiver racks my body and another spike of pain responds. It’s unseasonably warm in here and an orb of white light blinds me. Everything is wrong. I long for the sun’s warmth and golden glow.
I don’t want to be admired anymore.
So I pull against the pins. I squirm and don’t let up until I feel a tear and a wave of pain rolls through the fabric of my wings. Then I fly. I flutter up and up and up. Until I hit glass again. My half-broken wings are barely able to catch me when I fall, but I rise above the painter’s shouts and dance in the beams of sun streaming in from above. I bask in the warmth of it, my wings truly glowing now, burning incandescently. The warmth intensifies and tints orange.
I am not a moth. I am the flame.
I am the flame. Heat now licks at the fringes of my wings and the world tilts. I think I’m falling. This time I don’t catch myself. I land on something solid and colourful. Something that looks a lot like me. The heat consumes me now. Half my wing already gone.
Cries of desperation rebound off the sticky wall. I tune them out. I can only stare at the reflection of what I used to be. My time in the spotlight bursting into flames right along with me. I stare until those unduly blue wings start to disintegrate. Until my wings crumble and ashes litter the paint glued to my legs. I close my eyes to the suns soft kiss, a parting farewell as tiny razor blades slice through the fabric of my being. Until my image is naught but a memory—a star no one will get to see. A blue belle aflame. But there’s no more bluebells and no more me.
Annabelle Scarlett is a second year Writing student here at UVIC. She writes mainly fiction but also creative nonfiction and poetry. Her work is inspired by fantastical and fairytale stories. In her spare time, she loves to read, play piano, and bake. “Blue Belle Aflame” was born from a prompt which said to use the words burning, flutter, and museum in a story. The original draft focused more on the idea of pushing oneself to the point of destruction rather than what the final product morphed into; however, those initial three words are still laced into the story.