Maggie Cambri was depressed from the previous events inside her home. There she was, sitting in a rocking chair like an old woman in her 90’s. She was staring blankly through the thin air with grim images running over the other, her head chilled by the emptiness inside her soul making her growling stomach a bitter-sweet melody reminding her of being alive.
She just signed the divorce paper so her husband could go to that gorgeous receptionist downstairs who walked with her breasts and talks with her legs, her son was in jail for smoking weed, and her baby, mere 5 months, just pooped on the carpet. What could it do? It was still a baby. But there was something dark lurking on Maggie’s mind as she looked down on the soiled carpet. It was the color of the ground when her mother was buried for good. She was young, so young to notice that his father was rejoicing her death, just like her husband with the blonde if she and her baby died, with their son rotting in prison. Upon thinking of such morbidity, she was convinced to take actions of such images she kept seeing in her head. She stood up and dragged the baby from the carpet and threw it out of the window. From tht night on, she never heard it cry.
Showing posts with label fiction. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fiction. Show all posts
Untoward Incident
Violets. Since Gary knew that they were my favorite, he used this to compensate for every Thursdays and Fridays that he spent his life away from mine, until one afternoon when he suddenly felt that we needed to be together more often. Since then everytime he came after school, we see to it that a day wouldn't pass that we hadn't kissed. And since there's nothing like youth to urge deeper bodily attractions, we set every Saturday night feeding this juvenile desire after sneaking inside St. Peter's gymnasium when the clock struck midnight.
I was so naive a girl that everything he said was true. Every word that came right from his mouth resembled like a drop of honey for a deprived child. And somehow, as time gradually faded to years, and years to decades, a sliver of light came through my vision and slowly crawled into my conciousness. Our marriage would still last a lifetime without a faithful partner and a loving wife. And our children, Melissa and Justine, would still live like normal children without a joyful light to guide as they face their approaching maturity.
From the day that Gary casually told me he had an affair with a woman named Carla, an attractive, bright personnel from our children's school, the silence hadn't been in any position to falter the conversation. My chest bursted out with only a bag of air coming through my throat. From then on, everything was lost. Within seconds, I built a wall against the romantic disillusionment that every broken wife was inclined to embrace. We was a hog that was running away, never would its head turn back.
It was all gone except the occasional intimacy we shared everynight with a cold and damp emptiness. Though I never let disgust pollute my thoughts for the fact that he was still my husband, and we were united by the sanctity of God. I just moved around the house like a rodent, scavenging for leftovers, because by this I know that he would realize how much he had done all of us wrong to turn a house upside down.
One night, a month after his untoward revelation, a month after the pain that marked and seared my soul, came another blow that would take a longer time to heal. As I came home that evening from work, I swung the door open and saw him dragging a mouthful of smoke from his cigarette. I was trembled, witnessing Gary as he turned into something unrecognizable.
"You shouldn't be smoking here," I said. And to emphasize my shocked displeasure for he used to abhor smoking inside the house especially for Justine, I walked past him near enough to drag wind across his face.
"You shouldn't care," he replied darkly with this voice that I would never forget.
My feet were glued on the floor and my eyes bulged, and an unexplainable scalding material ran through my veins. I turned and looked at him which later on I regret because of the words he threw in return.
"We're married but that doesn't mean I couldn't be on my own." My knee weakened. It sounded like he threw away all of our life together, although that wasn't what he meant. But he spoke like it was so easy for him to do.
"And you're in my house," he added. He continued sucking that mouthful of smoke from his stick.
But I didn't want it to end there. It took me a moment to turn around and walk towards his direction. Slowly. And then I slapped him in the face. After the cigarette he was holding flew across the tiled floor, he raised his hand to return my gesture, but it didn't happen. Instead, I continued staring at him. I glared at him to vent out my utmost anger, disgust, ill-will, and the most unspeakable curses that a woman could convey with the lenses of her eyes; enough to give him nightmares everynight he spent with another woman and the night he spent with me while preoccupied by other woman's breasts. I looked at him like a raging monster.
After a while, my emotions were subdued. With his hand still in the air, I said,"The dinner would be in a while." I walked away, and therefrom went uptairs, shove the door closed, and cried. That night, there had been no dinner.
It had been a deep, cold one. The sheets were damp, and the pillows were wet. It had been a question that I hadn't been dehydrated because I managed to pack up my things without craving for a glass of water from the refrigerator.
Gary was at his nightshift, managing a food shop and serving nocturnal people. The whole house was unusually dark for no one would usually be responsible upon turning the lights off. I continued walking over each tiles with uttermost silence. I wouldn't want my children being awaken from the wee hours of night. I could just tell them about this tomorrow after school so I just plodded across the stairs to check on them.
Several steps passed and I was about to grab the knob when something clicked behind my head. From that point, I froze, and sob tearlessly after hearing my husband speak, "You wouldn't leave us until I say so."
"So you will kill me?" I dared him. I was no longer sobbing, but deep inside I was starting to fall. I was still standing there in the dark, facing the wall, imagining the pistol we bought ready on his hand.
"I wouldn't hesitate once you step closer to that door."
I cried silently. I could feel fluid running down my nose, as well as my pants. "Because you have Carla."
I started crying audibly when he grabbed my neck and dragged me across the floor. I almost crawled to keep up. The bag that I was holding fell in the carpet with an absorbent thud.
"Please, Gary! Don't let your children see you doing this."
"I dont care." He started pulling me by hair, dragging me further upstairs, into our children's room.
I pleaded, but he didn't seem to care.
I pleaded again, and he grabbed my hair even tighter while I was almost on my fours.
"Jason, you son of a b----! Wake up!" He called up and kicked the door open.
In one loud attempt, their faces were revealed. I tried to smile like a crazy woman but their faces were still masked by potential madness. My head was bent grotesquely.
Pulling me further inside the room, our Justine spoke, stammering with fear, dripping with tears and perspiration. "Papa, no. Papa." He was cowering at the furthest corner of the bed beside Melissa who was covering her ears.
"Gary!" I screamed. "Gaary! You're killing your children!"
He pulled me up by the hair like a rabbit. The dread of the night came a step closer to my conciousness. A shot reverberated through the room, and might as well through the neighborhood. At first, I couldn't understand. My sight momentarily blurred like I was about to pass out. I didn't budge. I dared not to move lest a slight movement would dismantle everything. Time slowly dragged me away, into a place that was both dark and blinding.
"Drink your milk."
"Not again, mom," Justine protested as he hid under the blanket.
"C'mon, don't make your papa come here," I said. "Melissa, your milk."
I turned to Melissa. "I thought you want a beautiful skin."
"I could use a moisturizer," she reasoned out. "With milk."
Then at the door materialized my husband. I looked at his hair and fell in love again.
"What's up here?"
"They wouldn't drink their milk," I said, fixing their bed while the two pretended to sleep.
"Well, don't bother them. Let's sleep."
With another wasted batch of milk in my hands, I waited for him outside as he turned off the light and closed the door behind him. We kissed.
When I woke up, I was in the hospital. But I was too weak to remain awake. The second time I woke up they said Justine died as the bullet came straight through his brain, but it didn't bother me at all or made me looked at the person who was speaking. Among the indistinct chatter, the depressing fog of sympathies, or the distant ringing of beaconing bells, I was focused on the fresh young violets that were crumbling and bleeding on the nearby window.
I wished I never woke up.
I was so naive a girl that everything he said was true. Every word that came right from his mouth resembled like a drop of honey for a deprived child. And somehow, as time gradually faded to years, and years to decades, a sliver of light came through my vision and slowly crawled into my conciousness. Our marriage would still last a lifetime without a faithful partner and a loving wife. And our children, Melissa and Justine, would still live like normal children without a joyful light to guide as they face their approaching maturity.
From the day that Gary casually told me he had an affair with a woman named Carla, an attractive, bright personnel from our children's school, the silence hadn't been in any position to falter the conversation. My chest bursted out with only a bag of air coming through my throat. From then on, everything was lost. Within seconds, I built a wall against the romantic disillusionment that every broken wife was inclined to embrace. We was a hog that was running away, never would its head turn back.
It was all gone except the occasional intimacy we shared everynight with a cold and damp emptiness. Though I never let disgust pollute my thoughts for the fact that he was still my husband, and we were united by the sanctity of God. I just moved around the house like a rodent, scavenging for leftovers, because by this I know that he would realize how much he had done all of us wrong to turn a house upside down.
One night, a month after his untoward revelation, a month after the pain that marked and seared my soul, came another blow that would take a longer time to heal. As I came home that evening from work, I swung the door open and saw him dragging a mouthful of smoke from his cigarette. I was trembled, witnessing Gary as he turned into something unrecognizable.
"You shouldn't be smoking here," I said. And to emphasize my shocked displeasure for he used to abhor smoking inside the house especially for Justine, I walked past him near enough to drag wind across his face.
"You shouldn't care," he replied darkly with this voice that I would never forget.
My feet were glued on the floor and my eyes bulged, and an unexplainable scalding material ran through my veins. I turned and looked at him which later on I regret because of the words he threw in return.
"We're married but that doesn't mean I couldn't be on my own." My knee weakened. It sounded like he threw away all of our life together, although that wasn't what he meant. But he spoke like it was so easy for him to do.
"And you're in my house," he added. He continued sucking that mouthful of smoke from his stick.
But I didn't want it to end there. It took me a moment to turn around and walk towards his direction. Slowly. And then I slapped him in the face. After the cigarette he was holding flew across the tiled floor, he raised his hand to return my gesture, but it didn't happen. Instead, I continued staring at him. I glared at him to vent out my utmost anger, disgust, ill-will, and the most unspeakable curses that a woman could convey with the lenses of her eyes; enough to give him nightmares everynight he spent with another woman and the night he spent with me while preoccupied by other woman's breasts. I looked at him like a raging monster.
After a while, my emotions were subdued. With his hand still in the air, I said,"The dinner would be in a while." I walked away, and therefrom went uptairs, shove the door closed, and cried. That night, there had been no dinner.
It had been a deep, cold one. The sheets were damp, and the pillows were wet. It had been a question that I hadn't been dehydrated because I managed to pack up my things without craving for a glass of water from the refrigerator.
Gary was at his nightshift, managing a food shop and serving nocturnal people. The whole house was unusually dark for no one would usually be responsible upon turning the lights off. I continued walking over each tiles with uttermost silence. I wouldn't want my children being awaken from the wee hours of night. I could just tell them about this tomorrow after school so I just plodded across the stairs to check on them.
Several steps passed and I was about to grab the knob when something clicked behind my head. From that point, I froze, and sob tearlessly after hearing my husband speak, "You wouldn't leave us until I say so."
"So you will kill me?" I dared him. I was no longer sobbing, but deep inside I was starting to fall. I was still standing there in the dark, facing the wall, imagining the pistol we bought ready on his hand.
