The Future of My Talent

The darkness filled the atmosphere as I, Malcolm Reveille ran home from school. The clouds thundered as my short, jet - black hair blew from the swift wind approaching me, making me conspicuous. I soon reached a big house that looked like a villa. I opened the huge gates.

There stood my sister, Zamora. She smiled cheekily. Her overgrown gown had a dark and blue pattern. Her long, brown hair blew in the air. Her face looked tiny with her cat-eyed glasses. She was taller and older than me.

I walked to the Reveille house. I ignored my sister standing at the door. She was probably taunting me to show my grade on today’s math test by that smile. I greeted my mom and dad and went to my room.

I have to say that I am not a fan of the stairs. For an 8 year old boy, I think it takes too much strength. I like to conserve my strength for useful things, not for climbing stairs!

I had even asked my parents to put my bedroom downstairs two years ago. They so did not agree to the idea. In fact, they made my room the farthest from the stairs so I could use more strength. Oh, the nerve!

But that was fine now, or at least a bit. I was now a bit used to climbing stairs. I walked to my room. I neatly put my shoes in the shoe rack and entered the room farthest to the stairs, my room!

I jumped on my bed. A message retorted in the back of my mind, you have to change your clothes first and then you can jump on the bed, understand! ‘Darn,’ I muttered. I went to the changing room where my clothes were sitting neatly on a stool. (I always do that the day before school!) I then changed in a hurry. I took a bathroom break after that.

Then, I jumped on the bed. The springs lowered silently as I closed my eyes. Then, another message came in the back of my mind, tomorrow is no school! With my eyes still closed I said, ‘Bingo!’

‘Yeah right!’ I recognized the shrill voice of my sister. I opened my eyes and lifted my upper body up. ‘What do you want, Zam?’ She lifted up her hand and spoke in a soft voice, ‘I told you to never call me that. Just give me your test.’

I stabled myself. I got up and took out my crumpled paper from my bag. She held it up. Then she gave me a horrified and surprised look, ‘No way!’ On top of the paper was a 92 labeled in red ink.

 ‘Yes way!’ I replied. She wailed, ‘No, now he can resume his write- ups!’

I, Malcolm Reveille, who was waiting for this just smiled. ‘Thanks Zam.’ And with that, she raged and stormed out of the room. (Yes, dear readers, I am going to write a story for you. Ah, you ask the back story of why I couldn’t write this story in the past? This is going to take a long time. Well, here you go. . .)

One month ago…

‘Are you okay?’ cried the voice of my friend Werquan. I slumped down as the volleyball hit my sweaty face with deadly accuracy. It was Sports Day in our school! We had many activities to do as our parents sat in the misty weather being our spectators.

It was a cool weather for activities. We ran all around the place. Then our teachers assembled us for volleyball. I thought volleyball wasn’t my thing, so I had never played it. It was Mrs. Vermicelli’s class versus Mr. Oppenheimer’s. I was in Mrs. Vermicelli’s class. I glanced at my friend Werquan at the opposite side of the court. He looked ready for this game. He really liked to play volleyball and was good at it too. So everyone called him Volleyquan for some reason. Then, Coach Eschenbacher, our physical educator blew the whistle.

The ball was thrown into the air as Werquan served the ball. My team did a catapult strike and launched it back to their team. Mrs. Vermicelli cheered as we got a point.

And the game went on as the ending of the game came. Now, our team needed only one point to finish the game. (That means gamepoint!) Everyone had stopped cheering. It was a tense moment. Then they started cheering again.

The score was 10: 8 with us leading. Heat filled the court because of the sweat. Werquan was furious now.

I served this time. I launched the ball two feet up in the air and jumped. I slammed the ball with all my power. It streamed out of the border line. It was now 10:9. I panicked!

They served this time. (By they I mean Werquan.) His eyes glowed with fury as my feet hit solid ground. He launched the ball higher than I had and slammed it into my face. I slowly slumped and crumpled to the ground. Werquan came to his senses. He ran towards me.

 Everyone stood up. They ran towards an unconscious Malcolm. I felt my nose bleeding. Blood trickled down my hand and touched the ground.

I groaned in pain. My face was red. Steam came out of my nose. My mom kneeled down and lifted me up. She took me to the nurse’s office. I was painfully healed as she dabbed some alcohol on my wounds. I cried in despair!

After a week, my wounds had healed fully. I sat at my chair in front of my macbook. I tried to express my life to others. It would be a biography about me.

Yes, that was it. I would write about my failures and success carried by a fictional person, describing my own life. How great that would be. I would name it, Malcolm’s Reviography. (I got the name Reviography from Reveille + Biography.)

I started typing. (Or my hands started typing.) I mean, my hands were typing by themselves! I had a feeling though that my brain was controlling my hands. I stayed focused on my Reviography. Truthfully, my mind had never put so much focus on anything before. I kept writing until my mom dropped over. She opened the door and stepped inside with a plate full of snacks. She saw me on the computer. She must have thought that I was playing games on my computer because she became a little ferocious seeing me on the computer.

