In Competition No. 3282, you were invited to submit a short story narrated from an un-usual perspective.

The seed for this challenge was Kim Stanley-Robinson’s cli-fi novel Ministry For the Future, described by the New Yorker as ‘both harrowing and heartening’. One of its chapters is narrated by a carbon atom, another by the market; a literary device informed by Bruno Latour’s actor-network theory (the idea that non-human entities have agency).

Honourable mentions go to Bob Pringle, Joe Bogle, Martin Leigh, C-A Herstedt and Frank Upton. The winners, printed below, are awarded £25 each.

When first I began to clear, Haggie realised he was – somehow – still alive. Very little else was, so it seemed. The landscape was upended, stripped, preposterous: decorated with stifling puddles, split duckboards, and the usual human detritus, over which I am sometimes draped by the artistic.

Haggie patted himself down, hunting through his uniform for injuries, or perhaps for one of his infernal cigarettes. He hadn’t smelt me coming, it seemed, but then men in his situation are often deprived of their senses, one by one. I was ever-present, I expect, too common to be counted. Haggie put down his rifle, out of harm’s way. It rested on a muddy shelf, perfect and useless.

Unsettled, lifted slightly by a gust, I divulged young Hofheinz, also intact, from Marburg, face charred by the same fires that produced me. A slight puff from his gun. Later I merged with the local mist.

Bill Greenwell

‘Animism,’ Bertrand Russell declares, ‘is absolute nonsense.’ Though not animism or absolute, I am nonsense; the word, or at least this particular vocal iteration of it, originating in Russell’s larynx and aided by spittle in my journey across their shared Cambridge rooms to the ears of Ludwig Wittgenstein this gloomy November Monday afternoon in 1911. I am both what Russell is saying and the refutation of what he means. It takes only common sense to conclude that if I, a temporary collation of soundwave and sputum, have attained consciousness, everything else must have it, west wind to wainscotting. Earlier words in Russell’s sentence predeceasing me, I ponder my legacy. Dare I hope Wittgenstein will contradict his friend and mentor? Or will this prove one of those subjects whereof he cannot speak and about which he must remain silent? I shall never know, as he may never know I ever knew.

Adrian Fry

We have our share of fascists and hatemongers on the Spectrum, I’m sorry to say. The True Hue Few and the Wavelength Purity Patriots are just the most widely known of that sorry lot, proclaiming that only narrow wavelength and frequency bands can be considered ‘authentic’ or ‘legitimate’ colours, while the rest of us are ‘impure shades’. Naturally, they’re dead set against what they call ‘chromatic miscegenation’, so there’s no place in their worldview for couples like me and my partner. She’s a playful magenta, while I’m a brooding deep violet near the indigo end of our range. Once we might have kept to ourselves and accepted that we simply had to live with the hostility. But today there’s a militant new spirit of resistance in the air. The Full Spectrum Freedom Alliance is on the march and we will paint the future with a bold new palette.

Chris O’Carroll

Cocky little sod. I’ll show him. The libretto smirks, warming to the incipient act of revenge. Thinks he knows the score does he, note perfect? We’ll see. Eyebrows cocked, forefinger to lips; standard maestroisms… and they’re Off! Except, dear reader, I decided to introduce certain changes to the piece; variations on a theme, as it were. Sheet music can do this, if so minded. Tonight’s conductor is notorious for eccentric reading of texts, disregard for composers’ intentions. Upstart baton boy, moltissimo ego. Accordingly, I’ve laid traps: our heroine’s aria is now in G# minor and 7/4 signature; a klezmer obbligato replaces horns; tenors get to test-drive their tonsils as soprani.

I’m observing players’ panicked glances: ‘What the…?’ This concert is going out live! There will be, ahem, repercussions: for music has charms both to soothe a savage breast and to Rattle Cages.

Mike Morrison

I was with him from the moment the bright hospital lights shone on his puckered eyelids and curling fingers. Created at his birth, I was faithful to him throughout his life; we were inseparable. I danced behind him on sunlit days and sometimes he played with me, the light behind him as I mirrored his every move. But now we stand stock-still, pressed against the wire as the searchlight dazzles him. I hide behind him as usual. Why can I not, this once, stand in front to shield him? But it would be futile. The bullets pass through him, and through me. They do not hurt me. He falls on me and hides me. Together we are lifted and taken away. I cannot go with him into the darkness of the grave; I will disappear, for I am a creature of light that has no more reason to be.

Bob Trewin

The Boss grew us trees when He made the Garden, me, and also the apple tree in the middle with His favourite russets. Then He did animals, plus two odd-looking upright ones without much fur. They had a kind of pet snake who said he was possessed by the devil, whatever that means. Anyway, there was a hoo-ha when they nicked the Boss’s apples. He threw them and their snake out, locked the gate, and put one of His guards on it. We’re well shot of those three meshuggeneh, but what was absolutely weird was that they ripped off some of my leaves and tied them round the middle of their trunks. No idea why. They surely can’t have kept them all that warm.

But that was aeons ago, and the Boss is much happier without them. He’s still writing his novel, and makes damn good chutney with my figs.

Brian Murdoch

No. 3285: on song

Hot on the heels of Berlusconi and Trump: the Musical, you are invited to supply an extract from the libretto of a musical based on the life story of a politician of your choice. Email entries of up to 16 lines to lucy@spectator.co.uk by midday on 1 February.