SCRIBE Volume 19 2016

1

2

3

SCRIBE

Volume 19, August 2016 The Literary Folio of The Spectrum Published by the students of the University of St. La Salle This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either products of the authors’ imagination or are used fictiously.

Any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or any part of form.

L I T E R A RY E D I T O R

Chad Martin Z. Natividad L AY O U T A RT I S T S

Jowan Dave G. Guides Glen Jed J. Descutido Shara Mae L. Pelayo ILLUSTRATORS

Seth V. Pullona Katrina Y. Nemenzo Keanu Joseph P. Rafil CONCEPT

Deo Flores COVER CONCEPT & DESIGN

Jowan Dave G. Guides PHOTO

Jhon Aldrin M. Casinas Set in Iowan Old Style

Contents Foreword

8 P O E T R Y

The Firebird Pee-Dee Hey

10

Smoked Caramel John Dale G. Gugudan

11

Enveloped

12

13

October 12, 2003

Living Room RJ Ledesma

14

HOME is where the Heart is‌ Roma Jane A. Hechanova

15

Broken rattles, Loose ribbons Nicole Javellana Locsin

16

Leap Hezron Pios

17

Tell-tale Testimony Seth Pullona

18

Pikit-mata Keanu Rafil

19

how to kill a fast burning cigarette Monica Louise Trinidad M. Cueto

20

Sketch of a Mistake

21

how to kill a fast burning cigarette

22

Nocturned Daphne Molenaar

24

Two Boys Austere Rex Gamao

25

The Persistence of RJ Ledesma

26

A Trip Beneath Katherine Co

29

Melt Your Headaches Lex Diwa Aloro

30

Confessions of an Amateur Psychopath

31

Help the Helpless

32

The Suffering and the Healing of a Train-wrecked Soul Deo Flores

33

{A Goodbye Letter to Everyone Still Alive} Sarah Lorabelle Sison Esguerra

34

Geography Hezron Pios

S H O R T

36

S T O R I E S

Dead Season Abe Link

38

The Channeled Waters Lyle John Balana

46

Pretence Lyle John Balana

51

Photograph RJ Ledesma

54

Corpse Art Lyle John Balana

56

There is Nobody Monica Louise Trinidad M. Cueto

60

This is Not the Exit Austere Rex Gamao

67

Scribes & Scribblers

69

Acknowledgments

73

Foreword If you’re reading this then you’re halfway down the shaft. A portion of light still shines from where you entered but you continue. You lower your left foot and then your right. Your hands switch bars at a parallel pace. The metal ladder clanking at the exchange of your steps is the only sound you hear. This continues for minutes.

After sometime you pause for breath and then lower your head to take a glimpse below. Amidst the utter darkness, you discern a pair of tiny white dots, vague and unmoving. Not long, another pair spawns beside it. And then another, and another, until about twenty-three pairs of steady white dots cluster below.

You take one step; then a clash of high-pitched squeaks respond as the dots disappear. You are close.

What made you open the lid? What did you expect to find inside this subterranean folio? You can’t possibly be looking for light. Didn’t you just abandon it by entering? If you touch anywhere else, which is almost impossible by the tightness of the shaft, you’ll only feel grime on concrete. So you hold on to cold metal and you hold tight.

A few more steps and you hear drops of water. A subtle slip, then a plop, a slip, and plop. It continues like this, raspy ticks almost like that of a clock, and gets louder each lowering step. A countdown? Looking up you could see but a speck of light. There’s still time.

After what had seemed like endless hours of descent, you finally reach what you assume to be the end of the shaft. You lower one foot down but it doesn’t touch anything. Your leg sways at unattended air. Your shoe slips off and lands immediately with a close thud. The ground is near enough to jump down. Do you?

The sound of a tiny splash reverberates along the many tunnels of the sewer as you land. A faint glow of light illuminates the darkness as you grasp your surroundings. Your phone? The brightness was lowered to save battery. Where is it coming from then? This central and natural luminescence. You approach a nearby canal and stare at its murky waters. You see it. It’s coming from your face. Like the many dots you saw earlier but brighter. It focuses. This will be your instrument, the only lamp that’ll help you see through till the end of these pages: your point of view.

The backdrop voice echoing in the darkness, Chad Martin Z. Natividad

P O E T RY

Art by John P. Tuason

The Firebird PEE-DEE HEY

Ash fell from the sky and heaped on the gardens below, Marring the skies and fields with dark palls of smoke.

Ominous sheets of despair, across the land they flow, Ravaging the world with chaos in one swift stroke.

Embers sparked gradually as hopeless times passed by, Nurturing the flames that bloomed like amber roses in the dust.

After that, came the blaze and a shriek of a fiery cry, Just as burning wings rose upward, flapping with a hot gust.

Hellfire torrents jutted fiercely out of the dark, gloomy ash, Erasing the blankets of desolation that shrouded the world.

Cleansing rays of light came and wiped away the trash, Hellfire so blessed, so pure; away the sadness was hurled.

Amber feathers flared wide, bringing the radiance of hope, Nightly fears were vanquished, morning smiles were illuminated.

Over the gray mountain of ash, the firebird became the faith and pope, VERITAS, FIDES, AMOR, the firebird’s teaching were treated.

Against the darkness, the evil, the lies, the illusions and deceits, Infernal firebird rose into the sky to shower the world with truth, Long live the firebird, the bringer of light, the epitome of righteous feats, You may stumble, yet you shall rise, blooming like fragrant flowers and fruit.

10

Smoked Caramel Two Poems JOHN DALE G. GUGUDAN

Art by Seth V. Pullona

Enveloped I run my skin through this blanket like a notebook in kindergarten.

A sugar cookie. A whisper from a niece.

My hands are balls of sand flying and crashing into each other.

I touch my skin. Scraping it in caution.

Like rubbing knives on knives that maybe when I scream, I will hear myself.

That I could find beauty in this shrill.

I stretch my arms to expand the space I own. To mark my house.

To answer my phone calls. To choose.

But as I let the light seep in. I see metal.

A second invitation and a contract.

I run my skin through this blanket again.

Circling. Thread to hair. How soft. How different From the home I live in. How different From the home I have to go back to.

12

October 12, 2003 The light seeps through the unkempt bathroom blinds.

It hits the wedding ring of mother making it gleam.

Glorious despite its chokehold on her finger.

Still gold over a blue violet smudge of stuck up blood.

She fills her lungs with the third cigarette. She stands and watch the light be put out like her smile when she came home to dad on top of another’s flesh.

And the water goes round and round and round. Then flushed.

It hits the calves of father as it stretches his boxers.

Strong despite its unpaid labor, its unreturned favor.

Still walking despite facing the back of mother every night.

The third tissue paper is crumpled and dropped in the toilet. His boxers run through his skin like the hands of mother 14 years ago. He is done.

And the water goes round and round and round. Then flushed.

It hits the hair of sister as she tightens her bun to get ready.

Frizzy despite the empty bottles of hair care on the sink.

Still dry despite hours of rinsing away what has been.

She adds her third finger to her mouth to lose an inch after gaining a centimeter. That she would not have to wear the belt of her mother.

She unties her hair and slap her cheeks.

And the water goes round and round and round. Then flushed.

Now, it is hitting on a tiny hand of a 3rd grader. My hand.

Holding an unlit birthday candle for not getting a lie For not getting a family picture. For getting closed doors

13

Living Room RJ LEDESMA

What keeps the room from caving in is the vacancy that comes from easing a couch to its proper place.

The lamp lords over what is left as if saying this cannot be put into the darkness just yet.

The ghosts do not feed on other ghosts.

14

L R O M A J A N E A . H E C H A N O VA

HOME is where the Heart is

– the heart that hears hushed heartbreaks, silent sobs escaping to the bottom of Freud’s iceberg (Ma, Pa, I’m home…)

– the heart that comes home to the sight of broken plates, broken limbs, broken vows.

(Only) the pile of cigarette butts and coffestained tables greet me.

(Hello, again.)

In the midst of the constant chaos, I smiled. the young girl used to weep and bash her head on the wall where she drew her complete family tree, but the girl has grown she can’t hurt herself more she’s had enough scars; there’s no more space inside, yet her heart’s hollow.

Home is where the Heart is, and her heart is hollow.

15

Broken rattles, Loose ribbons N I C O L E J AV E L L A N A L O C S I N

For Kit and G V The day we wake on sleepless eyes, Covered in sheets of muffled cries ...

I Recurring memories of childhood past As shadows crept beneath my nightlight II Seconds slipped by and turned into years Where my eyes only flooded with stifled tears III So tattered I had been, left broken and disgraced It’s your fault Voiced said, reverberating through my brain I couldn’t even bear to look at my face For I was stained So used I wanted to die But There was He who wiped every tear that I cried His Love has come to release my hyperventilating heart Offering to grace me with a brand new start He Pulled down the walls I built so that the others couldn’t see The shame and the hate I had deep inside of me IV All of us, like birds We’ve been freed from our solemn retreats Of cages clawed by clasped hands upon our breaks VI That day has passed.

16

Leap HEZRON PIOS

Whenever I write our names upon paper, they leap off the page; hopping like grass hoppers, fearful of croaking toads.

The hoppers don’t know obedience.

Thus they ask of hands adept at carrying their roughness and weightlessness.

