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- Story Listed as: Fiction For Teens
- Theme: Family & Friends
- Subject: Revenge / Poetic Justice / Karma
- Published: 06/05/2012
I woke up to the sound of running water. Sitting up in bed, I realised that my mattress was soaking wet. Still, in a daze, I flinched as a large, cold drop of water splashed on my head. I stood up irritably and glanced heavenward, contemplating a crack that had always been on the ceiling. I took stock of my surroundings, and looked dumbfounded at the sight of a prone figure on my armchair. Kenneth Chow, my twin brother, stared fixating yet unblinkingly out of the window from the chair. Those familiar features of his face didn’t ease the troubles of differentiating us, except a brown scar-like birthmark on his neck, which was the only major difference between us. Yet it was that pair of empty eyes and that unfathomable expression between a smile and a frown that somewhat revived the scene at Gleneagles Intan a mere fortnight ago. The doctor emerged from the neurology ward, and everybody I knew surrounded him, longing for an answer. “I’m sorry, but we tried our best,” she said nonchalantly. I stood against a wall, nonplussed and uncertain of what was to come.
Water wasn’t dripping from the ceiling anymore. So the rain had halted. It was the dead of night and 17th Street was as eerie as ever. So what if the rain stopped? It wasn’t as if the endless downpour within my guts was ever going to cease.
The coffee table next to Kenneth’s armchair was left uncluttered but for a plate of rice. I tried to feed him, but he wasn’t even bothered about me. “Please, Kenneth. Please just take one bite,” I pleaded desperately. An ugly flush suffused my cheeks when he only spun his head round to look at me with that usual empty gaze of his. I bellowed and held the plate aloft. I wanted so eagerly to smash it right at Kenneth’s face. I was wild and ferocious, no longer able to control my temper and terribly shaken by the recent but sudden happenings. I halted the plate just inches before his face and hurled it at the ground. The plate shattered, sending shards of glass flying. A fragment scraped my foot. I grimaced as I caressed the scar from which fresh red blood was oozing.
“Peter! What’s going on up there?” Mother yelled from her bedroom.
I seated myself on my bed and sank my face into my hands. Why was everything opposing me? Fate despised me; the rain despised me; even plates despised me!
Everything began on a breezy morning at the Bandar Baru Sungai Long Secondary School assembly hall. “And the recipient of the annual Best Athlete’s Award is, once again, the fabulous Kenneth Chow!” The applause rang in Kenneth’s eardrum as he triumphantly stepped up on stage to receive his trophy. As the assembly ended, the applause and cheers resounded around him en route to his classroom. But only if he were able to foresee what laid waiting for him.
What Kenneth hadn’t known was that I was glowering at him in the midst of the crowd, the animosity deep in my pupils. Then, an old woman, apparently a janitor, approached me and snapped me out of my musings. “Young one, I see you’re confused. Don’t let envy overwhelm your senses, or permit the veil of anger to blind your sights and sounds. The green-eyed mist clouds, a thousand tulips die,” she whispered into my ear. She kept on repeating the lines as she sauntered away. “The green-eyed mist clouds, a thousand tulips die …”
It was nine o’clock at night the same day. I was lurking behind a bookshelf and eavesdropping at Kenneth, who was brushing his teeth for bed in the washroom. He frantically stole a gaze around rapidly. He was afraid of something. I grinned wickedly. It seems his inevitable phobia returned, just as it had for the past ten days, since he had that nightmare. I remembered him confiding his terrifying dream, which started with him walking home along an alley at 19th Street. A tiny kitten emerged. It looked adorable, fragile and feeble, so much to an extent that Kenneth neared it to stroke it. Abruptly, it shape-shifted into a ten-foot-tall animal with starving eyes and an enormous jaw, before pouncing on him. Since then, he feared nightmares, death and the supernatural.
Afterwards, my mother, who was speed-reading my school report, was flabbergasted. “What? Three D’s?” she asked.
“I just can’t do it, mom. I try and fail, and try and fail, and try again and fail again. I don’t know what’s wrong with me either. But you ought to know, I did try,” I said.
