The Red-Haired Boy - By Marquen Carstens

Written By: Marquen Carstens

Category: short story

Competition: Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026

In the captivating short story "The Red-Haired Boy," Marquen Carstens weaves a narrative that captures the profound moments of life and identity. As a participant in the Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026, Carstens contributes to a diverse tapestry of voices from around the world. This piece delves into the complexities of family, belonging, and the innocence of childhood, inviting readers to reflect on the unseen narratives that shape our lives.

About the Work

"The Red-Haired Boy" is a poignant exploration of identity and belonging. Through vivid imagery and a delicate narrative style, Marquen Carstens paints a picture of a child's journey through loss and adaptation. The story's mood is reflective, with an undercurrent of resilience and hope, as it examines how a child's essence transcends the circumstances that surround them.

The red-haired boy

Original Submission by Marquen Carstens

The Red-Haired Boy

The first thing I remember about that day is the theatre doors opening.

Hospitals have a way of stretching time until minutes become entire afternoons. Outside the operating theatre, people sat on hard plastic chairs pretending not to listen to every sound coming from behind the swinging doors. Trolleys rattled past. Nurses hurried through corridors with the quiet urgency of people who no longer noticed fear because they lived beside it every day. Somewhere a monitor beeped without stopping. Hospital light is always the same-too bright, too white, as if it exists not for comfort but for observation.

I had been sitting there for hours when the doors finally opened.

The surgeon stepped into the corridor, the harsh light of the operating room burning behind him before the doors slowly closed again. He glanced at us only briefly, already moving toward whatever came next.

“The baby is white,” he said.

“And he has red hair.”

That was all.

He did not tell us whether the child was breathing.

He did not tell us whether his mother was alive.

He did not tell us that the operation had gone well.

Only colour.

Only a description that sounded as though it had already become destiny.

When they finally brought him to us, I was the first to hold him.

He felt warm and unexpectedly heavy in my arms, the peculiar weight of a new life that did not yet know how to carry itself. He opened his mouth, turned his head slightly, and searched without hesitation. He did not wonder who I was. He simply looked for warmth and found it.

He smelled of milk and blood and that impossible scent that belongs only to newborn skin-a softness untouched by fear, grief, or memory.

His hair was not the fierce red people imagine when they hear the word. It was copper, catching the fluorescent light until it seemed almost to glow.

When they placed him beside my sister, she lay pale against the pillow, her face caught somewhere between laughter and tears. She reached out slowly and let her hand rest on his tiny head.

“He’s beautiful,” I whispered.

No one answered.

The conversation had already shifted.

People wanted to know whose colouring he had inherited.

Who he would resemble.

Whether his hair would stay that colour.

It is remarkable how quickly the world begins measuring a child before that child has formed a single memory.

We started calling him Redhead before anyone had settled on his real name.

It was never meant cruelly.

It was simply because sunlight seemed to notice him before anyone else did.

The first three years of his life passed quietly.

He was the sort of child who watched before he spoke, who studied faces as though trying to understand what people truly meant rather than what they said. He walked early. He talked early. Yet there was always something thoughtful about him, as if he carried an older silence inside him.

My sister adored him.

Whenever she laughed, she tilted her head ever so slightly, and he recognised that laugh before he recognised her voice. His father was a quiet man, but pride lived in the way he lifted the boy onto his shoulders or carried him through the house as though the child were the safest thing he had ever held.

Their home possessed the kind of ordinary happiness people rarely notice while they are living inside it.

Then, when he was three years old, everything ended.

The phone call came late in the afternoon.

There had been an accident.

A truck.

A car.

The words arrived in fragments that refused to fit together.

Later people tried to explain what had happened. They said the truck had been speeding. They spoke about brake marks left across the road and impact angles and distances measured by investigators.

But accidents never fit neatly inside explanations.

What I know is this:

The boy was found wandering among shattered glass and twisted metal without so much as a scratch on his body.

He did not cry.

He waited.

Someone saw him standing beside the road, his copper hair covered in dust, his wide eyes alert but strangely calm.

His father was trapped beneath the truck.

My sister never left the driver's seat.

The world did not slow down to acknowledge either of them.

His grandparents reached the scene first.

They lived close enough to become the first hands that lifted him once the sound of breaking had stopped.

We lived too far away.

By the time the phone reached us, silence had already settled over everything.

“It’s serious,” someone said.

Serious is a useless word until you know the whole story.

When I arrived at the hospital, he was sitting alone on a plastic chair with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders. His thumb rested in his mouth. His red hair still glowed beneath the unforgiving white lights.

I opened my arms.

He came to me immediately.

He pressed his head against my chest exactly as he always had.

A nurse told me he was completely unharmed.

“A miracle,” she called him.

But miracles do not repair everything they leave behind.

My sister never came home.

What followed happened slowly enough to feel endless and quickly enough that nobody could stop it.

A social worker explained that the child would need to remain with another household until matters had “stabilised.”

He was three years old.

The office had soft carpets that swallowed sound. Framed photographs of smiling children covered the walls. A large green plant stood in one corner, healthy in a way that suggested someone else always remembered to water it.

The boy sat on the floor pushing a plastic car back and forth.

My mother asked whether she could pick him up.

“Let’s keep things calm,” the social worker replied.

The child looked at her for a long moment.

For an instant it seemed as though recognition flickered across his face.

Then he turned away.

My mother's hand remained suspended in the air before she quietly lowered it again.

The report arrived weeks later.

The sentences were tidy.

Clinical.

Almost gentle.

One line refused to leave me.

“The child’s physical characteristics facilitate integration into the current household.”

Red hair.

White skin.

Words that sound soft until they land.

More sentences followed.

Adoption approved.

Further contact not recommended.

We asked questions.

Questions carry very little weight once decisions have already been signed.

The last time I saw him, he sat in a playroom while another woman called him “sweetheart.”

Her hair caught the afternoon light much the way his did.

He knew who I was.

I could see it.

Recognition lives somewhere deeper than memory.

For one brief moment he reached for my hand and wrapped his fingers around mine.

Then someone called his name.

He let go.

Children follow the voices that tuck them into bed at night.

They know nothing about reports or court orders.

Only about who tells them it is time to sleep.

After that, the photographs stopped coming.

Sometimes I still think I see him in crowds.

Every child with copper hair makes my heart hesitate.

I wonder whether he has ever looked into a mirror and asked where the other faces are.

Whether anyone told him that his mother had dark eyes that softened whenever she laughed.

Whether he knows he once stood among broken glass and twisted steel without breaking himself.

He did not cry.

He waited.

He lives somewhere now in a world that found it easy to decide where he belonged.

But I remember the first truth.

Breath comes before colour.

Everything else comes later.

And no report, no courtroom, no carefully typed sentence will ever erase the weight of him in my arms that first morning.

Warm.

Heavy.

Alive.

Before the world had decided who he was.

About the Competition

The Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026 by Hashtag Kalakar is a celebration of creativity and expression. Writers and poets from around the world are invited to share their unique voices and perspectives. This competition is a platform for emerging and established writers to showcase their work and connect with a global audience, fostering a vibrant community of literary talent.

Thank you, Marquen Carstens, for sharing "The Red-Haired Boy" with us in the Global Poetry and Creative Writing Competition 2026. Your story offers a touching insight into the essence of identity and belonging, and we appreciate the depth and thoughtfulness of your narrative. We look forward to seeing more of your work and wish you continued success in your literary journey.

About Hashtag Kalakar

Hashtag Kalakar is a creative platform dedicated to providing artists, writers, singers and other creative talents with opportunities to showcase their work and reach wider audiences through competitions, features and creative initiatives.