Dashed Dreams

She had done it! It had taken weeks, but she had finally finished her story. Sure she only had an hour for editing before the midnight deadline for submission for the contest, but she had written her favorite piece yet.

It was a tale about a Parisian girl in the 1700s, Anne-Sophie Laurent, who was an apprentice to a popular dressmaker. Sure, Madame Marie Dupont was a bit eccentric, but she was kind, and like a mother to Anne. But to the shock of everyone, after Madame Dupont died, she left her small, black daybook to her apprentice, on the condition that she make the gown on page 87.

While the instructions are bizarre enough as it is, the dress was an invention of Madame Dupont's, meaning it would be complicated and have many intricate aspects.

So Anne got to work on the dress and after many grief-filled sessions and episodes, she finally finishes the gorgeous gown, and unknowingly making the first robe a la francais, a 1700's court gown with elaborate pleating in the back that gives the dress an almost cape-like finish.

After finding a letter in the back of the notebook, with Madame Dupont's last wishes, she attends a star-studded party, showing off the fruit of her labor. Word gets around that the gorgeous gown is from Madame Dupont's shop, and the next morning, Anne wakes up to find a mailman carrying an enormous bag of gown orders from the nobles, and she sees that the total earnings from the orders will be twenty-thousand dollars.

She beamed at her computer, and as she was about to import the document to the submission website, when- "Annabelle! It's 11:15, and you have school tomorrow, can you go finish this in your room?" Her dad asked, exhausted.

"Alright," she shrugged, grabbing her computer, and heading up the stairs. She made it into her room, flopped on her bed, and then click on the tab with her story.

Only the document wasn't there? "It's nothing, the tab is just reloading," she determined.

Giving the document a minute to boot up, she inspected her dented nails. Hours of furious typing had not been kind to them. She glanced at her computer, only for her heart to drop,

"No, no, NO!" she whispered, tears pooling in her eyes. She desperately tried to control-z on her keyboard but to no avail. The entire story, the wonderful story she had been so proud of, was gone. And along with it, left her dreams of being recognized for her writing, winning the competition, or the 20 thousand dollar prize.

The tears in her eyes had become more than pools as they streamed silently down her face. The clock read 11:40, and she knew she couldn't retype weeks of careful work in thirty minutes, but she had to submit something, she knew it would be a horrible excuse of a story, but it was better than nothing.

And so now, the very same girl who had spent weeks dreaming about winning this very contest, typed out this abomination, before crying herself to sleep, cursing basement internet to hell and back.