Night Time

I gave up, and soon the both of us were in the living room, with freshly brewed cups of coffee in our hands. It reminded me of how I drowned myself in caffine in order to stay awake for last minute examination preparations. My cousin strolled his way over to the television.

“Don’t switch on that. The rest of the them are sleeping, mind you,” I warned him, recalling the time when my father threw down my radio on the ground, for blasting it during his sleep. Tremendously terrifying.

I got my cousin to chat with me instead. With the coffee keeping us awake, we shared plenty of things; he cracked dirty jokes which he heard from his new school, we debated over topics like whether George Michael is gay, and also came to realize that most Chinese teachers have very weird dialect names. We had such a wonderful time that I have forgot the fact that my cousin is three years my junior, and we meet up once in a blue moon.

My eyes wandered around the room and it came upon my torchlight. An idea came upon me. Strolling over to the torch, I made my cousin switch off the main lights. The room was filled with darkness, with only mild moonlight shining from the balcony.

“Ooo..” I moaned, flashing the torch light upon my face.

“Cool!” My cousin laughed, “You look like an idiot!”

For that insulting remark, he received a hard kick at the stomach. He ended up being the one moaning instead. I shone the torch around the dark house, discovering that my house for like thirteen years of my life could actually be rather creepy at one o’clock in the morning, without much lightning. I felt my hair stand at the back of my head as I flashed the light upon one of the Buddha statues, one of the many religious artefacts which my parents adore.

“Let us explore our house,” I suggested, retrieving another torchlight from the cupboard. I handed it to him.

“Good idea! Let us imagine that this place is some haunted house!” he said.

Switching on the lights, we got for ourselves...