A/N: Prompt: Cue. Because the sequel to my NaNo refuses to die in my head---and that novel is at 50k words already but still far from the finish. So this is a teaser scene from the middle of the drama.

Washed Up

September 27, 2009

“It’s like hell crawled out from someplace and spilled itself over here.”

At the sound of Miles’ voice coming from behind a tipped over car, Tara Faye merely shuddered and continued picking her way through the muddy wreckage, keeping her grip on an oversized shovel she carried. The spindly girl shivered as a cold early morning breeze ripped through the devastated village. “And it will take some time for more relief to come in. What time did they say they were coming?”

“I don’t know,” Ida said wearily from nearby as she stuck the blade of her spade under a pile of mud. She shoveled the hunk of debris over into a waiting sack. In the bleak dawn light, she could barely distinguish the forms of newly arrived volunteers going over to help out the displaced residents who’d been on their roofs all night, or who had gone to some of the higher locations in the riverside subdivision “What do you guys see there?” she called to her two friends.

She heard Miles curse in a low voice. “Ida, you’d better come over here and see this,” he said.

Ida lugged the dirty spade behind her as she clambered over a dislodged series of blocks to where Tara and Miles stood. Her heart sank at the dismal scene before her. “Oh God, even Raina’s house!”

Tara slid down the muddy bank. “Rai! Where are you?” she called. Only the sound of crickets and the taunting breeze replied.

“Maybe they’re gone to someplace else,” Ida said. She tried to remember who else lived with their former schoolmate. “Just a grandmother now, and of course the child…” It had been months since she and the rest of their posse had the chance to hang out with Raina ever since the latter had been forced to leave university. It would be ironic to meet again under these circumstances.

Miles motioned for the girls to be silent. “There’s something in the house.”

Ida’s heart began beating in her ears as the high pitched wailing grew louder. “It’s Nina!” she shouted. Quickly, the trio ran to the muddied house. Miles looked upwards while the girls peered in through the windows.

“The roof,” Miles said. He quickly swung himself up onto the wet tiles. “She’s the only one here. Where are Rai and Lola Petra?” he asked.

Ida’s mind swirled with all kinds of morbid possibilities. ‘No sign of them. Miles, I’ll take care of Nina…”

Miles picked up the still screaming child and reached down to hand her to Ida. “She’s your godchild,” he said.

Ida managed to grab the six-month old baby and cradle her in her arms. “Shhh, Nina, it’s okay,” she crooned. Mud was still stuck to the infant’s hair and her reddened cheeks. The young woman tried to brush the dirt off the baby’s face before watching as Miles dropped down to where she and Tara were standing.

Tara winced as she peered over at Nina. “We’ll go on ahead. I think she needs milk,” she said.

“There had better be a spoon and clean water in the car,” Ida thought as she nodded. She trudged up the entire way to where the van was parked near the roadside. Once there, Ida fished in her pocket for the car keys and opened the rear passenger door to put Nina on the seat. She went around to the back to get the trunk open. Once there, she managed to find a bottle of water and a plastic spoon. She shook her head on finding the packets of powdered milk. “She’s too young for these,” she thought.

Ida managed to prop Nina up against the seat. She poured some water into a spoon and lifted it to the baby’s lips. With some difficulty, she managed to get Nina to drink down quite a bit of water. “I should add some sugar next time,” she said quietly as Nina gurgled before settling down to fall asleep. Ida sighed before finding a clean blanket in the back of the car and bundling Nina up in it. After a while, she also rolled up her jacket and used it as a makeshift bolster to keep her from rolling off the seat.

“I hope your mom is alive, Nina. Alive and okay,” she whispered. She had a sinking feeling as to what Miles, Tara and the rest might find back down near the river basin. Ida began making lists as to where she would have to send Nina in case the worst was confirmed, but still there was there interim and the present situation to think about. After all, she was the child’s godmother.

Ida crossed herself and shut her eyes. “God let there be a miracle. I don’t know if I can take care of this girl on my own.”

A/N: Prompt: Accidentally Perfect. This story draws from the song “Defying Gravity” from the musical Wicked. Sometimes the most painful thing to do may be the most right thing…

Surefire Scrawling

September 2009

“Why can’t you just act normal?”

It was something we’d hear over and over throughout the years from one mouth to the other. I just never imagined I’d be telling that exact thing to my best friend.

She looked up at me from the writing desk in her apartment. “Define normal. If normal is simply pandering to all those people, then I don’t care so much for it anymore.”

I gritted my teeth as I looked at her. For the first time since we’d met, both of us had a shot at getting someplace, together. We were finishing up our university courses soon, we were leaders in our respective professional organizations, and we were lining up to score decent positions in our respective fields one day. Then that wayward pen of hers just had to ruin everything.

I willed myself to forget everything that had transpired that day: the blazing article in the campus paper denouncing yet another registration scam, the questions all around school, all of the horrified and amazed looks that I’d received when it came out that I knew the brazen authoress. For a moment, I felt rage course through me as I watched her write. Hadn’t I wanted anonymity and happiness too? Why was I to be guilty by association?

“You’re going to throw it all away,” I finally said to her. After all these years: a childhood on the fringe, a tumultuous adolescence, and finally a most eventful university life---and she was going to throw herself into the fire again. Was this woman ever going to know anything of peace?

I heard the soft scraping of her chair, and her clear footsteps coming towards me. “Please understand, Mark,” she said as she grabbed my arm gently. “I didn’t quite see this coming either. I’m just doing what I have to do.”

What in the world did she mean? “You mean this was all accidental?” I found myself asking her in pure disbelief.

She smiled wryly. “No one signs up to be a hero. It just sort of happens.”

“And then?”

“We have to be where we are supposed to be.”

I pried her hand off my arm, but I held her shoulders firmly. “Ida, do you even know what you are doing?”

“Thinking for once!” she replied proudly.