They want gentle hands to write them down.

17

Tell-tale Testimony SETH PULLONA

I have forgotten the sensation of how the sun scorched my already-tanned skin.

It is dissatisfying nonetheless, but for the ravaged time that was stripped away from me, it’d been my only longing.

Right from this cold, damp walls was the deafening vibration that feeds my dying consciousness, the mere sign of our unsure security.

Explosions.

Silence.

Outcries and pleads.

He has his way of sneaking up unto us.

He who loathes peace and laughs at the condensed anger.

He who greeted us with pain and suffering.

He who damned humanity at a never disrupted peace.

Explosions.

Silence.

Roars of grief.

But here we are, taking pride of winning over, though the dread still lurks above.

We will withhold our stance despite the fallen ones, so a tell-tale testimony might live through us.

Explosions.

Silence.

Ear-splitting silence.

Warm debris flooded the streets.

The city crumbled like a castle of sand swept by the flooding shore.

And from here down under, was the cold that embraces us.

Are unfortunate to survive this never ending chaos?

Explosions.

Silence.

All but death.

No, we will never be fortunate. Everyone loses. No one wins at war.

18

Pikit-mata KEANU RAFIL

Pikit mata.

Agad didilat.

Gigising sa isang napakagandang panaginip.

Na may ikaw.

Ako. Tayo.

Pikit mata.

Agad ngingiti.

Sa komedyang tinatanghal ng aking isip.

Na may ikaw.

Ako. Tayo.

Pikit mata.

Agad tatawa.

Sa kasiyahang panandaliang nadama.

Na may ikaw.

Ako. Tayo.

Pikit mata.

Agad tatahimik.

Nakikinig sa ingay at tibok ng dibdib.

Na sana may ikaw.

Sana ako.

Sana tayo.

Pikit mata.

Agad tatalukbong, luluha.

Takot sa katotohanang pilit ikinukubli.

Na walang ikaw.

Walang ako.

Walang tayo.

19

how to kill a fast burning cigarette Two Poems MONICA CUETO

Art by April Espelita

Sketch of a Mistake His body was a shattered glass on the pavement that ruined me.

Like rifles we fired bullets at each other’s company.

His provocative character sheltered me a convincing home under a lustful, destructive roof that spoke of corridor fallacies.

Like cheap, stale cigarettes his soul moved like lifeless ashes first in slow motion, then in epic trails passing through me, suffocating of whatever decency I have left.

An oxymoronic story he writes in smudges of ink and bottles of marooned blood of mine.

Portraits of my body lingers on his messed-up desk and drawers.

While he touches my bare skin, the heat of insanity and obsession invades the last drops of innocence of his, of mine.

21

how to kill a fast burning cigarette free the ghosts light the candles spread his legs under the covers love a dead lover and burn the trail. grab his hand show him how it’s done collide your bodies give him some wisdom now form it tight share in his light tell him stories only he’ll understand love a dead lover and burn the trail. carry his spirit way up the loose stairs make him write poetry and take polaroid photographs of his body make him cook breakfast from cereal and rhum love a dead lover and burn the trail. play with his hair scare his emotions

22

pretend to be hypnotized by his eyes talk to him in ballads things he might not understand love a dead lover and burn the trail. now grab the bourbon and some jack and ale wash up all his wounds and the scars he graced little by little see the cigarette, the toxic part die on the trail.

23

Nocturned DAPHNE MOLENA AR

The night never dawned It is not my solace anymore You fill the dust and the midnight blue of the sombre sky But you couldn’t count the stars for us You tallied instead the screams that weren’t loud enough The last hours were never yours made me believe that the corrupting fog, dark clouds, bleeding city lights we’re calling out your name with urgency, not love not even lustered hate.

24

Two Boys AUSTERE REX GAMAO

There are two boys sitting on either side of you.

On your right, the person who cut you out of your self-made womb.

He talks about planting more flowers on your chest.

You talk about burying the dead left in your bedroom.

The other one, the one you thought would be good for you, He talks about things that you’ve always wanted to talk about.

Instead, you talk about lone trees and children suffocating.

There are two boys sitting on either side of you.

One whispers ice cubes in your ears, One has his hand on the inside of your thigh.

They both smell like cities you dream of going to.

There are two boys kissing you but you don’t know which one is which.

One smells like late night dinners and second homes, One smells like walking in the dark and stolen kisses.

There are two boys on either side of you While you dig for your grave.

One helps you read the book you never seem to finish, One points out constellations in the sky.

These two boys, you loved them a long time ago.

Now, you don’t even remember how they smell or the way they smiled And that’s good.

There are two boys on either side of you, Packing their worn out pillows and chipped cups and dry soil.

These two boys, they leave you.

You breathe out clumps of wilted flowers And from your eyes, candle wax.

Your skin exhales and a swarm of bees disappear.

There are two boys in cities you’re afraid to go to.

You sit alone in yellow sunlight.

Making guns out of your hands, shooting at shadows of picture frames and lost shoes and Counting down the seconds of the next boy who will sit by your side.

There’s a boy beside you.

So you prepare your nail gun and your duct tape and your ropes, You paint yourself in gold, bring out the best china, You clear a plot of land on your chest.

And hope he’s the last.

25

The Persistence of RJ LEDESMA

Remember blowing bubble spit.

Remember being each other’s gaping earth.

Remember turning over stones for gold.

Remember reaching for a short-hand quiver.

Remember your dog-eared Hesse never read so I took it for myself.

Remember bumping into something solid and you saying how beautiful; blood glittering everywhere.

Remember seaside talks about how the police siren actually sounds like.

Remember greasy plates and licking our fingers clean.

Remember flowers growing upon your skin, this being another metaphor for the verb to incarcerate.

Remember feeling like a temple with a lost child somewhere.

Remember the lake which was your body, which was where we made love naked once.

Remember arguing about which word best represents a likeness of an old lover.

Remember misinterpreting today’s horoscope as a subtle plot for your death.

Remember driving and realizing midway our destination that you didn’t have a car.

Remember trying to loosen a knot with one hand.

Remember the crying baby we would like to spank hard.

Remember the corner of the sound-proof room where you bit me hard and, even as I say the safe word, you wouldn’t stop and so we laughed instead.

Remember me standing up to pray and you only got it was a joke after I sat and told you we are each other’s gods.

Remember misusing tissue paper.

Remember letting the ice cubes melt on my mouth before letting me go down on you.

Remember naming the cat who will probably die first.

Remember the color of the curtains we didn’t mind open, the morning sun piercing our bare backs.

Remember cranes flying overhead, a witness to you stealing a pockmarked kiss on my neck.

Remember demanding a refund for a bag that couldn’t contain your unwritten manuscript.

Remember the city with the eternal rain.

Remember grass mowing itself for a party.

Remember seeking advice from a stone because you didn’t have anyone to talk to.

Remember that night I was drunk I could barely keep up running beside you.

Remember the miles we dared cross to give each other a massage, and half-ad mitting we were both bad at it afterwards.

Remember the hardness of dry soil.

Remember the list I made you entitled Lists of Important Works To Read Alone.

26

Remember saying I look like a skeleton bride.

Remember joking about something burning, then praying there weren’t any casualties.

Remember our dreams of fucking in space.

Remember reading aloud Italo Calvino at 3am in Mcdonald’s as I try to sleep on your lap.

Remember how we couldn’t agree about how the moon’s surface would probably taste like: milky or bitter.

Remember how you said you knew from the start how all this would come crashing down like a blessing.

Remember banning the word existentialism from our conversations.

Remember the stories that kept budging at our feet, and our hands, praying for a measure of tenderness.

Remember the difficulty of translation.

Remember figuring out the impossibility of our words from making sense against our selfishness.

Remember scolding me for the way I put things on the table.

Remember the song we tried to sing backwards.

Remember saying we might get used to this.

Remember me saying a prayer is a prayer is a prayer.

Remember teaching me how to turn myself into a bullet, Remember what remains of a church, its devastation we ourselves are responsible for.

Remember realizing the futility of metaphor in explaining what isn’t there (But should have been, but should have been what saved us.)

Remember stars exploding at our will.

Remember poetic license and visions of us abusing it, and us laughing like drunk gods with our pens.

Remember exploiting the creative possibilities of white space and ourselves hard-pressed to explain its intention, further muddying ourselves toward absolute obscurity, even from ourselves, our selves we trusted the most.

Remember how the flowers growing upon our skin must wither with the seasons.

Remember realizing too late that language couldn’t save what doom’s bound to happen; instead, it washes its surface with the milk of moonlight.

Remember saying art exists somewhere in the sewers we only need to wear gloves.

Remember trying.

Remember holding the other end of a wishbone despite knowing it wouldn’t break even.

Remember peeking through the cracks and seeing ourselves arguing over furniture.

27

Remember the words once spoken by either one of us that we secretly want to recreate to an audience.

Remember admitting to ourselves that writing is and was a selfish vocation.

Remember peeking again through the cracks and the only thing we see are words that refuse to settle down the bottom of the cup, like the dregs we claim them to be.

Remember reading holy texts from the back of our hands written by us, when we were golden gods drunk with our own greatness.

After Joe Brainard

28

A Trip Beneath KATHERINE CO

In mocking shadows and drowning umbra, Sounds of shrieking and vain chattering Settle beneath the earth of gore.