‘Why are you playing games on the computer?’ She asked. I replied confidently, ‘Uh, I am not. See for yourself.’ She stepped towards me and saw MS Word open. She first looked shocked. Then she followed the sentence I was typing. ‘I urged towards my friend Jimmy and told him my secret.’ Before I could type more, my mom patted me on the shoulders, ‘Wow, I find it interesting,’ while she chewed down some of the snacks she had brought.

‘I loved to read stories when I was young.’ And with that she comfortably started reading my novel. I headed downstairs to refill my plate with snacks.

After snacks, I went upstairs to check up on my mom. She was sitting there finishing the last paragraph. She was full of tears, laughter, and amazement all at once. She got out of the chair and patted my shoulders again. ‘How did you write this, this has so many twists and plots, you should get this published.’ I replied to her praises, ‘Yeah thanks mom. But you got to know that life is filled with many twists and plots. Isn’t that right?’ ‘Oh, that’s my boy!’ She left the room giddily. I closed the door and put concentration.

I have to say I was more creative than my sister. She just had a girl’s night out at some party on the weekends. She and her friends prepared for that the whole week. Since her school was off for some days. Her sassy and taunting voice was annoying to me. She was a teen though. So I guess it is quite understandable.

‘My ending had to be exquisite.’ I thought. ‘I had to put such a twist in my fictional life that my dear readers love it.’ I wrote constantly and surged towards the last line. After a lot of devotion and time, I managed an ending, ‘Imanyemi finally had kidnapped the thieves and contributed to the society. His work was done . . .’ I stood up, printed the copy, and went downstairs.

(So you could guess by the ending that Malcolm (a.k.a Imanyemi) was the hero, right? Yeah, I thought so!)

He printed the copy and made everyone read it. His mom and dad told him that they will tell him the results tomorrow. I went upstairs laughing like a freakster.

I entered my room and jumped on the bed. Sweat had filled my body making my face red. That was probably because of my brain deciding to take a Strike (holiday) for not earning its money for the ideas! I chillaxed the rest of the day and had a good night’s sleep.

I had forgotten to turn off my alarm. It was Sunday. My alarm bell rang making me fall off my bed with alarm. I got up and jumped on the bed again after stopping my alarm. I tried to sleep again when my sister crashed. She entered the door with a BANG and stormed in. I opened my eyes and saw her deadly smile on top of me. I closed my eyes. ‘What happened?’ I asked. Zamora replied in her sassy voice, ‘What happened is that your history test has come.’

A lump formed in my stomach. My legs froze. I was bad at history. I had not even studied for it. My mom’s cheerful voice called down from below, ‘Malcolm, come down now!’ I slowly got up and paced to the bathroom. I washed my face and headed downstairs while my tired legs carried me.

My mom held up my story. We were in the living room. My mom and dad were drinking their morning coffee. She slurped down her coffee slowly. ‘Love the story. We also emailed it to your teacher.’ I knew that was going to happen. Whenever I did something creative (once or twice in a year, mind you) my mom always takes a snapshot and emails it to my teacher.

My dad said the same thing as well.

I glanced back at Zamora. She still had that deadly smile. My dad spoke up, ‘Zamora, you told us that Malcolm had got an email from the teacher early morning. Can you show that to us?’ I turned around. ‘You didn’t show them my paper yet,’ I mouthed. She nodded her head. ‘Don’t show them, please.’ I pleaded She gave an expression in head language (Reveille family communication), ‘Sorry no can do!’

She brought her ipad on the table and showed my parents the test grade. My Mom’s and Dad’s face turned from cheerful to shocked irate. ‘They looked back up at me. My dad held up the ipad as his fingers trembled. He showed me my grades. I was shocked. There was a 69 labeled on the top of the paper. They were fierce as they spoke in unison, ‘What is this? You shall be punished!’ I panicked, which made my sister give her super – deadly smile as if this was a funeral. Curse her!

Anyway, I was panicked, It was like I was about to be set up to flames. But none of that happened.

My parents stepped forward. ‘You will stop writing your stories and focus on your studying. We will let you resume your stories only after you get a 70% or above on your end of the year math test, understand!’ With that they left the living room.

My knees fell on the ground. My sister cackled like an evil villain. I shrieked in the most horrible of voices I could muster, ‘No. I studied day and night for this math’s test. It carried the future of my writing. And that was how I got a 92% on my math test and could resume my writing. For my future . . .’

Back to the present . . .

Well, here I am dear readers.

I felt pity on myself as I typed this on my computer screen. I hope you didn’t fall asleep while reading this.

If you are a writer, you would understand how long of a hiatus it had been. A one month long break would finish the person’s talent. But I had barely managed to hang on. For example, it would be like someone breaking their diet routine and feel like that’s it.

It would feel like a decade for a writer.

I focused on studying more than writing. But I didn’t dare forget to write a story every week. And that is how I am going to live my life. With talent in my gleaming hands forever . . .