Fiction Fantastic 2026 Winning Story: “Myself, Truly” by Kendall Moeller

“Myself, Truly,” by Kendall Moeller, Elmira High School

Honorable Mention, High School Level, 2026

Myself, Truly

by Kendall Moeller

Elmira High School

An icy breeze flowed through the church corridors, bitter as it circulated through the nave like a lost spirit. Abigail had no idea how the air inside found a way to be more frigid than the spring wind of Anchorage outside. She’d rather have stood under one of the small summertime cascades on the side of the freeway than continue to stew in the unbearable cold and the curdled shame of sitting there alone on that stiff church pew.

“Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name,” she kept her eyes squeezed shut as her cold lips formed uncomfortably around the syllables of the words, a familiar vice around her lungs tightening like a phantom noose.

The bodice of her best Sunday dress, which she had been wearing since she was twelve, proved to be just snug enough in the chest to bring her rather irksome discomfort. What she wouldn’t have given to be able to tear the damned thing open, shred the faded pink linen, and toss it into the horrible spring slush in the gutters outside in some pathetic display of her triumph.

But she wouldn’t. She wouldn’t utter a single word of discomfort to anyone, wouldn’t dare to rip so much as a seemingly blameless tear into the hem of her skirt, lest she be forced to wear the ruined garment to Mass as punishment like she had been made to when she was little more than a toddler. It simply wasn’t worth it to cause a fuss over trivial matters such as her own comfort.

“Thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

A brass depiction of Jesus Christ hung just below the stained glass window of the church, gazing down patronizingly from his crucifix like a divine critic. The mere artistic rendition of his likeness somehow found a way to have a presence just as crushing as if the actual son of God had stood before her. Abigail couldn’t actually see it due to her eyes being screwed shut in prayer, but his silhouette lingered like a haunting vision burned into the darkness behind her eyelids.

She and the statue were the only two left in the nave of the church. Her mother was impatiently waiting outside for her, and their pastor had already retired to the back rooms to conduct his post-mass duties.

It was eerie, the way the silence rang louder than her own words, seemed to be laughing in her face, declaring its own architectural hollows and ominous echoes more important than her faith.

Abigail’s lips trembled frustratingly around the prayer as she spit it up, acidic tasting, onto the carpet of the church.

The carpet itself reeked of must. Every step of men’s loafers, Xtratuf boots, and the nicest heels that the women who attended Abigail’s church could afford caused a horrid crunching noise that reverberated in the rafters long after people had vacated.

“Give us this day our daily bread, and forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever.” Abigail swallowed around the lump in her throat and just barely managed to squeak out the end to her prayer. “Amen.”

With one last fleeting glance to the brass Jesus, Abigail stood from the rigid church pew and rushed out of the oppressive air of the building. The idea of finding her mother placated with the demonstration of her devotion was a fantasy, so she didn’t bother to entertain it.

The fresh air when Abigail pushed the double doors outward was nothing short of heavenly, more so than anything she had experienced that day in church. She caught sight of her mother almost immediately, the woman glancing up to regard her daughter with a placid expression before she beckoned her towards their parked car with a restless wave of her hand. Abigail obeyed the silent command, quickening her step while being careful not to slip on the icy pavement.

Once they had both settled inside the car, her mother spoke up.

“You confessed to Father Smith?”

“Yes,” Abigail muttered, tugging absentmindedly at a strand of her dark hair.

“Good, good.”

Silence prevailed as it so often did in their relationship, not exactly uncomfortable but undoubtedly tense. The tick-tick-tick of the blinker filled the space where conversation would have been, a welcome break from the monotonous humdrum of the engine.

“Stop pulling at your hair,” her mother chastised in the same tone she had used the last thousand times she had said it. “You’ll damage your follicles.”

Abigail’s hand fell from her head, resting in her lap as she stared at its upturned palm.

“You have such beautiful hair, don’t destroy it like that.”

Abigail felt her brow scrunch involuntarily before she manually smoothed it over with an inconspicuous brush of her fingers, hoping that it hadn’t been noticed.

Her hair, pin straight and a dark chestnut color for which her mother prided herself in having supplied the gene, was more trouble than it was worth. It knotted constantly, and her ends split and split and split, and no matter how long it got, her mother was never satisfied.

Tangled, oily, too boyish. There was truly no end in sight when it came to her appearance and the hoops she would need to jump through to please others. She had lost track of the number of times she’d glanced at her father’s old hair clippers and thought about how easy it would be to buzz the annoyance off and deal with the repercussions later, but they stayed firmly in their case no matter how tempting it had been.

The car came to a stop, halted momentarily by a red light. Abigail found herself glancing out her window, hoping to find something to observe to pass the time.

