きみょう - Strange, Curious

On my way home today, two things happened.
One of them interesting, and one of them fascinating, intriguing.

I'll start with the interesting one...

On the train, I stand about 95% of the time. (Trains in Melbourne have far more sitting room than standing room, so I stand near the doors)
The trains in Melbourne have, on each side of the door, a glass barrier between the passageway of the door and the seat.
I was facing one of these glass barriers, and I saw something interesting.
Reflected back at me was not an image of myself as I would see in a mirror, but something subtly, but interestingly, different.
Because the glass was transparent, and there wasn't much difference in the light on either side, the reflection wasn't clear. My reflection was more like what someone who didn't know me or care about me might see me as.
My face was obscured. You could see roughly the outline of my eyes and eyebrows, and occasionally my nose, but no more than that. Not enough to identify me by.
You could see the rough outline of my hair, and that it was dark. Brown? Black?
My clothes were relatively obvious - the formal clothes of a private-school boy.
I had a bag on my right shoulder - or was it my left? I couldn't quite remember how a mirror's reflection works.

Either way, that was pretty interesting.
I would have drawn it, but I can't draw to save myself.


As for the intriguing thing:
After I got off the train, I began the short walk home. It's about 10 minutes, depending on how fast I walk.
Just outside of the station, I saw a group of three boys. I recognised two of them.
Now that we're all grown up, everyone's matured to the point of being friendly towards everyone...people are even civil towards me these days.
Except for these two. The only two boys to not have grown up at all, they are still the idiotic rebellious teens they were three years ago.
I'm quite a paranoid person, so I began to imagine that they followed me. Perhaps to take whatever possessions I had on me (I was listening to my iPhone), or just for the entertainment of hurting me.
Either way, I more or less resigned to having all of my stuff taken and myself beaten.
I began to imagine what it might be like.
The first hit, dull, unrealised at first, but slowly beginning to sting. A broken tooth, perhaps, the taste of blood. I spit out both and barely have time to turn back before the second punch. This one knocks me down. I don't have time to put my arms underneath me, and my face hits the pavement with more force than it did the fist. I feel several more teeth breaking, and feel my nose bending to an uncomfortable angle. The pain is worse, now, spreading all through my face in drawn out throbs, along with the sharp pain in my mouth, my tongue and my nose that keeps me from speaking. Warm blood flows from my nose, and I resist the urge to lick it from my top lip as I would water, for fear of further injuring my teeth. The idle thought that my parents spent a fair bit of money correcting my overbite and misaligned teeth with braces and retainers over the past several years flits through my head, before I look up at the trio standing over me.
Some words, I don't quite hear them, and they turn away.
I grab one of the ankles. I realise that I'm smiling.
The one who's ankle I am holding shakes me off, and kicks me in the ribs.
Now I feel the pain in more than just one place.
I would have imagined it to stop hurting after a while, but after the second kick, I realise that the pain will only get worse and worse. I imagine my rib cracking and a razor-sharp fragment piercing my lung, but my breathing doesn't change.
I'm laughing now, and, after a brief look between each other, the group begins to reign down blows upon my still-prone figure.
I feel a rib breaking, and then another.
A nerve is pinched in between a break in my arm, and I cry out in pain, spraying blood onto the pavement which I am face-down upon.
I still laugh. I try and get up, and a horrible cracking noise comes from somewhere. I collapse again.
Laughing still, blood flowing from my mouth, I laugh as I try desperately to grab them somehow, to somehow share the pain that I feel...

That was when I snapped back to reality, and I realise that, although my step hadn't faltered, I had on my face a horrible smile. Most people have had expressions on their face that they can get an idea about the appearance of, just by how it feels to be wearing the face. I had a general idea about the smile that I had, about the crazed eyes that still were half glazed over. The unnatural smile that pulled back my lips into what was more a horrified grimace than anything else.
More intriguing still, I found that I couldn't wipe the smile off my face. I got a very strange look from someone who walked past me, but it took about 5 minutes for me to finally wipe that expression off my face.

I just thought it was interesting...it was probably the first time that I've adopted such a strange expression without realising it.
All from the result of a strange train of thought I was having.

Come to think of it, I haven't actually tried looking in the mirror yet...I wonder if I can reproduce it.