in my mind

In front of my PC, I stood up amidst the noise in my office, and like Christian Bale in Equilibrium, wrist-flicked guns into both hands, and fired adeptly--my aim and footwork masterly synchronized; my assessment of each co worker's location led by memory and peripheral vision: to my right tumbles the old admin officer; to my left the managing editor twists, falls from her chair. I step back, face left, arms spread-eagled but aimed. I squeeze both triggers at once: headshot to the assistant admin girl; the photographer chokes on his own blood. Two quick steps forward, right hand aims left, left aims right: the research writer gets it through his spine; lethal chest wounds for the webmaster. Pivot 160 degrees, lunge, skid, thumb both guns to automatic fire, spray the entrance door till both clips run empty. I flick both wrists: used up cartridges clang on the floor. Both guns re-thumbed back to semi-auto. The entrance door creaks slightly ajar; through the opening falls the nonliving office driver, and the utility man.

My gut twitches: someone is watching. Wrists flick on their own: fresh clips snap into place. Through the open blinds, the food vendor stares into dead-slit eyes: mine. He bolts for it; I run the length of my tunnel-shaped office, cocking both guns, firing at the window, at the running figure. His body thuds on the gravel outside. Pivot, quick eye sweep, instantaneous threat-assessment. The youngest office journalist screams, for the last time, into the dead telephone: my left gun blowing the unit away, my right triggering at her. Twist, adjust aim, fire, lean back, make sure, fire again, kick a chair out of the way, right hand firing straight in front, left hand into the back.

Then, I stood still, listening for movement; stance firm, feet spread apart, ready for anything.

The layout artist bleeds, unmoving, facedown on his scanner. The copy editor, headset on and pen in hand, has corrected her final manuscript, blood-smeared as it is. Sprawled on newspapers, both student assistants, usually early for their classes, won't make it this time. Or ever.

Behind me, the air-conditioner hums--suddenly the only sound in this tunnel of corpses. Soon, a mental tightness in me loosens up. Relieved, I retract both guns back into their wrist-sheaths. I walk back to my PC.

In this dead quiet, I can listen to myself think. I can finally write something decent.

you bad girl you

At McDonald's, I leaned closer to Anne to scold her. She had just returned from having our cups refilled with coffee.

"See that?" I pointed to a sign on the wall above her head. It said: Do not leave your valuables unattended.

"Don't you ever leave me again," I said in mock seriousness, waving my finger at her in the way you reprimand a child.

She laughed like a teenager, reached across the table and tweaked my nose hard.

(Ouch.) ",

pam

"So few of us left," said the Fading Light, a title the Queen took since the decline of our powers. She was beside the mound, the last traces of mound magic leaving her, like ripples we could all feel. No more murmuring winds lifted the dried leaves. None of us could come and go at the speed of thought anymore. We had almost lost every ounce of Faerie light we had. Our skins refused to be translucent, but with our remaining magic we remained undeniably stunning. Like the Queen standing before me, her sadness beautiful.

All our preternatural allies have either abandoned us or have been massacred by the humans. The time of the Faerie had passed. We are now refugees in our own home, which is wherever humans had not yet been to. We have been on the run for so long there was no time to mourn.

Today marks the third score of my watch over little Pamela, who is sleeping in my arms. She had been under my care since her phalanx of guards died protecting her. It was also the third score of our race's dwindling in number. Humans had been occupying more and more of our homelands, too soon for us to cope with, too many of them to deal with. We disdained their affection for contraptions, which they were using to annihilate us. For some reason, our powers affected them no more.

Before, with the mound's help, even little Pamela could hex dozens of men in yellow hats, with pick-axes and jackhammers, to walk away, their memories dishelved. And then the humans started using their metallic animals on us. One such creature killed Pamela's guards. I pulled her out of the way of a hulking animal that pushed aside all that lay in its path. The human that tamed it rode on its back, encased in glass. Pamela's guards were overrun, mistaken for little tribal men.

Faeries age slowly, and with the loss of the mound, I can only hope little Pamela also forgets her roots. For with no magic to protect her, she will have to rely on sheer muscle and cunning. Memories about a race humans disbelieve in will be of no help to her. The Fading Light, the last living guardian who shoulders Pamela's destiny, had decided for the child to age amongst humans.

