Memories About My Friend

“Kang, over here!” Dylan, my best friend, called me when I was looking for my friends after my mother had sent me to the railway station and left with her “5-years old” car. Aware of the sound, my eyes immediately darted to him and then the other chums. Suddenly, a grin of happiness flitted across my face. We had already planned to have a cycling activity at the Taman Botani Negara a few days ago as soon as the previous examination ended. And finally the day had come. Using the tickets we had bought, we boarded the train that came with anticipation, which would lead us to the destination.

It was our first time visiting the place and we were not familiar with it yet. It would not be a problem as it was just located a stone throw’s away from the railway station we had arrived at. To ride bicycles, we had to rent from the bicycle shop and the rental was RM10.00 per hour. Not to mention, any accidental damage to the auxiliary parts of the bicycle would be taken into charges based on particular parts being impaired. When we were all set, we rode to the hill. I was then unexpectedly reminded of the advice from my mother. “Kang, be careful when you pedal on the hills. Beware of cars and cliffs especially. Once you slipped off from the cliff, you are dead. Your bones will be fractured into pieces.”

All along the road, I always stayed cycling at the side of the road with walls rather than on the other side with cliffs. As a judicious man, I reminded them about it too. The day was cloudy and I expected everything would be fine. The roads were in well condition. The birds greeted us with tweets as we progressed. We swiftly dodged every oncoming cars and bikers. We were simply tranquilized by the fragrant scent from the foliage of trees. Ohhh…the air was so refreshing! When we had reached halfway, we stopped for awhile at the billboard to look at the map and we took pictures together with the help of a passerby biker. It was that very last and precious moment when I took pictures with Dylan that we encountered a terrible nightmare. It was a painful memory. It kept haunting me in my dream almost every single night that I would eventually wake up drenching in sweat and my face flooded with plenty of tears.

When we continued our cycling, Dylan and I began to set our eyes on each other when I challenged him on a race. “Sure, let’s do it,” he thoughtlessly accepted my challenge. That was when things began to go wrong. We thrillingly spurred on the road, leaving behind the rest of our friends without even knowing the dangers awaiting us. Our friends repeatedly shouted at us so many times, “Wait guys, slow down!”, “Don’t go too fast!”, “Stop racing!”, but we stubbornly ignored them like mules. We were almost at the same speed and position all the time until when we were about to reach the end, I got passed him. And in the end I arrived first. “Woohoo! Yeah! I won! Hahahaha…” I showed off my pride over the glory I got and when I looked back, he was not there! I was shocked. Where was Dylan?

Immediately, I went back searching for him but to no avail. How could this be? Not long later, my other friends arrived and I asked them about his whereabouts. To my dismay, they could not find him. We were puzzled and worried about Dylan. Then we thought he may have fallen from the cliffs and we began searching for him. Out of the blue, I found a glittering object down the cliffs. The object seemed to be a bicycle and indeed it was where he was! We quickly climbed down the cliff carefully to avoid falling. He was there, lying down unconscious on his stomach, but with a tiger! To my horror, the tiger was mercilessly tearing his body piece by piece. There was blood all over his body. Using all our might, we stomped and shouted together towards the tiger and managed to scare it away.

However, he was bleeding profusely and about to die. The chance for him to be saved was little. I held him and cried, “Dylan, don’t go now. The ambulance is arriving soon. You have to wait! Please, Dylan!” I tried as hard as I could to give him moral support but at that moment he closed his eyes, I knew that he had passed away. We were all saddened by the death of Dylan. We were informed that the tiger had fled from a lorry carrying a lot of animals in cages when it accidentally skidded it down the cliff at a turn and now it had been caught. I kept blaming myself that I was the cause of this tragedy. It was my entire fault. I regret for what I have done. Because of me, my best friend, Dylan, hadvanished off from this world. He will always be in the memories of my heart.