You are leaning on the balcony, holding a bag of chips in one hand and using the other to toss a couple into your mouth.

Crunch! Crunch! Crunch!

Suddenly, you knot your eyebrows together when you notice several words on an exceptionally big piece of chip you just grabbed out of the bag. It says: Follow your red and pumping heart.

What does it mean follow my heart? Who wrote it on there? You raise your head and examine yourself. I’m wearing red jacket and red tights, oh, and pink socks too! Maybe it means to follow the red!

You look around you and poke your head out of the bar to look down. People are streaming left and right on the walk down there, and vehicles are filing themselves left and right as well, leaving their booming behind them. It is that in that instant you see a bright red race car flash past in such a speed you suspect your eyes made a mistake. But you know full well your eyes haven’t. It must be a clue.

You sprint out of your apartment, run through the corridor, and into the elevator. It confirms your assumption as you see the advertisement on the wall of the elevator is painted red. It must be true. It’s my mission, my destiny, and I’m here to find out the secret that God is leading me to.

You rush out onto the street as the elevator door opened with a ‘ding!’. You remember that red racing car went right, so you turn right too.

You could feel yourself heating up in your jacket, but the jacket is red, so you dare not take it off, since you don’t want to affect your mission. You run, run, run, with an ominous feeling settling in your chest, somehow getting heavier and heavier. You can feel yourself tense up without an obvious reason, yourself being hypersensitive to your surroundings. The buzz of people’s conversation, children playing and laughing, cars booming past and leaving their foul smell behind them.

You see a post office with a mailbox gleaming its bloody red under the sunlight, and you are more and more determined.

‘Bang!’ The sound is rumbling in your ears, deafening you. You frantically look sideways and see a piece of concrete explode, its pieces flying and soaring all around you. Adrenaline surge in you as you speed up your pace running. You glance back during a turn and see a man in black hiding behind the mailbox holding a gun pointing straight at your face.

You grit your teeth and keep running, darting left and right in a ‘S’ shape. Passer-by are eyeing you with contempt and distain, and you disregard them in return. They don’t understand you. You are there to find out the biggest secret the world has ever produced and are even going to save the world with it. They will beg for your saviour then.

‘Bang!’ And a bullet shoot past your ponytail that is swinging behind you, inches from it. The heat scorched the tip of it, making it turn black and dissolve into dust.

Despite your huffing and puffing, you have to speed up again. You have past three traffic lights and all of them were red, meaning that you are on your right path. You turn right, you turn left, right, right, and left. The man in black trailing behind you wherever you are going, shooting at you once in a while.

Seconds later, you raise your head and see your old high school. Wow, amazing, the God led me here! The secret must be in here!

You enter it as you see the gate has been painted red at the bottom. This can’t be wrong! It’s my destiny! I’m born for this mission! You see a huge, well-decorated room with a red bell hanging in front of it and barge in, smirking as you go to the black man behind you. Ha, no one can stop me! Not even you, mysterious man with a gun! Suck it!

***

“Hey, honey, wake up.” You hear a rough voice whispering beside your ears.

“Huh?” Your fingertips twitch and your eyelids are fluttering open, “Where am I?”

“You are in your old high school, in the headmaster’s office.” A man’s concerned face appear in front of your eyes, “You are diagnosed with episodic schizophrenia, honey.”

#schizophrenia #crazy #hullucination #mad #strange

Wind rushed past me, cutting at my cheeks like a thousand daggers as the sky distanced itself from me. I didn’t flail about in the air, instead, I hugged myself tightly around my chest and curled myself into a ball, my heart hammering against my ribcage.

Then, I landed.

A pang of pain shot through me. A blast of chill crawled up my spine.

I could feel the agony and warmth leaving my shattered body, fading and fading away. Nice.

“Issy! No, no, Issy!” A distant figure sprinted toward me, stumbling and tripping along the way, “Why are you so stupid?”

My dad.

I could see his bloodshot eyes, chapped and quivering lips, matted hair, and sweat along his hairline.

I’ve never seen him lose his cool like this before.

He fumbled around his body, hands shaking when he finally took hold of his phone. He called the emergency line, explaining things incoherently with eyes still fixated on my face. After he hang up, he threw his phone onto the ground and extended his arms to hug me. His face contorted in distress when he finally realized that there is not a place of my broken body he could touch without further hurting me.

I parted my lips say something, but as soon as I did that, a surge of warmth rushed out of my mouth, filling my nose with the stink of rust.

“No, stay put, Issy, don’t try to talk!” My dad bent down and whispered in my ears, his voice hoarse with desperation, “Don’t sleep, please, I need you!”

I knew I would leave very soon, for I already could not feel the presence of my body. It was like my crushed body was merely a temporary container for my lingering thoughts.

Tears filled dad’s eyes as he yelled for me to stay awake.

I’ve never seen him cry.

I wanted to hug him, to comfort him, but I could no longer move a single finger. I couldn’t even talk. The only thing I could do was to stare at him with my empty eyes, trying to apologize without words.

“Issy, I don’t care why you did it, I just want you to live now, you get it?” My dad banged his fist at the ground frantically, shouting for me to hear, “Just hang on for a minute!”

It’s so cold, so very cold.

My vision became blurrier and blurrier and my ears buzzed, making me giddy.