“Didn’t you do that before?” I demanded. In the past, she had been just so content to simply volunteer in our youth center, help out people, maybe work to become a doctor. Not that there was anything wrong with all of this per se, but I had hoped that this would be the limit of the things we would have to do as a team.

She smiled at me bitterly. “You don’t have to follow me on this adventure, though I wish you could.”

“And what can I possibly do?”

“With my pen, with the way you think, the way you see and the way I hear---there’s no telling!” Her eyes were bright now, and her smile was growing wider. “You know your way about, and I’m lame,” she added, indicating the elastic bandage around her knee.

I could only bite my lip as I regarded her. She was going to be an exemplar, standing atop barricades and heading marches, even if on paper. I was going to have to ruin it a little.

“No, Isadora. Not this time.”

Prompt: Key. Literature is a dangerous thing. This is dedicated to my high school lit teacher.

Fire in the Bones

            “Who the hell would want to read a novel about a French ex-convict?”

            It had been one of many things that she would wish she had never spoken. From the first day she’d forced herself to open the novel bound in green, she’d been drawn in. Within a day, she had reached the last page. As she sat in her usual seat on the school bus en route home, she felt something like a ray of light probing in her seventeen-year old mind.

            “What is happening to me?” she wondered some days later as she found herself in the library, poking around in the dusty shelves for the gray-wrapped progenitor of that green volume. She at last lifted out the unabridged tome from its repository, and checked it out. Never mind if her bag seemed to now harbor a huge heavy brick.

            Within four days, she had finished the book. By this time, a flame had started from someplace within her brain, and had now spread down to her breast, her limbs, even to the very tips of her fingers and toes. It was as if a clear light had come into her eyes, which now missed nothing. So it came to pass that one afternoon, after hearing of a certain travesty on campus, she sat down in front of a computer and began to type.

            Two days later, several envelopes were delivered rather haphazardly to certain administration offices. Some stir was caused by this, for no student before had the audacity to openly point out the mistakes of the regime when it came to driving home to the students the plight of the poor around them.

            Of course, it couldn’t have been the novel that had started it. After all, the school had approved the reading and teaching of the text.  

A/N: Prompt: China. Two letters. Could be read independent of a series.

Getting Cold Feet

 April 24, 2012

            Mark,

            You have asked for the exact circumstances that finally drove me back to Manila after one year of “hiding” in Barcelona. I have wondered at times how I was going to tell you the truth without leaving myself so vulnerable to your reaction. Now that I am more certain that I can confide in you again, here is the story.

            I actually turned down my first marriage proposal last December. Before you make conjectures, the truth is I couldn’t think of a reason not to marry Howard: he was suave, passionate, gentle, and romantic---everything you are not. I liked him well enough, actually. It was the memory though of something that had happened back in college that reminded me that I was not quite ready to marry.

            It was one of those days when the best thing to eat on campus were steamed dumplings with fried Cantonese rice. I was eating with my right hand and typing with my left when you showed up at the hangout. You had with you a huge binder covered with photos and colored paper, as well as some pieces of plastic sheeting. I knew what it was: the new folder for archiving the documents of your organization.

            I’ll never forget the conversation. You nudged me with your elbow and I looked at you. You asked, “Ida, could you cover this folder for me?”

            I shook my head. “I’m eating.”

            “Even if you do it after you eat. I brought scissors and tape,” you said a little more desperately.

            I remember I looked you in the face. “It’s not that I don’t want to, Mark. I can’t. I don’t even cover my own books properly.” I had to be honest with you. I didn’t want you to get embarrassed in front of your subordinates because you gave them a folder that was hardly decent to look at.

            You nearly burst out laughing. “I thought that all girls know how to do that.”

            “What the hell gave you that idea?” I asked you. I was starting to feel so embarrassed for myself and the fried rice was starting to taste bitter. By the way, you might want to note that I have never ordered that meal again without even remembering what happened.

            You shrugged. “How will you cover your kids’ textbooks one day? That’s what moms do, right?”

            I got your point. My mom also did that for me when I was younger. I suppose I could have told you that your quip was sexist and gender stereo-typed, but I was feeling too disappointed. It wasn’t the first time that someone had pointed out my lack of domestic skills to my face, but the thing was that it was you. I felt as if I’d let you down, or let something more intangible down. It was at that moment that I realized that even at that point in our lives, you were pretty much imagining yourself as a career man and a father. I couldn’t see myself as the counterpart to that yet. This difference impressed me yet also scared me at the same time. We were only twenty then, for heaven’s sake.

            Which was what I realized too when I was in Barcelona with Howard. I won’t list the details here, only that he asked and I refused. I still had the same fears. I was still hoping to explore the world then see how I fit back in Manila, or maybe even take another degree. I couldn’t quite imagine myself living in Spain with him, or covering his children’s schoolbooks, or sharing whatever aspects of domestic life. I tried to convince him of this, but he was so persistent. Right away, I finished whatever business I had in that city so I could prepare to return home.

            That is pretty much the story I have to tell. Perhaps you will not understand, but that is the truth. I ask you not to read anything more between these lines.

As always,

Ida

**

April 25, 2012

            Firstly, happy birthday Ida. I can’t believe you’re twenty-three already.

            The right thing would be for me to go over to where you are seated in order to tell you all of this. I think that it would be better for you to read this and reflect.

            Some months ago, I was with my former thesis-mates getting a wedding present for a former classmate of ours. We were in one of those household goods stores when I came across a fine china dining set. If I recall, it was all white with some simple red geometrical detail round the sides. Now that I think about it, it was something you would like.

My friends and I debated about getting the dishes till one of them said that maybe I should just get the set at some other occasion, maybe when it was my own turn to get married.

Oddly enough, you came to mind even if you were all the way in Barcelona then.

Please feel free to come up with any theory, however wild.

