1. This story is dedicated to all those who believe they are different, and are not afraid of it.
2. It is also dedicated to Cheryl (Chua). Seeing you at IndoChine made me very happy, even if it wasn't for long. Such joy inspired me to get off my lazy ass and finish this story.
3. Finally, it is dedicated to the SJI Mats. This story is about the magic we all have inside us, as we stand out from the rest of the world.
People tend not to notice the better parts of themselves.
Teachers, for example, tend not to notice that they have television, and dish out homework like it was the cure for AIDS - only to spend their free time marking those pieces of paper.
Suffian did not notice his magical capabilities. The only conjuring he could do prior to the Gargantuan Lizard were for Detention Class forms. He could make grown, adult teachers bring the form to him, and even make them automatically send it to the higher authorities for him.
Everybody in the hall - both trainees and the instructor medics - did not notice the 30-foot tell lizard in the middle of the hall. If they did, their otherwise mundane military lives would have taken a sharp right to Interesting, and they could all stop being bored and/or unhappy for a bit and start running for their lives.
What Suffian did notice about himself, was that he was still terribly bored. In an effort to hold on to whatever Boredom did not take away from his brain, he struck up a conversation to the person nearest to him. Such was the magnitude of his boredom that it did not matter if his fellow conversant would be He-With-The-Bad-Undergarment-Disposition, Mr Tight Underwear. Surely, even prudes would be more entertaining than peacetime medics.
"Hey man, I've got a good one," Suffian said, in an attempt to start conversation.
"A good what?" Tight replied, somewhat disconcerted by Suffian's vagueness.
"Uh, joke."
"Oh... But we'll miss out on the lecture."
"No relax, the medic's complaining about us not listening. It'll take a while for manically-depressed retard fatsos like him to snap out of it."
"But he's talking about bones breaking!"
"Yes, my friend. Our bones, if we don't listen to him."
There was a mind-numbing pause. Then:
"That won't be in the test later right?"
"Live walking papayas would endorse zebra flatulence before that'll come out in a test."
"Huh?"
"No, it won't come out in the test."
"Okay good."
While this sequence of events transpired, the newly-materialized Lizard had already adapted well to the fact that it was no longer a fan, but a crazy killing machine. With the poise of one capable of wiping out an entire hall of trainees and medics, the Lizard stuck its head into the air, and sniffed.
At first it recoiled - someone has a very neglected hair farm in his armpits. But then an even stronger smell engulfed his olfactory senses, from beneath the murky depths of the Hair Farm. It was the smell of raw human flesh. To a human being, that kind of smell is disgusting. They smell it every morning in non-airconditioned buses. To a fan-turned-Giant Lizard, however, it smelled like a good appetizer for the main course of 200 or so trainees and medics. The smell (both smells, actually) came from Suffian's instructor medic, who unfortunately happened to be the kind of person who regarded bathing as an inconvenience. The Lizard stalked towards the source of the smell, hungry as hell.
"Okay hear me out," Suffian went on to a very nervous Mr. Tight. "Why does Lee Kuan Yew bathe with his underpants on?"
"He does?"
"Well, factually, no, but if he does, why would he bathe with his underpants on?"
"Um..."
Suffian could feel his boredom slowly creep back upon him.
"I give up," Tight said, rather tiredly. The mental exertions had taken a heavy toll on his mind. He always saw Mr. Lee as a sane, upright person who would nonetheless not wear his undergarments into the bathtub. It just wasn't...socially-conforming.
"Because he hates to see the unemployed!" Suffian exclaimed, as if to revive his dying zest for conversation. As an afterthought, he added, "And thank God his politicians have skin and hair on their heads to cover their brains too, or Mr. Lee would palpitate."
Meanwhile, the Lizard had stalked enough to be just 10 metres away from the Medic, when it stopped. True to its complacent evilness, the Lizard stopped for dramatic effect. It then let out a terrible pan-dimensional battle snarl, heard in dimensions Alpha 6 and Z Beta 3, but expressed in our dimension as a .01 decibel replica of a duckbilled platypus' mating call.
By then, Tight had turned away from Suffian, and had started to feverishly write down notes on fracture-mending. Suffian had retired to lazing at the back of the group, when he looked up for no novel reason and saw the largest creature he had ever seen outside of his pants.
Witnessing his own handiwork somehow jolted Suffian's inner magick and they fed information into his brains on how he had conjured the Lizard, and how he can properly use his magic and bend it to his will. It told him this:
"Okay. You were unbelievably bored. It wakes us magick-particles-inside-you up. You saw somebody who looked like a lizard. You didn't like him. We did a little calculation of our own about the scale, sorry if you didn't like it. Voila, Non-Likeable Giant Lizard."
Suffian was horrified, and it took him quite a while before he could think of anything to do.
The Lizard was starting to stalk again...
To be continued...
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