It’s time now, time to leave. I smiled to myself internally. Finally.

My eyes were dilating as my dad pulled fistfuls of his hair out.

I’m very sorry, dad, but I had no choice. Thanks for everything though.

I could no longer see. My vision a haze of grey.

I heard the man’s croak floating to me as if from afar, “Stay awake, honey! Just a minute!”

I was hanging by the brink of consciousness like a person hanging on the edge of a cliff by one finger. One slip meant falling into the darkness.

Fatigue loomed over me, my eyelids drooping.

I was tired of hanging on, tired of lingering in pain, tired of suffering in misery in this filthy world.

Goodbye, dad.

And I let go.

“Please!” The word echoed in my ears, though I could no longer hear it.

I slept to be never wakened.

When I was five, I made my very first friend.

She was called Lily, a girl about my age with golden curls flying as she skipped. Lily was very kind to me, and always enthusiastic when we ventured out into the yard. She has always ignored everyone else, making me her only friend, just as she mine.

The only thing which I was frustrated with was that whenever we cuddled, I felt like as if I was dunk into a pond of icy cold water. Yet, I was totally dry.

My parents insisted I had no friends though and brought me to a shrink. The beardy guy said that it’s completely normal, and that I was having an imaginary friend.

“Why couldn’t anyone see you? You are just here, beside me.” I whispered to Lily in the yard, biting my nail.

“I don’t know.” She shrugged, and stared at the sky, “People can be weird.”

Years later, when my peers were all forming into friendship groups, I did not. Not because I couldn’t, but because Lily forbad me to, saying that she’ll leave me forever If I made another friend. So, I obeyed.

When I was twelve, my parents got worried again, dragging me to yet another shrink. I was then passed between doctors and nurses, doing all sorts of tests. It turned out I’m both physically and mentally healthy.

My mom gave me a long talk about Lily, inquiring everything about her, basically stalking her, really.

“I can get her here to meet you, if you wish.” I sighed, “Mom, you are being annoying.”

She nodded, “Do please invite her here.”

For some reason unknown to me, when I brought Lily home, my parents were horror-stricken.

#Horror #Ghost #Spirit #Friend #Lily

#Short Short Story #Operation #Child

I could hear the humming of people’s voice outside the room, buzzing in my head.

The doctor behind the desk in front of me, bold and bony, scrutinized me with his deep-set eyes, “Huh, well, we have bad news.”

Me, only eleven, wriggled slightly on the stool, hands folded in on my lap, an ominous feeling rising from my stomach. I peeked sideways and found my dad clutching his hat in his hands, rubbing it, and my mom shifting her weight.

The doctor looked down at me, blinking rapidly to signal my parents.

“It’s fine, she can hear.” Dad patted my shoulder, “She’s old enough.”

“Okay, then. I’m afraid she needs to go through an operation. She has a crack on her spine, and we’d need to take that piece of bone out. She had it since birth naturally, so we can’t fix it any other way.”

“How long?” Dad’s voice sounded a bit hoarse.

“If you mean the operation, 3 hours. If hospitalization? Well, we have to see, but at least two months.”

I clenched at the stool, nails scratching at the edge, though gladly it was too noisy for them to hear it. I heard a sudden inhale of air and saw a drop of tear sliding across my mum’s cheek. I blinked, dazed.

It was later that my parents explained what an operation exactly meant, but I was still too young to be afraid of it, or you could say I was just too trusting.

A week later, I was stripped naked, given a thin layer of blue cloth and was told to wear it. I did as bid, and then laid face down on a bed with wheels and wheeled me into a huge room.

I strained my neck up and saw the heavy two-layer door closing behind me with my parents tipping their toes to wave goodbye. I gave them a reassuring smile and I think my mom cried again.

I was calm though, as a young nurse murmured to me, “Don’t be afraid, we’ll be fast. Here’s a needle to put you to sleep, and after you wake up, your parents will be with you again.”

“Okay,” I mumbled with my dry throat, seeing the tip of the needle penetrating my skin and the nurse’s hand slowing pushing its end. The gooey liquid emptied.

After that, the nurse left me in the centre of the room and sat beside me, “Do you need to talk?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“You are so brave. If you don’t want to talk, then let’s be silent if you want.”

“Sure,” I turned my head sideways to observe medical staff striding and marching themselves here and there, speaking terminologies so fast and complicate that it was as if I’m listening to a foreign language.

I knew whatever liquid injected into me, it was supposed to make me all dizzy and sleepy. I relaxed my body as much as possible, striving to search out a hint of sleepiness in me.

When finally, I found it, I told the nurse, “I’m going to sleep.” And closed my eyes.

‘Relax, relax, relax, I have to sleep’ I repeated to myself again and again. My breathing slowed, but for some reason, my mind was still clear.

As I started to worry if the effect of the liquid will ever kick in, I head the nurse saying, “Did I inject too much? It’s still early.”

I grinned internally.

I kept becoming closer to sleep when I felt a thin, icy cold line was drawn on my back. Is it really pen drawing or is it actually a blade cutting me open? I was in a state where I could allow myself to sink into unconsciousness or choose to come back to my senses. Should I try? It might be fun! They’ll surely panic. But what if I’m already bloodily open? Nah, don’t wanna risk it.

So, I sank, sank, and sank into the darkness.