Reflections

An old essay I wrote in Sec 3. Rather crappy, at that time I was still stuck in that ikari shinji mood. Hope you guys enjoy it as much as ms pereira did.

Reflections

Harsh light blinded his eyes.
His hand was raised instinctively to block the rays.
Silhouettes emerged at the doorway.
His eyes widened with terror.
Strong arms held him tightly.
No, he thought.
It was not meant to end this way.

The jail cell was empty except for a makeshift toilet seat and a straw mat for a bed. The sun had already set, and it was now deep into the night. Adrian Lee huddled into the corner, resting his head against the padded wall, eyes once again trailing off with a distant look.
How dare they, he thought.
My plan was brilliant! Foolproof!
Yet it failed.
Just like before.
Just like....
Before.

“Why did you do it?”
The question echoed throughout the cold jail cell. The resident psychiatrist was attending to the newest arrival to the prison, a boy barely out of teens.
Raising his head slowly, the cold and vacant eyes of Adrian peered into the psychiatrist’s, sending a shiver down her spine. She had seen this look before many times, but it was her first time seeing it on someone so young. “Why? It was not my choice. I was compelled to do it.”

“Let’s talk about your childhood,” she continued.
He let off a strange hollow laugh. “What childhood? My parents abandoned me when I was young, leaving me to fend for myself. I was often taunted in school, being called all sorts of names. The things that they said hurt me deeply. About me not being good enough to have parents or that my parents must have hated me so much. I should see their faces now. Now that I have got my own back, I would love to see their faces now.”
He laughed again. The eerie sound echoed off the cold, claustrophobic stone walls.
Although slightly shocked, she persevered, asking another question. “So is that the reason why you killed him?”

Andrew Wong glanced nervously behind his shoulder as he walked towards his car. The multi-storey carpark was deserted at this late hour, and he shrugged off that uneasy feeling he had in his gut.
Reaching his car, he felt his pockets for his keys, which he then fished out. But in his nervousness he accidentally allowed them to slip out of his fingers and land underneath his car. Cursing under his breath, he stooped to retrieve his keys.
Stop scaring yourself, he thought to himself, see you are so jumpy that you actually dropped your keys.
Then, he heard the soft sound of footsteps.

“He deserved to die. He humiliated me, made fun of me, made me feel worthless, and made other people not appreciate my worth. So what if he is rich? I am also a human being! Have you ever felt that way? If you have not, you will not understand the feeling of worthlessness I felt. Everyday I felt like I was fading away slowly, like I had no reason to continue existing. All I did was not dying.”
“That is not true. All of us have a reason to live. It is just that sometimes we do not know for what. All we have to do is to look for it.”
Adrian stood up angrily, his eyes immediately blazing with great intensity. “Do not expect me to believe this nonsense! I have no family, no friends, no relatives, no one to turn too. My classmates shun me, my teachers are biased against me, and when I went out to work, everyone was against me! From the start, everyone was against me. I tried my hardest, but the harder I tried, the worse the disappointment.”
He paused for a second, before continuing. “When I was in secondary school, I wanted so badly to be a student leader. I tried hard for a year, doing as much as I could for the school. But in the end? I was ‘rewarded’ by an empathic ‘No!’. I was brought up by those hypocritical teachers that taught me that as long as I work hard I will be justly rewarded. Lies, all of them! I now feel so foolish, thinking that I could succeed if I tried really hard. It really went downhill after that. I never tried again. I was too afraid of failing again. I realised I would not feel hurt if I did not try.”
His eyes reverted back to being glassy and void of life. “It was all his fault.”

He turned around, and he gasped in horror as he saw a masked figure brandishing a hunting dagger standing above him. He pressed himself against his car, legs turning into jelly.
A raspy voice came behind the grotesque mask. “Do you remember me?”
The dagger moved rapidly, slashing his throat into two. Instinctively Andrew grabbed his throat as blood poured forth in torrents.
The last thing he saw before his life force was drained from him was the dagger being cast upon the floor and the dark figure answering his own question.
“I did.”

“Do you even have the remotest idea of the feeling of being lonely? The feeling that no one needs you? No one thinks you are of value? I really wanted to disappear after that much disappointment. All I wanted was some recognition for some hard work, is it too much to ask? And it was not the first time. There were many occasions before where I was never rewarded for my good work. It is extremely ironic that I actually tried so hard before. Some things just do not work out. The real irony is that the harder I tried, the farther I got from my goal.”
“So you stopped trying.”
“Why should I continue to play by society’s rules then? I worked hard, therefore I DESERVE some recognition. Why play by the rules when they only benefit other people? That lowlife actually sabotaged my project. His company had just acquired the company I was working in, and immediately seized my plans and claimed them as his! See where playing by the rules got me? I should have done it long ago.”
“Society probably made me the public joke. But now I have taken my revenge. This society I live in does not play by the rules, did not appreciate my worth, did not give me the warmth and happiness that I am due! Not only does he deserve to die, society should too! Remember what made me this way? Society!” Adrian yelled, obviously frustrated.
Actually, he was not frustrated.
In fact, he was merely confused.

The psychiatrist sighed, before looking back into his dark eyes.
“Your mind has confused truth with reality.” She started in a slow voice. “The things you perceive and recorded in your memory is the truth, and out of so many truths, there will be one that changes through time. Your truth is that you want to feel that no one likes you, no one appreciates you. You are only thinking that way. You do so as you fear failure, fear being disliked, fear seeing the weakness within you. You want to disappear because you feel worthless. Whether that is reality is another thing.”
“Stop it! Society does not care for me! Who did? Nobody! Never did, never will! They made me this way! All I wanted was to be accepted. But they never accepted me for who I am. Therefore, I am not to blame!” Adrian was enraged, but she could sense doubt creeping into him.
“What is reality? Reality is the real world. The world where how to accept things and how to perceive things is entirely up to you. You chose to view it from an angle that most people do not usually take. You chose to see society as the cause for all your problems, and created a world of your own. Where you live by your truths that people hate you, society is the cause of all your problems. Actually, you are running away from reality. There is a good and bad side to everything and you choose instead to stop trying and look on the bad side of everything. You wished for an empty world, where only you would be comfortable, in order to protect your joy, to protect your weak mind.”
At this point in time, Adrian slammed his fists on the table and stood up. “NO! You are wrong! Just like the others! There is no such rubbish about truth and reality! The truth is that…is that…”
A flicker of doubt passed over his face.
He gripped the wired window, breath coming out in ragged gasps.
The psychiatrist sighed, closed her record book and stood up to leave.
“We shall finish this another day.”
The door creaked open, allowing light to flood the darkened room.
She sighed again as she looked back at the mortified face of Adrian Lee.
No amount of reflections would save his soul.