Boys of class O-II are busy practising Descriptive Narrative here. Description of situations and feelings is deemed as one of the most challenging jobs when it comes to writing skill, but see our brilliant Ahmar Siddiqui has fully succeeded in that. Well done, boy! :)

A time I experienced something spooky

The pungent smell of perspiration in the air entered my nostrils as I entered the newly constructed jogging track. Already, there were runners left and right racing enthusiastically. One side of the track was lined with tall hedges that separated the track from an educational institution whereas the other side afforded a view of the park. I had caught wind of the establishment through a friend who also exercised routinely. I did a quick warm up and began to run at a brisk pace. After successfully completing two laps around the track, I stopped and sat down, leaning against the towering hedge. I looked up to find the sun hidden behind thunderous clouds that rumbled above. I made a silent prayer for it not to rain otherwise I would be unable to visit the open air gym.

Unfortunately, my prayer went unanswered, and it started raining heavily – that they call ‘cats and dogs’. So, I briskly made for the exit. On the way, I jumped over a black cat. Though I continued onwards, but was internally aghast. I bit my tongue as I recalled the superstition that walking past a black cat is a bad luck sign. I dismissed the thought as an old wives’ tale and got back to the task at hand.

Hardly a minute had passed when an oddly shaped object caught my eye. I neared the tall hedge where the unidentified object was. To my horror, I found a severed finger! I yelped and ran home faster than a speeding bullet.

When I lied down in my bed that night, my wild imagination began to conjure multiple scenarios regarding the severed finger. The scenario that my mind deemed most likely was that a man had been chopped up into miniscule pieces by a serial killer. Realizing how close to my residence the heinous act had been committed, I found sleep escaping me. I recalled the black cat I had jumped over and concluded that bad luck was responsible for my current predicament.

The following day, I set off towards the jogging track to procure the finger to submit it to the police. Trying to appear inconspicuous I casually jogged over to the spot where I had discovered the finger. To my utter disbelief, I found several severed body parts littered beside the hedge. The horrific sight made me queasy.

A stranger approached me and inquired about my obvious distress. I responded by pointing to the body parts. The stranger laughed and told me that the body parts were fake; they were used to teach first aid classes at the school that was on the other side of the hedge. Dubious, I reasoned how lifelike the parts looked. The stranger who had introduced himself as a regular runner, named Ahmed, showed me the insides of the objects, proving that they were made of plastic.

I took a sigh of relief. My belief in superstition disintegrated as swiftly as it had formed.

Written by:
Mohammad Ahmar Siddiqui

Ahmar

O’ Level students are fully clear on this point that when getting hold of a topic for story writing, and intending to use first person pronoun ‘I’, they can pose to be anybody, like a mom, a baby, a shopkeeper, an elderly person or a young man etc. See the way Muhammad Abubakar Mian seized the topic, triggered/prompted his imaginative explosive to cause this ‘big bang’ you call ‘a short story’. Intensely engaging right from the first word he dropped onto the sheet, the story is compellingly believable. With crispy, punchy sentences most naturally gushing out like a water spring, and well-connected like pieces in a chain, the story itself unfolds all information, the background, the present scenario and a likely future. You’d feel as if you were watching this incident with your own eyes. It’s like a Hollywood movie scene.

Muhammad Abubakar Mian was asked to generate a short story using the following two sentences anywhere in the text.

“Blood was still oozing out of his nose…”

“I had never expected her to betray me like that.”

Blood was still oozing out of his nose as I slammed him against the wall and continued to beat him to a pulp. His tattered shirt was red all over, but no amount of bleeding would stop my onslaught. My fury of punches continued to rain down on him as I blocked out the screams of my wife. She pleaded me to calm down, but that was like asking a bull to stop and wait as an entertainer tied his shoes - impossible. In retrospect, I’m not exactly sure where all that intense energy had come from, but come it did, and when it came, it was violent. 

The stranger had touched my wife in the privacy of my home. I use the word “stranger” lightly as he was a stranger to me but might not have been a stranger to these walls. My wife could have let him in on a number of occasions. This was a possibility that I did not want to believe, but was forced to at least consider. I had never expected her to betray me like that. These thoughts raced through my mind as my one-sided offensive continued. 

There was one thought that resonated throughout my body more so than the others: ‘This was my fault. It was my neglect that had led my wife to what she has done.’ She was not to blame, and neither was the man at the receiving end of my fists. The latter was only taking advantage of the former’s unfortunate situation. The thought of this magnified my anger ten-fold, but it was through this anger that I realized the man before me was now motionless. His whimpering had subsided and his body grew cold. The next sound I heard was that of a police siren going off somewhere in the distance as two men in blue jackets kicked down the door.