The Scar

“Where are we going?” I murmured, as I looked around me.

I was chained to a wheelchair, an IV line on my left hand, and wrapped in a blue hospital gown.

“Off to the operation theater, y’know. You’re injured” said a soft-spoken nurse. The clanking of metal and the droning of the wheelchair pervaded the air.

“Am I?”

I looked perfectly normal, but then something pricked me on my left thigh. Then the pain intensified. It was as if someone ran a sharp blade under my skin. Blood spewed and painted a red trail on the floor, as the nurse wheeled my chair across the white-tiled corridor. The pain was burning me from the inside. I shivered.

“Am I going to die?” My voice, broken into a soft whimper.

A man with a squiggly wet mop looked up. The scent of anesthetic was strong, there was also the putrefying smell of death wafting in the air along with a strong pungent odor of chlorine.

The nurse opened a door. There was a man, not very tall, perhaps in his late fifties… a grey mustache, clean shaved, thick brows and his eyes pinned me where I was. I couldn’t move.

On his hand, a wooden ruler.

The nurse pushed the chair and tossed me on the floor. I could hear her latching the door from behind. I looked up.. and the man gave me a paper. It had questions… I noticed lopsided species of triangles and circles.

He pointed me to an empty place on a wooden bench. I picked up the broken pieces of myself and stood up. Walked towards the bench, dragging my leg, which stopped spilling its scarlet tears. I put the paper on the desk and sat down. The place smelt like chalk, dust, and dying hope.

There were others in the room, identical like dolls, dressed in the same shade of blue and black. All their eyes glued to their papers.

I was lost in the myriads of triangles, numbers, and alien words before me. One triangle leaped out of the paper and tried to strangle me. I pushed it away, stood up… and moved away from the desk.

Numbers of different sizes armed with weird Greek characters bubbled like black tar from the paper and overflowed onto the smooth cement floor. They charged at me, like colonizing ants.

I ran for my life. The door was missing. Perhaps, it also ran for its life.

The man with the wooden ruler barked at me. “Wherever you go, I will find you and I will kill you like a dog”

Warm beads of sweat trickled down my forehead. My hands trembled and I could hear my heart scream. I dragged myself out of the room and across the corridor. I remembered this place. It was a school building.

I tried to run, still in the blue hospital gown, towards the stairs.

It was boarded up. The rusted nails seemed to laugh at my pathetic self. I looked behind me.

The man, ruler in his hand. Banging it on along the rails of the wall. The metal clanged and the sound was becoming louder with every passing second.

“Do something” I told myself.

I looked at the majestic view of the school building. I was on the fourth floor of one of the crumbling building blocks.
I could see how the school had changed over the many decades. The golden sand of the large playground was now infested with shrubs, bushes, and mossy headstones. The seesaw and swing I had once played in, now torn apart and scattered like rusted bones. Creepers conquered and chewed the leftovers to bits.

A Peepal tree had grown right through the block that I had studied in. I could still see my young self hobbling around in a heavy school bag, neatly bowed shoelaces, and polished black shoes.
I looked behind me… I could almost smell chalk, dust and hear the screams of hundreds of children as he struck the wooden ruler on the metal railing.

I breathed one more breath. It smelled of all the happy memories that were still clinging to me. I jumped.
~~~

I woke up, panting… The time is 3: 23 am. I look at my hand, there are no IV outlets sticking out. I’m dressed in shorts, not a medical gown. I sat up on my bed.

Ran my hands over my forehead. Warm, feverish, drenched in sweat.. and among them, a scar from a distant past.
I heard something. Words, that still linger in my ears every time I wake up.
“Kneeel!”

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