Your friend,

Mark

A/N: Prompt: Hands. A much later story that came to me during class. Slightly inspired off a chapter in The Joy Luck Club

The Biology of Denial

April 2013

            Contrary to what everyone thought, Ida was not daft about what was happening. “I just don’t want to believe that this is for real,” she thought as she poured out her coffee into the sink for the fifth day running. She frowned with distaste as she watched the brown liquid swirl down into the drainage. After ten years or so of drinking that stuff almost daily, it was only now she’d developed an aversion to it. “Already a sign that’s something’s different with me,” she realized quietly.

            “Seriously Ida, you can’t just pretend that nothing’s changed,” Mark pointed out as he carried the breakfast dishes to the sink. “It’s not as if it’s a bad thing, right?”

             “Damn his being able to read facial expressions,” she thought as she gave him a withering look. “You’ve been at this for more than a week. I’m going to make you sleep on the sofa if you keep it up,” she threatened. After all, it would partly be his fault if she couldn’t see her feet in several months.

            “Save a blanket for me then,” Mark retorted. “And don’t insist that you know better just because you’re an ex pre-med student.”

             “It’s not necessarily what you think. It could be anything,” Ida said as she crossed her arms over her middle. “Stress from my post-grad. A bug?”

            “Yeah sure, I’ve seen you stressed for the past six years. And last time I checked, the flu and your grades didn’t make you run to the bathroom all the time, swear off coffee, start craving cheese, or throw up your breakfast every single day,” Mark said casually. “And don’t tell me you’ve been watching the calendar for nothing.”

            “I’m just a little late this month.”

            “Sure you are.”

            “It’s just more than a week late…well way more than one week,” the young woman thought as she began washing the dishes. She liked the feel of the cool lather of the detergent sliding from the plates to her hands. She listened for the tell-tale sound of Mark’s footsteps heading towards the bedroom, where he would be gathering up all the clothes that they had to get washed. Only then did she allow herself to sigh.

“I can’t believe I’d come to dread Saturdays,” she told herself as she put the wet dishes and cutlery on a rack to dry. Without work to really distract either of them, she was probably not going to hear the end of the matter for the rest of the day. This, added to the prospect of meeting up with college friends for dinner, made Ida’s gut twist again. After a few moments, she turned off the water in the sink and dashed off to the bathroom, which was all the way on the other side of the apartment.

            After she was through rinsing her mouth, she stalked into the bedroom. Mark was still there, sorting out all of the laundry into plastic bags before carrying them to the only washing machine in the apartment complex. He looked up quickly and shook his head. “Not feeling good?” he inquired sympathetically.

            She glared at him. “I don’t need you patronizing me, Mark,” she hissed. She knew it was mean of her, but she was just past the point of caring.

“I found a test in the trash can. Positive?” Mark said more pointedly.

Ida’s eyes widened with shock and embarrassment. “I was hoping to prove you wrong,” she said.

“The irony of it,” Mark said sardonically. “You could have at least told me.”

“Yeah, when you were the one acting like a know-it-all!”

“And I could have been wrong.”

“You sure weren’t acting it! Do you have any idea how scary this is for me? No, you wouldn’t!” Ida shouted. She could feel the tears prickling in her eyes at that moment as she began pacing the room.

“And you don’t think I’m scared?” Mark retorted. “About what could happen to you, or how everything will change for both of us? Stop being so selfish.”

The words cut more sharply than either of them realized. For a long time, neither of them spoke or dared to meet the other’s eyes. Finally, Ida ran her hands through her hair and smoothed out her t-shirt and jogging pants. “I’ll go out for a bit,” she said curtly.  If only to keep from throwing something hard at him.

            “Do what you like, just be careful,” Mark said dismissively as he turned to continue sorting the clothes.

            “Yeah, sure, whatever” Ida seethed as she turned to leave, making sure to slam the door behind her.

**

            Other people disliked the heat of Metro Manila in the summer. To Ida though, it was always invigorating to be standing outside in the morning sun, letting the warmth soak into her skin. As she pushed open the door that led to the apartment complex’s rooftop garden, she couldn’t help but smile on seeing the view of the city sprawled out in front of her just past the building’s edge. The part of town where she and Mark lived was in a newer suburb, grassland that had rapidly been replaced with skyscrapers, parks, mall complexes, and the rest of the urban gamut.

            “Why the heck is he so insistent?” she wondered as she sat down at her favorite spot, which was a bench set up amid some sampaguita bushes with their white flowers. Although the more rational part of her mind already understood Mark’s own anxieties about family matters and perhaps even his concern for her health, there was still a part of her that was angry at what he said. “He’s calling me selfish when I’m going to have to give up so much that he’ll get to keep!” she thought furiously. Getting out of this situation was not going to be a morally feasible option. She would have no choice but to see things through their full course.

“I knew I would have to at some point, but not now,” she rationalized. She and Mark had only been married for a few months. She was turning twenty-four in a few weeks, while he would have his birthday much later in the year. He was still establishing himself as an engineer, while she was still trying to earn enough credits to qualify for a psychologist’s license. While she didn’t mind the idea of ever having a family with her best friend---as if she could imagine having anyone else’s, it was the timing she did not relish. “God, why now?”

She sighed as she leaned back on the bench, thinking of the papers she had to write for her classes and of the report she had to type up for her job as a clinician’s assistant. “I understand the challenges of those things. But to be responsible for a life?” she wondered. She felt herself shudder as she held out her hands in front of her. Right now they were still stained with ballpen ink, but in time she knew that other kinds of stains would be on her skin, and maybe even on her clothes as well. And there was the matter of Mark as well. “He’s used to toying with circuits, making plans, playing the guitar and driving me to distraction,” she mused. Would the calluses on his hands ever soften enough so he would not accidentally chafe a baby’s skin?

A cloud passed over the sun, and for a moment the world darkened a little. Ida squinted and caught a flash of color at the edge of her vision. She turned and saw, on top of one of the neighboring buildings, a crew smoothing out a huge tarpaulin on a billboard’s steel frame. Ida’s jaw dropped as she took in the images on the billboard. “It’s not the words, you’ve heard them before…” she thought. It was those hands, so graphically depicted amid a dark backdrop; little fingers with no sign yet of nails, tiny palms with no lines as of yet.

