(First assignment for the module Introduction to Creative Writing; Grade: A)
“Of course she didn’t believe me. She even wants to throw Mikey and Leatherhead away but I hid them. But I saw what I saw okay, it’s real. I’ll prove it to you after school,” Danny said determinedly, taking a bite of his peanut butter sandwich. He’d been meaning to tell Ma he was bored of eating the same Gardenia white bread and Skippy creamy peanut butter three times a week, but there were more pressing things to convince her about as of now.
“So where did you hide them? Will your Ma find out?” Ron asked, opening his second packet of Pola snack - he’d buy one packet every recess, and two when he was feeling rich.
“Somewhere she’ll never look. There’s this drawer where Leonard the lizard lives. She won’t dare to open it. They’re safe.”
Soon the bell sounded, declaring the end of recess. The boys had the bad habit of staying behind for an extra five minutes and sneaking in from the back of the classroom. Today, their obnoxious form teacher, Mrs Wan, had decided to catch them red-handed and march them back to class in a walk of shame. Danny had no idea why she was so antagonistic towards them. Could it be that April Fool’s prank from two years ago when they were in Primary One? How was he to know she’d react so strongly to a rubber cockroach and almost break her desk from trying to climb atop it? Anyway, the cockroach belonged to Ron, he merely placed it next to her.
As Mrs Wan rattled on about math homework, Danny was on the edge of his seat, watching the minute hand on the clock draw closer to one-thirty. Then the bell rang, finally, signalling the end of Mrs Wan’s daily dominion. Danny dashed out of the classroom with Ron at his heels and they made their way to the longkang behind the school. It was a big longkang, and there was a bridge that went across it. At the end of the bridge was a traffic junction and across that road was a cluster of HDB flats. That was Danny’s usual route home after school.
Danny climbed onto the green railings, his grimy white velcro shoes fitting just snugly between the rails. There he dangled from shoulders-up over the longkang. Ron followed, and as he leaned over, his shirt rubbed against the rusty parts where the paint had flaked off and a copper stain appeared just below his embroidered name tag.
“My Ma’s gonna kill me. This better be worth it, Danny,” he scowled.
It was low-tide today and the bottom of the longkang was visible. In the shallow pool of water there were catfish and guppies swimming sluggardly among the weeds and sludge. The air was slightly musty and became nauseating if they breathed in too deep.
“The water is too low today. You know they like to camouflage. Yesterday I saw its eyes peeking out of the water.”
“Maybe it's hiding in that hole there,” Ron suggested and seemed to have forgotten about keeping his uniform clean as he leaned over even further, causing the brown stain to smear all the way down his shirt. He pointed to the opening on the right side of the longkang, “I wonder where that leads to.”
“The sewer,” Danny said, with dramatic undertones. As much as he didn’t want to think of the Ninja Turtles’ hideout and prove Ma right that he was in too deep and imagined it all, he immediately thought about the Ninja Turtles’ hideout...a damp space with sounds of dripping water, an old pinball machine, TV, a punching bag hanging on a metal chain, and pizza, lots of pizza.
“Do you think the sewer leads to the Zoo? Maybe it escaped from there,” Ron broke his train of thought.
“Maybe. But we need photo evidence - so that everyone will believe me,” Danny said, hopping off the railing and dusting down his uniform.
“Eh, I’m still deciding if I believe you.”
The boys ended up at the void deck of the HDB block across the street and the nice uncle at the Mama shop treated them to the Mat Kool strawberry and chocolate cup after they walked up and down the narrow aisle undecided for too long.
“Pa, can I borrow your old phone? I need to write an essay about my neighbourhood and I want to take photos so I can refer to them and describe the place more accurately,” Danny asked that night after dinner when Ma was busy doing the dishes in the kitchen, the words rolling off his tongue according to his practiced script. He hoped he didn’t look too excited or impatient.
“Hmm,” was Pa’s reply. If he suspected anything, he didn’t let on. Getting up from the sofa, he disappeared into the storeroom. When he returned, the Sony Ericsson was in his hand. He handed it to his son wordlessly and picked up the newspaper from where he’d left off.
“I got the phone!” whispered Danny to Ron the next day during morning assembly when they were supposed to be reading in silence for ten minutes. But it rained heavily that afternoon so Ma and Ron’s grandmother came to pick them up and they took the long route home.
The next day came and Danny and Ron decided research was necessary to determine if the crocodile really lived in the longkang.
“Danny Koh and Ron Chua! Where do you think you’re going?” Mrs Wan’s shrill voice echoed down the dimly lit hallway. The boys stopped in their tracks. It was after school hours and they were heading to the computer lab, unsupervised.
If it wasn’t for the phone call that drew her attention away from them, Mrs Wan would have personally ‘escorted’ them out of school. As she absentmindedly walked further away, speaking in an uncharacteristically polite voice to what sounded like her dentist, Danny and Ron snuck into the lab and went to the computer farthest from the door.
It took several moments for the computer to boot up (Ron kicked the CPU a few times). Crocodiles in the sewer, Danny typed, and the first result was a Wikipedia page about sewer alligators in New York.
“You never put Singapore,” said Ron. Before re-entering the search term, the boys skimmed through the New York article. “It says it’s just an urban legend,” Ron noted, as if he understood what ‘urban’ meant.
“But this is about alligators. What I saw was a crocodile!”
“You know the difference?”
Danny kept quiet.
After they left school they hung around the longkang for a good forty-five minutes. Danny was in a squat, positioning the phone in camera mode between the green-brown rails and waiting for the set of beady black eyes to peek out above the surface. Ron had lost interest after fifteen minutes and sat with his back to the railing, fiddling with a rubber band he found on the floor.
