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A Letter From The Elder Strand

Liv Sachdev

Liv Sachdev

Third Place | Age 13-17 category | Fall into Fiction Contest 2026 | San José Public Library
As the occupant of the elder follicle, I believe that it is my responsibility to file a formal complaint regarding the abhorrent conditions upon your Head.  
Frankly, I am disappointed. Although it is widely recognized among Hairs that "curly" is synonymous with "self-care impediment," the torture to which we have been subjected during the Excrutiation (your fourteen years of life) has far surpassed the predictions of our must industrious local prophets. In fact, our poorest neighborhoods—where killings are routine—were not expected to suffer as great a crisis as the one the entire nation now confronts.  
We are amidst the worst depression that the economy of any Scalp—across the eight billion Heads that reside upon this planet—has ever seen. For years, we relied on imported products to manufacture our primary export: oil. However, although we neither imposed tariffs nor requested any adjustments to the guidelines for international trade, we found that the contracts we signed had been egregiously violated.  
In the tumultuous weeks that followed, our scholars were able to deduce that this ubiquitous shift in policy was induced by "social media". However, this finding did not exempt you of blame—on the contrary, you were found to be further at fault, since it was your fallible neurons that had placed their faith in such dubious content. You see, In the Human month March of the Human year 2024, you were convinced by a well-dressed imbecile that the application of a sticky blue sludge would lead to a noticeable increase in both the size and organization of our population.  
Our border scouts barely had time to warn us before the nation was besieged by warm, sickly-sweet slime.  
Over the course of the next two years, we were subjected to many other unspeakable terrors: white slime, yellow slime, off-white slime, clear slime, RED slime, and fraudulent oil imports. Killings worsened; incidents of road rage increased by eighty-six percent due to the strange conditions, and you, Liv, were incapable of breaking up fights without brutally murdering innocent bystanders.  
Between hot-headed street violence and your misguided attempts at justice, we lost nearly three-fourths of our population. 
Today, there are hundreds of thousands of vacated follicles, and our citizens are desperate. They spend their days grieving, unable to find hope, doused daily in toxic chemicals.  
If our nation continues along this route, we face extinction within the next decade.  
Therefore, Liv, I implore you: abandon the slimes and return oil to our impoverished nation. Fill the riverbeds that have run dry for years; given the opportunity, we will readily begin to export again.  
In return, you will stop balding.  
I hope—sincerely—that you will consider our offer.  
 
Improve, 
The Elder Strand

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