“Then you’re not trying hard enough. Can’t you be a little like your brother?”
“Quit comparing me to Kenneth, mom!” I exclaimed. “I’ve had it! It’s always ‘Kenneth, Kenneth, Kenneth’, can’t I live a day without hearing that hideous name?” I stomped into my room and remembered to deliberately slam the door hard, so that its echo sounded loud and clear throughout the house. Later at night, I stormed into Kenneth’s room just as Kenneth lain himself in bed. “Congrats, Ken! I’m your biggest fan!” I mimed the voice of a girl as I encircled Kenneth’s bed. “You’re doing great, Ken, unlike your brainless brother!” I continued, this time obviously imitating our mother’s croaky voice.
“Will you –”
“No, I will not!” I interrupted. “I’ve had enough with you getting all the attention. You’ve no idea how long I’ve waited for this moment. I will not stop, I will not give in until you get a taste of your own medicine. Mark my words, Ken, your nightmares will kill you!” I said, and ran off to my room.
As soon as I got myself into bed, not at all harassed by the quarrel with Kenneth, a headache struck me. I could hear someone whispering in my mind, only it wasn’t my voice. “Does Peter really detest me that much? I know that extreme endeavours require sacrifices and that with fame comes jealousy, but does it always have to end this way?”
It didn’t end there. Some force was forcing me into sleep, although I hadn’t felt the need to. I found my head plunging gradually into a void, a black hole of swirling darkness. I was falling into the very mouth of a pit so deep the bottom was indistinguishable. The odd fact was, I felt as though someone invisible was with me, accompanying me during the fall.
As faint as all dreams were, a gloomy mauve sky came into view. I saw someone who looked like me on a hill, standing before a brick wall. I could sense the utter sadness of the atmosphere, and the colour draining out of everything. Then I realised I was looking from fifteen feet up, and felt as though I was watching from a third-person perspective. I raked my eyes across a distinctive scar-like mark on my doppelganger’s neck. It wasn’t me, or my double, it was Kenneth!
A hooded figure advanced on Kenneth from behind. “Are you ready, Master?” she asked in a cold voice – at least a woman was what it sounded like. Though I still had the feeling that somebody was by my side, I thought I was relieved when nobody noticed I was here. Perhaps my guess before was true. Perhaps I was only watching. Perhaps.
“But why can’t somebody else replace me?” Kenneth asked in a Scottish accent I’d never heard him speak in before in his life.
“This is tradition and the procedure clearly states that two of the eldest children in a family are to be blinded once in a century so that the rest of the family stays safe. Such a pity both you and your cousin are the chosen ones.”
“Has he fulfilled it yet?”
“I’m afraid so. This morning, in fact.”
“Then yes. I’m ready,” Kenneth said. What? What was he thinking?
They stepped onto a platform that held the wall. Kenneth stood with his back against the wall as a few other hooded men secured his wrists and ankles to it. Then the woman held a pair of knives above her head, their tips pointing directly at his eyes. She droned on some gobbledegook, seemingly prayers for the ritual. The moment she was done she followed through and lunged the knives at him.
The other odd fact was, I could feel what Kenneth felt, and I could think what he thought. Those couple of seconds felt like forever to Kenneth. His heart pounded vigorously against his chest. Being a blind man was the last thing he’d ever wanted. But what was he to do, even if he hadn’t seen enough of this world? He shut his eyelids as the knives struck him. He’d expected his eyes to be incinerating, but peculiarly he didn’t feel the pain. Instead, he felt totally at peace, his thoughts lingering ever deeper into the abysmal abyss of his consciousness.
I awoke with a start, breathing heavily and perspiring.
Kenneth ended up at the Gleneagles Intan Hospital in Kuala Lumpur later that night. After a number of checks conducted on him, Dr. Brenda Lin – a specialist in neurology – confirmed that stress, supposedly due to shock that the dreams had inflicted upon him, had caused him to sever his long-term memory and permanently lose most of his vital information, including his identity and virtually everything he’d ever learned in his life. And they couldn’t do anything to cure him.