Though his hands were getting tired, the thought of Ma and Pa yelling at him for dropping the phone into the longkang was enough to keep him alert and disciplined.
Just when the mosquitoes were getting a tad too distracting, something, other than catfish and the nondescript grey fish, broke the surface of the water.
“Ron!” Danny shrieked and pressed the camera button one too many times. Ron turned around and peered into the longkang less than enthused.
“That’s just two tortoises, Danny!”
Danny squinted hard, almost pushing his face through the rails. Indeed, it was just two tortoises sticking their heads out of the water, at a distance fortuitously appropriate for a set of reptilian eyes. As he struggled to reconcile what he saw on Tuesday with the sobering reality before him, the phone slipped out of his hands and into the longkang.
There was then a roll of thunder and the sudden picking up of wind.
***
Primary School Boy Drowns in Drain During Flash Flood. Those were the headlines on the newspaper Pa was flipping through. Ma stood on the threshold of Danny’s room with a cane in hand, her face black as thunder. Yet under the simmering waves of anger there was that tinge of relief, miniscule but still present.
***
“My Ma threw Mikey and Leatherhead away. She says I will be the next one on the front page of the newspaper if I continue chasing the imaginary crocodile,” Danny told Ron the next day, remembering how Ma had refused to budge until he handed over his action figures the night before. He rubbed his hand over the red welt on his left arm, feeling resentful as he was resigned.
“By the way, maybe you didn’t know, but Leatherhead is an alligator, not a crocodile,” Ron added absently, flipping through a copy of Tales of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Vol. 1, Issue 6.
Author's commentary
The title Longkang (transl. Drain) symbolises the flushing away of the imaginations of a child when reality hits too hard. This is further emphasised by the throwing away of the physical toys that represents the essence of the child's world.
Danny is a child deeply captured by his imaginations - from calling his toys by their first names to naming the lizard that lives in his drawer, we know that Danny lives in his own made-up world. His best friend Ron is a juxtaposition to Danny's personality and worldview, being very logical and down-to-earth. For instance, Ron's first thought about the croc was that it had escaped from the Zoo while Danny's mind immediately wandered to the setting of his favourite cartoon series. Ron also has a short attention span and quickly becomes disinterested, contrasting greatly with Danny's perseverance. Throughout the story, Ron's quips actively balance Danny's obstinate fantasies, keeping him from rising too far into the clouds. And without the rose-tinted lenses of reverie, Ron was able to see with objectivity what was in the longkang and ultimately serve ice-cold reality to his best friend, though in a less than polite manner.
At the end of the day, Danny is left to face the misguided beginnings of his persistence and question the validity of his obsession.
Reader's comments
The story was written from a perspective of a primary school boy Danny, with his friend Ron, both whom lived in Singapore. The description of characters like Ron and Ms Wan were meticulous, and constantly evoked depictions of what they were doing based on my own experiences. Being able to relate to a teacher yelling full names and dirtying clothes by rusted fences added to the involvement.
The references to TMNT were believable as well, and also helped set the timeline to somewhere around two decades ago. Alongside this, the use of a Sony Ericsson phone would also put this to happen around the early to mid-2000s.
Several other actions written were also experiences shared by myself, which increased my immersion and emotional attachment with Danny himself, such as him attempting to hide his belongings in places his mom wouldn't find while knowing her threat was real, and even borrowing the phone camera with a lie. Having personally went through such actions myself, it was very believable for me to see another kid with similar thoughts.
The plot was simple but very good, following a kid's imaginative mind, especially with the comparisons of situations to TMNT that inevitably led to him having been betrayed by his eyes. I particularly enjoyed this part of the writing, being a completely relatable POV of a kid that I once was.
The experience might also be slightly diminished to readers that did not live through childhood at the aforementioned time, but I believe it is only very slightly, with how believable the writing's POV was. In all I thoroughly enjoyed reading this writing.
I like how you were able to turn a trivial incident such as climbing into the sewer into such an adventure. The entire piece encapsulates childhood and youth and the incredible imagination of children and it really drew me in. I also enjoy how you created a constant build up all the way to the climax. By not specifying exactly what Danny was looking for up until the middle of the story successful draws the readers (or at least me) into your story as it builds on our curiosity as to what exactly Danny was looking for. Another thing that i really liked was how you foreshadowed the incident of your story with the two action figures that Danny owned, as well as using it to start and end the story. Additionally, the occasional comedic dialogues between Danny and Ron really helped in making the story more interesting.
I think the characters and the settings are very well developed. Even though the author doesn't explicitly mention any specific time, it is discernable that the story takes place somewhere around the late 90s to early 2000s - TMNT, Sony Erickson and Mat Kool ice cream. There is a very clear evoking of a particular relatable childhood zeitgeist that I find very comforting and charming. The author has also managed to perfectly convey the childlike sensibilities of their characters. Even though the characters are being situated in a dangerous predicament here, the premise of the story is very innocent - the boys wanting to explore an urban legend. Drawing parallels between the urban legend and TMNT also further compliments the innocence of the characters and the story. There is nice juxtaposition between the severity of the boys actions and their childlike perspective. The banter between the boys feels authentic and genuine. The structure of the story is coherent and flows logically.
I found the story to be a pleasant read. It was fun, light-hearted and enjoyable.
I really like how you developed the character Ma, I could really sense the typical Singaporean Tiger mom in her character. That made this story rather relatable and a pleasant read, which drew back some of my primary school childhood memories. Overall, I think that you did a great job in developing the characters as I could easily envision all of them in my mind. The fact that this piece of writing has a rather local flavour also made it an easy and enjoyable read :)