by Billy Miner
“Okay,” she said. “That’s fine. You can get contacts or just let it be for a while.”
She was very kind, but it still wasn’t enough for me. I was so angry at those bullies for picking on me; payback was bound to happen. I wasn’t going to let them beat me up and get away with it. Something had to be done. So my creative brains starting processing all the information that entered my senses that day. Cogs were spinning in my head, designing an incredible way to teach them who they were dealing with.
That evening, I gathered buckets of paint from my mom’s garage. I knew I would be able to do something fun with it. Mixing them together, I was determined to wake up early the next morning.
When I woke up, an hour earlier than usual, and an hour before all the other kids from school did, I took the buckets with wet paint and went to their homes. There were three bullies, to three houses were about to be targeted. I simply opened a bucket in front of every house and poured the wet paint on the floor in front of their homes. By the time I did that with the last home, I waited in the bushes to watch their unfortunate encounters. One of the bullies said, “See you later, mom!” and walked out the door without realizing what was going on.
He slipped.
“Aaaah!”
He slid all across the sidewalk and ended up falling into the wet paint. Pink! The mean demonic kid had become pink. I reached inside my pocket, pulled out the camera, and took a picture.
Leverage. If he was ever going to bully me again, I could blackmail him with this piece of evidence that he looked like a girl. Ha! That will teach him.
At school, nobody was bothering me that day, but I wasn’t done yet. The same evening, I dressed up as a black ninja person or something and knocked on their windows, making eerie sounds and threatening to haunt them.
“Oooh… I am a ghost… a black one,” I said. “If you go outside, I will eat you.”
It terrified them.
“Any ghosts in your house?” I asked them the next day when they saw me at school.
“H-how do you know about that?” they asked.
“Oh, I have my sources,” I answered.
“L-leave us alone, creepy kid” they said, running away from me.
I really didn’t care. They deserved it, stupid boys. They should have learned that I am smarter and stronger than they are.
Entry 2: Flashbacks
I remember I was upset at my birthday. My mom prepared a very nice gift for me. It was a hero toy with a shield and sword. It looked terrific, but I felt empty inside.
“Why can’t my brother come back?” I asked.
“Because he went to a better place. He is no longer among us. There is nothing we can do about that.”
“But I want him here. It’s no fun having a birthday without him,” I said.
“I understand,” my mom responded. “I wish I could undo what happened to him, but I can’t. However, I do have a wonderful birthday cake in the kitchen. Are you ready for it?”
“Yes, yummy!”
After the birthday cake, I designed a maze. I have always been into puzzles. I just liked the challenge of figuring out things. I drew lines on a piece of paper and looked at it. It wasn’t good enough. But I kept trying. Each time, the puzzle became more complicated.
“Mom,” he said. “Look at this. I drew a maze.”
“Looks interesting,” she said. “I might be able to find the way out. Let me do it.”
My mother looked confused, as if it was too difficult for her to solve it.
“Do you want a hint?” I asked.
“No, it’s fine. Just give me a few more minutes.”
I waited and waited, but she just couldn’t do it.
“Look mom, you just take this part, add it up to that, cross-reference it with the initial symbol and turn the letters upside down, fixating the message on the entire stretch of the second character of the first word and third character of the second word. It’s so simple.”
My mom looked at me as if I were crazy.
“Boy, you sound like a genius. What are you going to do with that brain of yours? Save the world?”
Good question. I had so many ideas but no clue what to use my intelligence for. I mean, I had a knack for encrypting and deciphering messages, but for what? The answer to those questions remained in the future. For now, I just liked puzzling and it showed to be successful, because each time, my mom was confounded.
My talents proved to come in handy when I did math at school. I was done with my tests before the others, helped some kids with their homework, and found out the teachers were all impressed by my set of skills.
Still I was considered the odd ball in the school. Other children teased me because I wasn’t well-grounded in a social aspect, and they often said I was trying to be a smarty pants or a know-it-all. I never tried to be that way, but they were just wrong sometimes. That’s not my fault, is it? Either way, whenever they bullied me, I appeared in the same scary black coat next to their bedroom windows, pretending to be a ghost and frightening them to the point that they all talked about it in school.
Entry 3: What Does He Want?
Others have tried to figure out what it is I am after, the ghost, that is. Nobody knew I was the ghost. They all speculated about him or her, but never took me into consideration. Pretty dumb if you ask me. Wasn’t it obvious?
Today I attended class and witnessed a conversation of children who talked about the “black ghost.”
“Did you see him too?” one of the children asked.
“Yes, he appeared in front of my bedroom window and said never to tease anyone. Maybe it’s one of the kids who gets teased a lot in school.”
“Could be, but I wonder what he or she really wants. It’s not clear.”
“Maybe there is no motive. He just wants to scare us.”
“Stupid ghost.”