I found myself back at my bedroom and the janitor’s airy voice filled my mind: The green-eyed mist clouds, a thousand tulips die. I knew ‘green-eyed’ meant jealousy. As for the tulip… my gaze lingered upon Kenneth’s deadened demeanour. Of course, the ‘thousand tulips’ implied a gifted being, and it must’ve been Kenneth. So the janitor predicted what was about to happen and I didn’t even bother to comprehend it. Now, my brother had gone, just because of my five hurting words: your nightmares will kill you. I hadn’t expected such catastrophic repercussions. A pang of remorse and guilt weighed down on me. The memory of that faithful night flooded me with utter regret, as it always would. The tears that accumulated in my eyelids set themselves free, flowing freely down my cheeks, stinging my eyes. I should’ve known. I should have known. But deep down inside, I knew nothing I could do would ever atone for what I did to my sole brother.
Then something I least expected happened. A surge of unbearable pain thundered through my head, forcing me down on all fours, hammering the ground. As the pain subsided I felt something strangely different. I glanced at Kenneth and we locked eyes. I could hear soft yet tumultuous conversations in my head, thoughts perhaps. Could it be? I’d read and heard unbelievable stories of telepathy links between twins, but was this what I assumed it was? The sickening memories of the nightmare returned briefly. Could telepathy explain all that too? That time when I felt someone with me throughout the dream, when I felt Kenneth’s feelings, when I thought his thoughts…
Thousands of words flitted past my mind at a time, but only few came close to clear.
Envy… clouds… tulip…
A tear left Kenneth’s eye and went all the way down to his chin. “Kenneth, is that you?” I asked, starting to dart towards him gingerly. But before I attempted anything foolhardy, the same intense pain returned again. Once the pain had gradually receded, I found Kenneth staring out the window as always. Kenneth, gone forever. Gone forever. Forever.
I hadn’t even realized it was drizzling until I turned to gaze out of the window. Raindrops were falling down lightly. The clock struck eleven. A new day was dawning, but for my twin brother, an entirely different beginning.
A beginning, stripped entirely of its future.
A beginning, with its end, far from sight.
Mare of the Night(Sherman Lam)
I woke up to the sound of running water. Sitting up in bed, I realised that my mattress was soaking wet. Still, in a daze, I flinched as a large, cold drop of water splashed on my head. I stood up irritably and glanced heavenward, contemplating a crack that had always been on the ceiling. I took stock of my surroundings, and looked dumbfounded at the sight of a prone figure on my armchair. Kenneth Chow, my twin brother, stared fixating yet unblinkingly out of the window from the chair. Those familiar features of his face didn’t ease the troubles of differentiating us, except a brown scar-like birthmark on his neck, which was the only major difference between us. Yet it was that pair of empty eyes and that unfathomable expression between a smile and a frown that somewhat revived the scene at Gleneagles Intan a mere fortnight ago. The doctor emerged from the neurology ward, and everybody I knew surrounded him, longing for an answer. “I’m sorry, but we tried our best,” she said nonchalantly. I stood against a wall, nonplussed and uncertain of what was to come.
Water wasn’t dripping from the ceiling anymore. So the rain had halted. It was the dead of night and 17th Street was as eerie as ever. So what if the rain stopped? It wasn’t as if the endless downpour within my guts was ever going to cease.
The coffee table next to Kenneth’s armchair was left uncluttered but for a plate of rice. I tried to feed him, but he wasn’t even bothered about me. “Please, Kenneth. Please just take one bite,” I pleaded desperately. An ugly flush suffused my cheeks when he only spun his head round to look at me with that usual empty gaze of his. I bellowed and held the plate aloft. I wanted so eagerly to smash it right at Kenneth’s face. I was wild and ferocious, no longer able to control my temper and terribly shaken by the recent but sudden happenings. I halted the plate just inches before his face and hurled it at the ground. The plate shattered, sending shards of glass flying. A fragment scraped my foot. I grimaced as I caressed the scar from which fresh red blood was oozing.
“Peter! What’s going on up there?” Mother yelled from her bedroom.