The tunnel runs on in endless sympathy.

Within the Train of Blood and Breath Deafening lanes of humanity and fools Fill the innocent space with pompous charity And a shameful, loose network of unsaintly values.

In their strong-scented words of empty wisdom and valor, The ground falls to shake in enthusiastic response.

Even the highest wind does not bother to give An ignorant answer, a hint of care.

In this trip of fueled questions And a blind longing for the Haven of Light The piling up of foolish mediocrity Is silently killing us all.

This tunnel, dark but unusually extravagant, Gives no end to the hopeless lanes Of humanity and fools, so to say This is simply an endless chase.

But do ever the blind see glimpses of colors?

Do ever the handicapped feel moments of strength?

Do ever the lonely feel a warmth in crestfallenness?

Ode to the unseen in its utter absence!

29

Melt Your Headaches Two Poems L E X D I WA A L O R O

Art by Keanu Joseph P. Rafil

Confessions of an Amateur Psychopath They say an honest man has nothing to fear So I’m trying to be brave But in this broken world of sinful men and worthless being Is there such thing as honesty?

He who flinches at the sound of a single pin has the most bones in his closet So be still, be brave The demons will fade The memories won’t matter To nightmares they’ll change The guilt will vanish Like the blood swirling down the sink As I wash my killer hands And the water turns to pink Don’t be too quick to judge I didn’t mean to do it all My hand held the dagger But I wasn’t in control.

Bloodstains can be washed off Like conscience of the mind I can hide and deny the crime I’ve done But peace I’ll never find So spare me the punishment The guilt is torturous enough Knowing I have been tainted With a wickedness I can’t shake off.

It’s true what they say No man dies unblemished, no man dies pure Our only hope is to repent Be pardoned and ascend For within every sinner lives a chance for redemption

31

Help the Helpless Take a look at that girl.

Her wrists are scarred and stained.

Eyes drained of life and hopefulness Yet they can be retained.

Notice that paranoid man Emitting the smell of smoke.

Enter into his crippled mind and see him Destroyed, beaten and broke.

Your eyes and mine are judgmental Open our souls up instead.

Understand those tortured souls, Realize the chaos in their heads.

Hear the hidden message of these lines, Everyone needs guidance to heed.

Leading letters of the first words matter Please go back and read.

32

The Suffering and the Healing of a Train-wrecked Soul DEO FLORES

For you— Know that no matter what gruesome fate befalls me in this tragic excursion of life, You will always be a sacred regalia immortalized on the walls of my rotten, vandalized heart.

Zephyrs sung by ghosts usually haunt me to slumber in this abandoned tunnel, I cannot sleep.

Evenings and shadows have never been graceful hosts to my mortal frame as well.

Although in lightless decay I have learned to thrive and scrape off a living from dread and rhyme, Happiness was never a distant silhouette—a lost reverie to me, ever since you came into my life.

Callous and often labeled as extremely caustic and outspokenly destructive, Only a few souls have ever dared to cross my paths and reach out to me as a friend, Lesser have tarried a moment with me, and lingered long enough to become important.

Even my own reflection departs from my audience, fearing that I might amalgamate with it.

Every corner of my existence resembled a desolate gutter or something relatively appalling.

Never before has my decrepit paradigm of a life been this vibrant and fulfilling, To the extent where this sewer of a core of mine bubbled no more with stygian horror.

Atrocious no more, sacrosanct and purified by the timely intervention of your kindness, Broken bones of mine have ended, as well as the stigmas sprawled across my skin have faded, Apart I from you, I can do nothing, let alone exist in this world, concealing my inner bane.

Bless my remnants, and make hallow my desecrated remains with the consecration of your love, And with a grateful heart, I shall consign myself to you, gladly obliging my undoing to your will.

33

{A Goodbye Letter to Everyone Still Alive} SARAH LORABELLE SISON ESGUERRA

Tonight there will be police cars outside our house, And my mom would be screaming and drowning herself in fresh salty tears As she runs towards the house from her 3-day vacation with my Dad. Our curious neighbors with bathrobes tightly tied in their bodies Will be out of their houses covering their mouths out of shock.

The dogs will not be barking for a night While the siren of ambulance roars in the dimming lights.

And for a moment everything will be shut silent As paramedics carry a black plastic with a cold, lifeless body of a 15 year-old girl.

When you see my hand dangling out of the plastic, Don’t condemn my parents for leaving me alone in the house.

When you see the policeman hovering in and out of our house, tying up yellow tapes in my room where my body was found, Don’t accuse them of being late; thinking they could have saved me, 18 hours have already passed.

When the forensic pathologist examines the line on my neck that had choked me to death, Don’t blame him for declaring there is no foreplay, I hanged myself on my own.

When my friends arrive at the funeral weeping, all of them wearing black, Don’t hold them accounted for my death.

They couldn’t have seen my abstract paintings as a sign, to everyone, they’re just art.

And lastly, when you find my box of letters hiding under my bed, Don’t blame the very first boy I kissed in summer when we were 13.

It’s not his fault he didn’t love me, I couldn’t even love myself.

Don’t accuse my parents.

Don’t blame my friends.

Don’t condemn everyone in white carrying my favorite flower.

Instead look for the old man in the hardware store; Who gave a little girl the rope and didn’t even ask what it’s for.

Search for the teens in school; Who saw me crying at the bathroom, who bullied me instead of asking what’s wrong.

Find the boy I bumped into one afternoon; Who saw my death notes, who criticized my handwriting instead of persuading me to live.

Got in my classes and listen to my syllabus-loyal teachers Who taught me to shut my mouth instead of trying to listen.

34

Do not blame all those whom I kept my pain from; Whom I’ve chosen to save from my demons hiding behind.

Blame those who were given the chance to save someone But didn’t.

To the people reading my suicide note, Don’t blame me.

Because when God finally asks me, “Why didn’t you tell anyone?”

I will tell him, “No one asked.”

35

Geography HEZRON G. PIOS

There is something special about the geography of our bodies— mountains as muscles, valleys as birthmarks, lakes as eyes, jungles as hair, cliffs as outstretched tongues, heart: a volcano.

A network of wilderness from nerve to nerve, island to island, later forming the archipelagos.

Our prayers, like a streaming river, gush out endlessly.

Like spells chanted to conjure the weather. Thunder storms in your absence; sunlit fields when you’re back.

Your phenomenon, your silent noises, your indifference morphing as open spaces between the tectonic plates finally diverging. I’ve always viewed puddles as oceans capable of depth.

36

S H O RT S T O R I E S

Art by Keanu Joseph P. Rafil

Dead Season ABE LINK

I The day was ending. I sat on a stool by the door, catching the last of the fading light. Mosquitos feasted on my legs and pinkish spots soon appeared. I scratched my skin and tried swatting the insects just to kill time. Inside our nipa house, the fire on the clay stove blazed on. The last scoop of rice was cooking and I checked it from time to time. A kerosene lamp was also lit; Nanay used the dim light as she sliced squash for the vegetable soup, while Manang who sat beside her read a battered romance novel. Nanay told her to read her schoolbook instead, but Manang fooled her into thinking that what she’s reading was also for school. Nanay would not exactly know the difference between the two, as she would not also know the difference among the letters in the alphabet.

Outside, my two younger siblings played pungko-inang with their friends.

They shrieked with voices shrill, excitement uncontained. Their sweat glistened beneath the orange sun. They wanted me to join them, but I had to help Nanay with the cooking. And so, I only watched from a distance.

Papang trod home clutching a half-empty bottle of rum on one hand. He might have been drinking along the way. His face was red, his eyes sleepy. He was faintly smiling though worry knotted his brows. He was a short man with droopy posture, his footsteps heavy. He carried a plastic bag on another hand; must be the rice Nanay asked him to buy in town.

The little ones excitedly came running to greet Papang with a mano as I stood up and waited. When he got to the door, I smelled the stench of liquor in his breath. I took, almost snatched, the plastic bag from him. The bag had a tiny hole which Papang might have not noticed. Rice was spilling out so I hurried to the tin container to pour the rest. Out of haste, I forgot to wear my slippers and ran barefoot on the dirt floor.

“Gina! Wear your slippers,” Nanay yelled at me. It was too late.

I walked outside, now with slippers on, to wash my feet on the water pump.

I called out Toto to pump for me. He broke off from his friends and helped me without protest. I scrubbed my feet against each other and mud slowly washed out. The metal monotonously creaked with each pump and the gushing water splashed. Children continued laughing; the birds went on with their farewell song. Despite these outdoor sounds, I heard Nanay shouting from inside the house. When my feet were clean, I asked Toto to stop. He also heard the shouting but was more anxious to resume to playing. I let him off and, within split second, he rejoined his friends. I listened to the shouting, less inclined to come back inside.

From what I heard, Nanay blamed Papang for losing his job at the construction site. Worse, he spent most of his last pay on drinking with other

38

Photo by Monica Louise Trinidad M. Cueto

39

workers who also got laid off. Papang and Nanay were really farmers, working for the hacienda of the Salvador family who lived in what we called the ‘stone house’. But it was the dead season and they must find other work. While the sugarcanes thrived on hectares of land, our stomachs wilted from hunger; our spirits, from poverty.

