The boy watched terrified from the crowd as it made its way towards the group. The boy was convinced that it was not human, as its nose was red and round, resembling a beetle he had seen earlier that day, and its skin was dead white. The boy was especially afraid of its smile, which was painted and fake. The thing turned towards the boy and called for him. The boy tried to seek refuge behind his friends, but failed, as they laughed and urged him forward. The thing called for him again, this time the boy inched his way towards the front.
The boy's heart began to race as he made his way towards the thing, and he was convinced that its smile was growing increasingly larger. The boy stopped and tried to turn around, but his friends wouldn't allow it. In the end, the boy was standing next to the thing, not knowing what to expect. The boy watched as the thing turned towards him and held out a flower, but he made no response. The thing pushed the flower closer to the boy, but the boy didn't budge. The boy could feel his legs trembling as the thing put the flower close to the boy's face and started to laugh. FWOOSH. A stream of water gushed from the flower and hit the boy's face. All he could hear around him was the sound of laughter.
When the boy opened his eyes, he had realized that he was no longer a child, but a teen seated among a laughing crowd. There had been tears falling from the teen's eyes, but they were not painful tears. The teen was confused. He sat up straight in an attempt to find the source of this happiness.
The source appeared to be a short, brown man standing on the main stage. The teen felt bad for the man who was getting laughed at by hundreds of people, yet the man seemed happy himself. The man just kept on talking and the crowd kept on laughing. Suddenly, the lights faded, and the man walked off stage. The teen's sympathy for the man had just gone up, as it appeared that he had given up. The crowd was no longer laughing, and was only clapping, as if to raise the man's self-esteem. The teen gloomily got up and joined the rush at the exits. People were pushing and shoving all around the teen in an attempt to force their way out of the building.
When the crowd finally dispersed, the teen found himself as a young child all alone in the mall. The child had no idea what was going on, or where to go. He could see his parents in the distance, yet he had no desire to walk towards them. They seemed upset, as if they had lost something, and they would probably yell at him if he somehow upset them even more. The child took a seat on a bench and watched from the distance, as his parents scurried to and from different stores. His parents seemed to remind him of the ants in the movie 'A Bug's Life', always working and never resting. The ants in the movie only stopped working so hard when the Warrior Bugs defeated their oppressors. Maybe the child's parents needed a hero like the Warrior Bugs, and he, the child, could be that hero.
The child made his way over to his parents, who had just come out of another store, and called for them. The child's mother turned around to see her lost child walking towards her, and ran towards him. The child's plan had worked. His parents had stopped working so hard and walked with him, hand-in-hand, out of the crowded mall. Somewhere in the distance, security alarm went off.
-Arshdeep
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