The Five Men in Black

There was no breeze in the air that afternoon on the streets of Pelangi, nor any hint that a thunderstorm was on its way to ravage the little town; just the typical Malaysian hot weather casting its charm over the lands of Johor.

Zahid Dolah shifted the bag on his shoulders and prepared to cross the road. This road, as he knew it, was a dangerous place to be at, due to the number of accidents that had occurred throughout the years. He looked at his watch and cursed the unrelenting traffic. He was late for tuition, again.

There were neither pedestrian crossings nor overhead bridges to aid his goal of crossing the busy road. He waited for another moment, before finally giving up. Turning his back to the road, he decided to have lunch before mounting another attempt to conquer that road filled with never-ending traffic.

As he passed by a shop, his peripheral vision detected something that made him do a double take. It was a pencil. An unusual pencil, one that has a curved plastic handle and which is double the length of any ordinary pencil. It was a dream come true for Zahid, for a pencil that special would garner him the attention he craved so much.

All of a sudden, he heard a dull thud of metal on flesh. Zahid, too absorbed in his thoughts, did not think much about it until he turned around and saw a crowd gathering at the side of the road.

Not even pausing for a second to think, he rushed to the place where the crowd was forming. There lay a woman, in her mid-forties, whose consciousness was deteriorating fast. One moment she was able to moan for her son, and then she couldn't do anything but to mutter incomprehensible words to herself.

The woman's son, a teenager about the age of Zahid, was kneeling helplessly at the side of his mother. He had a few scratches here and there, but he looked unscathed otherwise. He was shocked though, judging by the expression on his face. Another old lady say by the side of the road, supporting a bruised leg.

The crowd was getting bigger by the minute, but nobody seemed to know what to do. Zahid's tears came running down his face. He could not help it. And then he saw them.

They came with pageantry, with a kind of beauty.

It was the kind of scene in which the slow motion technology would be used in Hollywood to maximise the emphasis on the importance of these people. Confidence was evident in their gait, and Zahid knew at once, that the injured women would be saved.

With a commanding tone, the one who seemed to be the leader told the crowd to not panic. To quote him, ' We know what we are going to do. Please step back so to let us do our jobs well.'

The leader delegated jobs to his friends and they sped off without further ado. Concentration etched on his face, he bent down and tapped the semiconscious woman's shoulders,' Sir, sir, are you alright?'

There was a minimal amount of laughter. In his haste to help the woman, he addressed her inappropriately by mistake. However, despite his blunder, firmness was present in his help for the woman so nobody laughed out loud.

Zahid was really impressed with him. He could never make such a blunder and yet continue what he was doing with a straight face. He turned his attention to the rest of the men in black.

A guy with really small eyes was talking to a phone. That's it! Why didn't Zahid think of that!? Calling an ambulance was within his means but he had panicked and didn't know what to do. There was a bespectacled guy who looked like Harry Potter carrying a first aid kit box, sprinting out from the school opposite the road at a breakneck speed. Zahid could have done that too.

Zahid was impressed beyond words. They really knew what they were doing.

Following that, the five men were all over the place, helping the victims clean their wounds. Bandaging the exposed injuries. Judging by their voices, they could only be fifteen or sixteen years old! How did they know how to do such things which most adults don't know of?

Just then, the semiconscious woman threw up. The leader gave a sharp bark of command and all his members were at his side at once. They turned her sideways and wiped away the discharged from her mouth. Her condition improved a little just then, and her eyelids fluttered. The son, clearly still in a state of shock, scrambled to her side at once. Relief filled his face, and he told her to hang in there.

The ambulance arrived about twenty minutes after the call was made, by which Zahid was feeling rather impatient. The way the paramedics lifted the semiconscious woman was extremely rough and showed the level of care they have for the woman was miserable. In fact, the leader of the Men in Black protested and offered to place the woman onto the stretcher but the paramedics didn't care and just lifted the woman indifferently.

As the other female victim went off to a nearby clinic, and the son went on the ambulance with his mother, the crowd dispersed off gradually. A few people congratulated the five men and shook their hands. Zahid wanted to do so as well; however, the leader shouted that they were late and they jogged off, leaving Zahid with the regret of not being knowledgeable enough to help them, yet.

And so Zahid promised himself, one day, one day, he will be able to work alongside the five men in black. And he will be working hard, waiting for that day to come.