I seated myself on my bed and sank my face into my hands. Why was everything opposing me? Fate despised me; the rain despised me; even plates despised me!
Everything began on a breezy morning at the Bandar Baru Sungai Long Secondary School assembly hall. “And the recipient of the annual Best Athlete’s Award is, once again, the fabulous Kenneth Chow!” The applause rang in Kenneth’s eardrum as he triumphantly stepped up on stage to receive his trophy. As the assembly ended, the applause and cheers resounded around him en route to his classroom. But only if he were able to foresee what laid waiting for him.
What Kenneth hadn’t known was that I was glowering at him in the midst of the crowd, the animosity deep in my pupils. Then, an old woman, apparently a janitor, approached me and snapped me out of my musings. “Young one, I see you’re confused. Don’t let envy overwhelm your senses, or permit the veil of anger to blind your sights and sounds. The green-eyed mist clouds, a thousand tulips die,” she whispered into my ear. She kept on repeating the lines as she sauntered away. “The green-eyed mist clouds, a thousand tulips die …”
It was nine o’clock at night the same day. I was lurking behind a bookshelf and eavesdropping at Kenneth, who was brushing his teeth for bed in the washroom. He frantically stole a gaze around rapidly. He was afraid of something. I grinned wickedly. It seems his inevitable phobia returned, just as it had for the past ten days, since he had that nightmare. I remembered him confiding his terrifying dream, which started with him walking home along an alley at 19th Street. A tiny kitten emerged. It looked adorable, fragile and feeble, so much to an extent that Kenneth neared it to stroke it. Abruptly, it shape-shifted into a ten-foot-tall animal with starving eyes and an enormous jaw, before pouncing on him. Since then, he feared nightmares, death and the supernatural.
Afterwards, my mother, who was speed-reading my school report, was flabbergasted. “What? Three D’s?” she asked.
“I just can’t do it, mom. I try and fail, and try and fail, and try again and fail again. I don’t know what’s wrong with me either. But you ought to know, I did try,” I said.
“Then you’re not trying hard enough. Can’t you be a little like your brother?”
“Quit comparing me to Kenneth, mom!” I exclaimed. “I’ve had it! It’s always ‘Kenneth, Kenneth, Kenneth’, can’t I live a day without hearing that hideous name?” I stomped into my room and remembered to deliberately slam the door hard, so that its echo sounded loud and clear throughout the house. Later at night, I stormed into Kenneth’s room just as Kenneth lain himself in bed. “Congrats, Ken! I’m your biggest fan!” I mimed the voice of a girl as I encircled Kenneth’s bed. “You’re doing great, Ken, unlike your brainless brother!” I continued, this time obviously imitating our mother’s croaky voice.
“Will you –”
“No, I will not!” I interrupted. “I’ve had enough with you getting all the attention. You’ve no idea how long I’ve waited for this moment. I will not stop, I will not give in until you get a taste of your own medicine. Mark my words, Ken, your nightmares will kill you!” I said, and ran off to my room.
As soon as I got myself into bed, not at all harassed by the quarrel with Kenneth, a headache struck me. I could hear someone whispering in my mind, only it wasn’t my voice. “Does Peter really detest me that much? I know that extreme endeavours require sacrifices and that with fame comes jealousy, but does it always have to end this way?”
It didn’t end there. Some force was forcing me into sleep, although I hadn’t felt the need to. I found my head plunging gradually into a void, a black hole of swirling darkness. I was falling into the very mouth of a pit so deep the bottom was indistinguishable. The odd fact was, I felt as though someone invisible was with me, accompanying me during the fall.
As faint as all dreams were, a gloomy mauve sky came into view. I saw someone who looked like me on a hill, standing before a brick wall. I could sense the utter sadness of the atmosphere, and the colour draining out of everything. Then I realised I was looking from fifteen feet up, and felt as though I was watching from a third-person perspective. I raked my eyes across a distinctive scar-like mark on my doppelganger’s neck. It wasn’t me, or my double, it was Kenneth!