The young woman took a deep breath to steady herself. “There’s really no other way to face this, is there?” she whispered wryly. Besides it was not as if she was completely out of time to prepare and maybe even psych herself up a bit. After a few minutes, she finally got up and headed back downstairs.

A/N: Mini-contest time! Prompts: turncoat, schoolhouse, conflict. Another tale from the southern town of San Mariano. I weave Mark Lorenz’s life into history. I know this was supposed to be a mystery, but the muse…insisted otherwise. Dedicated to all my fellow students who are desperately trying to get people to register to vote.

Breaking Away

Part 1: Delay

Dominic Savio School For Boys

San Mariano, January 18, 2001

            “You said I could come too!”

            “Go home, Mark. A protest march is no place for a kid like you.”

            The scrawny eleven year old clenched his fists and tried to get out of the grip of the burly discipline prefect who was holding him back. His eyes blazed as he looked up at his classmate Frederick. “You’re not much older than I am!” he shouted, kicking up the dust in the parking lot as he wrestled himself out of the prefect’s grip.

“Well sucks to you! What are you thinking, you want to run away from your parents already?” Frederick taunted. The bigger boy laughed as Mark unsuccessfully tried to punch him in the face. “They’d disown you for going.”

“You asshole!”

“You behave yourself, Lorenz! Or it’s the principal’s office for you!” the prefect barked as he grabbed Mark by his shoulders.

“Sir, I’ll take care of him,” said a calm voice. Through a veil of tears, Mark could see the face of his cousin Nicolai Figueroa. The prefect muttered something before letting go of the child.

Mark dusted himself off before glaring at his cousin. “I’m big enough. I won’t get lost in the crowd,” he said impetuously, glancing towards the marchers who were preparing banners and placards.

            Nicolai sighed and bit his lip. “Something could happen out there. There’s no telling what can happen over at EDSA.”

            “But you’re going too!” Mark retorted. “Why does he get to march too, and I don’t at a time like this?” The shocking news footage of the night before flashed in his mind again—the aborted trial, the smugness of one group of officials against the dismay of the rest, the outrage of the viewers, and eventually the convergence at another historical street.

“EDSA is really far away. It’s like two hours from here, even by car,” Nicolai reasoned. “Your parents would kill me if I brought you there.”

“I don’t care! I can do it!” Mark insisted. The idea of being stuck all day in Dominic Savio was starting to become more real and bitterer by the moment. “I’m not going to forgive Fred for this!” he thought as he watched his classmate laughing and talking to some older students. “Besides, Fred said he wouldn’t say anything to the prefects if I went.”

“You’ll get your day, Mark,” Nicolai reasoned.

            “But if everything goes well, I won’t,” the younger boy thought as he pushed Nicolai away and ran back into the schoolhouse.

**

            The library was the last place Mark knew his friends expected to find him. The boy found a corner in between the History and Religion sections and then pulled out the first big tome that was large enough to hide his face.

            “There are always chances to write history, Mark Lorenz,” a gruff voice said kindly.

            “Ugh, I can’t tell Father Edwin to go away,” the boy thought. He could not bring himself to look at the priest. “But now is the time I can do something!” he managed to say.  “How can I stay at home and do nothing to help the country?”

            “Fighting to get a president changed isn’t going to work,” the old priest said as he pulled up a chair. “At least not in the long term.”

            Mark swallowed hard. “But it’s what needs to be done, right? And we can’t just do nothing!”

            “Mark, Mark, you’re young and restless. You will find some other way to help your country when the time comes,” the priest said gently. He wiped his spectacles before glancing back at the boy. “Did you tell your parents you wanted to march?”

            The student shook his head despondently. “I told them I had to do a project today,” he said quietly. He cringed, knowing that he had lied. Classes had been called off because of the night’s events, occurrences which his parents hadn’t reacted too well to. “One way I am already different from them,” he realized. “They’ll never get it.”

            “They love you.”

            “I wish they’d understand.” He couldn’t quite explain to his parents what drove him to such restlessness. It was more than just the history books or what he learned from following the news. “What if it’s in my blood?” he wondered. It was one thing he couldn’t share with them or even with Nicolai, as much as he hated to admit.

            “Who we are, where we are---sometimes it isn’t what we want, but God has other ideas,” Father Edwin said. “Maybe one day you’ll do something greater than just marching at EDSA,” he said.

            Mark sniffled. “Nicolai seems to think so.” However the thought of waiting to grow up, come of age, and then wait for another upheaval was sheer agony to him.

            As if his thoughts had summoned his adoptive cousin, Nicolai came running into the library. “There you are, Mark! Good afternoon Father Edwin,” Nicolai greeted quickly.

            “You’d better take care of your cousin,” the priest admonished. “Maybe if his parents will let him, he can come here tomorrow and be of help making banners and preparing provisions. That way he’ll still be doing something worthwhile in this situation.”

            “I’m not sure, Father,” Nicolai said embarrassedly. “You know of my uncle and my aunt’s opinions about politics.”

            The priest nodded through gritted teeth. “Then you’d better bring him home.”

            Mark hung his head. However the sound of someone pulling a book out made him look up sharply. “What’s that, Father?” he asked, pointing to the heavy tome that the priest was holding.

            “Something you might like to read during this vacation,” Father Edwin replied more cheerily. “It might cool your heels a bit.”

            “Its size might,” Mark noted as he weighed the slightly worn copy of Les Miserables in his hands.

**

Part 2: Fruition

Eusebio Public High School

Manila, October 30, 2009

            “I can’t believe we got stuck here.”

            It was all that Mark could do to keep a patient smile on his face despite all of Joshua’s carping nearby. “Rather than have the girls lose their place in the line,” he pointed out, gesturing to the rest of the queue. “Besides, you’re also registering yourself.”

