Leaving School

What Happens When You Glimpse Another World

It was so much fun to play with the school. Every day the sun would sparkle and we would go eat eggs from the rocks.

One day, all the water before us became covered by a strange bulging object and the water churned like there was a great storm.

An odd creature appeared out of nowhere holding curiously delightful food. It seemed somehow to reach from above—from another world.

The creature crumbled this marvelous food into small, delectable pieces. It was a taste I had never experienced before. Better than the eggs that we ate every day.

All of us scurried in a frenzy to grab as much of it as we could.

The creature’s long, queer appendages held the morsels between its pincer-like paws.

And there it was. The biggest, most succulent chunk of them all, between the long, slender pincers.

I swam quickly, aggressively, to claim the morsel as my own.

Suddenly, the strange paws grabbed me. I was trapped, then lifted high into the heavens. I could no longer breathe. Barely see. I was alone.

My skin began to tingle. There was a bright light.

I wriggled and wriggled and wriggled trying with all my might to break free from the creature’s grasp.

And in a moment that will always stay emblazoned upon my mind, I escaped the tight pincers, fell through a vacuum. It was all a blur. And then there I was among the school again. They were on their way to eat eggs by the rocks.

I happily joined them.

I never wanted to try exotic foods again. I never wanted to see that bulging object that brought a storm into our world. I promised myself that I’d go far, far away if I ever saw the queer creature’s pincers again.

But the food? Will I ever forget it?

The school asked me if I was okay. I wasn’t sure.

Where had I gone? Had I seen God? An alien?

The others started to treat me differently. Even revere me. I had gone above.

They had seen me leave our world and return.

I wanted to be like them again, but I never could be.

My eyes had been opened to an entirely new universe.

I would always be different.

A story by Pemba Umoja