"I wouldn't hesitate once you step closer to that door."
I cried silently. I could feel fluid running down my nose, as well as my pants. "Because you have Carla."
I started crying audibly when he grabbed my neck and dragged me across the floor. I almost crawled to keep up. The bag that I was holding fell in the carpet with an absorbent thud.
"Please, Gary! Don't let your children see you doing this."
"I dont care." He started pulling me by hair, dragging me further upstairs, into our children's room.
I pleaded, but he didn't seem to care.
I pleaded again, and he grabbed my hair even tighter while I was almost on my fours.
"Jason, you son of a b----! Wake up!" He called up and kicked the door open.
In one loud attempt, their faces were revealed. I tried to smile like a crazy woman but their faces were still masked by potential madness. My head was bent grotesquely.
Pulling me further inside the room, our Justine spoke, stammering with fear, dripping with tears and perspiration. "Papa, no. Papa." He was cowering at the furthest corner of the bed beside Melissa who was covering her ears.
"Gary!" I screamed. "Gaary! You're killing your children!"
He pulled me up by the hair like a rabbit. The dread of the night came a step closer to my conciousness. A shot reverberated through the room, and might as well through the neighborhood. At first, I couldn't understand. My sight momentarily blurred like I was about to pass out. I didn't budge. I dared not to move lest a slight movement would dismantle everything. Time slowly dragged me away, into a place that was both dark and blinding.
"Drink your milk."
"Not again, mom," Justine protested as he hid under the blanket.
"C'mon, don't make your papa come here," I said. "Melissa, your milk."
I turned to Melissa. "I thought you want a beautiful skin."
"I could use a moisturizer," she reasoned out. "With milk."
Then at the door materialized my husband. I looked at his hair and fell in love again.
"What's up here?"
"They wouldn't drink their milk," I said, fixing their bed while the two pretended to sleep.
"Well, don't bother them. Let's sleep."
With another wasted batch of milk in my hands, I waited for him outside as he turned off the light and closed the door behind him. We kissed.
When I woke up, I was in the hospital. But I was too weak to remain awake. The second time I woke up they said Justine died as the bullet came straight through his brain, but it didn't bother me at all or made me looked at the person who was speaking. Among the indistinct chatter, the depressing fog of sympathies, or the distant ringing of beaconing bells, I was focused on the fresh young violets that were crumbling and bleeding on the nearby window.
I wished I never woke up.
Hidden Pasture
On that field of Tayug, Pangasinan, there were thick beds of lush greens that attracted every passer by to lay their backs on and feel free to enjoy the cushion of these blessed grasses of the north. There were Maya birds perching and laying their eggs on the top of occasional acacias that stood like frozen human beings glued on the colossal green carpet. Near the center point of the breathtaking horizon, one of the small trees has fallen on its side, richly coated by dark sap that was like mud dried after a strong storm since three days ago. A teenager’s decomposing remain corrupted beyond peaceful recognition, missing for more than 3 days. His name was Joseph.
Before the typhoon Trining struck Region I, the house was bothered since my brother hadn’t come home past eleven that evening. My mother couldn’t help from being worried. She asked distant neighbors at the middle of their sleep about his last whereabouts. She was once informed that one of his friends, kuya Lito, had seen my brother flirting with a girl at the nearby basketball court one o’clock in the afternoon. And beside that, no one had seen him again.
A sullen morning drizzled with the news that a boy was missing. Baranggay tanods started visiting someone’s house here and there, asking all the people we knew, all for receiving Wala po eh at the end. I could just imagine their stares and mumblings as they closed their doors. On the evening that came, another strong rain began to fall. The searched had officially stopped.
I was five then; so young, but not young enough not to feel the common despair even just after a very short period of time that he was gone. I knew he must be dead; otherwise he must have shown himself to prove that he hadn’t been missing at all. But he didn’t.
Heavy rain went unbridled for two full days, and there was still no brother to apologize for the big trouble.
After the stormy days passed, my parents felt better by the thought that they could search again with a refreshing hope. And on the first quarter of that new day, the sky clear, sun bright, roads wet; a body was found decomposing at the bosom of an uninhabited field, far from civilization…far from help. There was a rumor that he was sexually harassed by some drunken bystanders before murdering him by a huge boulder of concrete several times against his head. He was sixteen then, and Joseph was dead.
Twelve years later, I found my self wondering. What would he look like if he hadn’t been killed? He must be approaching 30, he must be married and working for his children. He could be happy.
It was ironic because I always looked up to him being my eldest sibling. Now, I am seventeen, a year older than he was then. A year of experience ahead, a year of thrash that doesn’t count. A year apart that didn’t feel relevant. I was just too young to remember so much of the things while he was still alive. But since that day that he was found, all of the distant memories then have seem to be locked up here like a permanent scar- a place where nothing dwells but him. He is the man in the hidden pasture, and I saw him smiled.
The Full Grown Zygote
There was something with life that most people failed to see. They died without even knowing the perfect words that tugged behind closed doors, the stories that sifted out carrying the smell of old, rotten woodwork, and the last pulse of sound it uttered as it slammed around the hinges. I was home. The home I had taken for granted was dark, silent as death, and sullen as clouds before a storm. The candle that I lit and placed over an ancient china desk with the old portrait of mom before their marriage wasn’t God to fill in the black gaps that my love ones left behind them; leaving me sitting alone in the dark where no one seemed to care, or to look at. I didn’t care.
Nor to notice. Like Albert Einstein said about the importance of imagination over pure knowledge, I was in control: of what I felt, what I should, what I tasted, what I saw, what I shouldn’t. Sometimes, I just have to be more creative and convincing even to myself. That was to be in full control of the things that could crash me into dusts within the seconds after their coming. They couldn’t… crash me.
Now, where did that leave me? This house was mine. I owned everything that my family had ever owned. I would live a life out of their prejudices, now and forever. I would do things out of their consent, and succeed out of their cheers and warm congratulatory remarks afterwards. But missing them was an emotional luxury I couldn’t afford, not now that there’s no one I could hold on to, something soft I could pinch when something inside burned like hell.
There was silence… creeping to wards me, spreading over my head; slipping under my feet, wrapping around my torso and up, sneaking inside my nostrils, until I was wholly covered with silence.
The night was deeper since my previous notice of time. I remembered sitting over through the line of shadow that was casted by a life-sized window behind the front door along the floor. Now, there’s nothing there but the dusts that settled, unseen against the pitch black background, living a life unmindful of our universe where every movement meant something worth thinking of. Then I stood up, clasping my mouth with the remaining strength of my palm. The other hand served as my leverage so to keep me standing in the dark, also a tool for groping my way through the kitchen, as the merciful space between my palm and mouth were filled by the pressurized air of grief and realization. I was now approaching a scalding pain. And I couldn’t bear to be in the dark any longer, but the bullet ricocheted inside the room, bouncing off the wall with an array of nostalgia, searching and hunting for the center of my soul and spirit.
Then I couldn’t hold it.
The zygote had grown.
The Paragon Interview
A: Welcome to SNT, Gen. Spokesperson Echart Snaub, from the Paragon Foundation.
B: Thank you, my honor. (Waving his hand to the camera.)
A: You seem cheerful today.
B: Indeed. We’re so blessed by the rapid progress of the foundation. And I’m here being interviewed, how’s that?
A: Speaking of the foundation since you’ve mentioned it already, the listeners might want to know how Paragon endured up to its 226th this year. Anything special?
B: Everything’s special.
A: What makes you unique from other scientific foundations out there? I mean, I can’t mention a name but there are thousands of them. The oldest I know is no more than a century old.
B: Well, we have the best intelligence units, amazing technical crews, they have me (chuckles)…we have the highest funding so we are safe from brain drain. And I just wanted to add the new building.
A: Oh, I saw the building. It is undoubtedly the highest structure ever built on earth.
B: I say Philippines has a good bedrock.
A: I agree. So where are you getting the big budget? Could you mention some of the lists of the financial contributors? Asutex? Rembradt, Intl.?
B: We promised we would give their identities with utter confidentiality, otherwise they would stop funding.
A: I understand that especially if there is an unimaginably high confidentiality agreement at stake.
B: (Laugh) Appreciated.
A: Anyway, let’s start the real thing. At the report, you have a baby technology called STI. Let’s discuss that first. They say it must be the turning point of 21st century computing technology. How true is that?
B: The Synchronous Topography Inditor, or the STI system, is one of our latest and most flexible technologies. We owed it to our very own German nanotechnologist Dr. Peter Hoeg in leading the STI project for more than a decade. And I think it does really have a potential to dodge away, let’s say, from the major obstacles that impede technological advancement especially in the field of data processing.
A: So what is STI for?
B: It accepts digital topographic details from our high-end radiator scanners, or simply mapping of land, like Google Map 3D Grav, and other purposes such as military and any other geographical sciences. It could also be thought of as a contribution to the campaign against terrorism and disaster prevention by doing real time surveillance.
A: I’m curious. We already have those technologies you mentioned since… probably my youth. STI, based on your description, doesn’t seem to be any different. You scan moving topographies and feed them to computers. That’s not Paragon. There should be something else.
B: You know Paragon, eh?
A: So what is it?
B: The concept of creating a Synchronous Topography and advancing to geometrical data processing, that’s what it is. It had been a simple idea, but our fellow scientists from the past still struggled into getting it any closer to reality. The conception of this idea is finally concocted into STI by Dr. Hoeg. He thought that machines imitating natural features should be something worse. We could do better than that.
Several years ago, before the birth of STI, he thought it could be used into something big that no one had any guts to work for, and that’s when we hired him-- to execute his dreams… and maybe ours.
A: First, could you tell us short about geometrical data processing?
B: Okay. Instead of using conventional “digital” binary numbers, our “baby” technology receives and converts multi-dimensional images into a certain unique micro 4-D geometry- let’s say a complex pattern consisting of angular lines and deformed circles- or what we call Topography. What makes it more efficient compared to digital data processing is that these geometries are expertly drawn using Xenon atoms, and other less rare elements that are extremely stable under regulated environment. It’s like drawing with pebbles under atomic scale, in 4-D. Thus, there is no need to use special software to read the images. You just have to have a powerful lens magnification to see the details.
A: That’s great. Now I’m getting the picture. So you mentioned earlier about “something big” that Dr. Hoeg had in is mind in conceptualizing STI?
B: With the help of STI technology and the best functional telescopes from earth, land-based and space-based, we concocted a new peripheral device called Summary of God or SOG. It has been arranging 4 cubic millimeters per minute of readily arranged Xenon atoms converted from the digital stream of data. It is equivalent to 600 terabytes per minute that might have consumed a combination memory of 2 super computers instead of just covering 4 cubic millimeters of space!
It is that our telescopes are browsing through deep cosmos while afterwards relaying it through STI for data conversion from digital to analog Topographies to be stored to SOG.
