Lessons

"Ilyas!"

Ilyas's head shot up, eyes bleary and blood shot. He blinked thrice, his hazel eyes slowly focusing on Mr. Lee who was frowning, his hand grasping a red marker pen. Ilyas slowly noticed the glances his classmates where throwing him. Hastily, he wiped his lips, which, to his chagrin, were wet with drool.

Mr. Lee shifted onto his right foot, arms akimbo, and fixed Ilyas with a cool stare. In the haze that was gradually lifting, Ilyas realised a reply was expected.

"Err.. hmm?"

Mr. Lee was not amused.

"Stand," he growled, eyes cold as salted ice. Ilyas got to his feet, his chair scraping noisily against the parquet floor. He seemed to regain his senses faster now the entire class was staring at him. He felt like the woman with a beard,the man with three legs. He envisioned a cage around him and a big red neon sign that read " The first boy to cross The Most Scary Teacher in the school" while his classmates threw peanut shells at him and called him the Green Jackass.

"Do I bore you, Mr Ilyas? Should I juggle balls for you? Pierce myself with large needles and call myself "Spike" Lee?" The dimunative teacher was gathering momentum with his sarcasm, but Ilyas knew better than to answer. He remembered how Mr Lee had dealt with one such student a couple of years back who was foolish enough to say something lame. The police still had trouble looking for enough body parts to identify the body.

At least that was what Mark said. Ilyas remembered the other thing Mark was so convinced about: that the singer Aliyah was still alive and had engineered her own death to run away from bad debts and a forced marriage to Micheal Jackson.

As you can see, Ilyas still has not completely cleared his head. He begin to imagine Micheal Jackson moon walking around a tree and serenading the ghost of Aliyah with Hee-hee's and Ow's. His attention was harshly snapped back into focus as a a red marker pen came flying at him, thrown by an angry Mr Lee who was fuming at the non-chalance Ilyas was displaying.

It never touched him.

With a speed that defied the eye, Ilyas' right hand moved with blinding speed, intercepting the pen as it flew towards him. The loose pen cap, stopped abruptly in mid-flight, came off and fell towards the ground. It clattered loudly in the silence that followed, as all eyes turned from the surprised boy to the furious teacher.

Cold, blue eyes contrasted with the burning red face as a trace of insanity flared to life, before dying suddenly. Mr Lee seemed to want to start screaming, but amazingly he got a hold of himself, and breathed normally again, face not as red as before but the vein in his temple throbbed obscenely.

"Give. Me. Back. My. Pen." He held out a shaking hand as he spat out the words. Ilyas had timidly dropped his hands behind his back, but at the command slowly shuffled forward. The drama was back on. Ilyas somehow felt that what Mark said had a grain of truth after all. He felt as if his death was imminent.

Mr Lee gazed into his eyes, and Ilyas fidgeted, breaking eye-contact almost immediately. He braced himself for the beating that would ensue.

"Detention," Mr Lee growled, before grabbing the pen and truning his back on a silent Ilyas.