As I continued listening and contemplating on going back inside, Tiyay Asun approached the water pump with her small bucket. She was aloof despite my polite greeting. She placed her bucket below the pipe. I offered to pump for her which she accepted with that same indifference. She did not even attempt at small talk. She just stared at the dying sun. I was intent on listening to my parents’ fight, but I welcomed the calm of friendlier sounds and of Tiyay’s stillness.

After Tiyay left, I remained on my post. Darkness settled in, the children gone home. The house was silent once again. Papang was a mellow man even when drunk, unlike Nanay who rambled on, repeating her words over and over.

The wrinkly, aloof woman soon came back to the water pump, this time with a brown turnip. She gave me the turnip the size of my two fists combined, and then left. I did not even have a chance to thank her. When I inspected the turnip, there were young stems sprouting out. If I plant it, it might just grow.

At supper, gloomy clouds loomed over the table. We children watched our parents in their quiet rage. Every swallow felt like rocks falling down the throat.

To lighten up the mood, I shared my story of Tiyay’s gift.

“Tiyay Asun is really weird,” I said, tittering. All eyes were on me, awaiting continuation. I put the turnip on the table. “She just gave me this. I think it will grow if I plant it again.”

“Why not just eat it?” Nanay replied in her condescending tone. “Your father here doesn’t want to work anymore, and god knows where we’ll find food!”

“Harvest is near. We’ll be fine by then,” said Papang.

“Of course it’s fine for you! All you have to do is get drunk.”

Papang wanted to retort but bit his tongue and just sighed. He looked at me with those eyes which had a plastered expression of hopefulness, and then said, “Plant that turnip in the backyard. Do what you want to do with it. Then it will grow gold.”

“Oh, you can’t fool them, Lito,” Nanay said. But I somehow believed Papang.

I believed that the turnip would bear gold if I willed it enough, no matter how impossible it seemed to be. Papang spoke of promises he often broke, but an assuring feeling steered me to give him a chance, to believe him. Perhaps knowing that I was putting trust on a ridiculous idea forewarned me of its improbability, thus, sparing me the heartache of eventual disappointment.

40

II The following couple of months, my turnip grew. I did nothing special to it, just watering or weeding out. Nanay refused to help me in growing the turnip.

Once, I encountered Tiyay and told her about it. In her usual countenance, she just nodded and left no comment. Perhaps she thought of it as ridiculous as Nanay did.

Growing the turnip served as a distraction from thoughts of school. I missed going to school. I stopped ever since the previous harvest, which had been poor.

I was supposed to be a first year in high school. Manang was already in fourth year. For her to continue, we younger ones must give way. Nene also stopped because she was too lazy to walk the two kilometers to the nearest elementary school; Toto, though still very young, might have been in kindergarten by now.

I was not a bright student, but I was diligent as I enjoyed working with my mind more than with my body. One of the good things of going to school was sitting on your desk all day, anticipating that one-peso bread and iced water for recess, just listening to interesting things I would not otherwise learn from my parents. A lot of my classmates complained about school, though most still attended for the allowance or just to see their crush. In my case, I enjoyed school because I did not have to do as much work at home. I might have walked the two-kilometer dusty road, a maze-like path between sugarcane furrows, but once home, Nanay would bother me less because I was working on my homework.

It was the sounds I missed the most about school. I missed the chalk scratching on the blackboard; the murmurs of my classmates; the faint voice of the teacher from the next-door classroom; pencils writing on clean sheets of paper; the teacher’s stick hitting the table to get our attention; the chorus of juvenile voices singing the national anthem during flag ceremony every morning.

Manang abused her privileges. She hated school because of the projects she had to submit and examinations to study for. Yet, she continued for the same reason why I liked school. The difference between us, though, was that I actually did my best while she just wasted away. Instead of reviewing her notes, she buried her nose on countless romance novels; instead of doing her assignments, she went to a classmate who was lucky enough to own the television and watch the latest episode of a soap opera. Though Manang’s grades were not total failures, I think I could do much better.

Out of school, I had to help Nanay do the laundry in the ‘stone house’. The pay was the only thread we held on to during the dead season, with Papang being currently unemployed and a drunkard. Though, Papang was the only

41

person who urged me with the turnip – or perhaps he was the only one too drunk to care. There were a lot of sheets to wash in the ‘stone house’ and not enough maids for the task. That was where Nanay and I came in – weekly. Of course, I hated the backbreaking labor of batting the sheets to get rid of stains, or squeezing them to extract water, or reaching out tall lines to hang them dry.

Even my hands bled several times due to the strong detergent we used.

But the ‘stone house’ had qualities both oppressive and enchanting. For a month I had been going there, I never once entered it; my admiration only extended to its imposing exterior. It was called the ‘stone house’ because, unlike our houses, it was made of, well, stone seemingly carved into intricate moldings and arches. Nanay and I did the laundry in the kitchen backyard which was fenced around with bamboo to obscure it from the main garden.

The sheets and several clothing were left prepared in a big weaved basket, so we never had reason to come inside the rooms and collect the laundry ourselves. But one day, the maid assigned to the task got sick and had no one to entrust the duty. The mayordoma was left without a choice but to ask for my help, which I doubtlessly rendered.

If the exterior was not impressive enough, the interior left me even more breathless. The rooms were wide and airy, the furniture and ornaments expensive-looking and incomparable to anything I had ever seen before. I was also surprised by the amount of lighting hanged on the ceiling or mounted on walls; and they had more books than I had seen at the school library. I was left alone and I proceeded to one of the chambers. The door was ajar but there seemed to be no living creature in the big, empty house to walk in on me.

Before I stripped the bed of its sheets, I lay down and relished in the softness of the mattress and pillows. I pretended to be asleep, pretended to wake up to a life dramatically changed. I went to the dresser and sat in front of the mirror and admired my untroubled face. I combed my shoulder-length black hair with the turquoise shell comb and pretended to spray a spritz of perfume. I opened one of the drawers and saw the jewelry box left unlocked. I went through it and a slim, gold ring caught my attention. I tried it on and it fitted the middle finger of my left hand as if it was made especially for me. I looked around and for the first time, I dreamed. The ‘stone house’ taught me to dream the unattainable, to dream the wildest fantasy. How wonderful it was to dream of a life beyond what mine could offer. But soon enough, I sank back to reality, and I collected the sheets, and went back to the fenced-in backyard where the likes of me belonged. As I was leaving the room, I debated with myself whether to return or keep the ring. I took it off and I kept it my pocket. As Nanay and I went home, regret slowly showed its face to me.

42

Photo by Jhon Aldrin M. Casinas

43

III That night, I could not sleep as the ring burned in my pocket. The fact that I had taken it home somehow validated that I stole instead of borrowed. At dawn, I circled our house, thinking all sorts of thoughts. Only the cold air consoled me.

I examined the ring and estimated its value. It could bring me back to school, Nanay and I would no longer need to wash other people’s laundry, and it could get us through the dead season. Funny, how one small thing could do so much.

An idea then struck me – an obvious, though implausible, solution. I walked to where my turnip was growing, on a patch in front of the house, and carefully tied the ring on a stem. I pondered for a while. A rooster cackled from afar and broke off my unending train of thought. The ring looked as if it sprouted out of the plant overnight. But no matter how convincing the presentation was, no one might believe except for Papang. I was taking my chance.

I called out Papang who was sleeping half-sober; Nanay and Manang also woke up to my trembling voice. I told them about the gold which magically grew on the turnip plant. I led them outside as they scratched their barely opened eyes. As the sun fully rose, the gold glinted in their view. They forgot about going back to sleep, and stared and stared, dumbfounded. They did not react the way I expected them to – either with disbelief or praise; there was only silence. Papang approached the plant and solemnly pulled the ring out of the stem. He looked at the thing for a full minute and then showed it to us. He cleaned it with his crumpled shirt and secured it in his pocket. He stroked my head with his thick, calloused hand, and walked back to the house. Nanay gave me a puzzled look with her eyes wide and brows braided, and then followed Papang inside. Manang crouched and probed the turnip plant.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“What if there’s more?” she replied.

Papang sobered up and took a shower by the water pump later that day. He put on his most decent clothes and combed back his hair. He was going to town, the ring wrapped in a white handkerchief in his pocket.

During the time we were back at the ‘stone house’, I kept talking about going back to school with the money Papang might get from selling the ring. I told Nanay I could enroll next year and we could buy a new set of uniform and new shoes and new notebooks. Nanay who should scold me for spewing out fickle plans was atypically quiet. She nodded and smiled, but I knew that she did not agree or that other things absorbed her mind. Thinking she was worried Papang would drink the money away, I assured her, “Surely Papang will not spend it all.”

I was so excited to go home that I almost ran the whole way. But I slowed down my pace so Nanay, whose legs were weak from crouching too long, could

44

catch up. As I imagined, Papang was already home before us. He sat on the same spot I always occupied.

“How much did it cost, Papang?” was the first thing I asked.

He drew the handkerchief out of his pocket and shook his head. “It’s fake,” he said and handed it to me.

“Fake?” I replied. “But it’s gold . . .”

Nanay reached us by then and, having heard everything, asked, “Gina, did it really grow on your plant?” She calmly asked as if she knew the truth all along.

I just looked at her.