A: So SOG is a certain kind of a super advance digital storage device?
B: Again, we considered the post-conversion geometrical datum being stored an analog instead of digital since we’re no longer dealing with 1’s and 0’s.
A: And does SOG justify its name, Summary of God? For the name itself, it would surely hit sensitive ears anytime soon.
B: At Paragon, we always make sure that all our individual inventions deserve its name.
A: So you’re summarizing God by map-recording the Universe? Am I Right? With the aid of telescopes, scanners, and such, then saving them to SOG?
B: If you meant recording the events and structures of the Universe, no. That might be the first thing that Paragon would back out from. It requires infinite units of storage device! What we are recording is the logic behind the harmonious forces responsible for structuring the Universe as what it is, because Topographies could be Structural or Logical. The former is applicable to mapping and surveillance. With SOG, we store the later type of Topography. By that way, indirectly, we can shape the first clump of clay in sculpting our greatest Creator. Now, you could picture SOG as a ball of logic.
A: So that’s it? You study the laws of nature and know who is or what is God?
B: Nothing is that simple, of course. Everything that has been stored in SOG will be carefully analyzed. That’s probably the hardest part. We might invite underground intelligencias if there are such things. If it’s necessary, we might also seek help from our fellow theologians and physicists.
A: (Smiled) Sounds fun. Could I join the research, too, because your foundation really draws curiosity out of me?
B: Everyone with brain could contribute; everyone who believes in God and everyone who dreamt to know Him down to the tiniest details.
A: Well, I’ll wait for your invite. (Smiled) So I hope you, with the foundation you represents, won’t be
bothered by the people who think the whole SOG thing is a blasphemy.
B: No certainly, we won’t.
A: Well, good luck for the Paragon’s future projects and happy physics year! Thank you for your time.
B: Thank you. Happy Physics year to all! And before you wrap this up, you can visit our cloud address at Paragon.cld.
A: There you are.
A: (Now turning directly to the camera, regaining a more formal composure). It has been a whole decade since a revolutionary termite gene against HIV had been planted to a certain group of people in Spain. Now, scientists have been worrying about a new strain of the virus that has just been reported two days ago from the same country. Will humanity be facing a new indestructible scourge that might again remain incurable for the next 70 years? Let’s know more about it after the break. We’ll be back.
THE END
B: Thank you, my honor. (Waving his hand to the camera.)
A: You seem cheerful today.
B: Indeed. We’re so blessed by the rapid progress of the foundation. And I’m here being interviewed, how’s that?
A: Speaking of the foundation since you’ve mentioned it already, the listeners might want to know how Paragon endured up to its 226th this year. Anything special?
B: Everything’s special.
A: What makes you unique from other scientific foundations out there? I mean, I can’t mention a name but there are thousands of them. The oldest I know is no more than a century old.
B: Well, we have the best intelligence units, amazing technical crews, they have me (chuckles)…we have the highest funding so we are safe from brain drain. And I just wanted to add the new building.
A: Oh, I saw the building. It is undoubtedly the highest structure ever built on earth.
B: I say Philippines has a good bedrock.
A: I agree. So where are you getting the big budget? Could you mention some of the lists of the financial contributors? Asutex? Rembradt, Intl.?
B: We promised we would give their identities with utter confidentiality, otherwise they would stop funding.
A: I understand that especially if there is an unimaginably high confidentiality agreement at stake.
B: (Laugh) Appreciated.
A: Anyway, let’s start the real thing. At the report, you have a baby technology called STI. Let’s discuss that first. They say it must be the turning point of 21st century computing technology. How true is that?
B: The Synchronous Topography Inditor, or the STI system, is one of our latest and most flexible technologies. We owed it to our very own German nanotechnologist Dr. Peter Hoeg in leading the STI project for more than a decade. And I think it does really have a potential to dodge away, let’s say, from the major obstacles that impede technological advancement especially in the field of data processing.
A: So what is STI for?
B: It accepts digital topographic details from our high-end radiator scanners, or simply mapping of land, like Google Map 3D Grav, and other purposes such as military and any other geographical sciences. It could also be thought of as a contribution to the campaign against terrorism and disaster prevention by doing real time surveillance.
A: I’m curious. We already have those technologies you mentioned since… probably my youth. STI, based on your description, doesn’t seem to be any different. You scan moving topographies and feed them to computers. That’s not Paragon. There should be something else.
B: You know Paragon, eh?
A: So what is it?
B: The concept of creating a Synchronous Topography and advancing to geometrical data processing, that’s what it is. It had been a simple idea, but our fellow scientists from the past still struggled into getting it any closer to reality. The conception of this idea is finally concocted into STI by Dr. Hoeg. He thought that machines imitating natural features should be something worse. We could do better than that.
Several years ago, before the birth of STI, he thought it could be used into something big that no one had any guts to work for, and that’s when we hired him-- to execute his dreams… and maybe ours.
A: First, could you tell us short about geometrical data processing?
B: Okay. Instead of using conventional “digital” binary numbers, our “baby” technology receives and converts multi-dimensional images into a certain unique micro 4-D geometry- let’s say a complex pattern consisting of angular lines and deformed circles- or what we call Topography. What makes it more efficient compared to digital data processing is that these geometries are expertly drawn using Xenon atoms, and other less rare elements that are extremely stable under regulated environment. It’s like drawing with pebbles under atomic scale, in 4-D. Thus, there is no need to use special software to read the images. You just have to have a powerful lens magnification to see the details.
A: That’s great. Now I’m getting the picture. So you mentioned earlier about “something big” that Dr. Hoeg had in is mind in conceptualizing STI?
B: With the help of STI technology and the best functional telescopes from earth, land-based and space-based, we concocted a new peripheral device called Summary of God or SOG. It has been arranging 4 cubic millimeters per minute of readily arranged Xenon atoms converted from the digital stream of data. It is equivalent to 600 terabytes per minute that might have consumed a combination memory of 2 super computers instead of just covering 4 cubic millimeters of space!
It is that our telescopes are browsing through deep cosmos while afterwards relaying it through STI for data conversion from digital to analog Topographies to be stored to SOG.
A: So SOG is a certain kind of a super advance digital storage device?
B: Again, we considered the post-conversion geometrical datum being stored an analog instead of digital since we’re no longer dealing with 1’s and 0’s.
A: And does SOG justify its name, Summary of God? For the name itself, it would surely hit sensitive ears anytime soon.
B: At Paragon, we always make sure that all our individual inventions deserve its name.
A: So you’re summarizing God by map-recording the Universe? Am I Right? With the aid of telescopes, scanners, and such, then saving them to SOG?
B: If you meant recording the events and structures of the Universe, no. That might be the first thing that Paragon would back out from. It requires infinite units of storage device! What we are recording is the logic behind the harmonious forces responsible for structuring the Universe as what it is, because Topographies could be Structural or Logical. The former is applicable to mapping and surveillance. With SOG, we store the later type of Topography. By that way, indirectly, we can shape the first clump of clay in sculpting our greatest Creator. Now, you could picture SOG as a ball of logic.
A: So that’s it? You study the laws of nature and know who is or what is God?
B: Nothing is that simple, of course. Everything that has been stored in SOG will be carefully analyzed. That’s probably the hardest part. We might invite underground intelligencias if there are such things. If it’s necessary, we might also seek help from our fellow theologians and physicists.
A: (Smiled) Sounds fun. Could I join the research, too, because your foundation really draws curiosity out of me?
B: Everyone with brain could contribute; everyone who believes in God and everyone who dreamt to know Him down to the tiniest details.
A: Well, I’ll wait for your invite. (Smiled) So I hope you, with the foundation you represents, won’t be
bothered by the people who think the whole SOG thing is a blasphemy.
B: No certainly, we won’t.
A: Well, good luck for the Paragon’s future projects and happy physics year! Thank you for your time.
B: Thank you. Happy Physics year to all! And before you wrap this up, you can visit our cloud address at Paragon.cld.
A: There you are.
A: (Now turning directly to the camera, regaining a more formal composure). It has been a whole decade since a revolutionary termite gene against HIV had been planted to a certain group of people in Spain. Now, scientists have been worrying about a new strain of the virus that has just been reported two days ago from the same country. Will humanity be facing a new indestructible scourge that might again remain incurable for the next 70 years? Let’s know more about it after the break. We’ll be back.
THE END
Tracing Her
Written on: November 16, 2009
Muntinlupa, Philippines
Cold Tuesday afternoon, December 1995. Several people had already come by, and then walked away with hidden faces, troubled by the reason of the visited and the putrid life that was dictated ahead of them. For almost twice a week, people goes in and out from the dilapidated doors, leaving wakes of both stagnant burden and seldom strings of contentment, forgiveness and joy. And Cecilia, a person who had just awakened from her persistent nightmare, was just about to see and do things across these doors in a different way. Or maybe, she wasn’t much hopeful it would ever be possible.
As she disembarked from the cab, she noiselessly walked across the well-attended pavement, passed through different foul smelling corridors from the first floor up; until she was led into a direction she expected to. Clatter of crumpled scratch pages with some numbers scribbled in them, circular traces of dried beverage leakage onto the wooden desks, old newspapers, and crisscross of wires snaking from the outdated computers and destroyed printers welcomed her with warm nostalgia. Although it wasn’t exactly the same as she used to see it, it was still in its own identity in the universe to be recognized; teeming with decay and depravity, so far from the clean and orderly world she lived in.
Suddenly, a voice of a woman startled Cecilia back into place. “Ma’am, you may go inside.”
Seconds later, as assisted, Cecilia was pulled into a massive cross-section of steel bars. She hesitated at first when a female guard keyed on the padlock, but once it was done and swung open before her she couldn’t help but to step inside and breathe in the air filled with the smell of rust and numbing expectations.
A woman in orange jumpsuit welcomed her with unreadable facial expression across her rounded face. Her deep brown eyes followed her movement as she neared to the desk and pulled a chair to sit. Then the moment had followed for Cecilia to stare at her mother which she hadn’t seen for a very long time. She had imagined once what she would look like, but seeing her face for real was different from the image she had made herself. The first thing that caught her attention was the neck-level hair with a mix of white strands, three to four after she counted, growing down from the central crease. The contrast was so vivid like that of an umbrella. Below, she caught the eyes, same eyes, wherein sagging flesh below had only taken a bit of its beauty. This made her wonder what they had been through; but it’s a wonder so less than her average interest at the moment.
“Hi’ Feli. How are you doing?”
“I was shocked to see how much your face had changed, Cecil,” the woman remarked. “But of course, I know it would be you.”
“So do I.”
With a glimpse of silence, the conversation hanged like a suspended cobweb. The air was temporarily filled by indistinct chit-chat of nearby guards, and distant smashing of doors reverberating against the concrete walls. Few seconds passed to several more seconds. There’s a blank air that surrounded the room. Her mother’s oval face confronted her thoughts the way a child ask for sweet goodies that were locked up inside glass jars.
