Chapter 3 {II}

Warning: Triggering content in the chapter, including but not limited to bullying, strangling and pain.

His hand clutched tight at his breast where the coin lay. A look of panic travelled over his face. I reckon it must have passed through his system too.

I imagine you must know how it feels to not want to give up your very precious valuable, especially one that you just recently acquired and had started growing attached to. If you didn't have your share of bullies like most of us did at one point in time at school, then, surely, an elder sibling must have bullied you out of something that was rightfully yours.

So, I think it's safe to assume that you understand how Finian felt. And if my assumption is correct, then you'd also know that he'd be reluctant to give it up, at the expense of his life at the bullies' hands. In the face of danger.

And, unfortunately, his reluctance only served as fuel to Hansel's fire. He picked up our main character by the shirt collar.

All of a sudden, the boy found it hard to breathe. The pull on his shirt had the collar pressing on his neck and choking him. He coughed and frantically grasped at his neck to no effect.

He could hear laughter roll around in the background.

Allow me a side moment to wonder where the teachers were in this noise.

Back to the boy, he gasped around for air and felt pain instead. Since it's also safe to assume not everyone has been choked or almost strangled to death before, I can give a summary of how he passed through.

His head felt heavy and stung with pain from lack of oxygen to it, his eyes strained against the sockets of his eyes as though about to burst any second soon. He could practically hear the blood vessels popping in his brain. His head started to get light by the second.

It was at this point he realized the coin wasn't worth dying for after all. He didn't know if The Bigs were warped enough to commit murder. But they were likely to successfully blame the murder on an accident or something equally not incriminating.

He now wanted to let Hansel know he wasn't resisting anymore. He wanted to pull out the coin from his shirt pocket and hand it over. But he could do neither of them. The pain was just too much. Too loud. He couldn't even make sounds.

He could hear a voice say something. It sounded like a shout. Or shouts. The boy couldn't distinguish for the pain.

Just when he thought he would die for sure, when his vision had gone red and was going a darker shade, his body dropped to the ground. He could numbly feel his body hit the ground, but he wasn't too sure from the pain that blinded his vision and bloated up his nerves, numbing them.

It must have taken him a minute or more before everything finally started to settle back. His hearing and vision came back in echoes before finally settling in balance. His limbs weren't quite recovered though.

Finian Relish was sure he had gone to hell and back.

The poor boy.

'Don't ever question me again,' he heard Hansel saying to one of the members.

He couldn't figure out who, his vision and system balance wasn't fully on a hundred per cent yet for him to move any limbs or muscle.

Then slowly, he felt the head bully bend towards him.

'Gave you quite the scare, eh?' he said, chuckling as if he had given a friend a wedgie in the locker room.

When he continued to bend, Finian flinched numbly, too weak to even move away. But the bully had only bent to pick up a round, shiny thing that lay near his thighs. The coin.

He couldn't even mourn the loss as he watched the bully's smirk grow wide picking up the prize.

'So, it's only this stupid coin?' he said to his gang.

They all murmured their reactions and snickered among themselves.

'A stupid old coin,' someone said.

The coin clattered noisily to the cold marble tiled floors as Hansel dropped it in disgust.

'What a waste of bloody time,' he lamented, annoyed. 'I can't believe I wasted my bloody time because of a cheapshit thing that probably came from a toy gift shop.'

More laughter tumbled around at this. With more sighting remarks on the coin.

'Don't be biting off more than you can chew, yeah?' Hansel slapped his cheek then stood up straight. 'Let's move, guys.'

What happened next is still a bit of a blur to our main character. You can credit that to the fact that his body system wasn't fully recovered from the strangling, or that he dreaded even looking up to watch the departure of the bullies.

The next thing he was aware of was a heavy body hitting the ground with a tremendous thud just near him. Then a horrible high pitched screaming and splattered blood.

Finian later learned that Hansel had slipped on the very coin he had thrown down, lost his balance and had fallen face-first to the ground. Breaking two front teeth and damaging some gums. Plus the angry bruises on his face and a fractured cheekbone.

As a howling Hansel was wheeled out of the school to the ambulance, Finian picked up what was rightfully his and clutched it tight, his whole body shaking from the series of events that had just unfolded.

It was at that moment that his mind got made up and set in concrete. He was sure he had been meant to find that coin the previous day.

Well, at least he was right about one thing, only not as he thought.

Now I can't emphasize enough the gullibility of our main character. I am quite certain another everyday eleven-year-old boy like him wouldn't have jumped to a conclusion about an average coin, however bizarre the markings on it were.

Perhaps, if he hadn't held the coin at such high values, the evil in it wouldn't have manifested in his life. Or come out at all.

But as I already said earlier, what was meant to be was meant to be. And as the story being retold has already taken place, what is left is for the reader to grasp their own lesson from it.