Captured Before His Eyes

Warning: the following content contains mention of drinking.

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By: Lik Hang Lam

To: Charmaine, Phoebe and Valdemar

Everybody in my neighborhood is outside enjoying the warm weather and all that baloney, technically everybody except for myself. Maybe it’s just me but, I dunno, it’s kinda hard to enjoy a heatwave in December. To make things worse, I’m stuck in a hospital bed with half of my respiratory organs destroyed. It’s a long story.

A little backstory here, I’m Chinese and my family recently moved to Australia because of a weird law that China has set, it’s called “the hush law”. An average person speaks 123,205,750 words in their lifetime ( seriously who counts this stuff ) and the government is trying to minimize that amount. Personally, I don’t object to having a quitter society but could you seriously not think of any other solutions?

Anyway, schooling has not been fun in old oz, it’s not like my English is crap or anything cos I did go to an international school in China, but in Mosman, the students were absolute jerks. And to make things worse, the teachers are clueless. When the teachers were looking, people would put on this fake ass act so they’d score some “teacher points”, if only they were always like that.

Thanks to our “disciplined behavior”, the teachers aren’t even bothered to mark our tests so they just randomly pass the tests around for the students to mark them themselves. Last week I was assigned to mark Joey Mccoy’s test and once I saw his name on that goddam paper my face dropped. Although he sat behind me, I tried to hide it before he could take a glimpse but that didn’t work out. You see, the reason I was hesitant to let Joey know I had his paper was that he’s the school’s biggest Jerk. I even heard that he’s set a goddam record of the number of people he’s pantsed and the school hasn’t caught him yet.

Anyway, once he saw that I had his paper, he leaned towards me with a devilish grin on his face and said

“Hey buddy! Would you mind being a cobber by erasing the answers I got wrong?” He always said it in this loathsome tone which made you think that he was issuing a bloody order without directly saying it. But here’s the catch, if you don’t comply you’re basically asking for a beating. I’ve seen it happen to other kids before and let's just say, I don’t want to be part of it. Look, I don’t condemn cheating ok? If the teachers were carefree enough to let us do this in China and somebody was caught boosting someone else's grades. They’d probably make you clean their toenails for a week.

After school was finally over, I went over to my locker to put back the notebooks I didn’t need and a few moments later, I heard somebody coming towards me. Even without looking I knew it was Joey, it was pretty obvious because his bright red face would stick out like a sore thumb, to make things worse it wasn't just one or two on his forehead or his chin like most guys, but all over his whole face. He walked up to me with his usual gang, kicked the lockers, and said “Gee thanks for helping me out with today’s test, wanna grab some cold ones in the pub?” I’ll be real with you, it was a miracle I didn’t wet myself there, I’d honestly rather go home and play Minecraft or something but refusing to go to the pub with Mosman’s biggest bully was like asking for a death penalty. So I half-heartedly said

“Oh um, I’d love to hit the pub with you guys but er, maybe we could go somewhere else instead? We’re underage and…”

“Underage? Cmon don’t be a dag, it’ll be a blast.”

Needn’t any more explanation, I already knew I was a goner. Joey was never this nice to anyone, not even to his group of friends. Hell with it, if he’s talking to you, you’re a goner. I knew I had no choice but to comply so I reluctantly followed them to the bar.

Next thing I knew I found myself in Lala land having the time of my life… Yeah like that’s ever going to happen. I’ve been following Joey for way too long now and I can feel my trousers drastically vibrating. It’s probably from my mom, she was always the overprotective type. Whenever I went out myself, whether it be going out to buy lunch or whatnot I had to call her and tell her exactly where I was, then call her again once I arrived home. I don’t blame her, I really don’t. Thanks to the migration we’re kind of broke right now so my mother is doing everything she can to help support me financially whilst she’s away for work so it pains me to see her worry about me like that. Suddenly, Joey abruptly stopped in his tracks and looked back at me with the most hideous smile I’ve ever seen in a good while, and the next thing I knew, I was lying down on the grass panting like some lunatic.

My whole goddam body was aching, I couldn’t think straight, my mom was probably worried sick of me and I had absolutely no idea how to get home… But strangely enough, I enjoyed that moment, I really did. It’s like one of those scenes in anime where the main characters find themselves lying on the grass for some random reason in the middle of one of those fight scenes and proceed to magically gain some superpower or word of advice which helps them win the fight. Well unfortunately for me, I had to face reality. I fell unconscious and was told that a garbage truck found me and sent me home, what a climactic ending!

Author's Note: For my last piece of work, please don’t take it seriously lol, I’m only 15 and I really shouldn’t be teaching you about anything. Just follow what you think is right, the essay is only there for my take on things after what my dad used to teach me a few years ago. ( he used to study psychology so just trust me I know what I’m doing lol )

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