            Joshua huffed before rolling up his voters’ application form. “They’ll take forever in there. By the time they come out, it’ll be my turn to get my picture taken,” he said. He glanced around the dingy corridor that was crammed with people filling out forms, chatting among themselves, or searching for a photocopier. “Bet it isn’t this crazy where you registered to vote.”

            “It took me less than an hour. I live in a slightly smaller town,” Mark replied. Unlike Joshua and his other friends, Mark had already registered, not in the capital, but in his own hometown. He had only accompanied Joshua and his posse to the satellite registration center just to help them get through the process. “Consider it a small sacrifice for a better good.”

            “What’s that book you’ve got?” Joshua asked, gesturing towards the volume that Mark was idly bouncing in his hands.

            “Les Miserables,” Mark replied. He had never gotten through more than half of the hardbound volume that Father Edwin had lent him. However, he had managed to borrow a paperback version from a college friend of his. “It’s as if the book is coming back to haunt me,” he noted wryly as he thumbed the bookmark he had hastily inserted between the dog-eared pages.

            The circumstances for such a thing were all too-timely though. “And still, Mom and Dad would think me nuts for what I’m doing,” he reflected. While much to his parents’ relief, he hadn’t taken up marching and banner-waving, he had still managed to embark on an equally dangerous venture: volunteering at the youth center at the notorious Sitio Crisolita, where Joshua and his friends lived. Somehow the entire thing seemed to be just as mad and beautiful as the idea of making a barricade.

            Before he could ruminate for long, he caught sight of a bulky figure entering the corridor. “Well I’ll be darned! Mark?!” a booming voice greeted.

            Mark nodded cordially. “Hello Fred. What are you doing here?” He had long ceased to feel bitterness whenever his former classmate was mentioned.

            “I had to talk to an administrator for work,” Frederick replied, disdain coloring his already imperious tone slightly. He waved his hand as if trying to fan away some stink in the air. “And what about you?”

            Mark gestured to Joshua. “This is my schoolmate Josh. I’m helping him and his friends register for the elections.”

            “Ah,” Frederick said. “I thought for a minute that you finally set yourself down in a place more suited for you.”

            Mark bit his lip to keep from answering Frederick’s jibe. “He’s just trying to jerk your chain,” he told himself. Besides, what did it matter now? Not everyone in his new situation at Saint John the Baptist University was really aware of the facts of Mark’s life.

            “So you’re one of those nuts getting people to register,” Frederick added. “So you think it’s going to change anything?”

            “Yeah of course it will!” Joshua chimed in before Mark signed for him to keep quiet.

            “Maybe not now, but in time,” Mark said. “It’s a chance for people to act like proper citizens of this country.”

            “A country where the wrong person will get elected,” Frederick said. “If it’s an idol they want in the Palace again, then they will have it. They deserve it as much.”

            “And one need not be a psych major to understand what he means by ‘they’,” Mark realized. He could see Joshua reddening with fury. “By getting more informed people to cast their votes, maybe we could increase the chances of getting the right person elected,” Mark pointed out firmly.

            “Will it make a difference?”

            “I’d like to think it will.”

            Frederick looked at Mark quizzically. “Well some things never change, do they?” he said a little bemusedly. “Still trying to deal with the same old nasties trying to get in the palace, and you still being bullheaded about it.”

            “No, they just come full circle,” Mark said. And maybe waiting at the registration line wasn’t exactly marching, he realized, but perhaps something even more precarious.

"Bastard!"  Mark would have shouted but he bit his tongue. "You have gone too far," he said coldly. Before he could take two steps away, something slammed into his back, sending him crashing against a chair. He wheeled around just in time to dodge a fist aimed for his face. He managed to land a punch on Juancho's nose before someone grabbed him from behind and Juancho struck him in the stomach. Mark doubled over and fell to the floor as the others started kicking him.

"Two strikes already, Mark Lorenz. Don't make me finish you off next time," Jauncho taunted as he poured the contents of Mark's plate all over the young man who was gasping for breath on the floor.

"Juancho!" a clear voice shouted from the entrance of the eatery. Mark got a glimpse of two feet in tattered sneakers in front of him before his world went black in a confusion of angry voices.

**
"Come on, you gotta wake up! You can't just go down like that!"

When Mark opened his eyes, he was lying on his back, looking into the faces of his two best friends. Something cold and wet was on his head. "Did that just happen?" he asked as he tried to sit up. His entire body felt extremely sore and he was pretty sure he had some cuts and scrapes someplace.

Tato winced as he helped Mark move so that he was seated against the table leg. "You look even worse than the first time you stood up against that guy," he said.

"I had to," Mark said, glancing momentarily to his other best friend, who hadn't spoken yet. "How can she take all of those insults is beyond me,"  he wondered. "The things he said were just wrong."

"Not everyone is a gentleman," Tato pointed out. "We have to get you to a doctor."

"How did you know I was here?" he asked.

"We know you," Ida suddenly said. She smiled though her eyes were serious. "We figured you couldn't pass up the chance for an early dinner."

"Was it you who yelled at Juancho?" 

"Yes. Consider it a debt repaid." 

"You were never in my debt," Mark insisted. "I was just doing what was right by you," he wanted to say but he checked himself.

"It's okay Mark, I can deal," Ida said softly. She sighed as she looked him over. "I told the investigators everything. He can't harm me now. And if he knows what's good for you, he won't harm you too. You can't keep risking your neck to protect me."

Mark nodded painfully. "If you two had been here, you would have reacted worse."

"Never mind that. It is done anyway," Ida said firmly, finally closing the matter.

A/N: Prompt: Navel. A look into the past again. BTW, the social situation I describe here is not far from the realities. Though my characters are looking back on the end of the 80s, mores and acceptability in urban Filipino society were different then and now.

Given a Chance

Our Lady of Angels Refuge,

San Mariano, April 2009

            “I may as well get it done while I’m here,” Mark thought as he killed the engine of his car. Sure, it had been a long day for him. After visiting an injured friend, he’d kept his basketball appointment with his friends. Now it was later in the afternoon, and there was just one last thing to accomplish.

