2011 Student Writing Awards Booklet - Santa Fe Community College

Fiction Winner
Michael Armer
The Battle of the Unseen Realm
He was not a repulsive man. Indeed, he was considered by the naive
to be tragically ravishing. No one would see him as such if they truly knew
him, for he had his flaws. For instance, his silence: he never spoke a word to
any human.To humans, no word he spoke, but he had a raven. It was a raven
unlike any other. It was to this and one other alone that he spoke.
The raven was sizable and ominous. It knew things no man ever
knew. It was neither male nor female, for it was immortal—immortal, that
is, not quite dead, but less than alive. None could have said that it was so,
but all knew. Everyone sensed its presence; they felt its damnation.
The raven was many things to the man. Many roles, many purposes
it served. It had served the man for a long time, and it did things that
the strongest heart would shudder to hear of. Yet all of its exploits were
directed toward the same goal: to gradually, by degrees, rend asunder the
heart of the one they loved—the only other soul to whom the man spoke.
They loved the same, the man and his raven.They loved him
greatly. Many have made the mistake of saying the man had raised him, for
he and the raven had taught the beloved many things he needed to know
in order to live. Nevertheless, their greatest desire was to destroy him. By
destroying him, they would prove their might. They would make every
man and beast in every crevice of this pathetic earth fear them; control was
their twisted and vile life ambition. Even they knew it was a morbid reality;
even they felt grief that this was their chief end. It is impossible to
explain, but it was so.
They have nearly accomplished their goal. Yes, their joy is contagious,
they are elated that they have come this far and that the end is near!
Even now they are working to finish. Always are they vigilant; they never
close their eyes. They work so that one day they may rest.They work so
hard, so relentlessly, so they may be relieved from their anguish. All the
while, they suffer, for the one they love resists them. He knows them not,
but he feels them work against him, and he fights them. They are two
spirits: the man and the raven as one, and the one they love as the other,
and they fight in realms unseen to the human eye. They fight until the
death. And yet the man and his raven mourn for the sake of the one they
afflict. They long for their work to be finished, for they have toiled for
seventeen dark, unhappy years.
First, they showed the beloved how to fear. They put his life in
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