As gloomy light passed through the nearby windows, a new woman was lit before Cecilia, a face structured by fleshy cheeks ironically against a thin and petite body that was half hidden by a chipping unpainted wood desk. She remembered Feli bragging her photogenic sashes because of this. Of course, that was before she met her father.
She once said as they were sitting at the backyard one afternoon, her younger sister Tina playing with a newly bought rabbit from the nearby church early that morning, that it was the major interest of her father Henry. They met inside a bank both as tellers in the early 60’s. And with the fact that they were aware being both physically attractive, they went along so well. Henry was raised in the suburban Samar and was new to Manila where Felicidad had spent her life since birth. “It’s just a matter of months when I said yes,” she told her many times. “Then another month after that we decided to get married.” Two years later, Cecilia was born.
“So,” Cecilia broke the deafening silence, “Do they treat you well in here? Do they give decent food? Clean blanket?”
“You smell good, Cecil,” the woman in orange said. “I smell your perfume even before they told me my daughter was going to pay a visit. Your taste hadn’t even changed.”
“Shut up.”
“I keep myself informed as much as possible about you even though it’s so hard it’s like I’m prying open a door to which house used to be mine. You were not calling, or giving out letters. I don’t care if I’ve been well taken care of or given with clean blanket. You know, I just --” Feli paused. “Anyway, I managed to know that you have been married five years ago. I haven’t seen the guy but I know he’s a good man. And he has a beautiful name- Henry. Just like your father.”
Cecilia forced a smile.
“Your father would be so happy to see you well now.”
And after she smiled, Cecilia’s jaw suddenly tensed.
“You have kids?”
She breathed in before saying a word, “We have two, both girls.”
“I’m so excited to see my grand daughters.”
“Feli, you know it wouldn’t be possible,” she smiled a wry smile. “I wouldn’t let them get any nearer to a wicked person like you. And in the first place they would be shocked to see their grandmother alive knowing she died even before they were born.”
Feli couldn’t help but to avert her eyes into somewhere else.
“Why?” she asked. “Are you scared you would indeed die here without having a glance at them?”
“Cecil, please don’t do this to me.”
“But I want to. It’s my turn, Feli. It’s my turn. You’ve made my early life miserable, now it’s my time to make you walk, eat… and sleep… and breathe… as miserable as I grew up with the vision of my father bludgeoned to death--”
“Please--” Feli pleaded.
“—killed by her own wife, and to feel so empty and lonely and…” she couldn’t speak the next word. A lump was intruding through the passage between her lips and swollen heart. Her eyes could only moist itself to relieve some of the explosion burning inside her chest. But before she gave in to a noticeable burst, she successfully managed to bring herself back in. “You shouldn’t be thankful that I visited,” she finally said. “I came here not to make you feel better. I’m here to bring back the days you killed papa.”
“Cecile, you know--”
“Please, Feli! You have told us in the court days you have done it, and I felt justice had come since. But suddenly it was taken back as I realized I couldn’t accept the idea that you have done that to him.” Then with a force like wind, “ Feli! Papa had loved you!” Cecilia began to shout. “He loved you! And he is our father!
“But things turned shit,” she said in a lower voice. “What is it with aunt you think more worthwhile than your own family, huh?”
“Your father wasn’t the person you think, Cecil. He turns to a stranger when you and Tina were out of school. But his cousin treated me differently every time. She was always there for me. She loved me and I couldn’t help but to fall in love with her. You can’t blame me for feeling things.”
“Of course, I can. It’s your choice. You can turn away but you didn’t.”
Feli fell silent. A woman carrying plastic bags could be seen outside the window.
“As I recall, a close neighbor of yours had a statement that she heard you screamed before a shot was heard.”
Feli smiled, “Yes. I--”
“Don’t fuck with me. It’s one of the reasons I went here,” she said. “A week ago, she confessed she had been paid by the defendant. That’s you, of course.”
Feli’s face suddenly changed. She looked back at the window. The woman was gone.
“How does that feel? Lucky? That lie wouldn’t make your sentence even worse, right? But it proves a lot of things of who you really are; what you further deserves.”
“Yes. I deserve the worst.” It was all she could say.
“Papa’s body had been uncovered from a backyard in a residential area in Mandaluyong. Have you seen how he looked like then, fresh from crashed concrete?”
Feli didn’t speak.
“I’m asking you!”
“No,” Feli said. “Oh, God. No.”
“Well… half of his skull had been severed into pieces. His jaws hung open like he was pleading for air or something. Forensic people discovered his teeth were jammed probably even before he went unconscious. His legs were severed, so was his lower spine that had led him to a partial paralysis until he was shot dead, close range onto the nose bridge. In short, the murder wasn’t what you claimed to be a self-defense. It was intentional. He was slaughtered. Like a savage beast-- from the street.”
Then a voice called out from the distance just outside the metal railings. “Five minutes!”
“The trial closed in with a question lingering in the air,” Cecilia said. “I was thinking that maybe you were with aunt when the crime was done, am I wrong?”
Without a trace of hesitation she answered, “No.”
“Well, so you let her live her life in freedom?” she asked. “You know, we hadn’t heard of her for more than a decade. That proves you love her unconditionally.”
“That proves it,” Feli said coldly.
“Unfortunately, she doesn’t. She might be mingling with other woman out there at this moment, making them believed she really cared, and would sacrifice for the sake of forbidden love. ”
“I don’t care.”
These three words struck her chest so painfully that made her threw a sarcastic smile on her mother’s face--an act of painful dismissal.
“Well, I think I would be very late to the party,” she said, with a tone of termination as if she just wanted to quit talking to someone who dared insulting her whole life. “It wouldn’t bring us elsewhere, anyway.”
Cecilia began pulling herself together, clutching her bag, key chains rattled. Standing up, she greeted, “Merry Christmas, Feli.” Then she strode away towards the guards standing on the hallway.
The man to the left was smiling to Cecilia’s direction as she walked nearer to them. “We’ve got another beautiful visitor, eh?”
“Don’t talk like that,” the man on the right replied. “I’ve seen her visited her mother once, maybe 13 years ago. I think she’s a little hard to her mama.” Their eyes locked up on her until she finally walked passed them without uttering a word or giving a nod.
It was past 5 when she stepped out of the facility. On the very moment her face was licked by the cold and warm mix of air, then was the time everything became so vivid: in the cold breeze that would make things easier for both of her mother and herself; and something with the sinking sun that told her she wouldn’t regret whatever she have done and about to in her life especially if it bled out from the past years when her nightmare was taking its place, until the time she went absolutely impervious to her own emotional prime mover.
Impervious, she thought. What a word.
* * *
On the distance, a sight of a woman riding off a cab brought so much pain. It was because she knew that woman would be the last to give her deserved punishment and worst guilt an incriminated could ever be holding and bearing with the rest of its life. A guilt that would cause her to take a second look and warm consideration on a simple Christmas gift she had received from her before she left.
It was wrapped in a clean white cloth which she slowly unwrapped feeling what it was. And each time she unfold one over the other, a pause was dedicated to leave a space in her mind the image of her little Tina and Cecil together far back then. Her daughters so naïve about the world and the pain it would bring to everyone who had been given the chance to be born, grow, and realized upon maturity, just like a fruit, that to be picked and put into a basket filled with the other ripe fruits is a fate to be considered just already like a prison; a place to live without any valid excuses from the misdeeds we hadn’t even had the choice to avoid; a prison she was scared not for her but for her daughters to be caught into, which she had built herself unconsciously from the deed she believed she had in no position to control. And every time she held a fold away, she felt relieved by the voice that said she wasn’t the culprit of the bleak future that was laid before them, but at the same time consumed by her own realization of self-deception.
After some moments, bubbles of sudden fear and uncertainty gradually swarmed around her head like disturbed bees. It was triggered by the sight of a gleaming light emanating from the dreadful blade revealed by the last unfold. And with it was a picture of her two grand daughters beaming on her direction. It was a sight that drew a genuine smile on her battered face that occurred since the longest time she could ever imagine. And right there and then, she turned at the blade for the very first time not as a deadly weapon but as a sharp-edged tool promising to cut away all the skin that covered everything that… well, everything that could have nourished a sweet and unregretful life.
Muntinlupa, Philippines
Cold Tuesday afternoon, December 1995. Several people had already come by, and then walked away with hidden faces, troubled by the reason of the visited and the putrid life that was dictated ahead of them. For almost twice a week, people goes in and out from the dilapidated doors, leaving wakes of both stagnant burden and seldom strings of contentment, forgiveness and joy. And Cecilia, a person who had just awakened from her persistent nightmare, was just about to see and do things across these doors in a different way. Or maybe, she wasn’t much hopeful it would ever be possible.
As she disembarked from the cab, she noiselessly walked across the well-attended pavement, passed through different foul smelling corridors from the first floor up; until she was led into a direction she expected to. Clatter of crumpled scratch pages with some numbers scribbled in them, circular traces of dried beverage leakage onto the wooden desks, old newspapers, and crisscross of wires snaking from the outdated computers and destroyed printers welcomed her with warm nostalgia. Although it wasn’t exactly the same as she used to see it, it was still in its own identity in the universe to be recognized; teeming with decay and depravity, so far from the clean and orderly world she lived in.
Suddenly, a voice of a woman startled Cecilia back into place. “Ma’am, you may go inside.”
Seconds later, as assisted, Cecilia was pulled into a massive cross-section of steel bars. She hesitated at first when a female guard keyed on the padlock, but once it was done and swung open before her she couldn’t help but to step inside and breathe in the air filled with the smell of rust and numbing expectations.
A woman in orange jumpsuit welcomed her with unreadable facial expression across her rounded face. Her deep brown eyes followed her movement as she neared to the desk and pulled a chair to sit. Then the moment had followed for Cecilia to stare at her mother which she hadn’t seen for a very long time. She had imagined once what she would look like, but seeing her face for real was different from the image she had made herself. The first thing that caught her attention was the neck-level hair with a mix of white strands, three to four after she counted, growing down from the central crease. The contrast was so vivid like that of an umbrella. Below, she caught the eyes, same eyes, wherein sagging flesh below had only taken a bit of its beauty. This made her wonder what they had been through; but it’s a wonder so less than her average interest at the moment.
“Hi’ Feli. How are you doing?”
“I was shocked to see how much your face had changed, Cecil,” the woman remarked. “But of course, I know it would be you.”
“So do I.”
With a glimpse of silence, the conversation hanged like a suspended cobweb. The air was temporarily filled by indistinct chit-chat of nearby guards, and distant smashing of doors reverberating against the concrete walls. Few seconds passed to several more seconds. There’s a blank air that surrounded the room. Her mother’s oval face confronted her thoughts the way a child ask for sweet goodies that were locked up inside glass jars.