“Where is it from?”

Now I looked at the ground. I stammered.

“Did you steal it from the ‘stone house’?”

I did not answer. I closed my eyes as Nanay slapped me hard on the face. I lost my balance and nearly fell. The sting rang out and my left cheek felt warm.

My tears were uncontrollable. Nanay began preaching, her pent up suspicions all released. I would have answered, “No one taught me to steal; no, you did not raise me to be this,” but words escaped me. I saw Manang and Papang only watching. Curious neighbors also looked on. I wailed harder.

The following day, we went to the ‘stone house’ to talk to the mayordoma and to return the ring. We sat on the kitchen bench as the plump woman dressed in a stark gray blouse and trousers towered over us. We had to be quick with our business, she said, for there was lunch to prepare. Nanay did most of the explaining while I played with the hem of my shorts. No one mentioned that the ring was fake, though the three of us might knew it was. The mayordoma scowled throughout the short exchange, but in the end, her punishment was rather light.

“I will still expect you this Saturday,” she said. “But I can never allow both of you inside the house again, not even here in this kitchen. I won’t tell Madam what happened, and we will forget about this.”

At first, Nanay expected for the worse, perhaps even hoping for it. But she thanked the woman who only replied with a muted growl. On the way home, Nanay walked ahead and only looked back at me once. It was only to say, “You deserve worse, Gina, I tell you.”

When we got home, she pulled out the turnip from the ground and burned it along a heap of dried leaves. The dead season continued after that day. Papang continued to drink. Nanay continued to wash the dirty sheets in the ‘stone house’. I continued to believe I could go back to school. But now I knew I could not depend on false beliefs. Dreaming might just be hopeless, this I learned, too.

Yet, as Papang said, all would be fine come harvest time.

45

The Channeled Waters LY L E J O H N B A L A N A

T

he flood always comes this season.

It twists, it turns, like something alive. It has no arms and hands, but its amorphous advance is sufficient. It chews away at muddy riverbanks and ports fortified with concrete, uproots trees both young and old, sends dams groaning for their lives before bursting into a hail of waterborne fragments, becoming one with the waters.

They call this flood repulsive, an unnecessary incident that sends the people into disarray. Robbing us of crops, robbing us of livestock, tearing our homes into flimsy wisps fit for the depths, it gives us no rest when the skies darken. Rain feeds the flood, yet it receives no blame, only that which they can immediately vent their feelings on.

My people have a strange way of coping with their pain. They take their spears, their hallowed slingshots, their staves and sticks for killing fallen rabbits, and beat the receding flood accordingly. The sound of cantankerous splashes fills the air, along with shrill shrieks of anguish: muffled sobs for the men, full-on wailing for the women. The children use rocks, letting them bore through the flood’s form with angry throws. Sometimes their rocks are flat, and they bounce along the surface, once, twice, before sinking suddenly beneath the surface in obedience to a fundamental rule.

They are mad, they are charged with the fury of the helpless. Their crops are unprotected, their pens no sufficient barrier against that which can pass through cracks, let alone knock down the wall that bears them. Their homes are of wood and woven palm fronds. They cannot complain. Our houses are weak. We are weak.

The rains and the flood do not matter to the other peoples. I have been there, and I have seen their houses, their pens, their crops. Their crops are all in the same place, always fresh and picked, produced from strange barrels that come from the back of huge, growling wagons that spit out smoke. The other peoples talk among themselves in this place, where some sit, while others stand. The standing ones bear bags of produce, and sometimes they talk with those who sit, both gesturing, mouths nearly running off their faces. Most of the time the sitting ones give them what they need, which they put into the bag, while other times the standing ones turn away, their bags none the heavier.

I have seen their pens, almost as big as seventeen of our tiny houses.

Cages of hard substance, tougher and colder than our best rocks, hold in pigs, chickens, cows, and dogs. They have hollow boxes of concrete in their cages, which are filled with fine brown powder that may be their food. When the animals in the cages grow fat and wide, they are released and taken to a rusted place, full of whirring devices and sharpened knives. There they butcher them,

46

part their meat from their bones, and send them to the place where they grow crops.

I have seen their houses. They do not seem to be that much bigger than ours, but they seem to be made from the concrete and the hard substance in the cages of the large pen. They have transparent materials on their windows, which allow them to see in and out, but keep out the wind and the leaves that fly with it.

That which they have do not bow to the flood, do not lay squashed before onrushing tides. It is our fault for being weak.

I do know where we hide our strength.

My father told me a story about our people. He told me that we have gold, lots of it, and that this gold was given to us by the gods. This gold was to make us a strong people, one with a place in the world.

Yet evil was within our people. One of us, a man of dark skin and darker heart, stole away with the gold. Our people took heed of his evil plan, but the blackness of his heart would not allow him to share what he felt was his, and so he placed all the gold in a pit, then allowed a boulder to cover the treasure. He was speared a hundred times over by the angry men, stoned by the women, then had his remains thrown to the dogs. But the gold was lost to us, and we became a weak people.

I observed the strength of the other peoples, and the merciless brutality of the flood that devastated us yearly. We, the weak people, could not be rid of this rock, but perhaps one of them can.

The other peoples that I approached mocked me. They asked me for money, which came in colored sections of paper which was used to get produce from the place with the barrels, and the huge pen with the hard cages. I did not know what they spoke of, but when I told them there was gold under the rock, their eyes shone with the fever of hunger. They tried to make me place my sign on other pieces of paper, these with markings I could not understand and lines which were to have my mark, but I refused and went back home. I cannot trust what I could not understand.

But the flood I understood well. It was a force that had been visiting our people all my life. Each year I saw how it appeared, and each year I saw how it dragged itself back from under the earth and into the quiet rivers, allowing us to replace our dams of rock and stone, rebuild our houses of wood and bark, repair our destroyed fields in time for the sun’s reemergence. It had strength like that of the other peoples, and this strength I would use.

Just before the season that calls the flood, I went into the place of the other peoples and stole a tool of theirs, one that I have spied on with interest. Our people had a version of it, which was a thin, firm stick padded out at the end

47

Photo by Monica Louise Trinidad M. Cueto

48

with tied vines and tough bark to bite through the soil and dig a hole, but theirs was of smooth wood, with the hard substance of the cages on its wide tip. They called it a “shovel�, and it dug holes faster and deeper than we could.

I went to one of the rivers nearest the boulder which held our gold prisoner, then started to dig. Every day I would go there, then dig a hole, then go home when exhaustion took hold of me. I neglected my duty in our fields and our dams in favor of digging these holes. I dug one hole, then another one near it. I dug them as deep and as fast as I could, but time was against me. When I finished digging the consecutive holes, the season was upon us, and I still have to see to it that the flood was properly harnessed.

I took my shovel with me and climbed the top of the boulder to wait there.

A bright light flashed across the sky, then a loud rumble resounded through our trees and our homes. Then the rain started to pour. It did not come softly, but abruptly, falling down like a weight on my shoulders, on our land. Our people had sought the caves, for the houses were not to be trusted, and they would rather brave the cold and damp floor, with the darkness and the bats bearing down on them, rather than stay to watch their houses swept away.

The flood came. It charged down the river. From my spot on the top of the boulder, I saw it break through our tiny stone-and-rock dams, saw it strange our crops with its watery expansion, saw it fill our homes with its very self before taking them away far from our use. I had never seen it do this with my own eyes, only seen its aftermath, and I was filled with a strange horror.

The holes which I had dug- united, the other peoples called them a channelcaused some of the flood to turn towards the boulder, crashing against it, periodical malice fighting an olden evil. My seating spot suddenly felt slippery, and I started to fall.

I clung in vain with my damp fingers, but all was in vain. I slid down the boulder, then was swept by the very waters I had led to the rock. My body was like a leaf in the wind, flipping and sinking into the waters. Twigs slashed through my skin, and water got into my eyes and mouth. The flood was powerful.

My back crashed against a tree. I felt its branches strike through my stomach, my chest. There was a dull pain, much like an old bruise, but red blood mixed with the murky brown of the flood flowing past me. I was as good as dead.

I felt my head grow lighter as cold came to claim my life. My arms flapped uselessly by my side, the flood pulling for them, my impaled body holding them fast.

I leveled my eyes towards the boulder. It was moving, inch by inch, slipping away from its spot as much as I had slipped from mine. It started to drift away

49

faster, faster, a snail finding its pace, before erupting into a roll. A loud pop rushed through the waters to my ears.

As the boulder sped to my position, I saw flashes of yellow decorating its underside. My eyes were weakening, but it was clear what they were. Golden chains, golden trinkets, golden figures, all attached to the boulder.

The tale was real. Perhaps my people could be strong now, where I was weak.

I closed my eyes as the boulder neared me.

50

Pretence LY L E J O H N B A L A N A

O

nce upon a time, there was a girl who wouldn’t sleep She thinks she doesn’t need to sleep The whole world was before her, she said.

She always fell asleep around two o’clock, right after watching videos that she thought were important to her life.

And woke around five, to do it all again.

She kept up at this routine. She was a negligent girl. Everything in her life revolved around that sedentary affair. She scorned her studies, refused to check on the lights on her house, and ignored the dog that her parents had brought her. She had no other will but to watch those videos.

So, one day, the power cut off.