If only they knew how close to the truth they were. I had no reasons really, besides getting back at those meanies, but I just thought it was fun.
Then I thought of another idea, a way to exploit the situation. Everyone was afraid of me, but I hadn’t even mentioned any demands. What if I could become a modern-day Robin Hood, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor? Or maybe I could make a political point? No… too cliché. The main reason I was doing this was to be different. I was already different, but nobody recognized my art, my obsession with codes and puzzles and mysteries.
So I decided to go to the school library. I walked into the front door and saw the lady behind the desk. She was wearing a grey sweater, glasses, and a quaint hairstyle. “Typical for a librarian,” I thought.
“Excuse me, where do I find books about Egypt?” I asked.
“On the second row to the left,” she said.
“Thank you.”
I walked to that row and found a treasure of books about the ancient Egyptian pyramids. Just as I suspected they looked beautiful. I had heard of the pyramids on TV, but I had never studied them before. They were wonderful, glorious monuments to the fictitious creatures they believed to be gods back then. Whatever their purpose was, they included mazes, booby-traps, and puzzles. Perfect for me, and perfect for my plans.
I read and read all day long, concentrating on the complex structures of the pyramids and becoming more intrigued by the minute.
“Closing time, young man,” the librarian finally said.
I left and went home. Tomorrow was going to be a new day, a better day.
Entry 4: The Special One
Basically, what I really wanted was to make people think. Those simple-minded commoners who all sit in their bubble so comfortably and foolishly… they needed an upgrade of intelligence, and I was going to provide it for them.
I just wanted to be respected, to show that art can be meaningful, but at the same time unpredictable.
Either way, I just leapt up from my bed, ran downstairs, ate breakfast and sprinted out the front door. I arrived at the park and saw grass and trees, lots of them.
Trees… my brother had died because the natural elements combined against him. The tree became his death… his doom. Those perilous plants were about to get controlled.
I went to a remote location and started digging. I dug for hours and came to the root of the tree. It wasn’t a very big tree, but it would do the trick. I waited until it was dark and planted the tree in the middle of the roundabout in town square. However, I made sure all its leaves were plucked, leaving it completely bald and empty to show the world who was in control.
The next day, I went to observe people’s reactions.
“Where did this tree come from?”
“Who put it in the middle of the square? Seems rather strange, don’t you think?”
They didn’t understand. Did I really have to spell everything out for them? The tree signified life, the fact that I moved it meant that we control life… us… as human beings. The exclusion of the leaves meant that death overcomes us all, including my brother.
I sighed. People just didn’t get it. They were too thick.
Time for a new plan. I ran towards the park and dug out another tree. A little girl came by and asked me why I was digging out the tree.
“Mind your own business,” I said.
She looked innocent, so I felt a little guilty and then explained, “So that people will realize their true potential.”
Gladly she accepted my answer and ran off to her mother. I continued to get the tree out of the ground and waited until the evenfall once again. Then I snuck into the city hall and planted the tree in front of the door. It took some digging, and I had to get some of the tiles out of the way, but eventually I managed to do it. It was awesome!
The same scenario from before. I went to watch the crowd again. People were staring at it, digging it out and replacing the pavement… They simply didn’t understand the message I am trying to send them: Even a tree can break into the city hall, which means that authority is nonsense, which means that everyone can make it to the top (even a tree), which means that we have true potential. I was just trying to help people see their worth, but they didn’t appreciate the gesture.
How sad. I wish people made more sense. Look at me, for example… everything I do has a meaning, but so many people go through life without any goals or dreams. It’s a shame.
Entry 5: Pyramid Maze
I could not believe the narrow-minded way that the children in my school were thinking, nor that everyone in the city failed to see the symbolism in my tree-planting efforts. So I decided to take it up a notch. I planned on something more meaningful and more puzzling than I had ever done in my life.
I was going to build a pyramid. A real one, a live one. However, I couldn’t just do it in the middle of the city. That would make people mad. I was set on finding a spot outside the city walls, wherever that could be.
Another thing that entered my mind was the following: People didn’t understand the meaning of my objects because it wasn’t obvious enough. In order to make people connect the dots, you have to guide them from one step to the next. This is exactly what I was going to do.
I went to a remote place. It was on the border of the desert actually. It was silent as the grave. You couldn’t hear anything but the soft wind blowing and whistling a soft, soothing sound whisper. There were more grains of sand than I had ever seen before, and the rocks were heaped up as hills on the edge, the border boundary where the more varied landscape began.
It was a so serene, but the quiet surroundings also had something mysterious to them. A perfect setting for my project.
It had to be intense and fun at the same time; it had to be simple enough for those dumb people to solve but complicated enough to not give it away. I started to build with all my strength, piling rocks and bricks on each other. Cement was readily available by creating it with a few easy methods I learned from books I read.