The remaining handful of Faerie did not wish to be assimilated by the humans and chose to wither away; their memories of the mound and of our festive ages together in tact. We realized we had all lived a full life, except for the child under my care.

The Queen and I decided to give our remaining essences to Pamela, aware that with her new life with humans, she would lose the grandeur and grace inherent in all Faerie. A small price to pay for our race to survive, albeit changed.

"Only one of us left," said the Fading Light, and I nodded. With the last of our powers, we put a spell on Pamela, so that a kind heart within three hundred paces will be drawn to her, and will raise her as if she was her own.

The ceremonial essence transfer was next. After this, little Pamela will wake up completely human, with no Faerie left in her--except for the Queen's short temper and my unbending will.

When Pamela opens her eyes, all of her kind, save for her, will have withered away. All good things come to pass, even for Faerie.

-Final journal entry of Orphelia Ironhide, Shield-Nanny
to Pamela, niece-goddess of the Fading Light

natasha is gone

Natasha broke down this morning. Her neck snapped as I tried to use her. It's been a year and she couldn't take the weight of it anymore. Natasha is the tabo in my bathroom. Just like Bertha is my dish cabinet, Epipania my office PC, and Fred my harddisk that crashed two years ago.

the point

The problem with Sundays is that Mondays come right after them, forcing you to optimize being irresponsible and care-free and restful and take as many deep breaths as possible out of the office and just not think about work and consequences during Friday nights. That way, waking up on Saturdays is an event in itself: double hangovers, where'd I put my things, I'm just glad the week is over, and you get to reflect about your work which isn't so bad as long as you're not in the office, and the workweek is rotten only because you're a vegetable 24 by 7, and suddenly a jolt—tonight is all I have because tomorrow is the last day before everything begins again.

Damn you, workweek, sumpain ka even. You hear? The Sisyphean loop of things. The suffocating nearness of it all.

I object to peace of mind and fun and mental renewal with a consume until tag on it. It's not right nah-uh not right. The peace of laundry-day Sunday is not too far from the peace enjoyed by a man to be hanged in the next half hour.

I want longer weekends. You hear? I want them stretched. I want the end of fun deadline extended, moved away, far away, as far as I can throw it, out the window even. And while you're at it, wash my other teddy bear. It's beginning to go dark brown on me again.

At least I get to see my wife sleep on weekends, curled up in a blanket, pristine and ageless. If there are hints of wrinkles on her, it's not her fault. I put them there.

shades of brown

My coffee cup at home, a small unevenly browned one, I brought to the office to replace the one I use there, which was not as brown and whose circumference was bigger. That means the coffee to sugar to hot water ratio I follow at home and the one in the office are different. So I don't always get that 'sipa' I want out of each cup. To standardize, I did what I did, because I have another mug just like it, also at home.

My small coffee jar at home, a thoroughly green one, I left there. It comes with a small spoon, smaller than a teaspoon, which, when heaped with coffee--that heap mixed with two heaps of sugar and hot water near the brim--concocted the exact caffeine 'sipa' that logs me out of afternoon stupor and early morning daze.

Such a small cup. Form a C with your right hand, open it up a little, and that's the cup's circumference. It's height is just three-fourths the length of my hand. So much for so little.

When I was an undergrad, morning cups of coffee defined the house hierarchy. On the breakfast table, where I fixed the family coffee, colors said who was who: pink was my mom, blue was my stepdad, and I was yellow. I remember abandoning my assigned cup; my brother had poured something on it, turning it to the color of shit.

And the shit that I take from morning till night has significantly darkened with time. Deep, uneven dark brown.

go girl!

I keep getting pats on the back by email and by tagboard from friends who've read my blog: they think I'm a girl. Then, some of them who've read my entries that more than hint of my heterosexuality, they gasp and tag and comment back: syet, lalaki ka pala. I want to apologize to them—I'm not a girl—as if I let them down or deceived them or challenged the assumption that writing this girly could not possibly belong to a guy.

But I never saw my writing as girly, but simply writing.