As gloomy light passed through the nearby windows, a new woman was lit before Cecilia, a face structured by fleshy cheeks ironically against a thin and petite body that was half hidden by a chipping unpainted wood desk. She remembered Feli bragging her photogenic sashes because of this. Of course, that was before she met her father.
She once said as they were sitting at the backyard one afternoon, her younger sister Tina playing with a newly bought rabbit from the nearby church early that morning, that it was the major interest of her father Henry. They met inside a bank both as tellers in the early 60’s. And with the fact that they were aware being both physically attractive, they went along so well. Henry was raised in the suburban Samar and was new to Manila where Felicidad had spent her life since birth. “It’s just a matter of months when I said yes,” she told her many times. “Then another month after that we decided to get married.” Two years later, Cecilia was born.
“So,” Cecilia broke the deafening silence, “Do they treat you well in here? Do they give decent food? Clean blanket?”
“You smell good, Cecil,” the woman in orange said. “I smell your perfume even before they told me my daughter was going to pay a visit. Your taste hadn’t even changed.”
“Shut up.”
“I keep myself informed as much as possible about you even though it’s so hard it’s like I’m prying open a door to which house used to be mine. You were not calling, or giving out letters. I don’t care if I’ve been well taken care of or given with clean blanket. You know, I just --” Feli paused. “Anyway, I managed to know that you have been married five years ago. I haven’t seen the guy but I know he’s a good man. And he has a beautiful name- Henry. Just like your father.”
Cecilia forced a smile.
“Your father would be so happy to see you well now.”
And after she smiled, Cecilia’s jaw suddenly tensed.
“You have kids?”
She breathed in before saying a word, “We have two, both girls.”
“I’m so excited to see my grand daughters.”
“Feli, you know it wouldn’t be possible,” she smiled a wry smile. “I wouldn’t let them get any nearer to a wicked person like you. And in the first place they would be shocked to see their grandmother alive knowing she died even before they were born.”
Feli couldn’t help but to avert her eyes into somewhere else.
“Why?” she asked. “Are you scared you would indeed die here without having a glance at them?”
“Cecil, please don’t do this to me.”
“But I want to. It’s my turn, Feli. It’s my turn. You’ve made my early life miserable, now it’s my time to make you walk, eat… and sleep… and breathe… as miserable as I grew up with the vision of my father bludgeoned to death--”
“Please--” Feli pleaded.
“—killed by her own wife, and to feel so empty and lonely and…” she couldn’t speak the next word. A lump was intruding through the passage between her lips and swollen heart. Her eyes could only moist itself to relieve some of the explosion burning inside her chest. But before she gave in to a noticeable burst, she successfully managed to bring herself back in. “You shouldn’t be thankful that I visited,” she finally said. “I came here not to make you feel better. I’m here to bring back the days you killed papa.”
“Cecile, you know--”
“Please, Feli! You have told us in the court days you have done it, and I felt justice had come since. But suddenly it was taken back as I realized I couldn’t accept the idea that you have done that to him.” Then with a force like wind, “ Feli! Papa had loved you!” Cecilia began to shout. “He loved you! And he is our father!
“But things turned shit,” she said in a lower voice. “What is it with aunt you think more worthwhile than your own family, huh?”
“Your father wasn’t the person you think, Cecil. He turns to a stranger when you and Tina were out of school. But his cousin treated me differently every time. She was always there for me. She loved me and I couldn’t help but to fall in love with her. You can’t blame me for feeling things.”
“Of course, I can. It’s your choice. You can turn away but you didn’t.”
Feli fell silent. A woman carrying plastic bags could be seen outside the window.
“As I recall, a close neighbor of yours had a statement that she heard you screamed before a shot was heard.”
Feli smiled, “Yes. I--”
“Don’t fuck with me. It’s one of the reasons I went here,” she said. “A week ago, she confessed she had been paid by the defendant. That’s you, of course.”
Feli’s face suddenly changed. She looked back at the window. The woman was gone.
“How does that feel? Lucky? That lie wouldn’t make your sentence even worse, right? But it proves a lot of things of who you really are; what you further deserves.”
“Yes. I deserve the worst.” It was all she could say.
“Papa’s body had been uncovered from a backyard in a residential area in Mandaluyong. Have you seen how he looked like then, fresh from crashed concrete?”
Feli didn’t speak.
“I’m asking you!”
“No,” Feli said. “Oh, God. No.”
“Well… half of his skull had been severed into pieces. His jaws hung open like he was pleading for air or something. Forensic people discovered his teeth were jammed probably even before he went unconscious. His legs were severed, so was his lower spine that had led him to a partial paralysis until he was shot dead, close range onto the nose bridge. In short, the murder wasn’t what you claimed to be a self-defense. It was intentional. He was slaughtered. Like a savage beast-- from the street.”
Then a voice called out from the distance just outside the metal railings. “Five minutes!”
“The trial closed in with a question lingering in the air,” Cecilia said. “I was thinking that maybe you were with aunt when the crime was done, am I wrong?”
Without a trace of hesitation she answered, “No.”
“Well, so you let her live her life in freedom?” she asked. “You know, we hadn’t heard of her for more than a decade. That proves you love her unconditionally.”
“That proves it,” Feli said coldly.
“Unfortunately, she doesn’t. She might be mingling with other woman out there at this moment, making them believed she really cared, and would sacrifice for the sake of forbidden love. ”
“I don’t care.”
These three words struck her chest so painfully that made her threw a sarcastic smile on her mother’s face--an act of painful dismissal.
“Well, I think I would be very late to the party,” she said, with a tone of termination as if she just wanted to quit talking to someone who dared insulting her whole life. “It wouldn’t bring us elsewhere, anyway.”
Cecilia began pulling herself together, clutching her bag, key chains rattled. Standing up, she greeted, “Merry Christmas, Feli.” Then she strode away towards the guards standing on the hallway.
The man to the left was smiling to Cecilia’s direction as she walked nearer to them. “We’ve got another beautiful visitor, eh?”
“Don’t talk like that,” the man on the right replied. “I’ve seen her visited her mother once, maybe 13 years ago. I think she’s a little hard to her mama.” Their eyes locked up on her until she finally walked passed them without uttering a word or giving a nod.
It was past 5 when she stepped out of the facility. On the very moment her face was licked by the cold and warm mix of air, then was the time everything became so vivid: in the cold breeze that would make things easier for both of her mother and herself; and something with the sinking sun that told her she wouldn’t regret whatever she have done and about to in her life especially if it bled out from the past years when her nightmare was taking its place, until the time she went absolutely impervious to her own emotional prime mover.
Impervious, she thought. What a word.
* * *
On the distance, a sight of a woman riding off a cab brought so much pain. It was because she knew that woman would be the last to give her deserved punishment and worst guilt an incriminated could ever be holding and bearing with the rest of its life. A guilt that would cause her to take a second look and warm consideration on a simple Christmas gift she had received from her before she left.
It was wrapped in a clean white cloth which she slowly unwrapped feeling what it was. And each time she unfold one over the other, a pause was dedicated to leave a space in her mind the image of her little Tina and Cecil together far back then. Her daughters so naïve about the world and the pain it would bring to everyone who had been given the chance to be born, grow, and realized upon maturity, just like a fruit, that to be picked and put into a basket filled with the other ripe fruits is a fate to be considered just already like a prison; a place to live without any valid excuses from the misdeeds we hadn’t even had the choice to avoid; a prison she was scared not for her but for her daughters to be caught into, which she had built herself unconsciously from the deed she believed she had in no position to control. And every time she held a fold away, she felt relieved by the voice that said she wasn’t the culprit of the bleak future that was laid before them, but at the same time consumed by her own realization of self-deception.
After some moments, bubbles of sudden fear and uncertainty gradually swarmed around her head like disturbed bees. It was triggered by the sight of a gleaming light emanating from the dreadful blade revealed by the last unfold. And with it was a picture of her two grand daughters beaming on her direction. It was a sight that drew a genuine smile on her battered face that occurred since the longest time she could ever imagine. And right there and then, she turned at the blade for the very first time not as a deadly weapon but as a sharp-edged tool promising to cut away all the skin that covered everything that… well, everything that could have nourished a sweet and unregretful life.
Lost And Serenity
Its silver rim was shaking, to the point that the golden liquid was already sloshing and spilling onto the floor. It would cease for a moment, like a receding storm, but it would tremble and spill again like the storm was just getting angrier, until there was no more to spill. Until all the beer had plummeted down onto the floor, making the room smell like a liquor vomit.
The mug was held by a hand, gripping tightly against its body, almost crashing it, breaking it into tiny, invisible splinters. Jeremy Yu, a sheriff, a strong man, was crying. His head couldn’t be seen for it slacked against his revolting chest. However, the chair was strong enough to tolerate too much shaking.
No one would be able to guess why. Maybe the sheriff was angry and he could no longer hold it back, maybe he’s just acting crazy like a drunken mad man, like an alcoholic, or maybe the passing of his wife was too painful to leave it behind and move over his life. That thought, like no one had died. He was focusing on it. But she wasn’t coming back. Not in a week, or a month, or a year. She wasn’t coming back…forever. Her wife’s face was in danger of being forgotten like she never existed.
Jem was not as strong as you might think. He was strong, yes, but he’s a man who hadn’t just lost a wife but also his children: three year-old Tanya and his baby boy who was just born two months ago. No one would survive a brutal crash that that they had as it rolled down the hill side God-knows how many times. Their pain couldn’t be felt, nor recalled, nor investigated. He could just imagine,
Slowly, he stood up, his face a mess, slamming his mug against the table with a brittle implosion. He didn’t care if the mug split into two, or was it the table. He walked across the room and pushed the sliding door aside. It was suddenly cold. He was in the second floor, their house artfully balancing on a hill slope, staring into an inconspicuous veranda. No one could possibly tell time, but it was sure to be dark, dark enough to be night.
He was forcing back another surge of loneliness with a new makeshift bravery that was strong enough to keep him standing there. He observed tiny flickers of light from the distant city below. Its massive structures were devoured by the distance, too tiny to be relevant with anyone’s personal dealings as far away as this house.
In silence, he tried to move one of his limbs, checking if he could still feel, pulling it up and down. Dinner time, he remembered. It was only dinnertime that this view would be as lovely and serene as this. After dinner, he and his wife would go out here to breathe some fresh night air and embrace each other to brush away the cold. It was always a busy day. It was here that they mutually called out for an escape, comforted by the thought that Tanya and the baby were safe inside the house.
He lifted his right limb, grunting as he heaved it with his hands over the railings, and then, like a freak accident, he fell over with a heavy thud, and then rolled down continuously along the slope, his body occasionally bouncing over the concrete debris, thinking only of three faces over the braking pain that was battering his soul. The limped body stopped midway, unconscious.
The night was cold, yet lovely and tranquil. And finally, he found his peace in there- alive or not.
