School Boy to Superhero

“School Boy to Superhero” is one of the outstanding stories of the first biannual International Short Story Contest 2018 written by Bharath Sreekumar Menon, Global Indian International School, Singapore.

School Boy to Superhero

I woke up, without even knowing where I was. I saw two giant figures running towards me and I wasn’t even sure if they were humans. The last thing I remembered was when I was in Uncle Morris’s bed. The next thing I know, I’m living my dream, literally. The giant figures were getting closer and they were holding weapons. I stayed in hiding for a while until I suddenly woke up in San Francisco. This had happened multiple times. I had several questions, I knew if I asked Uncle Morris, he would just chuckle and dismiss it. So I decided to ignore it, until this happens again.

Little did I know that by the end of that eventful day, I would be packing with my family and getting ready for a new phase of my life- moving to China.

Anxious, yet excited about the prospect of going to a new school and making new friends, I started my first day of school. I had the most peculiar experience on the first day.

I met two students who looked strangely familiar in spite of this being my first encounter with them. They turned out to be Jake and his twin sister Jenny. It was not long before, my first conversation at school took a mysterious turn. ‘You are one of us’, he said leaving me to wonder what this country had in store for me. China had already surprised me with its wonders- Twins I seem to have a strange connection with, and an innate ability to teleport that I apparently have.

I decided not to tell mom and dad about this, because they would freak out. During lunch I met Jake again, reading minds and hypnotization was his ability and invisibility, his sister’s. His friend, Nick with his tremendous strength was one of us too. Imagine my surprise when, on my first day of school in a new country, I figure out that the four of us: me, Jake, Jenny and his friend Nick were destined to save the world.

The next day I encountered an incident that completely changed my perceptions of the new world I entered. It was only four of us who could see the monsters - the three giant figures in school. Jenny turned invisible and I teleported around the monsters to distract them. Nick threw things at them. Jake predicted the next moves of the monsters. Nick threw a roof and the monsters turned into dust. The next day, in school I found a special map which would lead us to the demonite stone. After a conversation with Nick, I realised this was the root of all monsters. After discussing with Jake and Jenny, we decided to start the journey the next day.

The big day, started with my mom screaming at me for being late. At school, Jake hypnotized the teacher to not mark us absent, then we left for the stone. Jenny was great at geography, so she guided the way. We finally reached a cave with the sign “The demonite stone”. Inside the cave, we saw humans in cages, and a huge monster who was sitting on a throne with others bowing to him. There were millions of them, I wondered how we would take them down. Then I saw a stone and a hammer in a box and guessed it was the demonite stone. Jake hypnotized monsters which made them fall into a pit of lava, Nick threw stones at the monsters, Jenny attacked the monsters, and I teleported to behind the throne. I got shot back to a stone. Once I regained consciousness, I saw Nick and Jake on the floor. Jenny got the stone and ran out of the cave, we followed her. Nick kept hitting the monsters that were coming after us. We forgot something, the hammer. I quickly teleported and got it back. We broke the stone and all the monsters turned to dust.

With an incredibly adventurous life ahead of him, Mike walked back home in anticipation of what lay ahead. After all not every ordinary schoolboy can claim to wake up in china, find his superpower and save the world.