            His hand shook slightly as he knocked on the refuge door. “Who is there?” a lilting voice asked.

            “Mark Lorenz. I’m here to see Sister Fatima,” the young man replied.

            Footsteps hurried away from the door, then moments later, two sets of feet could be heard going towards the entrance. The door creaked open, nearly hitting Mark’s foot as it swung outward. “Ah so it’s you. You only got to San Mariano now?” Sister Fatima asked. She was a slightly bent woman of about seventy, with bright eyes that seemed to blaze from under the hair that escaped her purple wimple.

            “I’ve been here since this afternoon, but I had things to attend to,” Mark replied. “My parents told me to see you if I had any questions.”

            “Ah yes,” Sister Fatima said, stepping aside to admit the young man into the small foyer behind the door. Mark found a seat near a side table while Sister Fatima began rummaging through a cabinet. “Hard to believe I lived in such a place once,” he thought. He could tell that the foyer’s white walls had been repainted several times over, and that the crucifix hanging on a wall was relatively new.

            “Here it is. Your parents wanted me to give it to them, but well, she said you would come looking for the letter when you were old enough,” Sister Fatima said as she placed a folded, sealed paper on the table. “I think you’ll want to read it in your own time.”

            “Thank you Sister,” Mark said as he picked up the letter and put it in his jacket pocket. It was an unusually cold April, and he could feel the chill even through his sleeves. “May I ask what her name was?”

            “Marielle Benitez. She was such a pretty girl. And you have her eyes,” Sister Fatima said a little wistfully as she took a seat atop a cushioned bench. “How old are you now, Mark?”

            “I’m turning twenty this October.”

            “Well, she was younger than you when she came here,” Sister Fatima said. “Oh my poor boy, she loved you very much. That’s why she gave you up.”

            “But still the same…” Mark thought. It wasn’t that he had cause to complain; the people he called “Mom” and “Dad” were both very good to him. What he couldn’t understand though was how such bonds could be severed. “Couldn’t she have tried harder to keep me?” he wondered.

            “She was nineteen when she came here. Her parents had sent her away when they found out. And well, she had no help in the world,” Sister Fatima began, her voice now sounding far off. “No way to take care of you once you were born.”

            “And where was my father?” Mark asked, his voice coming out more bitterly than he’d expected. Though it had been years since his adoptive family had revealed his origins to him, the wound still felt a little raw at times.

            “Living his own life,” Sister Fatima replied wryly. “Don’t be too angry. He was just about your age, and well, I suppose he wasn’t ready. It’s better this way, really.”

            “Well, the people I call my parents are kind to me. They love me more than I deserve to be. But one look at my cousins, and you’d know…” Mark said quietly. He barely knew this nun, but he felt that at least confessing to a near stranger would have its benefits. “You’d know where I came from.” Years of questions and not a few taunts somehow threatened to unravel themselves in his suddenly aching mind. “But no, I can’t just cry about it now…” he told himself.

            “The day you were born, I remember she was holding you. Looking at where they’d cut you from her, that umbilical cord,” Sister Fatima said. “And I remember what she said, “He’s never going to forget, and nor will I.” We all bear some connection to our mothers, no matter what.”

            The young man swallowed hard. “Did she really?”

            Sister Fatima nodded. “When we discussed all the options available to her, she figured that this would be the best for you. She wanted you to have a chance. To have both parents, a normal life, and everything you deserved. You must understand. It was 1989. And the world was less kind then.”

            Mark let out a deep shuddering breath. His memories of those days were little more than wisps. But yes, the nun was right. There had been a time when even schools would have refused a child in his situation. A young woman in his mother’s plight would have had to face a lot worse than just scorn. “Who named me?” he asked.

            “She did. I’m really not sure why she named you for the evangelist, but well, I’m sure about your second name,” Sister Fatima replied more brightly. “Named for here, and what you are to her.”

A/N: Prompt: Instep.

Visitation

April 2009

            It was not the first time that Ida had been stuck in bed because of her knees, but this particular occasion had to be the most maddening yet. “Why on a perfectly nice summer day?” she muttered through gritted teeth as she pushed herself up slightly on her elbows to get a better look at the lush scenery outside the window. At least she was at home in San Mariano, and not stuck in Manila. “Still, I have to get better if I want to go back to the city for summer class…” she told herself as the grinding pain in her right knee started up anew, forcing her back down in a lying position.

            The thought of spending the rest of the week recuperating from her knee dislocation brought fresh tears to her eyes. “I was supposed to go to the beach, visit everyone and have lots of fun!” she sighed bitterly. Of course that would have been possible before this morning and that tumble from the stairs. Before Ida could mull any further on her ill fortune and the genetics that had given her such fragile knee joints, a knock sounded on her door.

            “Ida? You’ve got a visitor. Keep the door open though,” her mother called.

            “Keep the door open? What?” the girl wondered as she tried to ease the twinge in her leg. “Who is it?”

            “It’s your friend Mark.”

            Ida rolled her eyes even as she tried to run her fingers through her hair to make herself more presentable. “Send him in. He won’t be long anyway,” she drawled. It was too late to turn him out of the house, and besides she did welcome the distraction.

            A few moments later, Mark pushed the door open. “Hey Ida, what happened to playing basketball with the guys?” he quipped.

            “The obvious?” she retorted. She would have lobbed a pillow at him if only she could have gotten one out from under her injured knee.

            “Sorry about that,” Mark said affably as he sat on the edge of the bed. “I heard from your mom that you fell down the stairs again.”

            She nodded as she felt her cheeks grow hot at the memory of the one time she had slipped while hurrying to get to a class. It had been Mark who had found her at the bottom of the stairway, half-dazed from pain and embarrassment. “Yeah but this time the damage is a lot worse. I’ll be bandaging my leg up for a month instead of just a week,” she said in a more cavalier tone. “Nothing I haven’t done before.”

            Mark winced at this. “Isn’t that uncomfortable?” he asked, pointing to the pile of pillows that propped up Ida’s swollen knee.