A hooded figure advanced on Kenneth from behind. “Are you ready, Master?” she asked in a cold voice – at least a woman was what it sounded like. Though I still had the feeling that somebody was by my side, I thought I was relieved when nobody noticed I was here. Perhaps my guess before was true. Perhaps I was only watching. Perhaps.
“But why can’t somebody else replace me?” Kenneth asked in a Scottish accent I’d never heard him speak in before in his life.
“This is tradition and the procedure clearly states that two of the eldest children in a family are to be blinded once in a century so that the rest of the family stays safe. Such a pity both you and your cousin are the chosen ones.”
“Has he fulfilled it yet?”
“I’m afraid so. This morning, in fact.”
“Then yes. I’m ready,” Kenneth said. What? What was he thinking?
They stepped onto a platform that held the wall. Kenneth stood with his back against the wall as a few other hooded men secured his wrists and ankles to it. Then the woman held a pair of knives above her head, their tips pointing directly at his eyes. She droned on some gobbledegook, seemingly prayers for the ritual. The moment she was done she followed through and lunged the knives at him.
The other odd fact was, I could feel what Kenneth felt, and I could think what he thought. Those couple of seconds felt like forever to Kenneth. His heart pounded vigorously against his chest. Being a blind man was the last thing he’d ever wanted. But what was he to do, even if he hadn’t seen enough of this world? He shut his eyelids as the knives struck him. He’d expected his eyes to be incinerating, but peculiarly he didn’t feel the pain. Instead, he felt totally at peace, his thoughts lingering ever deeper into the abysmal abyss of his consciousness.
I awoke with a start, breathing heavily and perspiring.
Kenneth ended up at the Gleneagles Intan Hospital in Kuala Lumpur later that night. After a number of checks conducted on him, Dr. Brenda Lin – a specialist in neurology – confirmed that stress, supposedly due to shock that the dreams had inflicted upon him, had caused him to sever his long-term memory and permanently lose most of his vital information, including his identity and virtually everything he’d ever learned in his life. And they couldn’t do anything to cure him.
I found myself back at my bedroom and the janitor’s airy voice filled my mind: The green-eyed mist clouds, a thousand tulips die. I knew ‘green-eyed’ meant jealousy. As for the tulip… my gaze lingered upon Kenneth’s deadened demeanour. Of course, the ‘thousand tulips’ implied a gifted being, and it must’ve been Kenneth. So the janitor predicted what was about to happen and I didn’t even bother to comprehend it. Now, my brother had gone, just because of my five hurting words: your nightmares will kill you. I hadn’t expected such catastrophic repercussions. A pang of remorse and guilt weighed down on me. The memory of that faithful night flooded me with utter regret, as it always would. The tears that accumulated in my eyelids set themselves free, flowing freely down my cheeks, stinging my eyes. I should’ve known. I should have known. But deep down inside, I knew nothing I could do would ever atone for what I did to my sole brother.
Then something I least expected happened. A surge of unbearable pain thundered through my head, forcing me down on all fours, hammering the ground. As the pain subsided I felt something strangely different. I glanced at Kenneth and we locked eyes. I could hear soft yet tumultuous conversations in my head, thoughts perhaps. Could it be? I’d read and heard unbelievable stories of telepathy links between twins, but was this what I assumed it was? The sickening memories of the nightmare returned briefly. Could telepathy explain all that too? That time when I felt someone with me throughout the dream, when I felt Kenneth’s feelings, when I thought his thoughts…
Thousands of words flitted past my mind at a time, but only few came close to clear.
Envy… clouds… tulip…
A tear left Kenneth’s eye and went all the way down to his chin. “Kenneth, is that you?” I asked, starting to dart towards him gingerly. But before I attempted anything foolhardy, the same intense pain returned again. Once the pain had gradually receded, I found Kenneth staring out the window as always. Kenneth, gone forever. Gone forever. Forever.
I hadn’t even realized it was drizzling until I turned to gaze out of the window. Raindrops were falling down lightly. The clock struck eleven. A new day was dawning, but for my twin brother, an entirely different beginning.
A beginning, stripped entirely of its future.
A beginning, with its end, far from sight.
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