Category Archives: fiction

Trese

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There’s so much hype surrounding Trese, an animated adaptation of the Filipino graphic novel of the same name that will be shown on Netflix. I haven’t had the opportunity to read the series but I will find time to watch the animated series.

From what I gather, this is about a Filipina, Alexandra Trese (trese is thirteen is Spanish, believed to be a number of bad luck) who is some kind of detective who deals with the underworld/supernatutal. It gave me the Witch Hunter Robin vibes but Trese looks like she is more kickass than Robin.

Photo from Goodreads

Based from reviews of the graphic novel series, readers are introduced to Philippine mythology, the stuff that terrorized us kids at night like:

1. tiyanak – a blood-thirsty baby monster that started out as an aborted fetus, or so what the elders told us;

2. mananaggal – a monster that takes human form by day and splits in half during full moons; the upper body splits from the lower body and develops bat wings to fly and feed;

3. kapre – a giant that resembles a man that hangs out in huge trees and smokes a lot. When you see a tree at night billowing smoke, most likely that’s a kapre on that tree. I’m not really sure what this creature does but maybe it has something to do with bringing you with him to the underworld

4. wakwak – a vampiric bird, similar to manananggal. We don’t call that kind of monster wakwak here in Luzon, most likely it’s referred to as manananggal especially if you’re in an urban or semi-urban area.

5. tiktik – it’s a small creature probably like a troll or something that makes the “tik tik tik” sound on rooftops, especially when there’s a pregnant woman in the house. The creature bores a hole through the roof with its razor-sharp tongue to reach the pregnant woman’s tummy to feed on the fetus inside.

5. tikbalang – a half-man, half-horse creature that is said to make people get lost in the woods, never to be found again. The old people said that when you’re in the woods/mountain and you get lost, it’s most likely you’re being toyed by a tikbalang. I don’t know if they feed on humans but I think they’re some kind of foot soldiers of the underworld. When we were kids, we were told that if we get played by the tikbalang, we should turn our shirts inside out so we can reverse the spell cast on us by the creature so we could find our way home.

6. duwende – dwarf or similar to leprechaun I think; they said they live inside earth mounds and sometimes they live outside old homes; they can put curses on you. We’ve had stories in our family about being played upon or cursed by duwendes because they got offended for some reason.

7. aswang – a shape-shifting monster. This is one I feared the most when I was a kid. This creature can be anything. Like a vampire, it feeds on humans but not just blood, it devours humans like how big cats shred their preys. Unlike the other creatures above, the aswangs aren’t brainless zombies that you can easily outwit. They’re diabolical or basically demons in human form, if they want to manifest in that form. Sometimes they can be huge black dogs that chase motorists at night and grab people from their vehicles. Sometimes they make a doppelgänger of your friend or family to trick you and mislead as you have become a prey. Sometimes they said some witches are aswangs and they steal bodies of the dead during a funeral to feed on. When they steal a body, they replace the body in the coffin with a banana tree trunk. This is one of the reasons why people in the rural areas hold 24-hr vigils during funerals so that the aswang will not steal the body. They also said that aswangs, if they live among humans in a village, do not socialize and they do not come out during daytime. They do not have philtrum, or the indentation above the lip.

I did a research on these mythical creatures more than a decade ago as I was writing a novel based on Philippine mythology. I almost didn’t finish my thesis for my MA because I was so preoccupied writing this novel. One of the major antagonists, if not the main antagonist, was Maria Makiling, a diwata (a nature spirit, like a minor goddess or a fairy, based on the Sanskrit word devata = god), who is said to inhabit the mountain of the same name in my hometown. This diwata was said to be antagonistic towards foreigners to the area (i.e. non-residents) and make them go around in circles in her mountain, similar to what tikbalangs do, to be forever lost. One version of the legends we have of her was that when she was in her human form, she was raped by a foreigner whom she snubbed because she already had heart set on a native suitor. She has since become vindictive. Hence, the volcanic nature of the mountain.

I won’t go into details of what I wrote as I burned all copies of it. It was causing me literal nightmares. Like nightmares of aswangs circling overhead inside the church next to my childhood home. Regular nightmares. My novel involved occult rituals and I don’t know how they came about or how I conjured them up in my head. But considering how the paternal side of my family was into occult, like the really bad one, I wouldn’t be surprised if I had it buried in my brain all along.