Remember Ally Mcbeal? I keep telling friends I took male sensitivity classes, which softened up my grip-view on the world. But that's not true, I've always viewed the world this softly. Still, to be talked to as if I need to prove something called manhood: that, contrary to surface reading, I really am another hormonally poisoned brute, insensitive to the nuances of words said and the depth underneath them, evasive and elusive on commitment, lousy with house chores.

I'm still partly these things. Pero, sige, whenever I get another Go Girl! I will return the gesture with Thanks, pare, wahoooo!

I mean, how else do I prove I'm a guy?

and i cringe

When I try to recall what undergraduate life was like, it is almost as if another person lived it, and not the current me.

On a large rug on the second-floor of my family's apartment, one of our many transient dwellings, photocopies of readings in six different subjects lay around me. I'm pillowed on my hands clasped behind my head, seeing nothing but white ceiling, ignoring the muffled voices of my family in the other room. At almost nine in the morning, Mom is dressing up my two younger brothers to take them to Grandma's house, where they can play till Mom fetches them after five.

Yes, Mom, I'm leaving for school after I finish typing my term paper.

I lock the door behind them, fix myself a cup of coffee, and go back upstairs, to my room, to continue staring at the ceiling. I brush aside some papers with my foot, to make a larger space to lie down on, and fight the drowse-inducing cadence of very faraway sounds.

I'm a philosophy major asking the ceiling why I am academically required to try and find the central algorhythm of all knowledge. I don't even have a girlfriend.

How did I manage to wake up and sleep feeling all important, all throughout junior and senior years, as if my thoughts, which were restated echoes of dead white male Anglo-Saxon thinkers, rippled forth and changed the core of things? Back then, I couldn't even fry an egg without piercing the yolk.

bear-stabs

I have memories of the rain in me. Of rain-washed blood and stabs of iron and light. In the middle of a night-storm, biting a small longnose pliers, my uncle, that shirtless moron of a bear, climbed up the lamp post beside our gate to fix the fuse: the entire looban had fallen into darkness.

He monkeyed himself up past the metal spokes of the gate, looked down at me once, his face a shadow: the only light source being the post he held onto. I wiggled my fluffy slippers-warmed toes: should I call for help, or watch further?

Spears of rain soaked my uncle's teddy bear pajamas, everything in eye-sweep simplified in shades of grey: his grip slipped and I lost time. A thud when he hit the ground or a thud when he hit the metal spokes? He bled on the ground, in the rain, leaning on one elbow, his free hand on the center of his chest as he smiled at me: I waved back.

"Tumama lang 'yung pwet ko!" he yelled in the light-circle; the lamp post shone directly over him. I lost more time. Did he hit the spokes chest first, then pulled himself up?

The bear got on his feet and looked up, at the height from which he fell, and then looked around for his pliers. My aunt came rushing past me, screaming what was that thud and panicked herself into more screams as she rushed out to my grinning uncle.

"Ang tanga-tanga mo!" my aunt shrieked between sobs and wiped her unshirted bear's chest of blood, of which there wasn't much, with the rain washing it down. Then more sobs and "Wala 'yon, sweethart." And then I remember getting up the next morning, still with my fluffy slippers on: the storm had stopped, the ground was clean, and the spears had stopped coming down from the sky.

A bear with so many bandages on his chest lay on the couch, sleeping.

rain-soaked brain

The scattered patches of puddles along the road infront of my office are now one. The rain and the narrow gutter-drain gave them wholeness and direction. I'm looking at the sluggish rapids through the blinds I pulled up: leaves, twigs and candy wrappers in transit.

Tis the glum season to admit defeat: I rest my forehead on the wet-opaque window: everything within eyesight--the trees, the slippery sidewalk, the lifeless road, the distant grass--has this dampened grey-brown aura of hibernating slowness.

I wonder who took my umbrella.

how to write a friendster testimonial

Feel particularly witty. Click "Add a Testimonial." Skim previous entries. Decide you can do better. How to proceed. Wiggle your fingers over the keyboard. Grin with determination . . . plunge in.

"I've known him since..." Fuss over your beginning. Too many nostalgic templates floating around. Decide to avoid that. "When we were kids, Martin climbed a tall acacia and couldn't get down. He hollered 'Mama' till his voice got husky. We laughed at him till his mom came running, blaming us for what happened." There. Concise, a touch of drama, explaining you've known him from way back. Decide that he forgave you for not helping out back then. Wonder how he'll thank you for recounting the old days.

