my bitchin’ yesterday was rewarded. or maybe i did offer a virgin to astaroth.
an email arrived at 2.08 am informing me that one of my short stories will be appearing at the philippine graphic. if another story gets accepted by the philippines free press (now ready for submission, i just need the balls to hit send) and the forthcoming volume of philippine speculative fiction anthology (a few polishing needs to be done after i do more important things like building my abs and hanging with my cool dudes as we buy cool stuff so that we could look cool and put the cool pictures in facebook) that would really rule.
this piece of news couldn’t have come at a better time: even I am starting to get tired of my great potential, har-de-har.
full disclosure: this is a love story. well, sort of. i mean, i really tried to make this a love story.
here’s an excerpt, full copyright protection, of course. click on the entry title above for better viewing.
TUESDAYS ARE THE DEADEST OF DAYS
A couple hunched under a small umbrella already being threatened by Habagat’s wind braves the downpour. Their gaits are syncopated, never quite falling into a cadence despite the distance they have walked. The man uses his bulk to shield the woman from the sheets of rain that make it past the useless cover and in the darkness, the frail woman almost blends with the shadows. Only the bundle she is carrying–a white cloth that used to be a flour sack–indicates her presence and despite being so weary and hurting, she considers the heavy rainfall a blessing. It only takes a deluge to loosen the grip of Martial Law and at this unholy hour she is grateful that they have not yet encountered any checkpoint controlled by the Philippine Constabulary.
A gust of wind hauling with it the stench of floating garbage from Pasig river and the smell of baking bread from Binondo slaps her, rain mixing with her tears and she doesn’t sob for fear of waking her baby, instead, she keeps her blurred vision on where they are going, so very close now as she reminds herself that the last thing they need is an unnecessary attention. The same wind uproots the umbrella from the man’s hand and he lets go after a second’s hesitation to run after it. Then, he guides her towards Quiapo Church and they walk a bit faster across the open courtyard towards the canopied entrance like lost strangers seeking shelter.
Lightning flashes and before their eyes can adjust to the momentary blindness, the deafening sound of thunder. An electric heaviness hangs in the air, the lightning has struck very near. In her arms, the baby wiggles and yawns.
“Hurry, the patrol might pass by,” the man whispers although he thinks that the police might not even be in the precincts at this weather with the Plaza Miranda Bombing already nine years into oblivion. The woman very gently lays what she’s carrying in her arms onto the granite steps, unfastening a knot from a layer that exposes the baby’s still bloody face and the man looks heavenward and fixes his gaze at the church’s left steeple, straining his eyes to get a glimpse of the clocks.
The woman says nothing, whimpers her words away and in a moment, the baby cries and so she takes it to her bosom one last time until it falls asleep to the melody of her humming that are mostly stifled sobs.
The baby finally lets go and the woman places it once more on the steps of the church whose foundations were laid some four centuries ago, built by the brawns of newly converted natives under the sign of the cross and the sigil of the King of Spain. She picks up one of the wax-smelling cardboard boxes littering the steps and props it beside the baby to keep the winds at bay and despite not being entirely religious, she crosses herself and mumbles a quick prayer before getting up. She looks back and sees Liwanag candles lettered on its sides and in the dark, she reads more of its hopeful significance than its manifest irony. The woman then rests her thin frame underneath the arm of her companion and she lets him drag her away, past the only witnesses of their deed–the mute statues of the ever watchful San Pedro and San Juan–into the piazza and finally towards Hidalgo Street where torrential tears fall once more to rival the fury of the rain.
#
Tuesdays are the deadest of days at Sa Guijo Café + Bar as its weekends are observed on Sundays and Mondays. Aptly enough, Tuesdays are Goth Night when bands slated to play have names with words like “tears” or “wake” or “crimson” or “decay” rendered with dark iconographies of candles, cauldrons, crosses, and coffins. On Tuesdays, Sa Guijo Café + Bar–which really is neither a café nor a bar but two houses with its partition torn down to accommodate a low stage cramped with amps, speakers, microphones and stands, a drumset and an assortment of cables and jacks as well as the requisite eight tables–becomes alive with death’s little fanboys and fangirls. This particular Tuesday at this nondescript place of two-story apartments tucked anonymously in the warehouse district of San Antonio Village in Makati simply called Sa Guijo by music lovers and alcohol worshippers alike, two strangers, neither of them quite Goth, meet.
Rafaela is the first to arrive and as she walks towards the rusty iron gate hinged on a concrete wall painted with the face of our national hero with his anachronistic Ray-Ban aviator shades and Bose noise-cancelling headphones, the indispensable sound check is blaring from the speakers. Tendrils of a guitar’s whine undulate with tentacles of a singer’s wail as the two slither out the wooden door covered with stickers and posters promoting album releases, energy boosters, outdoor adventures, alcoholic drinks, subversive publications, filter cigarettes, and dubious charities among want ads for unsigned bands hopefully looking for a person to be one of these: bass, guitar, drum, keyboard, vocals as a final member to kick-start a dream aimed at securing a record deal and achieving superstardom; and a design house desperately seeking for a person to be all of these: illustrator, animator, graphic artist, motion director, web designer as an intern to help finish a huge, confidential project with an impending deadline. Both demanding ads conveniently forget remuneration, even in the fine print.
And while it is very early into the night with the sun still casting feeble rays that shone defiantly against the blackness already pockmarked by a few twinkling stars, the balding, black-clad bouncer slash waiter slash parking attendant everybody calls Manong is already manning the entrance, ready with the rubber stamp pad and complimentary drink stubs.
Rafaela stalls and sits down at the wooden bench that used to be a trunk of an ancient Acacia and lights a Camel after she realizes that the talismanic words I’m with the band will neither work tonight nor ever again. To clarify, she has never been with a band, the band or any band. But Marko, her ex, is a vocalist and he gets her to all of his band’s shows. As he’s the one who submits their guests, she’s always in the checklist under assumed names such as Steven Segal, Chuck Norris, and Sho Kusugi. She would have settled for Cynthia Rothrock but he always insists on these male aliases and who is she to argue when she is nothing but…what? A groupie? That would be flattering both the band and herself, although what a groupie does is exactly what she is doing, fucking the band and getting in for free. So she has to pay tonight, debating herself on the practicality of spending precious pesos that she should be saving until her pay arrives. If, and when it arrives, she corrects herself, then she remembers that she got fired again from her last job. But because she knows that she must confront this place as well as every memory of Marko she decides that she might as well pay the cover for what it’s goddamn worth. Every successful goodbye comes with a price after all.
Rafaela stares at the wall, artificially aged like a movie set with painted cracks and hints of bricks and vines dangling one-dimensionally from nowhere. Everything is pretense, she thinks and in the span of a single cigarette, she went through the whole five stages of grief all over again and acceptance only came when all the mental curses directed towards Marko and his shitty, stupid metal band has been unleashed. It was a victory this time with neither tears boiling up her eyes nor snot running down her nose so she decides to reward herself with another stick.
“We really have a Goth scene here?” A hoarse voice from someone who’s been smoking too much or just unaccustomed to speaking. The really was spoken as a part of the sentence, not as a punctuation like yeah! and ohmygod! and ican’tbelieve! – the entire arsenal of kyala girls who can carry a conversation by just a permutation of all these. Rafaela, judging from the stranger’s faded jeans, ratty shirt and well-worn Chucks, decides that this one, despite her painfully thin frame and Catholic schoolgirl face, is a grrrl.
