Dread (almost lost my life) … encounter with a gang
Dread.
Dread
because I almost lost my life that day.
It
all started long after a friendly basketball match at the Marine Parade
Community Club. Our team had won the match. While the rest of the team members
had been celebrating our victory at a nearby fast food restaurant, I was not so
lucky. Beads of perspiration rolled down my cheeks like faulty faucet as I
waited patiently for Mother to pick me up for tuition. Coincidentally, a group
of teenagers stormed towards me like Stormtroopers.
Or
may be it was not a coincidence at all …
Out
of the blue, their eyes flickered in recognition as they settled in on me. How
did they know me? I barely even knew them at all. Scrutinizing them carefully, it
dawned on me those teenagers were our opponents during the basketball match.
Their looks of recognition soon changed to a degree of awful hatred in their
eyes. For a moment, pin-drop silence settled in. Then, a teenager, probably the
leader of the teenaged group of rowdy gangsters who sported a bull-dog like
countenance let out a hideous chuckle. A murderous look lingered in his eyes.
His
eyes.
They
expressed no mercy, only emptiness and venomous vengeance. Forcefully cornering
my head against a whitewashed wall, the teenager asked in an aloof manner,
“Where are your friends?” I turned tongue-tied and could only stare stupidly at
him. Without any warning, he brandished a penknife which gleamed under the
bright sunlight. Slowly and deliberately sweeping the penknife within inches
from my face, the teenager said, “May be this will help,” a mocking smile of
steely eyes starting at me. The dreaded penknife was placed strategically on my
left cheek and began slowly sinking into my flesh. Cold purple blood thundered
in my ears. My heart was plunging into an abyss of consternation. No escape. It
had to be my last thought as I closed my terror-stricken eyelids in hapless
resignation.
“Let
go of him!” My saviour had arrived. Mother.
Seeing
Mother arriving, the teenagers scuttled away like frightened rats. Once again I
was safe and sound. I let out a sigh of relief. All the tension in my muscles
eased. I did not need to fret anymore. My ordeal was finally over. However, the
feeling of dread during that incident would forever remain a chip in my back.
Dread that there was no hope.
Dread
that I was not going to make it to safety.
Dread.
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