"The only Alcoholics Anonymous member I know with a rap sheet longer than her arm." Synopsis, punched it right where it counts. Smile proud. Continue with best wishes template: "She gets better every two months, sobering up and then plunging down again into the bottle. Her consistency is a thing of beauty." Perfect.

"This gal, mhann, tops the list of coolness kids in school. She is goodtimes personified." This is exactly how you know her, you decide: in a mindless-fun wavelength. Apt would be the surfer-dude template...always useful for people you don't really know, don't care to know better, and don't really intend on offending. It's like a neutral arms' length pat on the back.

"Lovely, full of energy, bouncy, talkative..." Will this do? you ask yourself. It's non-committal, an unimaginative grocery list of adjectives, the first impressions off your mind when you think of this person. Maybe another adjective will do. Decide to be a miser. You hope she'll be flattered and then write you a testi that beats what you did for her. Always works, you remember. People think you are either sincere or pulling their chains. Either way, they remember your effort.

"Terry is the man! He can do overtime like a camel! Nice going on that promotion and the anvil of feather award!" Perfect for a guy who thinks he's important. Keep up the exclamation points and the cheerleader attitude. He'll testi you back with empty praises, that's the only bad side to this. An empty pat on the back deserves another.

"I don't know this guy well..." A lot of bull, you press backspace to erase it. If you don't know the person well, why write a testimonial? You decide to be honest and qualify things: "From the week-long workshop, where I got to know Dexter, he kept biting his nails, kept spitting between long sentences, and stayed too long in the toilet. Nice guy though."

"He jumped back, barely evading the bloodied knife. His opponent pressed on, withdrew the weapon, and lunged at him with a stab aimed at the neck." Hah! Action-packed. Who wouldn't approve of this on his testi page? Even though none of the events happened. You continue with the neat story. "He ducked below the thrust and stabbed upward, piercing the enemy's throat. Someone will choke on his own blood tonight." You decide you should get paid for this. It's publishable escapist testi-writing.

"Superb craftsmanship, astounding character-build up. Gregory packs a wallop on every page." You mimic the back-of-the-book cover write up. It's always funny. People are after all books to be read and reviewed.

pinoy detective fiction

Smaller and Smaller Circles by FH Batacan
Published by the University of the Philippines Press, 2003.

The body count had reached six before the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) sought the services of two Jesuit priests: forensic anthropologist Gus Saenz, to examine the victims' corpses, C.S.I. style; and clinical psychologist Jerome Lucero, to build the killer's profile to hasten the manhunt.

Six teenage boys found dead at the Payatas area had their faces, genitals and internal organs removed. In Saenz's comfy hi-tech lab in Ateneo, the evidence point to the same knife used on the victims, each of whom died on the first Saturday of the month.

The tidy knife job and corpse dumping suggest meticulousness and skill. The consistent date of death, a ritual; something with which to start the month right.

A serial killer is on the prowl, which the NBI can't begin to admit, and can't fathom how to track down.

This is because, Batacan writes, "Little attention is paid to determining patterns: a missing persons' physical type or age, the geographical area in which he or she disappeared or reappeared, the condition in which he or she has been found."

This leads to the prevalent myth that there are no serial killers in the country, even though serial killing, she writes, "is not a solely Western phenomenon...and that the inadequacy and sloppiness of local police methods and intelligence techniques stand in the way of its detection."

In short, no one is watching, except, in this case, two men of the cloth "with no staff, limited resources and often, no official authority, performing the kind of investigative work that very few people in the country--and civilians at that--are capable of doing."

This is an excerpt from my review of Smaller and Smaller Circles. It's an unexpected good-enough read. For a teaser review, click here and here. Try to read the teasers first, because mine gives everything away: judgmental synopsis and all.

The development, or the chase (which is painstakingly slow), is seen through the lives of the characters: the sleuths (two Jesuit priests--recall Umberto Echo's 'In the Name of the Rose'), the victims' mothers, the reporter hot on the serial-murder-scoop and her adopted father/segment producer); the National Bureau of Investigation agent; and of course that of the killer himself (who is from UP Manila--could this be a hint that the freedom to improve is the self-same freedom to degenerate?).