A group of children played in their warm jackets and hats several yards away on the school field. In the wake of spring break, it lacked any actual athletes and found itself susceptible to the whims of imagination only fully realizable by children. They scurried around like colorful caterpillars in their fuzzy layers, throwing slush and snow at each other playfully and arguing about rules to games that had none. Something strange twisted inside Abigail, her chest feeling tight again as she watched quietly.

An older boy leaned against the chain link fence surrounding the field, somewhere around Abigail’s age and seeming to act as a sort of supervisor as he broke up arguments and ruffled the hair of children before he fixed the way their hats were situated on their heads. Abigail envied his warm coat that obscured his frame from the waist up and tried not to curse him mentally when he shoved his hands into the deep pockets of his faded blue jeans. He looked out across the field before he paused, turning his head to the street.

Abigail felt her heart lurch as their gazes met, embarrassed that she had been caught staring but unable to get her body to move to save some of her dignity. The boy blinked once before raising a hand in a friendly gesture. His shaggy dark hair that framed his thin features shifted in the wind, his gloved hand tucking it behind his ear as he gave Abigail a small smile.

She swallowed around the lump in her throat, waving back shyly as the light turned green and the car began moving once more.

“Who was that?” her mother probed, sounding inexplicably vexed.

“I don’t know,” she began, ready to justify her simple action if that was what was demanded.

Abigail turned to look at her mother, finding her holding a trembling hand to her mouth as despair brimmed her dull blue eyes. A breath squeezed in the young girl’s lungs, a certain familiar feeling of dread filling the air of the suddenly too cramped car.

“Oh, Abbie,” she started, her voice trembling with a strange tone of sorrow. “Don’t lie to me. I know you’re lying. I always know.”

Her mother’s hand that was still wrapped around the steering wheel squeezed rhythmically, the pale skin where her wedding ring used to be now bare to the world as she shakily signaled and made a turn.

“I can feel the devil coming for my baby,” she despaired as Abigail continued to stare at the side of her head, unblinking. “Abigail, He’s everywhere. Temptation and sin,” she hissed the word, causing Abigail to flinch. “You’re falling into His grasp, I can feel it.”

Her mother brought a hand to her eyes, gasping brokenly a few more times before she reached behind the seat for her purse, her eyes dry and her hastily applied mascara still intact.

“Go to your room. I can’t look at you right now,” was all the woman said.

Abigail blinked. The car was parked and she hadn’t even noticed.

Her hand shook as she opened the door, lagging behind a bit so she and her mother wouldn’t have to face each other.

Abigail shut her bedroom door behind her so silently that she had to check that the latch had actually slid into place before she started her post-Mass routine. Her hands shook as she undid the buckles of her Mary Janes and set them at the foot of her bed. She unzipped the back of her dress next, taking her first complete lungful of air since she had put it on hours ago. Her skin seemed to buzz as she changed into a loose hoodie and a pair of leggings. Her thoughts were a mess of shapes that didn’t connect to each other, sounds that didn’t form words, and that feeling of dread that she just couldn’t seem to shake.

The act of kneeling at the side of her bed in prayer was a familiar feeling, but not this early in the day. The sun was high in the sky, though her blinds did much to filter out the harshest of beams.

“Lord,” she started, her voice sounding off in her own ears. “I don’t know what you want from me.”

Her head fell down onto her comforter, the material offering little more than a soft landing as she dug the backs of her clasped knuckles into the sensitive area where her skull met the top of her spine.

“Please, if you’re listening, help me.” Tears slipped from her eyes, wetting the blanket into which her face was pressed. “I don’t know what to do.”

Tears continued to fall, the girl’s soft sobs muffled as her face began to heat up with the flood of sudden distress that filled her lithe form.

She sobbed for what felt like hours until the air began to change somehow. The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end, skin prickling as something deep in her gut shifted. She wasn’t alone.

“Fear not,” the presence said without a mouth, without a tongue, without lips, and without a true voice, only the outline of words as they filled every open inch of the room. Abigail’s ears rang with it, a gasp escaping her as her head snapped up to face the intruder. “I am here to help.”

The figure had no true shape, morphing each millisecond into something equally unfamiliar, unnatural, and beautiful in its vagueness. It appeared to float before her, emanating beams of light that put the ones from the sun outside her window to shame.

A warbling vowel escaped the girl, her lungs burning with bated breath. Abigail forced her eyes to focus on the presumed center of the glowing mass. The urge to shield her eyes clawed at her mind, some deep-seated compulsion planted in her mind which she could not remember instilling herself.

