UM(1) Creative Writing Club (Activity)

Nay Htet

It hurts. It hurts like nothing else. I think no thing should be hurt that way. No one should hurt no thing. But still, it hurts.

---

Like a German officer who would pick a Jewish prisoner at random to shoot in the dark of the night, I was chosen among several other friends of mine to face a fate which all of us are destined to, but one of us will be the first to go.

He swiftly eased me out from my dark hiding place and smoothed his hand across the length of my body as if searching for invisible defects or imaginary imperfections.

I was the perfect one, just perfect for the perfect hell and torture that waited me.

He jammed me into a knife-edged hole, which momentarily grasped me in its sharp jaws until he pushed me further into the narrow orifice.

A thousand shards of metallic bits bit into my head, and flew round and round and round like a thousand orbiting moons all crashing into my head one by one...

Jsssshhhhh

...everything was churned into a blur, my splintering head, my screams, the vibrations in the wall, the cycling metal bits, and the dark mush that suddenly filled the hole....

Jsssshhhhhh
Jssshhhhh
Jsshhh
Jsh

All of a sudden, the mechanism came to a halt. There was a brief episode of silence.

The night was quiet, quiet as if nothing happened.

Of course, nothing happened because I am a thing and we don't talk about somethings happening to a thing.

I was most certain now that my head was gone, and the dark mush that filled the hole was what was left of it. I felt a tug on my body from the rear end of the hole and I was gently pulled out.

My head was chipped away at places to form a conical projection with a perfect tip.

He held me upside down in diving position and grinded my pointed head against a surface.

Scrhhhh

It was a precarious thing: I was so anxious that my funny-shaped head would split under such great force.

It did.

And when it happened, he would jam me in that 'hellhole' again and chip my head away.

Jsssshhhhh

People are lucky to have only one head. If this thing happens to them, they won't have to go through this again and again, like me who is blessed with an endless supply of heads.

By the third time or so, the hellhole and the grinding has become something of a routine to me. It was as if I was made for this suffering, as if it was the function and purpose of my existence, something I have no power to change. Things cannot have their say about what they want the purpose of their lives to be or how they want to live their life. Because life, after all, is for the living, not for the 'non-living', as they call us.

---

Weeks transpired and I was so much shorter than I used to be. I was so short that I could fit end to end in the hellhole. It became difficult for him to pick me out from the hole when it's done.

One day, I found myself lying on the floor when I should be lying on his desk. Normally when he drops me, he would pick me up immediately. Now he didn't seem to care one bit.

He seemed to have forgotten me completely.

It was a liberating moment but a sad one, too, because I thought he abandoned me. I had been with him too long not to miss him, despite all the misery he brought to my life.

That afternoon, a broom swept me into a dark corner in one of the unknown territories of the room. It was a dusty place where time seemed to be frozen forever in an eternal twilight.

Looking around, I was mildly shocked to see several other 'stubs' like me — the stubby erasers, bits of paper, broken pieces of porcelain, and yes...shortened pencils, enjoying their retirement years in a secret place where you will never be spotted, picked and forced into a hellhole.

They were happy to have me. So am I. Above all, I am happy to have lived long enough to tell you, people, the story of my suffering.

It's been a long time since. But it still hurts.

---