Lost and Serenity
His back ached, like all his bones were in pieces. He couldn’t budge either, only able to lift his eyelids and feel the pain in his eyes at the light that burst like fire. At first, he thought he was drowning, by the blur that blocked his sight like he was submerged in an ocean. Vague. He tasted salt. But then he realized he could breathe. That’s fine. Seconds passed and his vision went clear.
He could feel and see with familiarity, thinking, remembering where he was last. It was his room, he thought. No… it was their room. He painfully turned his head aside and saw the bed side where his wife was supposed to be asleep. It was bright in the morning though. But upon realizing that no one’s there, that he was still alone, he wanted to scream- only when he hadn’t heard a voice.
He tried to listen, his body stiff in concentration. He was hearing indistinct voices outside the room, like they were having a suppressed conversation. Suddenly everything went audible as the door yanked open. He jerked.
“Dad, mama told me to wake you up.” Tanya was talking with her arms holding the heavy door from slamming back.
“Tanya?” He couldn’t believe her voice. It felt… distant.
“Tanya?” he asked again, slightly leaning forward.
“Mama!” Tanya called.
Later, a woman hurried beside her. There were the two of them, standing like angels on the doorway: Tanya and her mother.
“Mama?” he asked. Now, it was his voice that felt distant.
“Jem, what’s wrong?” she asked with concern while walking towards the bed he was sitting. “You’ll be late.”
As soon as she sat beside him, Jem looked at her face, probing for a wound, a scratch, or a scraped flesh; her nose, her mouth, lips, her ears. They’re all perfect, as it were for four years that they’ve been together. No wounds, he whispered to himself. No traces of accident.
At first, he was afraid to touch anything fearing that once he touched her, she would rearrange like a smoke.
“Where are we, really?” He squinted around the room, trying to find something bizarre or out of place.
“What are you talking about?” She laughed as he turned back to her and began poking on the tip of her nose.
“You must be… you must be dead. The accident. I saw you. I saw Tanya.” He could barely speak. He was sobbing lightly.
His wife hugged him. “It’s okay, Jem. It’s okay. You must have a very, very bad nightmare. For now, you must move. You’ll be really late.”
She kissed him on the forehead, and hurried outside the room.
His sobbing stopped. He couldn’t breathe. He was too happy, too joyous, to breathe. It was a dream. Everything was a dream.
“Mama?” he called, just to be sure, as he began to walk towards the open door, struggling to untangle the sheet off his feet.
“Yes? Feeling fine now?” Her voice was sweet, homey, wafting together with the comforting smell of cooking breakfast.
He was dreaming. He wanted to jump, only wondering if it would be good for his knees and aching body.
“Yes, I think so,” he answered gleefully as he sprinted and disappeared from the door.
It was his heaven.
The mug was held by a hand, gripping tightly against its body, almost crashing it, breaking it into tiny, invisible splinters. Jeremy Yu, a sheriff, a strong man, was crying. His head couldn’t be seen for it slacked against his revolting chest. However, the chair was strong enough to tolerate too much shaking.
No one would be able to guess why. Maybe the sheriff was angry and he could no longer hold it back, maybe he’s just acting crazy like a drunken mad man, like an alcoholic, or maybe the passing of his wife was too painful to leave it behind and move over his life. That thought, like no one had died. He was focusing on it. But she wasn’t coming back. Not in a week, or a month, or a year. She wasn’t coming back…forever. Her wife’s face was in danger of being forgotten like she never existed.
Jem was not as strong as you might think. He was strong, yes, but he’s a man who hadn’t just lost a wife but also his children: three year-old Tanya and his baby boy who was just born two months ago. No one would survive a brutal crash that that they had as it rolled down the hill side God-knows how many times. Their pain couldn’t be felt, nor recalled, nor investigated. He could just imagine,
Slowly, he stood up, his face a mess, slamming his mug against the table with a brittle implosion. He didn’t care if the mug split into two, or was it the table. He walked across the room and pushed the sliding door aside. It was suddenly cold. He was in the second floor, their house artfully balancing on a hill slope, staring into an inconspicuous veranda. No one could possibly tell time, but it was sure to be dark, dark enough to be night.
He was forcing back another surge of loneliness with a new makeshift bravery that was strong enough to keep him standing there. He observed tiny flickers of light from the distant city below. Its massive structures were devoured by the distance, too tiny to be relevant with anyone’s personal dealings as far away as this house.
In silence, he tried to move one of his limbs, checking if he could still feel, pulling it up and down. Dinner time, he remembered. It was only dinnertime that this view would be as lovely and serene as this. After dinner, he and his wife would go out here to breathe some fresh night air and embrace each other to brush away the cold. It was always a busy day. It was here that they mutually called out for an escape, comforted by the thought that Tanya and the baby were safe inside the house.
He lifted his right limb, grunting as he heaved it with his hands over the railings, and then, like a freak accident, he fell over with a heavy thud, and then rolled down continuously along the slope, his body occasionally bouncing over the concrete debris, thinking only of three faces over the braking pain that was battering his soul. The limped body stopped midway, unconscious.
The night was cold, yet lovely and tranquil. And finally, he found his peace in there- alive or not.
Lost and Serenity
His back ached, like all his bones were in pieces. He couldn’t budge either, only able to lift his eyelids and feel the pain in his eyes at the light that burst like fire. At first, he thought he was drowning, by the blur that blocked his sight like he was submerged in an ocean. Vague. He tasted salt. But then he realized he could breathe. That’s fine. Seconds passed and his vision went clear.
He could feel and see with familiarity, thinking, remembering where he was last. It was his room, he thought. No… it was their room. He painfully turned his head aside and saw the bed side where his wife was supposed to be asleep. It was bright in the morning though. But upon realizing that no one’s there, that he was still alone, he wanted to scream- only when he hadn’t heard a voice.
He tried to listen, his body stiff in concentration. He was hearing indistinct voices outside the room, like they were having a suppressed conversation. Suddenly everything went audible as the door yanked open. He jerked.
“Dad, mama told me to wake you up.” Tanya was talking with her arms holding the heavy door from slamming back.
“Tanya?” He couldn’t believe her voice. It felt… distant.
“Tanya?” he asked again, slightly leaning forward.
“Mama!” Tanya called.
Later, a woman hurried beside her. There were the two of them, standing like angels on the doorway: Tanya and her mother.
“Mama?” he asked. Now, it was his voice that felt distant.
“Jem, what’s wrong?” she asked with concern while walking towards the bed he was sitting. “You’ll be late.”
As soon as she sat beside him, Jem looked at her face, probing for a wound, a scratch, or a scraped flesh; her nose, her mouth, lips, her ears. They’re all perfect, as it were for four years that they’ve been together. No wounds, he whispered to himself. No traces of accident.
At first, he was afraid to touch anything fearing that once he touched her, she would rearrange like a smoke.
“Where are we, really?” He squinted around the room, trying to find something bizarre or out of place.
“What are you talking about?” She laughed as he turned back to her and began poking on the tip of her nose.
“You must be… you must be dead. The accident. I saw you. I saw Tanya.” He could barely speak. He was sobbing lightly.
His wife hugged him. “It’s okay, Jem. It’s okay. You must have a very, very bad nightmare. For now, you must move. You’ll be really late.”
She kissed him on the forehead, and hurried outside the room.
His sobbing stopped. He couldn’t breathe. He was too happy, too joyous, to breathe. It was a dream. Everything was a dream.
“Mama?” he called, just to be sure, as he began to walk towards the open door, struggling to untangle the sheet off his feet.
“Yes? Feeling fine now?” Her voice was sweet, homey, wafting together with the comforting smell of cooking breakfast.
He was dreaming. He wanted to jump, only wondering if it would be good for his knees and aching body.
“Yes, I think so,” he answered gleefully as he sprinted and disappeared from the door.
It was his heaven.
Perennial Summer
A Short Story by Eduardo Bautista
“Since then, a new day had shone on my vision and the tropical breeze brushed along my cheeks- announcing the coming of perennial summer.”
- Mary Grace
“That was a long time ago, but I still missed him.”
“Haven’t you considered, you know, meeting someone else? To give you real attention and importance?”
“There is no such thing that I recognized then. I was so naïve a girl that I paid no attention to them.”
On my front, touching behind the single-size couch in an angle where she was sitting was a wall that held memories of distant past. “Is that you?”
“Yes. My mother said I was so beautiful,” she said without even turning. “She always had a reason of taking me a picture.”
“When was that taken?”
“It’s my 14th birthday.”
As I stared back through her, that beauty had been departing and leaving wakes on her face just above the hammocks of sagging flesh. In between were deep lines that gradually formed as she smiled; probably delighting the boys back in her youth.
I was staring at one of the photographs. With the reluctant smile on the photo was a daisy clinging on her right ear.
“We are supposed to be together with my best friend there,” she said. “But because it’s my birthday she let me have the shot. The yellow daisy, if you want to know, was the only daisy around. We don’t have a choice. Violets are rare. When my aging aunt discovered that one of her well-taken-care daisies was missing, she went so mad that it became the cause of her death; so sad that when we told it to our friends, they can’t help laughing.”
I still remembered the potent smell of fresh daisies coming from a flower vase. It was perching over a wooden tripod placed at one corner of the house. The smell gathered and mixed with the presence of old newspapers of the early 50’s, creating an ambiance that flowed through nostrils as if they were patient emotions that had been there for so long and someone should feel every time they entered the house.
“When I met my husband, I was not in the thought of marrying him, but because he had been very nice to me and that he proposed, I said yes. I was so afraid to be alone especially my mother had just died. I’m like the other women out there scared for their security.”
As I returned my gaze on the flaking wall of photographs, I hadn’t seen any recent picture, neither in any part of the house. Although on the entryway, there was only an isolated photo of a man beaming on the lenses, maybe in some western forest, in a military fatigue. I didn’t bother to ask. The young man and the old woman I was interviewing had never had a child. I was about to ask more when tears started to blur my periphery.
“How about Clive?”
“He’s gone,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone.
“How could he be gone?”
“You know, since I was 12, he was always there; like wind when I call and like wind once I whispered I needed him. But maybe he was just tired of me. Maybe he thought I was always controlling him; so then I let him. He turned to breeze blowing away from here.”
“I grew up believing we would be together forever,” she continued after realizing the growing silence. “Practically, as long as I could conceive him different from me.”
I made a sound so she would feel I was listening.
“There were suitors when I stepped 18. I still remembered most of their names but their faces. I was in Ohio when I met one of them- Peter. I no longer remember the face but he might be the most beautiful boy I’ve ever met; three years younger though. Nevertheless, I was afraid that Clive would be hurt so I hadn’t given my acceptance to any of them. Anyway, ignoring suitors was fun.”
The thought drew a smile on her face. Her eyes still transfixed to mine. As young and glittering as it had been.