“Speak, dear one. I am Adam, and I mean to guide you through this trial you face.”

Though the figure had no face, Abigail could’ve sworn the being looked upon her with sympathy. Every aspect exuded purity, divinity in its most visceral form. It was simultaneously horrifying and utterly gratifying.

“Please, Adam, turn me into what I’m meant to be. I’m—wrong somehow, and I don’t know what to do.”

I’m spewing utter nonsense, she thought to herself despairingly, but couldn’t seem to stop the torrent of words. “I can feel myself coming undone. I’ve felt it for years.”

The shroud of light seemed to nod, the overwhelming sense of comfort that perforated through Abigail’s years of built-up anguish in a single moment being the only signal of the assumed affirmation.

“You have suffered much. You need not ache any longer.”

The being moved closer to her, the light emanating from it slowly being recast off of the bed’s surface as it perched before Abigail. Every shift and sigh of it felt like a look straight into a world beyond her own, one where she was meant to be.

The beams of the presence felt blissfully warm, like the first sunshine after the dark months of late fall and winter or the comforting embrace of a fireplace.

This feels nice. Why does this feel so nice? she asked herself hazily, with every muscle in her body going loose as warmth encompassed her. Is this what heaven feels like?

Her hands were shapeless when she looked down at them, blissfully nothing. When she glanced at her mirror, she saw nothing she could decipher as her old familiar form. Instead, her shape was ever-shifting, like the being’s, loose and wonderful like it was shaped to her very soul. She recognized her body no longer. It terrified her; it calmed her. She felt human.

A sick feeling began to eat at her stomach, chasing out any shreds of bliss and instead leaving her with a hollow sort of shame, much like the kind she had felt in church. What had she done? What was she without her shape which she had labored to maintain? Without the delicate femininity of her bones and skin, what was she?

“What have I done?” Abigail murmured, trembling as she wrapped her arms around her body, sure that it would shatter apart were she to stop. She had put so much work into forming her shape to the preferences of others. What would they see when they looked at her now? If they regarded her with disgust, what would she do? All her life was spent making herself into a pretty, inoffensive thing others could disregard, only to be reduced to a monster, all for a few moments of her own joy.

The being seemed to sigh, a long metallic sound that made the ground feel as if it were swallowing the two of them whole.

“I have revealed the you buried within the shell of Abigail,” the being replied, patient in its cadence and all-encompassing in its passion. Abigail shook her head back and forth violently, so lost in her fear, that she risked rendering herself concussed.

“My mother—”

“Your mother could never hope to change how you truly are,” it declared, the words undeniably final. “Do not seek validation in a place you will never find it.”

In that moment, a hand began to extend from the shapeless shroud of light. The motion seemed to drag on forever, the palm of a painfully human hand facing upwards as the fingers uncurled into an inviting gesture that urged Abigail to accept it. It was the first time that the being had taken a definitive shape, and it was nothing short of remarkable.

The digits of the hand were somehow familiar, each luminous vein and freckle intimate in a way just as perplexing as it was comforting to the cowering girl.

“I don’t understand.” Abigail trembled, shrinking away from the divine hand offered to her and instead covering her flushed face.

There was silence for a moment before the hand slowly caressed her flushed cheek, the brush of knuckles along her cheekbone like a cooling balm as the being pulled the frightened girl’s hands from her face. She gasped around the lump in her throat. Never before had she thought it possible to touch heaven, yet here it was cradling her in its palm.

She couldn’t bring herself to look up from the floor, simply letting her hands fall to her sides when the being released them to cup her face.

“Look at me,” Adam said, and Abigail obeyed.

The reflective surface of her mirror gleamed back at her. Adam’s form, still luminescent but now fully defined through solid edges mirroring her own shape, peered back at her from the confines of reflectively coated glass. It smiled.

Abigail’s heart felt as if it were about to burst from her chest. How—what?

“What’s happening?” she whispered, bringing a hand up to press the tips of her fingers against the mirror. It was warm as she laid her palm against it. “Am I—you?”

“I am you as you are me,” her reflection—Adam—she—said as it also brought up its hand in time with hers. “Do you understand?”

No, she thought to herself, but every second she spent looking at her mirror began to feel more and more right.

“It will get easier, I promise you,” they said.

“Will it be worth it, though? Me being as I am?”

“It’s always worth something to be true to one’s soul,” they said with a smile, stroking their thumb against the mirror. “Let yourself be as you were meant to be. Do not feel shame for merely existing.”

Abigail’s eyes never left the mirror, her head nodding before she could process it. She gripped the mirror’s edge, resting her forehead against Adam’s.

Tomorrow, she promised herself. Tomorrow I’ll be myself, truly.