only a dead mole is a good mole

The Presidential Security Guard closest to the woman with a mole ignored the immediate screams and angry flashes of cameras around him. Not one of the three PSG's cordoning the tiny woman was able to break her fall. She had taken six steps after descending the low stairs coming out of the hotel's entrance when a thud was heard. It was not a bullet's sound, but that of her small torso hitting pavement.

The PSG leader's screams as he ran to the immediately thick crowd could be heard crisply over the clicks of cameras and oooohs of reporters who had leaned in and over the body, shielding it like an umbrella, effectively blocking, in the few seconds after the President's head blew up like a watermelon, the PSG's line of vision. No one had managed to approximate where the bullet came from. Orders to secure the area were heard.

The media wasted no time serializing the authorities' efforts to catch a phantom who was not a hero. No one seriously wanted the President dead. No one cared enough to take the needed steps to kill her. But then everyone knew that no one wanted her alive either. It was not relief that people watching the live feed from the Oakwood's front entrance felt. The tiny woman was not a dictator in the terrifying sense that Marcos had been. It was not victory that the Opposition party, who were at the scene, felt when the mob of reporters and bystanders rushed to lean in and crowd around the President's pavement. Because now, the Opposition would need someone else to negotiate with.

It might have been a scene where a pedestrian got run over by a bus on a boring afternoon. Except that this one pedestrian annoyed the nation. Had she been a celebrity, the people may have panicked, yelled for someone to call an ambulance. But no, the crowd continued to stare at the torso without a head. It was a scene no one wanted to ruin by calling for help, or showing signs of wanting to help. She's dead? Hindi nga. Tomorrow is another day.