The bell jingles like a police siren, prompting Peter to grind his teeth and hop into the yellow door.
“That’s not a school uniform!” yells Mr Ngora, pouring bubbling tea on the boy’s pus-leaking blisters. Immediately, he spanks Peter with a horsewhip for wearing his naked feet.
“I’ll sketch whip marks on your face,” he shouts, smacking kisses on the sjambok. His roof-blowing remarks force the pupils to chew their fingernails and pop their ballooned eyes at the teacher.
In sixth period, Peter tiptoes into class and dumps Vaseline on his blistering feet.
“Wipe the chalkboard!” says Mr Ngora, squeezing a yellow piece of chalk between his fingers as if it were a cigarette.
In response, Peter drags his feet towards the green board, and the teacher measures the river-deep cracks on his heels using a ruler.
“Where are your shoes?” Mr Ngora asks before the class captain presses the skin-pinching whip into the teacher’s hands. This time, Peter hugs the desk and locks his tear-drowning eyes as the whip lashes his bums.
Suddenly, Mr Ngora swings the whip, but it coils around the ceiling-hanging fan. The harder he pulls the python-skin whip, the more sparks flash like lightning from the flame-smelling cables.
“Unknot my whip!” the teacher says, rubbing his magic teaching tool, the rod. In a blink, Peter peels the horsewhip from the ceiling and dashes to the hostel.
That starry night, Peter wraps himself in nylon bags and presses his nose to the wall.
Then, he dreams about a box of black shoes with the scent of genuine leather itching his nose.
First, he rubs the box and rolls the cans of black kiwi polish. Afterwards, he folds shoe-shining cloths. Then he picks the blue cloth and clicks the shoe polish. Later, he dips a finger into the black wax and sniffs it.
Then he scoops the shoes from the box, while his blinking eyes hunt for size number 11. Soon his friends grab their sizes and toss the empty box towards him. “They didn’t pack size 11,” he snorts, punching the box.
In fact, he punches the wall and stirs up his snoring roommates, who blow the whistle and rescue the cracking wall from a first-round knockout.
Thereafter, Peter spots another box in the corner. This time, he litters the genuine leather shoes on the floor. Luckily, he snatches a single pair of size 11, but without shoelaces and an outsole. Instantly, his roommates nudge him with elbows, while teasing the slimy saliva drooling from his jaws.
In the end, Mr Ngora jingles the school bell and presents Peter with a pair of Grasshoppers, together with a can of wax polish for scoring full marks in the essay, ‘My dream shoes.’
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