Vicky Zhu is a writer from British Columbia, Canada. She is a graduate of the Iowa Young Writers Studio and her work has been recognized by the Scholastic Arts and Writing Awards, the New York Times, and the John Locke Institute. When she's not heavily editing her work, you can find her searching for indie albums, debating, or designing her next robotic invention.
The prize for the winning story was $5,000, and her story will be published in the January/February 2026 print issue of The Walrus magazine.
The albatross flew away the day our air conditioner broke down. Suzanne brought a portable fan into the living room, and we watched the white blades burn away the condensed heat. The plastic whirred, drawing circles and not going anywhere.
To break the silence, I talked about the chick on the roof who now glides across the sky with every beat of his wings. As he left in the twilight, his half-formed wings flapped on the half-decayed horizon; roof, which is now missing. “It’s still here,” says Suzanne, “you can still hear its song.”
They don't need sound to sing.
—
Suzanne lives in a white house, so stuccoed and pale that the wayward sand practically leaves scars on the surface. This is not surprising; the house doesn't stand so much as it crawls towards the ocean. Even the realtor printed in small text “eroding foundation.” I know this because I was a realtor. When Suzanne moved last spring, I couldn't think of a better solution than to ask why this particular house. The house needs company too, she answered, looking at me long and intently.
She is an artist by profession, but Suzanne says she means it more as a metaphor; she doesn't paint so much as catalog memories. Personally, I've always wondered how much you can fit into a riot of color. But I try to believe. I watch her in the slow dawns, paint capsules scattered like wishbones around her easel, and try to see it in every dove wing and every tug kissing the gesso canvas; her fingers formed swollen crescents around her hand; quiet control transmission.
—
As we approach, Suzanne tells me that only she remembers her story correctly. When I ask her what it is, she never answers. Sometimes, when pressed, she talks about sweet grass and handfuls of June bugs; wheat soaked in the sun's rays; the last grains evading the harvest. Suzanne says she's from the Midwest, but when asked where from, she pauses, her lips agape.
Saskatoonshe starts, then starts over. Saskatoon.
She pauses, then repeats. She puts her hand back into the paint box and starts again.
This is how the weekend goes: Suzanne in creativity; I track the ups and downs of the wayward housing market. Sometimes we talk while cutting out pieces of our lives. She is an attentive listener, giving half glances and laughing brightly from time to time. She claims that she never went to art school; I silently doubt the truth of this statement. I trace the curve of her wrist as she strokes the linen yellow of the canvas: there's the full moon, then the morning albatross. She says she's thinking about seabirds right now because one of them just filled the rafters with a bunch of eggs. I pickle the white line at the edge of her collarbone, dull, as if seeping through her skin. I watch her reach for the phone.
Suzanne, why white lead? Of all the colors.
This is the purest thing they sell.
It's toxic.
I know.
The bristle tip scratches the canvas. She bites her lip; lets the brush fall onto the paint box. I watch her get up and leave – I take this as a signal to leave too. The corridors are littered with canvases; propped up, hung, folded. Half-formed faces with averted eyes; the barren bending of the branches; midnight rain; the road is half completed. Her voice, lighter than breathing, is somewhere forward.
Maybe don't follow me.
—
At night, Suzanne comes through the crack of my front door, which I keep ajar. Some vague part of me knows that I want her to stay so I can hear her voice every time. It was my fault – I clung to forgotten words, tied to expired conversations. But I can’t help it, I like to see her most clearly in my dreams; the way her shoulder presses against the couch, her breathing quickening like her pulse. She curled up in a fetal position, as if trying to grow the void around her.
How can someone who holds so much inside look so empty to the world? Where does she go when she's not here and doesn't wake up? I saw her cross that threshold and then not; I can hear it in her vague sentences and the drawling of her vowels. And words that quickly hit your teeth.
We had a wheat plantation.
Saskatoon.
My father.
Backhand.
I want to tell her that I understand that I can give her the softness and warmth that she deserves. I wish this wasn't a lie. I let her hold my hand as tightly as she wants and for as long as she wants. I can still see small rows of sunken crescents where her fingernails once were; the weight of her palm was still pressed against mine.
—
The last thing I want to know is that oil paintings burn at just a fingertip temperature. I know this when Suzanne takes out a matchbox and lights the match; I look away because I can already see smoke rising from the canvas fire. I'm on your porch, far enough away from the heat, but I see it all so quickly: frames collapsing into each other, then into the sand.
Suzanne presses herself against the step next to me. We watch as the late tide breaks up the remains, as sea foam sinks under the leaked paint. The mound is so dark, so thick, that it looks more like a wounded animal than a destroyed ship.
Suzanne.
Hm?
Why do all this if it's not for long?
Give me a reason to stay. Here. Alive.
She laughs, a harshness that lingers for a moment too long. We sit – Suzanne and I – as if the silence reminds us that we are still here. I'm trying to swallow this suffocating feeling that comes in small hot waves. I can't look at her. Instead, I look at the last wooden frame, gnarled and blackened beyond recognition. Smoke rises, thick with expulsion.
—
Suzanne, why do you use white lead?
Her breathing is heavy and drunk with sleep. Her voice: droplets.
Everything else has subtext. I want honesty.
—
Sometimes, at the end of midnight, I wonder when it will end. When she will watch the tides and slip away to another place at another dawn.
You can stay here, seabirdI tell her, there will always be a place for you, but her eyes are already glazed over by the blur of distant shores. I tell myself I know this. I know her: her dark breath, her half-formed sentences, so raw and long past that they are almost past tense. I hold her while she sleeps like a handful of water; watching my skin ridge and leave dull patches. I know I'm drowning in it. I want to remain a lifeline that no longer knows its line. I think of her: heavy limbs and broken thoughts, ready for uncertain flight, going anywhere, but at the same time remaining homeless.
—
I know she's gone when I wake up on a sofa that feels obtrusively wide. I see her there, outside, with her shoulder blades exposed. Her birdlike shoulders are thin and sharp enough to highlight the sky. The morning fog has already dissipated, freezing in the window panes. As if in a dream, I see the ocean, gray and disheveled, nibbling at the remaining stain. I go out with a blanket.
Twenty steps later she sees me. Brush at the ready. Wide marble eyes. Now, closer, I see her sharp, bone-white fingers. They are shaky, soft and fast.
Suzanne, it's so cold here. She doesn't say anything. The blanket is dripping off her shoulders.
Suzanne, can you please stop? Her fingers: so white and cold. Her smudged fingerprints are on my hand as she pulls her hand away.
Somewhere an albatross is cawing; a guttural sound, muffled in foreign waters. I see every piece of skin torn and raised on her lip, crying a deep, dark red. She turns away.
SuzanneI say. This white one will kill you. ོ
