2021 Writing Contest Awards

     The streets are swarming with people bouncing off each other like pinballs, trying to get to their destination. I stop and scan the street; all these people look so different from the people of my home town. There is a beautiful blue sky and beyond all the tall buildings, beyond the street lights, beyond the signs, you see the sky. So far up that you can barely see it. I start to look down back to the street. There is a strange man sitting in the alley way and he seems to be staring right at me, but I just brush it off without thinking too much about it. I look up and I see the huge signs and they are advertising so many different things. They show food and clothing brands and animal toys. 

     I look down to the road again and there are taxis picking people up. So many different cars driving down busy streets. There are white cars, blue cars and even pink cars! The cars are honking trying to get their way through the busy street. The bicyclists are trying to get across the street before the light turns green and the cars come zooming across the street. The old women are walking their fluffy dogs who are trying to get to the sausage they are smelling, pulling the women along the streets. The young women are window shopping walking down the streets trying to decide if the price is worth the piece of clothing that they want.

     I can hear my stomach rumbling. I can smell the hotdogs cooking at the hotdog stands. I can smell the pizza from the pizza place down the street where men are flipping the pizza crust right in front of the windows. I see women sewing in the small sewing shop, they smile at me as I stroll past, and I smile back giving them a small wave. I look over and there is the same man sitting at an outdoor restaurant looking at a newspaper, glaring over it right at me. I brushed it off again and went on with my day. 

     I look over and see the long bridge, it stretches out so far, it is almost hard to see. It looks like power poles stretching across the land. The Statue of Liberty sits in the middle of the beautiful blue coast; it stands so tall above the land guarding the lake like the astonishing woman she is. 

     The roads swerve and turn just like a snake; it almost looks like a puzzle. I am trying to figure out how to get to my hotel but these roads are just so confusing. I finally found my hotel, after almost an hour of searching. I look up and realize that it is huge, bigger than I thought it would be. I went into the hotel and they told me my room was on the 26th floor, room number 689. I get all the way to my room and look out the window. Looking at  the buildings, they are all different sizes, tall and small. Some standing so tall you can barely see the sky. Some of the buildings are so small they look like a needle in a haystack. The older buildings look like they could fall any second now and crush the whole town. I start to look at all the tops of the buildings, admiring how beautiful they look and I see the same man standing on top of a building really close. I thought that was kind of strange but I started to get tired. 

     The sun begins to set on the far side of the city and it covers the whole sky. The orange and red sky begins to fade as darkness begins to cover the beautiful sky, like a blanket over a child's head. The sun goes down farther and farther and the sky becomes dark. The city becomes bright and all the street lights and the building lights come on, it was almost like it wasnt night at all. 

     The streets seemed empty, they almost seemed scary or maybe even mysterious. I watch a stray dog cross the street and go to a nearby deli dumpster. Some old man walked to his apartment building, using his cane to help him. There was a group of strange men standing outside my hotel and one of the men seemed very familiar. I didn’t think much about it because it was a long day and I am most definitely tired now. 

     I start to get tired so I lay down to rest so tomorrow I can go and see the buildings filled with graffiti and I want to visit this small cafe I passed today, it seemed like the perfect place to read my new book. I slowly drift to sleep and start dreaming about all the things I saw that day, the beautiful sites and the wonderful people. There wasn’t one thing I wasn’t happy about; it was a beautiful day.

     I drift into a deep sleep and then suddenly I hear a loud crash, it was so loud it almost sounded like they were doing construction on the hotel. I suddenly wake up and jump out of bed looking around to try and figure out what is going on. I look around and realize there are two men standing at my door in the dark. One seems to be holding a baseball bat and the other one seems to be holding a bag. I blink and they come closer, one looks just like the man I saw all over town today and I started to get scared. I then rub my eyes hoping it is just a dream and then all of a sudden there is a black bag over my head and I’m screaming trying to get away from this suffocating bag and these horrible men but not one person in New York City can hear me.