Two things slow down the story's pace. One is the telling of the characters' back stories. Another is the series of lectures on forensic investigation: how date of death is approximated, inferences on weapon type and killer profile based on depth of cuts, manner of mutilation, and so on. Remember, this was written some five years before C.S.I. made it here through cable TV. The book's concept was original at the time; probably why it won the grand prize in the Palanca awards.

Don't expect tense dark alley chases or gun-point drama. The priests are not deputized to make arrests, they carry no guns, and they are relying on their own resources (forensic equipment, air fare, unofficial intelligence sources, etc.--good thing they're Ateneans, they can afford it). One subtle message in the book is that professional forensic-detective work leading to an arrest, in this country, is nearly a miracle. Probably why priests are the detectives--they are morally untainted, at least compared to cops; and they answer to a higher morality, at least as far as their image goes. The ending, where the killer is bullet-holed, and one of the priests offers himself as a killer-negotiator (and nearly gets martyred), is a comforting closure. Justice was not to be served by human courts (a tainted extension of the police), but by heaven. The killer's psyche was too damaged by teenage trauma to do otherwise--his shrewdness evolved out of an inability to cope with the pain. This is his salvation.

The pace of the investigation felt realistic. The book detailed the causes of delay--the NBI investigator wanted to hog media attention; and there was no national database of committed crimes and missing persons, where one could compare and cross-reference cases, and see patterns. This accumulates into: if this is how slow justice comes, we need a miracle; hence the priestly interference. It was as if God was forced to do something.

ahmed

Ah•Med //(pronunced ä-'med, written abbrev. 'Mhedz') noun. 1. A periodioc hermit of a myth whose reclusive moods remain uncatalogued. 2. Name of Arabic origin: 'Ahmed' means 'praise.' Therefore, to mention his name is to praise him. Don't. 3. In Krus na Ligas mythology, the right pinky finger, and therefore keeper of all peripheral powers of the omniboogyman. 4. Ahmed is known for his shiny look long hair, and for his habit of knifing the universe with a crisp, hand-lip coordinated Finger: his right arm would jut out from under, his middle-finger-guided hand in a sharp upward stab; at the same time he'd hiss, "**CK **U!" Goodness is in the man, somewhere.

rhea

Rhea is watching her friends in the water. She's sitting on a papag, a bed assembled from bamboo, like the cottages to her left, where Espy and the others are drinking. Yesterday, when the jeepney they sardined into got near the shoreline, the wind picked up a coolness, a sweet scent that meant they were nearing the edge of the island. That was the point, of course, of coming to this place. To see the beach and then maybe decide to wade in it. But then there was the trek to the campsite that Espy's boondog watched over. It felt like ascending a mountain to Rhea, who had been raised to think that the terrains of Bacolod and Manila defined the world. And then there were the makeshift cooking and eating utensils and lavatories (which was anywhere far from human eyes), and it was an hourly struggle to remain antiseptic. Because the bathroom hadn't been invented yet on a hill that high. And she even managed to sleep in a tent with Espy and Rona. How was that possible? Never mind. Coming down from the hill was a different story, and strained almost a new set of muscles, which Rhea didn't expect. Her only exercise in the office was straining with the mouse and pressing her floor on the elevator panel. Of course, her vocal chords were in order. But you can't ask your voice box or your tongue to go downhill for you. Rhea remembered her cramping legs during her slow walk to the beach, when Ayen said she walked like those cheap wind-up little robots, and she was too tired to hit him with her bag. And now that the hill and campsite and boondog were behind her, she stares at the inviting beach below. But it's nice up here, she thought, with the air blowing not too hard and not too hot. But it would take effort to shower, even though the shower room was only six paces to her right. And after she showers, she'll have to walk all the way down to where Pam and Rona are doing synchronized swimming. There, she'll get wet again. This time by semi-salty water. And then she'll have to wash her hair, again. There was an odd logic to all this. You come up a hill to go down. You shower to get wet so you can get wet afterwards, in the sea. Weird. I think I'll just stay up here, she thought. This is the second time she went to Batangas, the second time she stayed away from the sea. Better that my friends think I just didn't feel like sea-dipping again, she thought. She couldn't risk them finding out that, when sea water touches her, she turns into a crab.