She whipped out her phone to continue watching, but that was dead, too.

She decided to try and sleep. But she couldn’t.

Everything was dark, except for the moonlight filtering through the windows in her room.

She tried to sleep. Really hard.

But she couldn’t.

She was closing her eyes, but she was taking a really small peep, the kind that leaves lines of liquid black right underneath your eyelids.

And then she saw it.

Two eyes shining in the dark.

Staring back at her.

She pretended to be asleep.

The eyes started to advance.

She still pretended to be asleep.

A suggestion of a snout emerged from the darkness, along with the eyes.

She still pretended to be asleep.

Then a mouth, lined with fangs and a manic tongue, swaying from side to side, spraying spit everywhere.

She still pretended to be asleep.

51

The entire thing emerged. It was a rotting husk of a dog. Maggots were fleeing from its body. Its smell was suffocating the room, and the girl’s nose started to wrinkle.

She still pretended to be asleep.

The thing went to her bed, then licked her cheek. It left a hot, sticky trail of saliva on her face.

She still pretended to be asleep.

The thing whimpered, pushing at her side, trying to pull her away.

She still pretended to be asleep.

Its whimpers rose to a growl. It struggled, its strength increasing with every pull, trying to surmount her weight and her artificial inactivity.

She still pretended to be asleep.

It finally gave up. It howled, once, twice, then retreated from the room.

She still pretended to be asleep.

She waited, until she was sure it was gone, then woke to wipe the residue of the thing’s approach from her face.

She wondered what it was, and why its whimpers sounded like her dead dog’s.

And then, she smelled another scent. Far more dangerous than the last.

The scent of burning. The scent of smoke. And the cracks on her door were glowing with an orange, hostile light.

52

Photo by Jhon Aldrin M. Casinas

53

Photograph RJ LEDESMA

I

t was a strange list: a cat figurine, a Martha Stewart arts and crafts book, a ball of yarn, a bent teaspoon, a shoe rack with seven pairs which are not yours. You also remember the fake flowers. You are suddenly worried about the leak in the faucet pipe. The coffeemaker was on when I left, you thought. You suddenly felt like chugging warm liquid. Coffee or tea. But you couldn’t. You were outside your house thinking about a strange list. You were still counting. You were still imagining the mundane details of your house: the tiny crack above your bed. Rumpled sheets after sex. Unpaid bills. A painting slightly tilting to one side, which annoyed her. You remembered the shower and how sometimes it doesn’t churn out water. You thought of the book which lay unread on your couch forever. It was Dickens and you hated it. It was a drag. You wished you never picked it up in the first place. Books burn out the fastest, you surmised.

Or is it the poor cat? You hated Martha Stewart and everything she stands for, but you’d have to pretend you tolerated her. A ball of yarn was never untangled.

She never used it. I was mad. I’m sorry. I miss your feet. It doesn’t matter. And I’m sorry again. You were still thinking of warm liquid sliding down your throat.

Coffee, you decided. But you can only imagine for now. You watched the crackle.

You watched your roof caving in. The walls grew orange wings. Angels were coming. You can hear them. You stood still at a point near enough to feel the heat of everything being swallowed up. You watched and thought of a strange list. You thought of going nearer. You thought of hurling this piece of glossy paper into the ball of fire. She was grinning that perpetual grin. You wanted to erase it and knock some sense to her: we are inconsolable. We never had kids.

Everything comes to this. It wasn’t my fault. I couldn’t save you. You thought of the strange list again as the angels did what they had to do.

54

Photo by Jhon Aldrin M. Casinas

55

Corpse Art LY L E B A L A N A

T

here was a war forty years ago. Founded on the need for expansion and the dwindling of current resources, and waged under the banner of a new and exciting discovery— a wondrous armor that required insane amounts of force to penetrate— warfare became brutal, forceful, extremely deleterious to the environment. Portable handheld antipersonnel weapons would have been artillery-grade pieces in more peaceful times. Rifles that discharged concentrated photons onto designated targets replaced solid-slug bullets, for their inefficiency in the face of the wondrous armor was revealed.

Soon, the nations of the world- at least those that lasted- busted out the nukes. The very resources that they fought for so hard to gain was lost to them forever. Slowly, the chain of command in each remaining nation broke down, and the peoples of the earth were lost to anarchy. The soldiers who preserved their armor became the most dominant force in a land where law was forgotten, and they formed gangs and tribes for their own preservation. For the expansion of their selfish ideals.

The good old values of benevolence and respect for life was forgotten. Old technologies were unearthed to feed the need for the rules of the new world— cloning tanks to immediately produce capable and controllable minions, cybernetics to extend the life of the privileged and the favored, and terranium domes for food. Water was sucked out of the air through moisture machines, and clothes- bloodied, beaten, and battered- became valued resources.

It became a sin to help. Anyone who tried was destroyed, slaughtered by fire and fist. Sometimes their bodies were hung up with metal pipes, or strewn along the lost roads of the old cities, a warning to showing compassion. The pacifists were rooted out, then killed along with ideals.

More years passed, and the old overlords— those with the armor- had faded away. Their lieutenants did not know how to operate the wondrous protection, and so rejected it in favor of a more direct approach. They donned weak imitations. Junk, scraps held together by molten lead and cogs- formed rudimentary support to their combat prowess. Battle started anew.

Their cloning machines started malfunctioning. The new clones produced did not seem like clones at all. Some of them obeyed the old pattern, breathing and listening to the letter, but the others had ideas. The others did not believe in the values of self-determination, of toiling for leaders who had earned their position through chance, through the whims of superior men. These clones decided they wanted nothing of the war and fled into the wastes, where no man would wonder, taking terranium domes and cloning machines with them. They created a society for themselves, one that resembled the old times.

The warlords were infuriated with the theft. The daring attempt to separate

56

from the established order could be disastrous to their legacy. They plotted to take them all back by force, by blood, because that was the only thing that they knew. There was no compromise, no words of softness among men cloned again and again. Only heartless directives, only the uplifting of excellence through the forceful removal of rivals.

They raised their armies and started for the rebel dome.

Along the way there was a culling. Heat and exhaustion took their toll on the marching armies, and those that were left behind simply died on the sands as the rest ignored them. Those that were too weak could not be counted on to perform, and resources were scarce.

When they reached the dome, they barely had a thousand among their number. But this was not a detriment to them, used to war, used to violence.

Here they would prove their worth.

They broke into the dome, weapons raised and ready, and stopped at a sight.

All in the dome were dead. Their blood and bodies littered the insides of the dome. Guts, limbs, pieces of hair were spread over the length and width of the dome. The cloning machines were equally devastated, turned to flat, scattered scrap. The terranium domes had their glass walls broken in, the shards forming chaotic patterns among the crushed plants half-buried in the cultured soil inside the device.

But there was something strange about the scene. It did not seem grotesque.

It did not seem to be horrifying. The gore formed beautiful patterns on the walls and on the floor. There was a red swan, assembled from torn skin, pieces of eyeballs, a broken bone or two, colored all over by congealed blood. There was a semblance of a forest- limbs inserted into inflated stomachs, then smeared all over with bile and what seemed to be vomit. Flowers- actually teeth ringing the tops of thumbs with strips of tongue for the stems- topped soil thrown along a nearby replica of an old tank, formed from the body of a broken dome, a hollowed-out arm standing in for a barrel, with three human bodies somehow squeezed together to form makeshift tracks for each side. There was a dragon, its fangs of cut fingernails, its serpentine, limber body of several twisted intestines, roaring at a tiger, made from charred flesh set against white swathes of leg creating a ferocious body of stripes. Imitation houses, actually ribcages arranged so skillfully as to resemble models and not horrible, passable attempts at demoralizing enemy forces, were set to one side.

The men stopped, marveling at the beauty of the art. They were not disturbed by the death, as they were always ready to face its trials, but this was not something that they were prepared for. They had never seen something like this before. Their weapons, their homes, their cloning tanks, the rare vehicle

57

Photo by Monica Louise Trinidad M. Cueto

58

that ran on clones endlessly sprinting inside gigantic hamster wheels to power the contraption forward, they were all simple and ordinary to the eye. Here was something greater than themselves. Here were things that they could not have imagined, nor made. Perhaps they could not strike out, or cause them to bleed, or make them wish for death, but there was a certain quality to them that moved their once hard hearts.

They wanted to learn how to make these for themselves. But the rebel clones were gone.

They lingered awhile before the lieutenants mustered enough willpower to send their troops on their way home. As they passed their dead, they did something that they did not do before- they took hold of an arm or a leg, then dragged them back to their bases, where they were placed to the sides. Burial was not for these corpses, nor a slow fate to inglorious decay. There was now a template for the remains of the living. No longer would they be merely reminders.

The lieutenants made their troops labor for weeks. Despite the lack of battles, they did not limit food nor drink. The clones were properly fed as they dissected the corpses, broke down bones and meat, set them to gradually sensible patterns that sought to imitate what they have seen in the graveyard of the rebels. Harsh words became few and far in between.

After their work was done, there was celebration. Here at last were things of beauty for themselves, their own flowers and tiny houses and dragons and bears and swans. They thought of the other clones in other places, how they would turn green with envy at the marvel wrought to replicate the pacifists’ last art.

