"Say something"

To my beloved Hae,

As visibly evident to you and the many anonymous names that would have read my posts without my knowledge of when and whom they are read by;

I've gone back to story-teller mode, and am without doubt feeling happy about sharing stories onto my new "Hae look" for a blog page. Let's insert a smile :)

As soon as I've overcome the last of my SAM course, I would continue to confide my innermost thoughts, feelings and previous interesting encounters that I wish to remember. That's a promise.

In the meanwhile-

The following short story was a submission to my English teacher (not my beloved Mrs Jenny) but the college teacher. We were asked to write a narrative inspired by a scene of one's own choice from "Say Something by A Great Big World".

With love,
CCM.

***************************************************

I run my fingers down his heavily tattooed arm, hoping to evoke a response. Stroking his inner arm, a shadow cast over a patch of sore pink skin, revealing a new addition to his body armor of tattoos. Another new development in Joe’s life that I have yet to know about, so I thought. Beside me, his gaze was fixed onto the ceiling; a clear sign that he had drowned in his pool of thoughts, drifting far and only further off into a state of what's unknown.

As I lay next to the inert form of a man whom I was to acknowledge as my significant other, I've suddenly come to realize how much we have changed to become the detached pact we are now. Joe was the one who witnessed my early childhood years and remained by my side ever since. From the beginning, I always thought, or so I thought, that we had chosen each other by fate and was meant to be. “

Please, say something, Joe,” I whispered gently.

He then shifted ever so slightly to avoid facing me. Defeated, I slowly turned from him and welcomed the hollowness of that very night’s silence in my wake. A wave of sheer, cold emptiness passes through the invisible barrier that sets his and my world apart. A heavy voice pierced through the night air, You saw this day coming, didn’t you?

A few inches out of reach, Joe’s body transcended heat far enough to reach the curvature of my bare back. But deep within, I felt vulnerable and stark by the shrill realization that Joe’s presence brought upon nothing more than physical comfort. The bed sheets grew stale cold and all sense of hopelessness enveloped around my entire being. My inner being ached for even the slightest chance of stirring a response in him. Alas, the final bell had sounded. There and then, I have finally succumbed to my tiredness.

            Sometimes, it hurts more to hold on.

            With all that my inner strength could muster, I rose from the bed where my childhood dream still laid wide awake, peering into dark space as though imagining a future without my prior existence. Hot tears cascade from the over-spill of emotions that hold me prisoner to this endearing moment, when I have finally learnt to let go of the heaviest obstacle blocking me from the light at the end of the tunnel...

            Goodbye. 

Short stories, by memory.

Chicken moves over to take the currently vacant lot in front of me. I looked up from my homework to be greeted with a one of his trademark non-verbal cues; the usual toothless, sincere grin he makes when he’s about to start conversation. I smiled back in recognition.

“So, how’re things going with your prom date?”

I gave a nonchalant shrug. Sensing my hesitation, he decides to switch the topic and directed the focus towards himself. I appreciated his unspoken word of understanding, and listened intently as he gave update on how the pairings from previous student-couple shippings were doing at the time.

I took a glance to the back of the class where old soul Lion could be seen taking a light nap in his own territory, and Chicken’s eyes followed. At the time, sheer curiosity had gotten the better of me…

“So how are things between Rae and Lion?”

Chicken barely shook his head in slow motion before fiddling with a key chain around my pencil case.

“I guess that Rae realized,”

“Huh?”

It was then and there; when I had too begun to realize how so much and so little can change within such a short span of time.

This particular scene took place in the library where I normally hung out with Potato during our shared empty class slots. I still remembered flipping through the pages of a green covered booklet which consisted of brain diagrams and names of meanings of structures albeit I also remembered very clearly and am therefore very sure, that nothing had sieved through the depths of my long term memory. What cerebellum? Hypothalamus? Some hormone producing prefecture perhaps, only God knows.

Anyway, Potato had already known beforehand to not even try and beat the very much dreaded afternoon slump. Doing her signature move, she managed to plug in her headset by using her hair as a camouflaging curtain and simply pretended to sleep. Within her ear shot, it was music flowing into one ear and coming out from the other. And that also meant that I had to raise my voice to talk to her, bearing in mind that we were in the library.

That day, however, I was in the mood to talk about things; things concerning our circle of Turban friends. She then grabbed a pencil and began doodling at my past year papers stash. It was a habit of hers as she was never comfortable with looking at people in the eye while talking.

“Do you find that the people in Turban are somewhat similar to one another?”

Potato continued to doodle without giving a response. It took me a while to realize that she was doodling her responses onto the fore-edge of the past year paper stash.

“I don’t know,”

I continued on.

“I find that our kind of people really don’t express our concerns over something until if it’s requested for,” More doodling sounds persisted. “Especially people like Kiwi and Tomato,”

Potato remained silent, but her gaze never shift from the fore-edge, for which she would have dedicated so much of her time to by now. I can’t remember the exact details of exactly how the conversation took on from there; but I felt like I was having an open soliloquy as I continued to shift from one member to another of the Turban clan only to be synchronized with the continuous rattling of Potato’s pencil to the fore-edge.

By the time I finished, Potato had also stopped her doodling. My eyes slowly lingered across the body of the past year question booklet’s very thick fore-edge which read countless short responses, out of which the most memorable was:

“._.”

I looked up to a starry night sky, one of those you wouldn’t believe to be real even if you had seen them with your very own eyes. With everyone having to camp out on sheets of pure blue and orange canvas, I’ve never felt so connected to the surrounding nature; given the unusual nature of my surroundings during the time. Nevertheless it was a breezy, starry night; and I had never felt so consumed by wanderlust as opposed to the very day when I have set out for an outdoor camp with a troop full of people outside family relations, for the first time.  

Four-eyes was gazing out in the same direction, but with a look suggesting a different nature of wonder. He seemed isolated from everyone else. I approached him with the intention of getting him to guard my jacket to bring him back to earth. He shoved the yellow hoodie over his shoulder and continued to stone.

“Do you miss home?”

“My mum. She would be home alone until I’m back,”

“Hmm…” I tried to follow his gaze but eventually started to seek out something which caught more of my attention. All was still.

“I’ve never seen so many stars. Never knew what the city had hidden from us all this while, I guess we do share the same piece of sky, huh?”

Four-eyes smiled.