“I couldn’t imagine my parents’ confusion as to why I was doing that to myself. They frequently thought I was into girls,” she said. “All of it I bear on my shoulders for more decades to come because I was into the childish belief that if only I held on Clive long enough, God would have pity and would make him real.”
“Then on 1941, I met my husband.” She said. Although he was the exact opposite of Peter in appearance, 11 years younger, he gave me another chance not to be alone. However, he had never brought his promise for a long time.”
I silently unzipped my backpack and pulled my pad and ballpoint.
“He left you?”
“I was 56, barely a year after the marriage, when I received a letter saying he died fighting in Vietnam. I felt relieved. My worries of him dying in the war had vanished and my life hence had been changed for the better. I was sitting on this same couch every night until midnight, staring and feeling, thinking of how things would turn if he hadn’t died. Honestly, there was no crying, or depression of some sort. It’s just a plain thinking as if he was a stranger I only met once- on that afternoon in the barracks, and never met since.”
She turned her head towards the wall clock that had been giving accurate guide without its permission since it was nailed on the wall.
“It’s getting late. Don’t you have parents to worry?” She placed her hands on her lap, caressing as if it began to hurt.
“It’s for a school project. They would understand.” I assured her.” So after your husband passed away, don’t you have any relative to go home with?”
I wrote something on my pad.
“I don’t think so. Maybe they wouldn’t even care if I was still alive. The closest relative I have, we just lost communication 5 years after Mike, my Husband, died. And with my best friend, I just heard she had cancer. I don’t know how she was now. But if you’re worried of how I could manage the household, don’t be fooled by what you see.” She gave out a laugh. A difficult laugh that was drawing every bit of energy she could have gotten from several hours of sleep.
I went home at 7 o’clock. I left after I refused to join her for dinner. Since then, as I gave my final gratitude and was about to leave the house, it occurred to me that she was indeed happy. Initially, I doubt it. I thought it was another cliché from the elders, but she had been alone for a very long time. Since she and her husband lived here in the Philippines for convenience during the war she had survived all by herself as her choice and decided not to come back home.
Yesterday morning, she was found by her neighbors dead on her couch. They said she’d been dead for almost a week since it was starting to smell.
On that day, the absence of life around her had been uncovered. The sullen, lifeless breeze finally broke out of the house into the lively street of seldom old houses and trees that rarely moved even during a storm.
For some ineffable reason, a vision of contentment was felt by the people who had carried her body into the carriage. So as they say. Maybe from the aftermath of despair, or she had realized how things should really be.
Several days after, I had my turn. It was the same day as Joseph Estrada was inaugurated as the new president.
I stood in front of my classmates as I was called. I recited:
“…For a young people like me, those experiences could be very depressing and unpleasant. But for an indifferent woman like Mary Grace, it was nothing but making memories. All of us, as we grew older, everything would just be memories.” They almost laugh. Some raise an eyebrow.
“ I realized that memory alone might be able to rip everything apart – leaving what is essential that has always been taken for granted. Have we been to wealth or disabling scarcity, it wouldn’t make any difference since it would all come to pass. Then is the time the word contentment would cease to be a cliché; when everyone realized every time it should be here.”
I walked passed every row and sat down. I was crying.
THE END
“Since then, a new day had shone on my vision and the tropical breeze brushed along my cheeks- announcing the coming of perennial summer.”
- Mary Grace
“That was a long time ago, but I still missed him.”
“Haven’t you considered, you know, meeting someone else? To give you real attention and importance?”
“There is no such thing that I recognized then. I was so naïve a girl that I paid no attention to them.”
On my front, touching behind the single-size couch in an angle where she was sitting was a wall that held memories of distant past. “Is that you?”
“Yes. My mother said I was so beautiful,” she said without even turning. “She always had a reason of taking me a picture.”
“When was that taken?”
“It’s my 14th birthday.”
As I stared back through her, that beauty had been departing and leaving wakes on her face just above the hammocks of sagging flesh. In between were deep lines that gradually formed as she smiled; probably delighting the boys back in her youth.
I was staring at one of the photographs. With the reluctant smile on the photo was a daisy clinging on her right ear.
“We are supposed to be together with my best friend there,” she said. “But because it’s my birthday she let me have the shot. The yellow daisy, if you want to know, was the only daisy around. We don’t have a choice. Violets are rare. When my aging aunt discovered that one of her well-taken-care daisies was missing, she went so mad that it became the cause of her death; so sad that when we told it to our friends, they can’t help laughing.”
I still remembered the potent smell of fresh daisies coming from a flower vase. It was perching over a wooden tripod placed at one corner of the house. The smell gathered and mixed with the presence of old newspapers of the early 50’s, creating an ambiance that flowed through nostrils as if they were patient emotions that had been there for so long and someone should feel every time they entered the house.
“When I met my husband, I was not in the thought of marrying him, but because he had been very nice to me and that he proposed, I said yes. I was so afraid to be alone especially my mother had just died. I’m like the other women out there scared for their security.”
As I returned my gaze on the flaking wall of photographs, I hadn’t seen any recent picture, neither in any part of the house. Although on the entryway, there was only an isolated photo of a man beaming on the lenses, maybe in some western forest, in a military fatigue. I didn’t bother to ask. The young man and the old woman I was interviewing had never had a child. I was about to ask more when tears started to blur my periphery.
“How about Clive?”
“He’s gone,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone.
“How could he be gone?”
“You know, since I was 12, he was always there; like wind when I call and like wind once I whispered I needed him. But maybe he was just tired of me. Maybe he thought I was always controlling him; so then I let him. He turned to breeze blowing away from here.”
“I grew up believing we would be together forever,” she continued after realizing the growing silence. “Practically, as long as I could conceive him different from me.”
I made a sound so she would feel I was listening.
“There were suitors when I stepped 18. I still remembered most of their names but their faces. I was in Ohio when I met one of them- Peter. I no longer remember the face but he might be the most beautiful boy I’ve ever met; three years younger though. Nevertheless, I was afraid that Clive would be hurt so I hadn’t given my acceptance to any of them. Anyway, ignoring suitors was fun.”
The thought drew a smile on her face. Her eyes still transfixed to mine. As young and glittering as it had been.
“I couldn’t imagine my parents’ confusion as to why I was doing that to myself. They frequently thought I was into girls,” she said. “All of it I bear on my shoulders for more decades to come because I was into the childish belief that if only I held on Clive long enough, God would have pity and would make him real.”
“Then on 1941, I met my husband.” She said. Although he was the exact opposite of Peter in appearance, 11 years younger, he gave me another chance not to be alone. However, he had never brought his promise for a long time.”
I silently unzipped my backpack and pulled my pad and ballpoint.
“He left you?”
“I was 56, barely a year after the marriage, when I received a letter saying he died fighting in Vietnam. I felt relieved. My worries of him dying in the war had vanished and my life hence had been changed for the better. I was sitting on this same couch every night until midnight, staring and feeling, thinking of how things would turn if he hadn’t died. Honestly, there was no crying, or depression of some sort. It’s just a plain thinking as if he was a stranger I only met once- on that afternoon in the barracks, and never met since.”
She turned her head towards the wall clock that had been giving accurate guide without its permission since it was nailed on the wall.
“It’s getting late. Don’t you have parents to worry?” She placed her hands on her lap, caressing as if it began to hurt.
“It’s for a school project. They would understand.” I assured her.” So after your husband passed away, don’t you have any relative to go home with?”
I wrote something on my pad.
“I don’t think so. Maybe they wouldn’t even care if I was still alive. The closest relative I have, we just lost communication 5 years after Mike, my Husband, died. And with my best friend, I just heard she had cancer. I don’t know how she was now. But if you’re worried of how I could manage the household, don’t be fooled by what you see.” She gave out a laugh. A difficult laugh that was drawing every bit of energy she could have gotten from several hours of sleep.
I went home at 7 o’clock. I left after I refused to join her for dinner. Since then, as I gave my final gratitude and was about to leave the house, it occurred to me that she was indeed happy. Initially, I doubt it. I thought it was another cliché from the elders, but she had been alone for a very long time. Since she and her husband lived here in the Philippines for convenience during the war she had survived all by herself as her choice and decided not to come back home.
Yesterday morning, she was found by her neighbors dead on her couch. They said she’d been dead for almost a week since it was starting to smell.
On that day, the absence of life around her had been uncovered. The sullen, lifeless breeze finally broke out of the house into the lively street of seldom old houses and trees that rarely moved even during a storm.
For some ineffable reason, a vision of contentment was felt by the people who had carried her body into the carriage. So as they say. Maybe from the aftermath of despair, or she had realized how things should really be.
Several days after, I had my turn. It was the same day as Joseph Estrada was inaugurated as the new president.
I stood in front of my classmates as I was called. I recited:
“…For a young people like me, those experiences could be very depressing and unpleasant. But for an indifferent woman like Mary Grace, it was nothing but making memories. All of us, as we grew older, everything would just be memories.” They almost laugh. Some raise an eyebrow.
“ I realized that memory alone might be able to rip everything apart – leaving what is essential that has always been taken for granted. Have we been to wealth or disabling scarcity, it wouldn’t make any difference since it would all come to pass. Then is the time the word contentment would cease to be a cliché; when everyone realized every time it should be here.”
I walked passed every row and sat down. I was crying.
THE END
Albatross
It was getting darker. Saturday afternoon, hungry, and I was watchful. I was sitting beside a criminal. And knowing that tomorrow or the day after that, someone would be killed mercilessly, if it even makes sense to kill with mercy. It made me feel like a human reject sent to a battleground where soldiers were dreadful that the war had extended until eternity.
We were surrounded by makeshift houses out of plywoods, used tarpaulins loaded with pools of rainwater, and rotten tin rooves. Housewives were creating a crowd for daily afternoon gossips, while across the muddy, dusty streets of Tondo was a woman responsible enough to call on her youngsters and smack them on the butt as they entered the tiny, old fashioned house.
On the spot that i was squatting, I smiled after someone greeted me with a fellow nod. He lighted a Malboro stick.
He walked past me like I was a boy begging for illegal powder and he's willing to give me some for free.
"Have you met Toning?" the man asked. He dragged on his stick, and it glowed like heaven.
"Not yet. Will he be coming soon?" I asked. "We've been here for half an hour. What a brat." I cursed on my breath and spit onto the uncemented yard of the man we had been waiting for.
"This is Upham, by the way." I introduced Upham to the man who was currently leaning onto a door. "He's expert on ammunitions. R-16, Angel Rum, .38 Special, name them." I looked at Upham and he nodded humbly.
"You must meet Toning, my brother," the man said to Upham.
"I'm not aware that he has a brother," I interjected. "What's your name?'
They both seem to unheard me.