I built every day. It took me an entire week. It wasn’t just done in a few hours. Every day after school, I left and built the edifice as good as I could, only to return in the evening and hear my mom say I was late for dinner. She didn’t understand what I was trying to do, but she certainly would when it would be finished. I was certain of that.
The more I built, the more ideas entered my mind. I completed the structure and added details, paintings, symbols, and signs on walls, door, and entrances. When it was done, it looked like an ancient pyramid. It was awesome!
I often needed a torch to walk through the hallways that I had built. It was awfully dark in there, but I didn’t mind.
Each day I came back, admiring the work of my hands and the patterns I engraved in the walls and ceilings.
Little did I know that something would go completely wrong…
Entry 6: The Puzzle
That day, we coincidentally discussed the origin of the pyramids. I learned a lot about them, like the fact that they were built as tombs for pharaohs, according to their beliefs and rituals. It represented the descending rays of the sun, and that they were thousands of years old. I was intrigued.
After school, one of the kids I spoke to, talked to me. Her name was Sarah, and she was one of the few who would actually talk to me.
She asked, “Where are you going?”
I slipped. I didn’t want to tell them yet, but I accidentally said, “To the desert.”
I swallowed the rest of my words.
“What are you going to do there?” she asked.
“N-nothing. I am just going to have some fun.”
“What could be fun in the desert?” she said as she walked away, throwing her hands in the air as if I were crazy. “There is nothing to do there.”
That was close. Almost disclosed my secret.
I ran off to the desert, planning my strategy of perfecting my pyramid even further. I came closer and grabbed the torch I left lying on the ground near the main entrance. I lit it on fire and went inside.
The pyramid was more like a maze actually, having dead ends in hallways and symbols leading to trap doors or secret passages. I maneuvered my way through the spaces and came into the main chamber.
This was my jewel, my piece of art. The light entered in a specific way, but it would shine on certain mirrors and crystals you could turn and illuminate the whole room with. Where did I get the crystals and mirrors, you may ask? From my mother’s bedroom of course. We didn’t have much, but at least she had THAT.
When I entered the chamber and contemplated more ways to make the puzzle a challenging mystery, I stepped forward and fell.
“Ouch!”
I neglected to see the hole in the ground that had been there for a longer period of time. I always worked around it, but I forgot that I still hadn’t fixed it yet.
Great. How was I going to get out of there? There was no one to hear me, so I had to do it all by myself.
I climbed a little, but the dusty debris of the surrounding walls crumbled and I fell back on the ground, covering my head to not get too many rocks and grains of sand on me. This was it. I was stuck.
After a while, a mysterious tile in the floor covered up the hole I was in. Oh yes, I forgot about that too… the mechanics I had placed there were designed in such a way to automatically cover up the imperfections in my maze. I didn’t know how to counter those and solve them though. Somebody had to come search for me.
My mom was worried, I heard later. She had asked around and called the police to find out where I was. It never occurred to her to look in the desert.
I had to spend the night in the dark pyramid… in the cold desert. What’s that? You think deserts are hot? Yes, during the day, but if you’ve ever spent the night in one, you know they can be freezing cold at night. I shivered a lot and I didn’t sleep much. It was terrible.
The next morning, or so I was told, my mother had asked the school board if anyone had seen me. The teachers passed the question on to the students, and Sarah said she heard me say I was going to the desert.
That afternoon, I h
eard voices in the distance. Apparently the villagers had gathered around the pyramid and stood in awe looking at my structure.
“Who built this?” the mayor asked.
“No idea,” my mom said.
“We had a lesson in class about pyramids,” Sarah added. “Maybe he got the idea there. But I sure must say it is impressive to build something like this.”
“Okay, let’s go inside,” a police officer said.
They all went inside and were stuck.
“What do these symbols mean?” my mom asked. “They don’t make any sense at all.”
In the meantime, I was screaming, “Help! Save me!”
“That’s my son!” my mom said in panic. “We have to rescue him.”
“Everything will be all right, madam,” the police officer said, calming her down. “We’ll get him out of here in no time.”
It was more easily said than done. They didn’t know what to do. I could have yelled the meaning of my maze symbols to them, but I was more inclined to let them figure it out, just to test out my incredible puzzle.
“Okay, hold on. This formula has a man, a two, and an arrow scribbled on the wall. What does that mean?”
“Ha-ha! Looks more like a girl,” Sarah said.
“I think that is just the way the Egyptians drew those things,” mom said. “They wore those things on their heads. It’s not hair.”
“Either way,” the mayor insisted. “We must understand what it means.”
“Perhaps it means a man has to take to steps and look up?” the police officer suggested.
The others looked at him and he walked to the wall, stepping aside with two steps. He gazed up and saw a handle.
“Aha! See? I am good at this,” he said smilingly as he pulled the lever and opened up a secret door.
