I APAVAC LITERARY CONTEST

Light by Meritxell Micó Frau
Level 2nd Batxillerat
Teacher’s name
Amparo Aznar Ruiz
IES Vila-roja Almassora (Castelló)

It was seven minutes after midnight… when Nia Sharman saw the flickering of a faint light at the end of the hallway, dark and solitary. She had never walked down that corridor before, but still, she could inexplicably get a vague sense of familiarity. Not knowing how to make her feet move in the right direction, she told herself firmly that she had to find what the origin of those flashes was. There was no one else in the office that night, but Nia thought that there was a possibility that some of the other workers in the building could have come down to the ground floor in search of an available coffee machine; theirs might have broken unexpectedly. Too much speculating for such a simple fact, but there was something so intriguing in that light that Nia could not keep her eyes off it. Nia Sharman started her way along the corridor, ghost-walking in a not-so-quiet manner. She was rather anxious. Her pulse began to speed up as her body was getting closer to the light, which was, meanwhile, turning more dull, to slowly fade away when Nia Sharman’s palm touched the wall. There was a light sensation of a breeze shaking the air, a presence.
Not a soul was found, however. Nia Sharman was standing all alone, surrounded by a thick feeling of restlessness that would not vanish. Against her curiosity, Nia decided to ignore the light, and take it as an invention of her own mind due to having spent too many hours in front of the glowing screen of the computer. She retraced her steps considerably faster than her initial pace, yearning to leave the building and go home to drink a nice coffee that would get her mind off the issue. As soon as she got to her bureau, she ordered all the muscles she could move to start gathering all her belongings to leave as quickly as the blinking of the light. Nia Sharman was all ready to leave the dark office and its mystery behind when her immediate plans were truncated by the sudden appearance of a body through the translucent glass that divided the space. It was a man that she could slightly recognise from a few distant encounters in the lift. His face was quite an unforgettable one, always with a neutral expression and a scary semblance that always gave her goose bumps. Millions of thoughts came to Nia’s mind, all of them fueled by the mysterious vibrations that man gave her. Despite the office being dark, Nia saw the man’s eyes glowing in the dark like two red flames about to burn. Nia Sharman felt herself petrified when the rapid moves of the man began to trace a way for his left arm to put something he was holding in the light. “A gun” Nia feared, as she prepared herself to run, if needed.
“Coffee?” a harsh voice asked through the thick darkness while holding a steaming cup of light coffee.