I want to watch Trese but I’m afraid of summoning again the nightmares. Even if it’s just an anime.

Mi Corazon No Entiende (A fiction)

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The raindrops kept tap-tapping on the rooftops outside my window, in a rhythmic pattern in sync with my heart—the heart that has been pounding with such force that i was afraid my veins would just burst.

After a few seconds this lump of muscle broke into a canter and it slowed down to a cadence an old man could follow.

Then it exploded and tore into a million pieces.

I wonder if I should pick them up from the floor. Should I try to put it back together? I stared at the ceiling above me. The fat raindrops outside morphed into a deafening downpour. The raindrops somehow found their way into my eyes and cascaded down at the sides of my temple. The flow just wouldn’t stop, much to my annoyance.

“I got it! I got it! I am finally moving to Switzerland!” I remembered him telling me at lunch break. We had just finished a really difficult training session that morning.

“Oh my gossssssssshhhhh! Finally! I’m so happy for you!” I gushed over my spaghetti alfredo.

I was really happy for him, that’s the truth. But sad for myself. The words echoed within the hollow depths between my ears. The words were like an ice pick that lodged itself somewhere between my heart and lungs. I couldn’t breathe.

Brandon finally got the promotion. The parent company is moving him to the headquarters.

I guess this was God’s reply to my prayers. I’ve asked Him to take away whatever I was feeling towards my friend and colleague because it was killing me.

I broke off an engagement that was going nowhere because of Brandon. Because I thought–just a hopeful thought–that he will see me. Really see me.

Of course he doesn’t know. No one knows. He will never know. Only I know.

And I will take this fact with me to my grave.

“So when will the move be?” I almost choked on my pasta. I pretended to squeak in delight instead.

“December. Boy, am I so excited by this!” Brandon squeezed my shoulders. It was painful, the squeeze. I just couldn’t decide whether the pain emanated from his over-enthusiastic arm or from the ice pick that stabbed my gut.

“Good for you!” I said. “As for me, I am finally making my way to Davao with my new assignment.”

I lied. I was just making it up. But I guess it will become a reality after today. I will raise this to my boss.

“Yeah. Probably it’s for the best, after you’ve been through,” Brandon said, pertaining to my sham of an engagement. Sham of a relationship that was just floating along in the Dead Sea of relationship hell.

Maybe, just maybe, I should’ve let my engagement go on as planned? Maybe I should have…

No. I was flogging a dead horse.

I stopped staring at the ceiling and flicked open my mobile phone. I read and reread all my past Viber exchanges with Brandon.

I resolved never to read them again. Never. Even though these made me happy, even though these became my raison d’etre, I had to stop this illusion.

The gray matter inside my head should take over. It has saved me a million times from disaster in the past. It will keep me alive still.

What about my heart? Shall i pick up the pieces on the floor? Probably I should leave it where it lay.

Because my heart does not understand. Mi corazon no entiende.

###

COLD HANDS (A fiction)

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Stuffy. So stuffy.

I had to get out of the windowless hotel room that was to be home for 8 days. A craving for cold milk tea pushed me out of the room and into the humid night.

My search for a convenience store brought me to Chinatown Food Street. It was 10 pm and the nearest kiosk selling a variety of drinks, from Coke to Tsing Tao Beer, has just put up a sign saying it was closed. But the street was still teeming with mostly tourists dining al fresco.

I sat by a vacant table with a bottle of empty Tiger Beer on it after buying my 2.70-dollar milk tea from the nearby 7-11 and took photos of the food street. I was a non-tourist tourist after all.

“Excuse me, this is my table,” a guy with a thick European accent spoke behind me.

“Ooh sorry,” I turned around and saw the guy with ash-brown colored hair smiling at me. Scandinavian probably.

“It’s ok. You’re Filipino, right?”

“How did you know? I always get mistaken for Chinese or something else.”

“I always know. I work with a lot of Filipinos in our ship. They’re a jolly good lot. I’ve always liked Filipinos.”

The writer in me was curious. “Oh yeah, there are a lot of Filipino seafarers. So how long are you staying here?”

“I have a couple of hours before we leave. Thought I spend it outside my cabin and take a break from dealing with all the numbers,” he said. Definitely Scandinavian. Norwegian probably.

