Kemps Student Fiction Winner Announced

Over the summer term KS3 students had the opportunity to take part in the Kemps Prize for Fiction 2026. Students were invited to submit an original story of up to 750 words. Once Kerry at Kemps had read through all the entries, she selected 5 finalists. They were invited to Kemps in early July, where their stories were read out to the invited audience and an overall winner was chosen. Huge congratulations to Layla who wrote a short story based on the concept, “What keeps me awake at night.” You can read her prize-winning entry below …

The stars above our house never blinked.

At least, that was what I told myself when I could not sleep.

My name is Clémentine de Rochefort, though Maman always called me Clemmié, as if my name were something delicate enough to hold between her fingers. She died three winters ago. The priest said she had gone to Heaven. Papa said nothing at all. He simply shut the door to her room and left it closed, as though grief were a draft that might escape into the house.

We lived outside Versailles in a grand stone house that seemed far too large for two people who never spoke. Every evening, the servants retired early, the candles burned low, and the silence stretched through the corridors like black lace. Papa spent his nights in the library beneath portraits of saints with sad eyes. Sometimes I imagined they watched him. Sometimes I imagined they watched me.

The night that troubles me most began with rain.

Not proper rain; only a fine silver mist that turned the windows into mirrors. I remember standing in my bedroom, looking out across the sleeping village. The roofs glimmered beneath a sky crowded with stars. A few windows still glowed with candlelight. Tiny islands of gold in an ocean of darkness.

“What keeps you awake at night?”

The question arrived as clearly as a whisper against my ear.

I spun around.

Nobody.

Of course, nobody.

There was never anybody.

Yet my imagination was a living thing. Maman used to laugh and say I could find dragons in a teacup. Since her death, the dragons had grown larger.

The house had monsters. Not real ones. At least I do not think so. The monster beneath the staircase wore Papa’s face. It had long fingers stained with ink and disappointment. Whenever I brought him my sketches or stories, it swallowed them whole. Whenever I cried, it turned its head away. In fairy tales, fathers rescued princesses from towers. Mine built them.

Another monster lived in the chapel. It crouched behind the crucifix and fed on guilt. Every Sunday it whispered that good daughters obeyed, prayed, and endured. It spoke in the voices of priests and governesses. It wore holiness like a wolf wearing a grandmother’s dress.

I knew they were not real.

But knowing and believing are different things.

That night I crept downstairs carrying a candle. The corridors groaned softly beneath my feet. Shadows stretched across the wallpaper like black branches. Outside, the stars remained fixed above the village. I found Papa in the library. He sat alone beside the dying fire. For a moment I did not recognise him. He looked old. Not the grand, severe man who inspected every aspect of my life with military precision. Just a lonely figure bent beneath invisible weight. His hand rested upon a photograph.

Maman.

I had not seen her face in years.

Something shifted inside me. The monster beneath the staircase had always seemed enormous. Yet now it appeared strangely small. Papa lifted the photograph and pressed it against his forehead.

Then he began to cry.

Not loudly.

Not dramatically.

The quiet, hopeless crying of a person who believes nobody can hear. I stepped back before he noticed me. The floorboards creaked. His head lifted. For a second our eyes met across the doorway. Neither of us spoke. I fled upstairs with my candle trembling in my hand.

Back in bed, I pulled the blankets to my chin and stared at the ceiling. The monsters gathered around me as they always did. The staircase creature. The chapel beast. The wolves of loneliness that prowled the edges of every room. Yet they looked different now.

Smaller.

Less solid.

As if moonlight were passing through them. Outside, dawn was beginning to stain the horizon pale blue. The stars faded one by one.

I thought of Maman.

I thought of Heaven.

I thought of fairy tales.

Perhaps monsters were not creatures hiding in forests or beneath beds. Perhaps they were the stories we invented to survive things too painful to name.

The staircase monster was grief.

The chapel beast was fear.

The wolves were loneliness.

And Papa?

Papa was not a dragon guarding a tower. He was simply another prisoner inside it. As morning arrived, the village slowly woke beneath the brightening sky. Candles went out. Birds began to sing. Somewhere downstairs, a door opened. For the first time in years, I slept.

And the stars, at last, blinked.

I used to be kept up at night. I used to gaze upon the starry sky and let my mind wander to what life used to be. Now I dream of what it could be.