This was my second personal experience, and compared with the first, I didn’t actually witness a spectral figure or sensed a ghastly presence of anything. For that, I refused to call it a supernatural awakening. Still it was creepy.
I spent the remainder of my Raya holidays in Langkawi with relatives. This meant - for me - free food, free lodging, free rides, free tourism activities and you know, the experience of familial bonding and shared closeness with your related kin or whatever.
DID I MENTION FREE FOOD!?!?
On the last day before having to leave early tomorrow morning, we headed out to a few tourist spots namely Makam Mahsuri, Forgettable and Overpriced Tourist Spot #1, You’ve Got to be Kidding Me Location #2, This Sure Was a Pleasant 5 Minutes Experience That Took Us Half an Hour to Get Here #3, Langkawi Cable Car and Underwater World Langkawi. Of course, dehydration was a constant bother so I chugged bottles of water as we drove to the designated places. My 3 years old niece, Adriana, probably excited by the sudden elasticity of my abdominal area, decided to play bouncy ball on my full bladder and refused to sit anyplace other than directly above the Human Organ Balloon. I am much tempted to verbosely tell you how extremely pleasant that experience was but it was actually dimmed by the more excruciatingly thrilling events of driving on bumpy streets and over speed bumps while having an approximately 15kg giggly and jumpy deadweight on your bursting full bladder.
I heart kids. We should teach them to play with scissors and other random sharp objects.
Anyway, it was a seven-seater car, and I sat way back with the kid. She was at an impressionable age undergoing the mimicking phase. She’d imitate your actions and words and I was quite proud of the new range of profanit—err vocabularies that I exposed her with. Wouldn’t it be nice if she grew up into a Jr. Aziemah? I’d be making the world a favour ‘cause she’d have my bubbly optimism, egregious generosity and love for all things happy and cute teehee! :D
Dyjae stop gagging.
We were driving to the Underwater World (actually enjoyed the place) and she was staring intently at the back windshield, at the miniature horizon growing smaller as we drove past thickets of bushes and sparsely grown trees. Then she pointed out the window, and I presumed she was pointing at the car behind us;
“There’s someone there! Someone over there!”
“Uh... congratulations kid. You can detect humans. Your mom must be proud.”
“There’s someone there!”
“Yeah it’s called a driver. Wow, right? Your aunt Aziemah is a genius.”
She was pointing vigorously still and I noted that the car behind us already drove past. There was nothing there. Before I comprehended anything, she asked the window;
“You want to go to auntie Aziemah’s house? You do?”
She nodded excitedly a few times and turned to me;
“Can we go to your house? Can we?”
Note that the house she was referring to is the adjacent room my cousin rented for me at Kampung Tok Senik. By this time, alarm bells started ringing... though it was just Beyonce’s ‘Ring The Alarm’ song playing on my Zune.
“Uhhh... who’s going to my house? You’re going to my house, Adriana?”
“Yeah I want to go to your house too!”
“Then”, I emphasised this part out of paranoia, “only YOU can come to my house.”
I thought the matter settled, eked out some courage and tried to focus on burning a hole on the backseat of where my eldest sister was sitting (This is for chuckling whenever we ran over a bump, you No. #1 sister in the world you!) before lil’ Adriana started doing something more creepy. She continued staring outside the window for several minutes, and just like how she’d imitate me everytime I stuck my tongue out at her, she started the imitation of bulging her eyes out and sticking her tongue much further out than people usually would. Her whole tongue stuck out of the crevice of her sinisterly creepy smile and she kept her eyes bulged for quite some time, all the while keeping an intense stare outside the window. I just gaped at her, chilled to the bone at the creepy face she was making and made a mental note to sleep under the covers that night... not because I’m scared, but, uh... because I’m... anticipating chilly weather and such and such.
After that, she got distracted as 3 year old kids would usually do and resumed her favourite pastime of imagining auntie Aziemah’s full bladder as a makeshift trampoline.
I almost prayed for her new friend to come back.
The creepiest thing was, when we got back that night and I slept in my respective bed... It happened... I actually...
...Slept like a frikkin’ baby.
Thanks for inviting the Sandman over, kid. Here have a penknife. Pergi main jauh-jauh, preferably without adult supervision.