"He's also good at those," the man added. "That man, it's his toys." Then he checked around before continuing like he was planning to masturbate. "He's one of those who assassinated Mr. Go two years ago. And he's smart, my brother. He slid off justice, and see what he is doing now; risking it again."
He smiled. His tanned and tattooed arm flexed as he lifted his cigarette and finished it off with a long single drag. God, that fast. He threw it on the ground and combed the sky like he's a poet hunting for inspiration.
I followed his gaze. The sky was as gloomy as a basin filled with murky, gray water. Directly above one of the shacks passed an unfamiliar bird. It was distant, big and white, and if I was stupid enough would suspect it to be an ostrich. Only ostrich couldn't fly and rarely white as dove. It was flying in an incredible speed, sweeping across the sky in a great heavenly arc, gliding easily through the air. Up there, it was the only thing that was moving aside from a wisp of cotton chugging forward for attention. I lowered my gaze a little and the peaceful space was engulfed by brown dust, wet clutter, and bare skins grazing for unexpected fortune and unusual cash, others contenting themselves by breathing against neighbors and surveying for attacks from sharks they did wrong.
On this world, i realized how consuming it is to look through and down, even by simply looking back. It will be a pleasure to look up sometimes. Up there, it was something different. Like it was a new world built for no one to live rendering it painfully disconnected and uncorrupted. Looking at it would surely be a relief from the pain of our usual territory.
When I had enough, I pulled of that and the small seed of irritability suddenly broke off through my words. "Shit. Where was he?"
Seconds passed and the man noticed my expression. "So, who is this target? Another businessman who treated everyone with kindness?" He snorted like it was funny, although it was true. Kind but elite people are more vulnerable of being murdered instead of average people with huge attitude. Covetousness is a powerful motivation. Not for us, but with the people who had a very short patience from losing.
"Nah," I said. "Actually, it has something to do with adultery."
I looked down, and I could hardly see a stone. It's really getting late. "It's a businessman, yes, but we are taking his revenge for his wife. I heard how wicked she is. She's been bitching around lately with younger boys less than half her age. Jesus, this husband wants her to be tortured first."
"You agreed on that?" the man said, looking amused.
"No." Upham answered for me. "We're mercenaries but we're still human beings, for god's sake. That's why I studied on ammunition so I could finish someone in a snap and keep off the blood out of me, so much of torturing a woman."
I wanted to laugh, but as a fellow, I thought better of it.
It would be Upham's fifth assignment. In my case, I've seen four people killed- with my help, of course- and blood is a natural thing for me. Pool of blood. And justice wasn't something we're scared about after all. It's as simple as getting caught off guard and doing the crime worse than what we've been asked to. That's what we are scared of. The guilt of unnecessarily raping a child or cutting off some man's genitals is too much. It always activated a drop of conscience inside our heads, and wouldn't leave us until another assignment comes when we could redeem ourselves and never do it again. Justice is just a light, formal nuisance especially if someone in a position patronized your skills and previous criminal achievements.
One night, two days after the discovery of the body we dispatched as commanded was discovered floating on the Pasig river, I was reached by two uniformed men. I thought of asking for their badges, but scared to make an impression that I had been on this scenario more often than a normal, innocent civilian, I asked them instead:
"Have I done something?" with matching apprehension as I open the door with uttermost respect for men in uniforms. And I knew, in the first glance, that they were NBI agents, flashing me an arrest warrant even before they step inside. I mean, why would they step inside? Was I expecting them to accept my offer of snacks and forget about things? No, so I immediately came after them because it would already be a crime if I wouldn't.
Once I was in the precinct and been told of me being one of the suspects, I pestered them with the usual but tested what-where-why-when statements and promised to prove the validity of my alibis. Thank god my upper man had a lot of strings to pull. After I called him, I was a free man; as good as an innocent. And this agents ushered me outside with a smile like I was an honorable visitor who was about to leave.
It's hopeless. I stood up and breathed out my impatience audibly. Toning wouldn't come. He's two hours over and it's very late for talking. My wife must be expecting me to be home within an hour.
"You leaving already?" The man asked as I started shaking the numbness off my legs. "He must have reasons."
I flipped my phone open and greeted by a smile from my wife and our son trapped inside her arms. "He must have called then."
I flipped it back with a sigh.
"Maybe he's on his way," he said, inching towards us. Upham was already walking away.
"Fuck him," I said, waving my hand. "Just tell him we've been here long enough to realize..."
Suddenly, a young boy rushed in, panting, towards the man I was talking. I was already few paces away when he begun to speak.
"What's up? Why are you running?"
"It's--" the boy breathed in, and out, and then in. "It's Toning," I heard the boy said. "He was shot."
I turned and looked at the boy in the distance as if I found my long lost child. "What the-"
"He kept on running away but cops gunned him down."
The sinking sun and its remaining light suddenly spilled across the horizon. His words echoed around the foyer of another cold, disturbing evening like a soldier calling out for a truce.
I was tired, I told myself, and I wanted to go home.
We were surrounded by makeshift houses out of plywoods, used tarpaulins loaded with pools of rainwater, and rotten tin rooves. Housewives were creating a crowd for daily afternoon gossips, while across the muddy, dusty streets of Tondo was a woman responsible enough to call on her youngsters and smack them on the butt as they entered the tiny, old fashioned house.
On the spot that i was squatting, I smiled after someone greeted me with a fellow nod. He lighted a Malboro stick.
He walked past me like I was a boy begging for illegal powder and he's willing to give me some for free.
"Have you met Toning?" the man asked. He dragged on his stick, and it glowed like heaven.
"Not yet. Will he be coming soon?" I asked. "We've been here for half an hour. What a brat." I cursed on my breath and spit onto the uncemented yard of the man we had been waiting for.
"This is Upham, by the way." I introduced Upham to the man who was currently leaning onto a door. "He's expert on ammunitions. R-16, Angel Rum, .38 Special, name them." I looked at Upham and he nodded humbly.
"You must meet Toning, my brother," the man said to Upham.
"I'm not aware that he has a brother," I interjected. "What's your name?'
They both seem to unheard me.
"He's also good at those," the man added. "That man, it's his toys." Then he checked around before continuing like he was planning to masturbate. "He's one of those who assassinated Mr. Go two years ago. And he's smart, my brother. He slid off justice, and see what he is doing now; risking it again."
He smiled. His tanned and tattooed arm flexed as he lifted his cigarette and finished it off with a long single drag. God, that fast. He threw it on the ground and combed the sky like he's a poet hunting for inspiration.
I followed his gaze. The sky was as gloomy as a basin filled with murky, gray water. Directly above one of the shacks passed an unfamiliar bird. It was distant, big and white, and if I was stupid enough would suspect it to be an ostrich. Only ostrich couldn't fly and rarely white as dove. It was flying in an incredible speed, sweeping across the sky in a great heavenly arc, gliding easily through the air. Up there, it was the only thing that was moving aside from a wisp of cotton chugging forward for attention. I lowered my gaze a little and the peaceful space was engulfed by brown dust, wet clutter, and bare skins grazing for unexpected fortune and unusual cash, others contenting themselves by breathing against neighbors and surveying for attacks from sharks they did wrong.
On this world, i realized how consuming it is to look through and down, even by simply looking back. It will be a pleasure to look up sometimes. Up there, it was something different. Like it was a new world built for no one to live rendering it painfully disconnected and uncorrupted. Looking at it would surely be a relief from the pain of our usual territory.
When I had enough, I pulled of that and the small seed of irritability suddenly broke off through my words. "Shit. Where was he?"
Seconds passed and the man noticed my expression. "So, who is this target? Another businessman who treated everyone with kindness?" He snorted like it was funny, although it was true. Kind but elite people are more vulnerable of being murdered instead of average people with huge attitude. Covetousness is a powerful motivation. Not for us, but with the people who had a very short patience from losing.
"Nah," I said. "Actually, it has something to do with adultery."
I looked down, and I could hardly see a stone. It's really getting late. "It's a businessman, yes, but we are taking his revenge for his wife. I heard how wicked she is. She's been bitching around lately with younger boys less than half her age. Jesus, this husband wants her to be tortured first."
"You agreed on that?" the man said, looking amused.
"No." Upham answered for me. "We're mercenaries but we're still human beings, for god's sake. That's why I studied on ammunition so I could finish someone in a snap and keep off the blood out of me, so much of torturing a woman."
I wanted to laugh, but as a fellow, I thought better of it.
It would be Upham's fifth assignment. In my case, I've seen four people killed- with my help, of course- and blood is a natural thing for me. Pool of blood. And justice wasn't something we're scared about after all. It's as simple as getting caught off guard and doing the crime worse than what we've been asked to. That's what we are scared of. The guilt of unnecessarily raping a child or cutting off some man's genitals is too much. It always activated a drop of conscience inside our heads, and wouldn't leave us until another assignment comes when we could redeem ourselves and never do it again. Justice is just a light, formal nuisance especially if someone in a position patronized your skills and previous criminal achievements.
One night, two days after the discovery of the body we dispatched as commanded was discovered floating on the Pasig river, I was reached by two uniformed men. I thought of asking for their badges, but scared to make an impression that I had been on this scenario more often than a normal, innocent civilian, I asked them instead:
"Have I done something?" with matching apprehension as I open the door with uttermost respect for men in uniforms. And I knew, in the first glance, that they were NBI agents, flashing me an arrest warrant even before they step inside. I mean, why would they step inside? Was I expecting them to accept my offer of snacks and forget about things? No, so I immediately came after them because it would already be a crime if I wouldn't.
Once I was in the precinct and been told of me being one of the suspects, I pestered them with the usual but tested what-where-why-when statements and promised to prove the validity of my alibis. Thank god my upper man had a lot of strings to pull. After I called him, I was a free man; as good as an innocent. And this agents ushered me outside with a smile like I was an honorable visitor who was about to leave.
It's hopeless. I stood up and breathed out my impatience audibly. Toning wouldn't come. He's two hours over and it's very late for talking. My wife must be expecting me to be home within an hour.
"You leaving already?" The man asked as I started shaking the numbness off my legs. "He must have reasons."
I flipped my phone open and greeted by a smile from my wife and our son trapped inside her arms. "He must have called then."
I flipped it back with a sigh.
"Maybe he's on his way," he said, inching towards us. Upham was already walking away.
"Fuck him," I said, waving my hand. "Just tell him we've been here long enough to realize..."
Suddenly, a young boy rushed in, panting, towards the man I was talking. I was already few paces away when he begun to speak.
"What's up? Why are you running?"
"It's--" the boy breathed in, and out, and then in. "It's Toning," I heard the boy said. "He was shot."
I turned and looked at the boy in the distance as if I found my long lost child. "What the-"
"He kept on running away but cops gunned him down."
The sinking sun and its remaining light suddenly spilled across the horizon. His words echoed around the foyer of another cold, disturbing evening like a soldier calling out for a truce.
I was tired, I told myself, and I wanted to go home.
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