And so they dragged their art out to the open desert, out in the cracked streets and fading skyscrapers. They ran into each other, bragged about their designs, then moved on to seek fresh faces. The din of battle, familiar for so long with the last inhabitants of the earth, became pointed, reserved critique, harsh whispers of praise, outright expressions of envy and challenge.

The years passed. Their designs evolved. The need for bodies dwindled as the dead among their number were decreased. They looked about their surroundings for replacements, unwilling to kill off any of their number lest they hold some new art within themselves, lest they be deprived of some hidden genius lurking among the rank-and-file. Art started to be made from stone, from scrap, from the defunct scrap armors and rusted weapons that had not been used for quite a length of time.

The earth was now quiet. The earth started to heal.

59

There is Nobody MONICA LOUISE TRINIDAD M. CUETO

Part I “There was sadness in her poetry and poetry in her sadness,” he whispered softly to the calm evening wind. Two seconds after, snapped into unforeseen madness.

The night she forgot all about the moon, the wickedness of its moonlight, the wonder in its reality, the romantic importance of its maliciousness was the night he unconventionally and disturbingly lost his mind.

He, the most mentally stable person any sane-enough human being could know, finally lost his marbles. And she, the almost perfect embodiment of a hopeless romantic, could not remember his existence therefore could not remember of love or ever loving anyone.

Convincingly, he loved her in a way. He loved the way she made coffee out of sugar, salt, flour and beans. Its disturbing taste excited him, excited them both. He was fascinated with the way she turned the word lugubrious a rather perfectly beautiful word to place on loose sentences, to pronounce. Her scent was his cocaine, her eyes were his liquor, her laugh was the melody of his life and her flaws were his gold. He loved looking at her, memorizing the geometry of her features. But most importantly, he loved the mystery of her.

He sang to the popular ballads of the 70’s and wondered how he was able to know the words and she loved the idea of it. She loved the way he’d carry her to bed when the bourbon on the shelf abused her system. She was smitten by the smell of his shirt drenched in rain and sweat. She fell in love with the way he looked at her. His voice was the playlist of her long travels, his smile was her ecstasy, his sultry kisses were her ocean’s wave and his flaws were her sunlight. She loved the fact that he was a quiet and bashful man. But most importantly, she loved the idea of him.

In spite of how the structure of this story has gone so far, this is not a romantic tale that speaks of hearts and destiny and all the what-nots of a love story. This is a tale of two nobodies and a rather peculiar way to live a life and love. nobody /ˈnōˌbädē,ˈnōˌbədē/ pronoun : no person

Part II

noun : someone who is not important or has no influence

60

They were known throughout town, known to be together for 10 years. He was a curator and she was a writer, published three bestselling novels and one flop in the market. She blamed the recession. He knew she had writer’s block for months.

They were popular for being the best tandem since Bonnie and Clyde. She’d write short stories for him to read, he’d paint the characters in his canvass impulsively and with his sheer wit at entrepreneurship, would make a fortune out of his art. Their chemistry was contagious that spinsters and bachelors decided to wed, nuns and priests raised a family.

It was a strange year their 10th year together. There were seven full moons that appeared in the month of October. And she knew that. She had an erratic fascination for the moon. She’d take mental photographs of them in her head and would remember each moon she saw on different nights. “There is always something about the moon that makes everything so comforting,” she would say. With this mystery between her and the moon did he fall in love quite so deeply.

On the sixth full moon, she fell ill with too much sadness; depressed and exhausted with having to live with the living and morose with the fact that she cannot stay with him forever. He stayed up all night taking care of her but knew so well that there was nothing much to do.

On the seventh full moon, her toes began to fade in color, started to become pale and then translucent.

She wasn’t ill. She began to transform back into her real form – nonliving, a soul, a ghost. Her time was almost up and she felt as if the moon had something to do with it. It was taking her back.

It was then he realized… that they must vanish, become nobodies. In that way, they could hide, so she could be with him forever. Or so he thought…

Part III She died 50 years ago during the Second World War. While serving as a nurse at a field hospital in Boston, a nuclear bomb hit the area where she was working, tending to a crippled soldier. She was only 19 years of age.

Her death was an absolute devastation especially to her. She had accomplished nothing, loved no one and learned nothing, she was after all, was just growing up. Her unfinished business was what kept her soul amongst the living.

For 40 years, the ghost roamed around town after town studying people, learning from the mistakes of the living, loving the way they loved, hearing their stories, be fascinated with how much the era can change decade after

61

decade and finding her purpose as a dead person in a world full of living.

And then he saw her, sitting on a bench at the train station, reading the newspaper held by an oblivious old man next to her. Yes, he is one of those who could see. Instead of running away and faint like he’d use to, he just stared in a way that he was unable to move, confused by a certain gut feeling.

“There was this beautiful creature and she was dead, but still, she was perfect,” he wrote on his journal on the way home. He didn’t sleep that night thinking about her.

The next day, he saw her again. He came up to her and said “They told me once that I was mad because I saw things that I wasn’t supposed to see, but I knew that I wasn’t mad and I was right. And then they told me, my gift is a gift for a reason and now I know that this right here is one of those reasons.”

In the beginning, it was predictably and horribly complicated. And how else could it have been not? She was a ghost who spent the last 40 years wandering invisibly along hallways and streets; he was a human being who was still very much alive and very much visible. He could not hold her hand, kiss her forehead nor touch her face. She cannot hug him without making him feel cold. But in spite of how odd their situation was… they were irrevocably happy knowing the other exists.

One peculiar afternoon, mid-February, as her laughter filled the room and the luminosity of her happiness cleared the skies and made the sun at ease, she felt warm and heavy, she felt her own skin and she felt blood filling up her entire body and she felt a heartbeat as her temperature rose.

One peculiar afternoon 10 years ago in the middle of February, she was once again alive.

Part IV The mystery of her second shot at life has always remained an enigmatic occurrence. But she always knew that it wasn’t going to last forever, it was going to wear off one way or another. As what she has learned from life and death, nothing lasts.

She knew she would one day vanish again but this time, not as a ghost nor a spirit wandering around, but something else that could no longer linger with the living. He, in his romance that drove him insane, denied the fact that she was.

So, they became unknown to society; lived underground, away from total normalcy, but the house they built below the ground looked as normal as normal could be. With a garden, a patio and a balcony overlooking the sewer system, home was perfect, but then again, they were each other’s home and that was the only thing that mattered.

62

Photo by Jhon Aldrin M. Casinas

63

Part V Day by day, she was turning paler, her translucent parts turned transparent.

Day by day, she felt colder. Each day, he was suffering, but always believed that he can fix it by going deeper underground, miles further from the moon.

As days passed, she was sad but always happy to wake up beside him still, grateful to have woken up to the sight of him, it was a pleasant knowledge to have that she still existed. He never missed out on a chance to make a memory of her for each day.

He loved the way she smiled at him whenever he made a mistake at pronouncing poetry. He loved the way she made funny faces behind his back when he recited Shakespeare or Browning or Tennyson. He was amazed by how strong she got when weakness was all that was expected. He loved the way she looked at him. But most importantly, he loved her deeply, passionately – a source of his self-destruction in the end.

She loved the way he was running around the house in panic every time a body part became ghost-like, she found it romantic. She was mesmerized by the way he cooked her pancakes out of blueberries, coffee and flour; they were god-like in flavor. She loved the way he laughed at her old timer jokes and the crinkles that form by his eyes. But most importantly, she loved him in a way that was irrevocable and real.

Part VI He never knew what this was all for. He felt played at by destiny, by the universe. But he knew that for a limited time will he ever feel the kind of jubilance that only true love can bring. He felt cheated. And it unconsciously fed his madness.

But she knew why she was going to have to leave. No matter how much they hid from the moon or go way deeper underground, she would still vanish not in vain for she has accomplished her business with the world, with the living.

He didn’t understand this. He only wanted her with him.

Part VII The night he kissed her forehead, the last bit that remained to be in flesh was the night she forgot all about the moon, the wickedness of its moonlight, the wonder in its reality, the romantic importance of its maliciousness.

As her memories of him slowly wiped away, so was she. Until there was nothing but the cold breeze of December air that was left to kiss his cheeks goodnight.

64

He never came back to live in normalcy with the other living beings. He chose to stay 30 feet below the ground as he is comforted with the memory of her and his death caused by lunacy. He was after all, nobody. “There was beauty in his madness and madness in his beauty,� were the last words she whispered to him the night she disappeared and left him underground to lose his mind.

65

Photo by Jhon Aldrin M. Casinas

This is Not the Exit AUSTERE REX GAMAO

T

here is no exit sign but this is a quick escape route. The guide takes the nearest hand and pulls it towards him. He has no idea where it leads but they don’t have a choice. They took this path. They want to go back but the cavern is blocked by an unknown force, an invisible hand. Someone chokes, others follow. The air is running out. Out. Have to get out. Any exit will do. Pull open. Crack open. Break open. The exit that is not the exit. Mouths gasping. The guide screams for his group, for himself. This is a rash decision. This impulse will kill them all but going back is not an option anymore. Out. Have to get out.

Going back means facing the unknown force, the invisible hand. The guide goes first. The door closes behind him. He sees a point of light in the dark. He was wrong, this is the exit. A winding tunnel. When he emerges from the dark: the unknown force, the invisible hand.