            “Kind of,” Ida admitted.

            “Alright,” he said as he gently took hold of her instep and lifted her foot slightly to adjust the pillows under her right leg. Ida felt her face grow warm again at the sudden contact, and she suddenly found herself unable to look him in the eye for fear of betraying herself. “Why am I allowing him to do this to me?” she wondered as she gripped the sheet. The sheer intimacy of his touch was frightening as well as comforting, even if for the mere fact that he seemed to know her so well.

            “Ida?” he asked her. “Is that better?”

            “Yes,” she replied distractedly. “Thank you,” she added, feigning a glance out the window when in reality she was discreetly surveying his face. His look, she decided, was someplace between concern and teasing, as it always was whenever he came across her in dire circumstances. “But nothing harmful,” she reassured herself.

            “I’d better go before I’m late for the game,” Mark said after a few moments. “I’ll text you if I’m coming tomorrow.”

            “You’d better!” Ida exclaimed. “You caught me at my least presentable!”

            Mark merely chuckled at this. “I’m used to seeing you looking a mess anyway, Ida. You’d better rest.”

            “Yeah. See you soon,” she said. Once he’d shut the door behind him, she finally allowed herself to smile more widely. “Still, he’s such a sweet guy when he wants to be…” she thought, not realizing that once again her cheeks had gone red.

A/N: Mini-contest idea. The base is a little obvious from the title. “Tia” is a Filipino term for aunt.

The Hundred Hour Nap

September 30, 2009

1:30pm

            The door to Room 430 swung open painfully, as it had for the ninth time that day. “She hasn’t woken up yet, has she?” Myrna asked the white-faced boy seated next to the hospital bed.

            Freddie shook his head. “I’m scared Mommy. Why won’t she wake up?”

            Myrna sighed as she set down her muddied bag as well as her beige shawl. “I’m not sure,” she replied hollowly, glancing briefly at the pallid figure lying in bed. “Nothing yet from Luis?” she asked tersely.

            Freddie looked down at his skinny feet then back at his cousin’s bed. “What if he doesn’t come back?”

            “He has to!” the heavyset woman said indignantly as she went to the window. She looked out over the vast cityscape, which was now gleaming in the sun as if mocking the disaster of four days before. “He could be anywhere,” she whispered. It had been four days since that bamboo pole had slammed into Elaine’s head. And it had been just a little longer since Luis had left.

**

September 26, 2009

10:01 am

            The first thing that she had felt was an odd lack of coldness. Though she was still spiraling and flailing about in the rushing murk, she wasn’t feeling the least bit chilled. In fact, movement had suddenly come much more easily.

            Elaine lost no time in foisting herself up out of the current and onto a jutting piece of masonry that had been at the side of her aunt’s house. “Tia Myrna! Freddie!” she screamed into the howling storm. Neither of her relatives was in sight, not even any trace of their clothing or the things they’d been clutching in their flight.

           “Don’t let little Freddie get swept too far!” Elaine thought as she looked around. Her toe slipped into the brown mire, but miraculously rested on top of the water’s surface. Alarmed, she stretched her entire foot towards the water. Her foot did not sink at all.

            Just then she heard a woman’s voice screech in the distance. “Elaine! Wake up! Oh God…Freddie, get help! Elaine!”

            “I’m not dead!” Elaine shouted back. “Because if I’m dead, where’s that light at the end of the tunnel---“ she wondered. She had studied, or to be exact, read a little about that sort of thing when her religion teachers weren’t looking.

            She walked over the water, hoping desperately that her feet would sink at some time, or that the water would really drench her arms, her face, or just any part of her body. She didn’t even feel her shirt or her pants sticking to her anymore as they should have, or her waist-long hair whipping against her back. After a few minutes, she came across a whole huddle of people apparently washed up from the now abating current.

            “We’d better go now and get your niece to a hospital. She may have some brain damage,” a kindly lady told a weeping figure in the group.

            The disheveled, mud-caked woman being spoken to nodded dumbly. “Luis---where is he?”

            “He hasn’t been back since last night. Maybe…” a boy replied.

            Elaine groaned in dismay. “Why must we worry about my aunt’s ward?” she muttered. She could still remember all too clearly the day she’d first laid her eyes on him, the day he had come to the small town of San Mateo after his parents’ deaths. Like him, she had been a very young orphan too. Contrary to what the adults ordered to “get along”, their first week under the same roof had culminated in several bruises, bite marks and screaming matches.

            It had been more than ten years since that time. While she couldn’t say she felt completely amiable towards him, she did know that Luis was part of the background of her life. And if something happened to tear him from there, the loss would be obvious.

            “Well he’s alive someplace,” she thought, glancing back towards the group. She longed to give her aunt a comforting hug, or to ruffle her cousin’s hair, but she knew somehow that her hands would no longer be felt. “But that doesn’t stop me from finding him, for their sake,” she resolved as she set her feet one in front of the other, eventually heading away from where Myrna and Freddie were trying to carry the limp form of a girl with hair that fell like a muddy curtain over her face.

September 27, 2009

2:15 am

            The real problem had been trying to figure out where to look first. After all, living under the same roof with Luis did not automatically ensure complete familiarity with his habits and preferences. So Elaine had returned to the house first.

            The flood had carried away nearly everything in the house. Luckily Luis had left his ratty schoolbag hanging on a hook, and this had miraculously survived being buffeted by the merciless current.

            She had searched through the bag, only to come up mostly with sodden text books and notes. “Okay, he took his ID and wallet, now what?” she had wondered aloud.

            A black leather-covered book floated right by her elbows. Elaine had grabbed it quickly and pored over it eagerly. Through the various ink blots, she could just detect a flowing tell-tale script.

             Now it was that singular blurred line of text that had Elaine standing where she was, in the middle of a place she was pretty sure her aunt would disapprove of. “Damn you Luis,” she thought as she stepped aside to avoid a scantily clad woman serving drinks. Of course she knew that in her “condition”, she wasn’t exactly capable of doing anything to physically affect her surroundings. At least it had allowed her to literally walk all the way from San Mateo into the metropolis, and into one of its infamous nightspots near the old downtown district.

