The Silent Room

After coming back home from a day out settling bills and some chores, I parked my car outside my house gates and took a deep breath. My parking is always under a shady mango tree, which I personally planted and raised over the past six years.

It’s not really that tall, but when its in season, the tree will bear mangoes in abundance. The sweet golden flesh of ripened mango is a real treat for us. It also makes a convenient gift whenever someone comes to visit. A lot of fruit sellers claim that their produce are ‘fresh from the farm’. I can tell my visitors that the mangoes I’m giving is fresh from the tree because I’d grab a pole and pick the fruit there and then.

My neighbourhood is a nice and peaceful one, filled with wonderful people who know the right things. Some of them grew fruitful longan trees, another grows some banana plants and one of them, who lived at the slope of the hill, made a little farm for himself and in it he grew carrots, cabbages and potatoes. My mango tree is heavily shedding its leaves now, a sign that the blossoms are coming soon, and in about a month or so, the fruits will grow and in another few weeks they will be ready for the picking.

I leaned on the car and surveyed the neighbourhood in a quick 360 view. It was already way past 6 PM. The sky was full of puffy clouds, and the sun was getting ready to settle down after a day’s work. I turned around, after deciding that I have things to do indoors when a sudden scream caught my attention.

For a brief moment, time seemed to slow down. A single millisecond felt like a whole minute. The birds stopped in midflight, their wings paused in the flapping. The air was still, and the speed of sound seemed to decelerate as I heard a cry from afar…

Before I had a chance to react, my sight was interrupted by a sudden flash of black and white and grey. At that moment, my face became the landing pad for a speeding Adidas World Cup Edition Tricolor football. A few miliseconds after that, time accelerated back to normal as I regained my sense and composure.

But of course, not before some profanities escaped my lips. It’s a motor reflex, I tell you!

Some kids then came over running to me. It instantly became a rowdy mess of apologizing and blaming each other for the ridiculously powerful kick. Since I wasn’t hurt that much, and nothing was damaged, I went easy on them and let them off with a big-brotherly warning. At least they were doing something healthy outdoors instead of being cooped up at home playing video games all day long.

Gotta give them some credit for that.