Michelle Yong

As I was deleting files in my laptop, i discovered a piece of essay, half-written. I opened it and read. I thought it was my brother's essay but as i read on, i realised that it was mine. The way of writting is so different from how i write now, much better actually. Then I thought, "people change, and so do their stories."

Here's the essay, despite the half-written form. (i couldn't get myself to finish it.)
It is called "Daylight"

      I watched the sunrise today. Slowly and pleasantly rising from the east, beams of light breaches the atmosphere and reflected by the clouds. As I stood there at the bank of that fishful of lake, I see the reflection of myself crying. Tears rolling off my face and dripping into the calm waters of the lake. A series of waves spread through the lake, slowly fading away. With my hands wrapped across my body, I hugged myself. I calmed myself down but the pictures of his remains in my very mind. The sight of him would break me down but I missed him too much to think of how it ended. Silently, I took a long journey back to my house – simple, wooden, built by him.  

       “I will be leaving now! See you for dinner!”, it was the last words I said to my parents as I leave for work. As usual, I would take a cab and it would travel into a tunnel to get to the other side (the mainlannd). Well, I live in an island not far from the mainland. A tunnel and a bridge connects these two lands. Taking the tunnel would seem as a wiser choice as traffic jam is less hectic down there. However, the minds of many will change and lives will be traumatised forever including mine on this very day. As the cab decides to travel into the tunnel, a bad instictious feeling struck me. Ignoring that, I looked out of the window and surprisingly I saw a man who took my heart away years ago. He was driving in the very same car as he last did. The man is my boyfriend who stayed close to me. Madly in love, we had a dream of having a cabin built specially for us.  

I smiled at him and moved on with our day. Annoyed with the jam, many started honking and rage could be felt even from inside the cab. All of a sudden, a loud sound of a crack could be heard. The tunnel fell into a pindrop silence. Many looked around, confused. Minutes later, the concretes of the roof of each end of the tunnel fell. The underwater tunnel which is supported by concrete is under a lot of pressure. Without an exit, people started to panic and ran to the exit. As I wanted to do that, a loud explosion could be heard at the ends of the tunnel. Nobody walked out of it. Afraid, very few survivors gathered and asked for an exit. Tension builds among and in them. Fear gathers in every corner of the collapsing tunnel. Beyond the chaos and fear, suddenly a man emerged from a underground where the ventilation fan is. Among the midst, he,latura brought us hope. We picked ourselves up and walked to him. We demanded to use that way to get out but he broke our hope and told us that the ventilation fans cannot be stopped because it is our only source of oxygen. He took charge of things and started looking for ways to go out. In my mind I thought, “What a brave man he is. He comes to our aid without knowing a real way out of this fragile tunnel”. All followed him to where he leads. He brainstormed and squeezed his brain juice to get us out of there.

       Without knowing what is the condition of the tunnel, we continued our little journey out of this tunnel. Suddenly, a part of the tunnel collapsed due to the high water pressure above the tunnel. Water gushed in like water being poured into a glass, slowly filling up the tunnel with water and thus drowning us. Mr. Latura asked us to get on top of cars and get out of the water to prevent hypothermia. As he efforts to save us from the danger of drowning, he tried to stop the inflow of water by planting explosives into a part of the tunnel to prevent further water entrance.