Oh Willy

“Oh Willy” is one of the outstanding stories of the first biannual International Short Story Contest 2018 written by Sarah Siddique, Sunrise English Private School, Abu Dhabi, UAE.

Oh Willy

This is the story of Willy, a tall boy. Willy’s parents died a few months ago on April 21st. Now it’s August 1st. The cause of Willy’s parents’ death is too much sharpening. Wait a minute!! If you readers don’t understand the meaning of being sharpened to death then let me explain. You see, Willy is a pencil and so were his parents. So apparently the owner of Willy’s parents didn’t care about the long life of their pencils. Willy’s dad Timmy and mom Sincy always told Willy, ‘if your owner loses you then you are very lucky.’ But unfortunately Timmy’s and Sincy’s owners were not clumsy like other children because they were adults.

Anyway Willy moved on. Willy’s friend’s name is Pencilvania (short form Vania). Vania’s dad’s name is Real Pencilvania, fondly called by everyone as RP. He owns the land of Pencilvania. RP married a lady pencil who produced many pencils and so they had many children. And RP was like Willy’s dad and took care of him.

Now moving on, Willy really liked a girl pencil. Her name was Grace. When Willy’s owner took him out of the packet he saw Grace for the first time. But Willy was sad because he knew he would be shorter than Grace in a few days. Whenever Willy’s owner would rub his mistakes with Willy’s butt it used to tickle him. The other pencils would laugh at him because usually when someone rubs the pencil’s butt its very rough and painful. Weeks later Willy became shorter and shorter. Vania and Willy tried many new looks to impress Grace. They even sharpened Willy a little to make flowers out of the sharpened waste!!!

Willy always used to say to Vania, “Grace’s hair is amazingly beautiful and it would be a shame if she got sharpened because then her beautiful hair would go away just like that. She is tall too (for pencils being tall is beautiful).” And Vania would always say “It’s never too late to impress her before you die, which you might in a few days, so you should impress her quickly. And she’s not going to lose her hair. I am sure she’s not even used.”

Finally on August 15th Willy was ready to meet his Juliet who never even knew him. But Willy’s owner took him to write a big poem about India!!!!!! Willy almost forgot that August 15th was the independence day of India and all the kids had to write something about it. Willy got so angry and sad. He kept saying to himself “why can’t these rich brats buy themselves some pens!!!!”

The next day Willy was more than halfway to his death when Vania saw him. Vania said “it’s ok Willy we still have today.” That made Willy feels a little better. Willy got all ready and took his flowers. He stood up straight. On the way to meet Grace he asked other pencil fellows where Grace was and they showed him the way. Finally he reached her home and knocked on the door. Someone shorter than Willy answered the door and greeted “hi”.

Willy replied and asked “is this where Grace lives?”

The other pencil said yes. Then Willy said, “May I see Grace?” and the other pencil answered “I am Grace.”

Willy stared at her in disgust and said “OH MY!!!! I was silly to make these flowers for you. Look at yourself, you are so short!!!! Where is your beautiful hair? I used to love you! Please tell me you are not Grace.”

Grace was so upset and said “if you loved me truly then you would have loved me this way too and besides, everyone has to eventually become short.”

Willy said “this is the real world, pencils like other pencils when they are pretty. So looks like I just wasted my time. Bye.”

That was the end of the story and if you were expecting something romantic then you are reading the wrong story.