He was a first-engineer, whatever that was. Told me he was working on the German ship’s engines, for a German boss who was so gruff and stiff. Oh, the British are also stiff, I countered. No, the Germans are more stiff and are scowling a lot, he said. “That’s why my Filipino crew loves me, I am more relaxed than our German boss.”

Christien. His name was Christien. He had prodded me to give him my name. Lisa. Took me a while before I responded. Because I just wanted us to be nameless. Anonymous. But he managed to get it out of me.

I lit a cigarette. “Sorry, I should kick this habit but I still hold on to this vice to keep stress from eating me alive.”

We talked about my life as a writer and the adventures I had that were later shaped by my words, read by an unknown audience. I was in the city for training for my newish job. He talked about the 10 weeks circling Asia and 10 weeks going around the Mediterranean Sea, hopping from Genoa, to Barcelona, to Valencia, to some North African ports–places I could only pinpoint on the map. He talked about the absurdity of piracy in the 21st century, of having British body guards to keep them safe, of being locked up inside their ship for days or weeks at a time to protect them from those pesky pirates.

Of things in-between our struggles to keep our sanity intact: I in a landlocked concrete hell, he in an endless blue stretch of nothingness.

I painted a rather touristy picture of Cebu and gave him reasons why he should skip Manila, where I spend hours just driving to and from work. That particular dreadful, drizzling night that I was stuck in traffic for four hours. Why a tenth of our population endure months or years away from family. How they kept our economy afloat during the worst and best times.

He said that in his present company, he can be at sea for 2.5 months and 2.5 months off and anything longer than that would drive him crazy. But the Filipino crew, oh it was a different story. The guys told him they’re ok even if they’re 9 months at sea. They needed the money. They can endure, his crew said. That’s why he loved Filipinos.

Christien said it’s hard to keep a relationship when one is often away at sea. Yeah, I could only imagine the hardships my compatriots were going through. He was looking at me with sad smiling eyes. Guessed that he was 35 years old, pegging it on my age; no crinkles yet at the corner of his eyes. He felt flattered so I adjusted it to 40. He was crestfallen. Ok, I said, it was somewhere between. Let’s settle it at that.

“You are very beautiful. Who would’ve known that I would get back to my table to see a beautiful woman sitting there?” has said as he slowly slipped his hand into mine. “Why is your hand cold?”

“It’s from my milk tea bottle,” I said. I bought it two hours earlier.

“So it’s 12 midnight, what now?” Christien asked.

“I have to go back to my hotel. I have to go to our office to work tomorrow,” I gingerly took my black bag from the table.

“Can I come with you to your hotel?” His eyes were still smiling.

But mine felt like huge saucers at that moment. “Umm, no, I don’t do that. Besides, I’m already committed.” I offered him my hand for a handshake.

“OK I understand,” he took my clammy hand and kissed it. “You really are beautiful.”

“Are you sure you’re OK? How will you get to your port? Cab?”

“No, I can walk. It’s just 20 minutes from here.”

“OK bye then. Really nice talking to you. Had a nice time.”

He embraced me. Can’t remember if he planted a kiss on my cheek or on my forehead.

“When are you going back here?” he asked after he released me.

“I don’t know. It depends on when my bosses will ask me again to come back.”

“Will I see you again? Is there a chance that I will see you again?”

“No. Probably not.”

“Are you OK, just walking by yourself?” he called out as I took a few steps to the direction of my windowless hotel room.

“Yeah, it’s just two blocks away,” I said. “Bye, Christien.”

My head was whirling. What was that all about?

I tapped my hotel room key card on my door knob and flopped on my white sheets five minutes later.

I smelled sweet masculine perfume on my cold, clammy hands.

###

OF THE THINGS LEFT UNSAID (A fiction)

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She has always loved the sea.

Staring at it makes her feel like the world is finite…but there’s something that lies beyond what her eyes can see. Something massive and unreachable. Making her restless.

Yearning for something indescribable.

Adrienne continued to stare at the lights winking at her just past the Flyer. Skyscrapers, like sentinels guarding the city’s wealth, were beautifully lighting up the hot, humid night.

There were several teenagers awkwardly doing skateboard tricks on the pavement while cyclists whizzed past her. She then looked at the footbridge wrapped with purple fairy lights, leading pedestrians from Gardens by the Bay towards the Esplanade.

It’s a long walk. But then I have the whole night, Adrienne thought. She just didn’t want to go back to her hotel. Not just yet.