67

SCRIBES & SCRIBBLERS

Lex Diwa Aloro – A purple rabbit on roller skates appears from behind you. She circles around you and says, “Follow me.” Before you could say anything, she zooms away and her figure disappears within the darkness. You’re on your own again, as you were just seconds ago.

Monica Cueto – You meet an orange bipedal fox wearing a beret, smoking a makeshift tobacco pipe. She meets your gaze, puts a hand on your shoulder and blows a cloud of smoke on your face. For a moment, your sight is impaired. When the smoke dissipates, the fox is nowhere to be found. You look around and see the tip of an orange tail protruding from a corner.

Lyle Balana – An owl, the size of your palm, walks back and forth a rusty old pipe. In a deep and wizened voice, he speaks of aged stories and forgotten lore, some of which sound like exaggerated versions of fables you’ve read as a child. You ask him, “Will I ever get out of here?” This was his only reply: Ask Alaska.

Pee-Dee Hey – The infamous meth dealer, whose name you felt you’ve seen on NBI’s most wanted list, sells you a conspicuous leather sack. He claims you can’t surmount the obstacles ahead without it. He manages to trade it with you for a few strands of your hair. He drops the strands in a test tube solution and hurriedly goes away. After laboriously untying the sack, you take a peek at its contents. It’s empty.

Jowan Dave Guides – A hamster driving a remote control Lamborghini drifts in front of you. When it leaves, you decipher a message from the tire tracks it left behind. It reads: Fast and the Furious 7 confirmed.

Dale Gugudan – You see a yellow dragon-ish, turtle-like figure with a spiky shell run off while carrying a bound princess on his back.

Martini Albert Manalo – A man drops out of a pipe. He is wearing red overalls, a blue shirt, white gloves, and hat with the letter “M” on it. When he approaches you, you notice he also has a mustache. In a somewhat Italian accent he asks if you’ve seen the princess. You tell him “The princess is in another castle”. You get a feeling of De Ja Vu. Sarah Lorabelle Sison Esguerra – A sewer unicorn sleeps soundly among a pile of colorful rocks. You were about to approach it until you notice that the rocks were actually crushed piles of bones stained into different colors. You take a different path.

John P. Tuason – You see a parrot standing on a wooden ledge near the empty port of the lake. It tilts its head and stares at you. You say, “Hi”. Its says, “Hi” 70

You ask, “What’s your name?” It says, “What’s your name?” You laugh and think to yourself, “Poor fellow, it’s only capable of repeating what I say.” It says “Hello”. You never said that. You get goosebumps.

Roma Jane Hechanova –You turn around and see a woman. You let out a sigh of relief. Embarrassingly, you confide, “I thought I’d see a ghost.” She smiles.

“There are no ghosts here,” she assures you. “How can you be so sure?” you ask. “I’ve never seen one, and I’ve been living here for 500 years.”

Hezron Pios – You meet the official ferryman, donning a red polo shirt and a yellow straw hat, of the sewer. He willingly agrees to give you a ride around the sewer’s waterways. In exchange, he makes you promise that you’ll have to find his lost girlfriend when you reach the city’s surface. (But you don’t really have to.)

April Espelita- As the ferryman takes you for a ride, you rest your hand outside the boat’s hull and feel a rough stony texture. You tilt your head out and see a starfish sticking to the boat. Suddenly, it comes off the boat and floats upward.

You look up and realize that there is a constellation of shimmering starfish filling the dome of the sewer.

Nicole Javellana Locsin – Sitting on top of a rock in a murky lake, you spot the local siren. You hear her sing the first lines of a song: “When your legs don’t work like you used to before…”

Keanu Rafil – A blind toad minding its own business leaps to and fro with ease despite its lack of sight along a rocky shore It constantly waits for a female visitor to kiss him and turn him into human, just like in a story he heard from the owl.

Katherine Co – A cynical scallop, loud and brash, complains about everything she sees and spouts nastier words as she sees you. She can be appeased by playing K-pop music from your phone.

Deo Flores – From afar, you see a bat that happens to be flying but isn’t using its wings. As it gets closer you realize that its wings are broken and it walks on its two long and overgrown feet that have evolved since.

Seth Pullona – You overhear a rat with two arguing heads, sounding like a an old married couple . A hearsay: they were human lovers that were cursed after sharing a slice of bewitched Sansrival sent by a sewer deity.

Jed Descutido – A dusty range rover lies inactive in a small crater on the ground.

You kick it, and suddenly its screen plays an old clip. It shows the video of first man on the moon planting a flag. After witnessing a memorable part of 71

human history, the video continues playing, and the astronaut takes off his helmet. It’s not Neil Armstrong but turns out to be a man wearing glasses.

You suddenly recognize the place he’s standing on to be one of the rocky surfaces you saw in the sewer and that the section of the universe in the video was actually a virtually-edited green screen trick.

Shara Mae Pelayo - You see a persian cat resting on battered carpet. “Fill in the blanks of this song: I can’t stand to fly and I don’t know why / and now I’m _?” “Falling?” “Wrong,” it insists.”It’s: and now I’m / leaving on a jet plane...”

You leave it to its delight.

Daphne Tanya Molenaar – A statue, whose face shows the deepest passions of a theatrical performer and whose stature is that of a ballerina at the climax of an en pointe, comes alive when moonlight from a gaping hole strikes her. She drops to the floor and her expression changes to that of someone who doesn’t give a damn anymore.

Abe Link – You see a teapot shaking. You come closer to it and discover it has a face. It says something in a foreign language, but there was a tenderness in her voice which reminded you of home. You run away.

Jhon Aldrin Casinas - As you pass by an enclosed hall, you see an armored knight standing with its back against the wall. It speaks in a proud voice, “Who goes there?” You present yourself and state your name. “What a digustful name and what on earth are you wearing?”, it growls, “I am Sir... son of the great...of the mighty house of....”Suddenly, the ground shakes and the armor topples to the ground. A fly comes out of it and flies away.

RJ Ledesma – You reach the dead end of the hall. Suddenly, a giant shadow forms at the empty wall in front of you. From the outline, stretching its arms, you deduce that the creature is a mighty bird with powerful wings, with sharp scales on its head and has thorns around its shoulders. With all the courage you could muster, you slowly turn around to face the creature. It’s a penguin wearing a feather hat and a marabou shawl.

Austere Rex Gamao – There is a monkey hanging from of a chandelier. You step back thinking it would hurt you. Seeing the apprehension in your eyes, the monkey smiles and with a child-like voice says, “I just need a friend.” You leave the monkey alone as you cannot anymore distinguish between what is real and what is not.

72

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

RJ Ledesma, for being a fellow backdrop voice that echoed the words which made this artificial paperback come alive.

Jowan Dave Guides, for investing the time and providing the skills needed in laying out the steel, concrete and muck that made this folio an unconventional beauty.

John Aldrin Casinas, for intricately capturing the ephemerality of a ghost, the desolation of a divorced shoe and other photos utilized in this folio.

Daphne Tanya Moleenar, for seeing the polka dot pattern found in dead insects that has favored this folio’s cover.

To our parents and loved ones, for understanding that, late at night, there is a sewer that needs to be erected.

And to all our contributors, thank you for stepping into dark tunnels and plunging into cold waters to establish the architecture of this subterannean folio. It would have been just a large and empty hole in the ground if not for the poetic and illustrative plumbing that you have provided.

You pause and close your eyes, taking a moment to absorb everything: the dampness of the air, the hidden lessons in silence, and the version of consolation found only in the dark. You open your eyes and you see it: pipe and branch, rock and flower, beast and companion—the phantasm of reality.

73

74

THESPECTRUM A . Y . 2 0 1 6 - 2 0 1 7 thespectrum.usls@gmail.com

RJ Nichole L. Ledesma Editor-in-Chief Daphne Tanya L. Molenaar Associate Editor Robert H. Jerge III Managing Editor Andrea Nicole C. Farol External Affairs Director Newspaper Editor Christiana Claudia G. Gancayco Magazine Editor Lex Diwa P. Aloro Asst. Magazine Editor Katherine E. Co Online Editor David Willem L. Molenaar Asst. Online Editor Joshua Martin P. Guanco Literary Editor Chad Martin Z. Natividad Photos and Videos Editor Jhon Aldrin M. Casinas Asst. Photos and Videos Editor Margaret E. Yusay Layout and Graphics Editor Jowan Dave G. Guides Newspaper Writers Maria Angelica M. Ape Starlene Joy B. Portillo Magazine Writers Lyle John L. Balana Hezron G. Pios Online Writers Charlene Marie D. Lim Maria Angeline M. Mayor Ida Sarena M. Gabaya Filipino Writer Ma. Lore P. Prado Sports Writers Gian Von J. Caberte Stephine Paul M. Dungca

Illustrators Katrina Y. Nemenzo Karen D. Panganiban Seth V. Pullona Photojournalists Ma. Henna A. Pilla Nicci Bernelle P. Aguilar Nichol Francis T. Anduyan Videographer Neil Angelo F. Pelongco Layout and Graphics Artists Glen Jed J. Descutido Shara Mae L. Pelayo Editorial Assistant Keanu Joseph P. Rafil

Publication Moderator Jean Lee C. Patindol

75

76