… I wish I had done it the other way.

This is a story I wrote. It's not a true story.

Last Sunday, a group of friends and I wanted to catch a 3 o’clock movie at Alor Setar Mall. A new movie had just been released, and we wanted to be the first in town to watch it. But first, we had to pick Shuang from her apartment.

We headed up to the 14^th floor as her apartment was on that floor. After much chit-chatting at her place and a few drinks, we headed down to the car. We pressed the button to call the elevator up to take us down to the ground floor. Suddenly, the electricity just went out! Irritated, we headed to the emergency staircase.

After going down 9 levels of stairs, to our dismay, we found out that we couldn’t go down any further. The stairs was under maintaince. The cement of the stairs was still wet and we couldn’t use it. Navine, who was quick to express his anger, cursed those in charge of making the repairs, saying that they were irresponsible as they did not prepare another route for people living on the apartment to get down. Zhean Wei, who was always full of ideas, devised a plan for us to get down.

One of his brilliant ideas was to sling down a rope from the fifth floor and each of us would slid down onto the bottom. Another idea he thought of was to get some sort of material, and use it as a slide so that we could slide down the wet cement part of the stairs. Out of the 8 of us, 6 of us agreed to slid down the rope, while the other 2 were afraid, and said that it was very dangerous without safety precautions.

The 6 of us, found some rope, and Zhean Wei slid down the rope first, and he got down safely to the ground floor. But still, the 2 weren’t convinced that it was safe. Slowly, one by one, each of us slid down. When it reached by turn, I was slightly nervous. I was afraid of heights! What will happen if the rope suddenly snapped? But still, not waiting to be labeled a “coward”, I slowly climbed over the wall and slid down the rope. When I was about 3 floors away from the ground, the rope snapped! And there was I, clinging onto the pipe that was stuck onto the wall. Those on the ground floor helpless and shouted for me not to let go and they would get help. I was so scared, and wanted to faint. The other two who wanted to build the slide were already with them because they had some a long plank and slid past the wet cement. I wished I had done it the other way!