Four hours ago she was frantically typing on her phone, chatting with Rhodora as she sweltered under a canopy next to the domed building, which was one of the government initiatives to make up for the city’s lack of natural attraction.

“He said he would be late. He was just finishing up something in the office,” Adrienne remembered typing on her phone.

“Ok. You’ve been there for 30 mins already. If he doesn’t come it’s either: 1) He’s too chicken to show his face because he still feels something or 2) He has moved on,” Rho replied.

An hour went by and Adrienne sweated profusely. Something important might really have come up, she argued to herself.

Ping. Ping. She looked at her phone.

“Sorry I can’t come. Still fighting this nasty flu. Have to stay in the office.”

There, it was final. Nail on the coffin.

She can recall tasting her salty tears behind her sunglasses. Then came the bitter aftertaste.

She copy-pasted Matt’s text message to Rho.

Ping.

“Sorry, Rienne. I don’t know what to say,” her friend said. She could feel pity behind those black pixels.

A few days back, Matt was agog to play host after she told him she would be coming to the city for business. He told her he would fetch her from the airport. They would be going to some watering hole and catch up. After all ten years is a long time.

She was not the one who sought him out. It was Matt all along who planned her itinerary in the city. Wait, wait, don’t worry about me. I have business to attend to first, Adrienne told him. No no, I have to challenge you to a drinking contest, just as I promised before, he said.

Ding-dong. “In fifteen minutes we would be closing…” the public announcement system rambled on, bringing Adrienne back to the present, back to the steel bench she has been occupying for heaven knows how long.

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Her feet led her to the concrete steps of the footbridge with purple fairy lights. Where would I go? Ah, to the weird durian-looking thing, she decided. Might as well check out life on the other side of the Bay.

But why am I still here, Adrienne asked herself as she looked past the old man on a bike, peddling LED trinkets to tourists. Why am I torturing myself?

She rummaged through her bag for her phone. Nothing. Eerily silent. Damning silence reverberated through her consciousness.

A jogger brushed past her, almost making her lose balance. Yeah right, I haven’t eaten anything since lunch, Adrienne suddenly realized. She took the nearest seat and then she found herself sitting across the regal-looking Fullerton building. Uncannily similar to the Old Post Office back home.

With all the the strength she could muster, she fired up her phone and went to search for her Notes. Scrolled. Copy. Paste on the message field:

“Matt,

What I wanted to accomplish on this trip was supposed to be something that I should have done a long time ago. I left so many things unsaid.

I wanted to tell you over bottles of beer that you were an itch that I had to scratch. And scratch I did. The problem is it took me a decade to do that. I wanted to tell you that I fell in love with a ghost, a ghost that never went away. You were with me but you had never been with me. I didn’t know it then.

I buried you by jumping from one relationship to another, without knowing that it was you who I wanted. I thought of taking a job in this city but I could not figure why I had to abandon all that is familiar to me. I thought I was running away from something I could not fathom. But it was only much, much later that I realized I wanted to run to you. Which sucks, by the way, so I have to get you out of my system.

I do not expect to gain anything from this except maybe closure. I need to move on.

Goodbye and have a happy life. Don’t go looking for me.”

Sent. To Matt.

She remembered a few days ago Rho told her that the note was cruel. “WHAT DO YOU REALLY WANT TO ACCOMPLISH WITH THAT?” she told her friend, in all caps. “YOU ARE A SELFISH LITTLE B*TCH. Now Matt will become unstable. Think of the consequence!”

“I don’t know. I just want peace. I want to move on and not hang on to somebody that was never mine and will never be,” Adrienne said with finality.

The ghostly facade of Fullerton was taunting her. Well then, I accept your challenge, old girl. I will walk up to you, she thought to herself. Adrienne was already strolling across another foot bridge to where the Merlion has reigned for so many years when suddenly the Sands’ top flashed its green laser across the bay. Oh, they were starting the lights show, Adrienne grinned to herself.

Ping. Ping.

“I don’t know what to say,” the message from Matt said. Adrienne sucked in her breath. Her world stopped.

“To be fair,” Matt continued, “Yes, I was crazy about you then. You can even ask my family about it. The letters, the exchanges we had were precious to me as well. But then one day you told me that you just got a boyfriend. I told myself, I will give you time. Plenty of time. Then life got in the way. We both went our different ways. Choices made. But there were never regrets.”

The laser multiplied and danced across the Bay.

