Light-headed

The last exam paper was finally over and done with. Yes, finally. Just a few moments ago I had been freezing inside my classroom, succumbing to the chilly winds of the air-conditioner, my hand trembling as I wrote each sentence.

It felt good to be free.

It was as though I had just been released from a two-week jail sentence that seemed to last for eternity. At last I could unload all the information I had spent the last sleepless nights memorising. I felt light-headed, as if everything had been wrung out dry, like how you would squeeze the excess water out of a damp towel or rag..

But I wasn’t feeling as happy as I should have. Despite the imminent joy of knowing that there were no more papers to be sat for or essays to be written, I knew that I had bungled up my last paper, for it was an extremely difficult one. I had a premonition that I was going to fail, and it seemed to stick with me even as I left the classroom. It was that feeling of guilt deep down inside, biting your stomach and stalking your shadow. Nevertheless, I tried to shake it off.

I made my way out of the school gate, passing students with smiles and expressions of joy adorned on their faces. I just wanted to get home as soon as possible and wipe the thought of all the examinations clean off my mind, just as I had done so to all that information.

I seemed to be lighter. It was that common feeling one felt after the last exam paper. It just seemed empty – that space between my ears.

I started flagging for a taxi.

In less than five minutes, a vacant taxi stopped for me. My lucky day, I thought, for I rarely managed to get a taxi so quickly. But the moment I entered the taxi, I realised I wasn’t as lucky as I thought I was.

Staring at me from the driver’s seat was a pale, bony face with ghastly features. It was as if his skin was tightly wrapped around his bones with no flesh in between – just hollow spaces at the cheeks. His eyes glanced at me eerily, surveying me head-to-toe. The hair that drooped from his scalp was grey, thin and dishevelled. And that said a lot as there really wasn’t much hair to start with.

“To where?” the cold, drawling voice said roughly.

“Upper Thomson Road,” I replied hastily and shut the door, fastening my seat-belt. The driver gave a rudimentary nod and stepped on the exhaust pedal.

The speed at which he was driving could almost have killed me, or so I felt. If not for the fact that I had already fastened my seat-belt, I might have just flown forward and crashed against the front seat.

“Slower, please,” I begged. He seemed to stifle a grin, from what I could see in the mirror, and at once the taxi seemed to slow down. “Thank you,” I said, and closed my eyes.

I just needed to rest. That sudden jerk of what was probably a hundred kilometres per hour or so had made me feel dead nauseous in an instant. I did not enjoy fast car rides, just as I hated roller coasters. Not as much adrenaline as others, perhaps.

I also didn’t want to look at the reflection of the taxi-driver’s face in the mirror, those menacing, bloodshot eyes seemingly fixated at me. But closing my eyes didn’t help much, for the face that had been captured so vividly when I first got into the taxi was floating my empty head, full of space to store new information.

In a few a minutes, the taxi came to a stop. Red light, I guessed. That was quite a break. But before I could actually savour that stationery moment, the taxi sped off again with another jerk. I was getting irritated. The feeling of my head being extremely light didn’t make things any better.

I opened my eyes slightly just so I could see the speedometer. The thin, red arrow pointed to “60”. 60 kilometres per hour. That was considered slow. Just what was with me?

I looked ahead and saw the beginning of an expressway. Chances were that the taxi-driver was going to rise to speeds ranging from 80 to a hundred kilometres per hour. If I couldn’t even stand a mere 60, what was 80 going to be like? I stared blankly at the front seat.

There was seriously something wrong with me, I knew it. I just felt too light. Or was it light-headed?

As I felt the speed of the taxi gradually increasing, I felt myself – or mainly my head – swaying back and forth violently. I could not take this any longer. Acids were rising from my stomach almost as quickly as the taxi was moving.

I wanted to scream and tell the taxi-driver to halt, but I felt too sick to do so, my head still empty as ever. Everything was spinning around at breakneck speed and going blank. My feather-light head swayed vigorously, and I desperately closed my eyes, feeling utmost dizziness and nausea to the highest degree. This was like a horror roller coaster ride on the highway, and I didn’t like that idea.

And then it happened. It was like a mini-explosion that happened suddenly without any prior notice. My limp body seemed to be strangled by the seat-belt, which actually saved my life, for I might have just been flung forward but the sheer force of the collision. I still felt like vomiting.

And then I knew that it was my overly-light head that had caused me to feel nauseous even at 60 kilometres per hour, let alone the 100 kilometres per hour that the taxi had been travelling at just seconds ago. The crash summed everything up – the vulnerability of my feather-light head and all.