“Haha, this is awkward. But really, I wanted to say it to your face,” she typed frantically. “I just wanted to be free of you. Close the book. Move on.” She didn’t know if she made any sense at all.

The eerie music accompanying the dancing lights made her hair stand on its end.

Adrienne heaved a sigh. “Well thanks anyway for not being weird about this and all,” she typed. “I’ll be going home tomorrow. Have to sleep now. Goodnight.”

The lights finally made their encore, with the buildings below the Sands all lit up and the green and blue laser lights beaming out across the dark water. As if they were all trying to embrace Adrienne.

Ping. “Goodnight.”

—

The streetlights dotting an already sleeping Manila were like orange poppies blooming in the black velvety meadow, which was suprisingly bereft of the smog that has constantly blanketed the city.

Adrienne has never seen Manila this beautiful and peaceful.

A few minutes later the plane landed smoothly on the runway and taxied its way to Terminal 2. She stared at her phone as the other passengers scrambled to get their stuff overhead or under their cramped seats.

Any moment now Adrienne would be stepping back to her familiar world that has changed a million times since she left three days ago.

Her fingers flicked and swiped over her phone’s screen. Matt’s number and the rest of his contact details appeared.

Delete.

She would be getting a new phone number.

###

Taking It All Apart (A fiction)

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The only light source right now is the laptop’s LCD screen. Quite ghastly, if I may say so but it’s perfect right now. I feel like a hundred bombs have been thrown my way and I am removing a thousand pieces of shrapnel off my flesh one by one. Ghastly light source and badly broken self go hand in hand.

God told me to let go and that He will catch me. He told me that several times over the years but I was too stubborn to heed His call. I told God, “I can handle this, I am strong, I came from a family of strong women.”

Idiot.

God could have slapped me in the face then to bring me to my senses but He didn’t. He waited patiently. Oh, so patient that I am surprised by His tenacity and faithfulness. But then I shouldn’t be.

The earthly body is weak and human capacity for bearing so much pain and beating is only this much that I was already leaving a trail of my crap all over the place. My innards were hanging from my open wounds for all to see. I was making so much mess that I am so ashamed of showing my face but there He was–He took me in His arms and rocked me to sleep until I whimpered “I surrender”.

Then I finally gave in. I let go. As I fell from the 22nd floor of my hotel room in Hong Kong, my last thought was, how bloody can this be? Will I see my body chalked on the pavement? Again?

I have seen that done to me a couple of years ago when I was reunited with Him. I was so battered and broken that I wondered how my body can heal again. He just said, “Leave it. I will build you another one.” So there was I, staring at this forlorn figure sprawled on the burning pavement of Manila while His angel carried me over his shoulder. I saw the policemen cordoning off the scene with yellow tape but they were too busy to see that the bystanders had already eviscerated my cadaver.

Then I saw my old self. It was empty.

I clutched at my chest. A huge beating muscle was there. A heart of a mother that is capable of infinite love for her children. I am still alive, I exclaimed. Then the angel flew higher to get me the 1.5 version of me. The 2.0 version would have to wait, God was still perfecting it, the angel said.

Fast-forward. As I was falling from my hotel room to slam onto the concrete below, I wondered how my 1.5 version could take the impact.

Bam!

It was tougher than I thought. My head was made of fiberglass though so that’s the first thing I lost. But my heart was encased in some kind of carbon-steel alloy so at least that was safe. Or so I thought. However, a huge piece of titanium from my right arm managed to pierce through the heart through several chinks that I have managed to make in the course of my usage of version 1.5. So I pay the price. Heart is bleeding profusely and O2 sats and blood pressure are dropping fast.

Then a 16-wheeler lorry ran over v. 1.5.

Yep, it was bloody alright. Que horror! I could still stand, albeit with a lot of pieces missing here and there. But I am still rooted to the same spot so all I could do is wait for the paramedics to pronounce me dead or alive. And wait. Then darkness enveloped me once again and I now only have my laptop’s LCD screen as source of light. Ghastly, I know but what choice do I have?

Then I could hear the distant sound of flapping wings. Angels.

Then God whispered in my ear, ever so softly. “Version 2.0 is almost done.”

He has taken my world apart to build me a new one.

1 Peter 5:10 “And after you have suffered a little while, the God of all grace, who has called you to his eternal glory in Christ, will himself restore, confirm, strengthen, and establish you.”