            The girl glanced enviously at the glasses of liquor on the bar before looking around the mostly empty room. “In the past I’d have to be drunk before agreeing to this thing,” she scowled before a burst of laughter filled the air.

She felt something in her twist at the sight of a couple passionately kissing in the corner amid the hoots and laughter of their friends. “I wouldn’t do that. A kiss is an exchange of the breath,” she told herself as she continued to survey the premises. At last she came across a knot of young men raucously talking near the front of the room.

            “Luis? He’s not coming at all, like I said,” an inebriated student, still wearing the tell-tale polo and dark pants of his university, said as he raised his glass. “He’s stuck.”

            “Where?” slurred his equally red-faced companion.

            “Up in Ray’s house.”

            “Isn’t it flooding there?”

            “Yep, exactly that’s why. That’s northern Quezon City for you.”

            At the sound of this, Elaine wanted to hit her head against a post once again. “I’ve been looking in the wrong place!” she hissed. It made much more sense for her wayward housemate to wait out the storm in a newer part of the metropolis, which also happened to be closer to home.

            As she stepped out into the street, she could see a drizzle making ripples in the puddles that formed in various potholes. “God must have a seriously strange plan in all of this.” She didn’t even have to factor in the disaster to realize this. Just being knocked out and disembodied was enough. Worst of all, she had a feeling as to the reason that necessitated her current state of limbo.

September 27, 2009

11:00 am

            She had to admit that there was something charming about Luis while he was sleeping. Maybe it was because she was all too knowledgeable about the crazy schemes that reflected in Luis’ eyes whenever he was awake and looking at her. Now he just seemed to be an innocent young man, almost deserving of his surname Angeles.

            Carefully, Elaine stole up to the pallet where Luis was lying, tossing and turning in his sleep. She was now aware of a stinging pain in her hand, as if someone had stuck a needle into it. “What are they doing to me elsewhere?” she thought as she sat on the edge of the mattress.

Her hand absent-mindedly came to rest on the nape of Luis’ neck. Much to her shock, she felt the warmth of his skin course into her hand. As she drew away, she saw him stir and stretch before opening his eyes.

“Elaine?” he asked confusedly. “How did you get here?”

“I’m not sure,” she confessed. “Luis, we’ve got to go. Tia Myrna is looking for you…”

Luis sat up quickly and blinked. “Did the flood---“

“Swept the house thoroughly.”

“Any way I can contact them?”

“They lost the phones and all the cell sites are down anyway.”

“Where are they then?” Luis demanded hotly.

“In an evacuation center, I think.” Elaine replied levelly.  

“You shouldn’t have left them!”

            “They don’t even know I’m alive,” Elaine retorted curtly. Much to her relief, Luis fell silent. “Look at me. Isn’t there anything different?”

            “Well for one thing, you don’t really look like you came out of the flood. It’s neck deep outside, and there’s water all over the first floor,” Luis replied, looking her from head to toe.

            “That’s the thing,” Elaine explained. She bounced on the edge of the pallet and realized that Luis’ eyes went wide as he watched her. She knew she wasn’t even making any indentions on the coiled spring mattress. “But I’m pretty sure I’m not…dead.”

            “You aren’t since I’m talking to you,” Luis argued, grabbing her arm. He recoiled as if the sudden feel of her living flesh repulsed him. “And you’re warm….”

            “I don’t really know what’s happening!” she exclaimed. “But please, we have to find some way of getting you home.”

            Luis shrugged. “Look at the water outside. I can’t get past that, not like you.”

            It was only then that Elaine realized that somehow, her footprints were outlined with an eerie gray murk. “Have I really been stepping in that?” she asked aloud.

September 28, 2009

12:00 noon

            “So you were swept away by that flood and then you found yourself floating?” Luis asked as he put another soggy box on the landing. Though the water still came up to his chest, he still waded through it to move yet another box of ruined items.

            Elaine nodded as she pulled her knees closer to her chest as she sat on the edge of the step. The clean-up of the apartment building had been going on for the better part of the day, and to make the job faster all of the buildings’ denizens had divided up the entire flooded space into sections. Luis had agreed to clean the most deserted area, near this landing. “Expediency my foot. He just wants to talk to me,” Elaine had thought when she heard of this.

She knew that at least on Luis’ part, it had to be a result of being stuck in one place for too long. She’d gone in and out of the apartment several times, and each time she returned he was still surprisingly receptive to conversing with her. “But why am I still entertaining him?” she wondered. The thought was enough to send something like a chill through her.

More disturbingly, she could already feel a strange ache in her body, as if she’d been in one position too long. Then there was that nagging pain in her hand that refused to leave despite all she’d attempted to do to kill the sensation. “If I’m in this state for too long, I might end up not really waking up at all…”

“Actually I got hit upside the head. And soon I discovered Tia Myrna calling me. Holding my unconscious body, for lack of a better term,” she finally said.

            “You have a body. I can feel you now,” Luis said perplexedly, his arm brushing against hers momentarily.

            “But it seems as if only you can see it,” she murmured in a small voice.

            “Stop worrying about that Elaine!” he snapped. “We’ll go home soon enough and figure this out. I can’t believe you can be so selfish to worry about yourself when there are all of those people out there suffering!”

            “You’re one to talk!”

            “You say you’re not quite dead. Well guess what? There are people who are already dead!”

            Elaine stared at him coldly before crying out and clutching her arm. She would have tumbled off the step if Luis hadn’t steadied her with his hand. “I think someone is trying some procedure on me in the hospital…” she gasped as she met his worried gaze.

            Luis nodded worriedly. “Do you know where they brought you?”

            Elaine shook her head. “I left before I could find out. But that’s where I’m supposed to bring you anyway, so maybe I’d better take a look.”

            Luis looked at her grimly. “Soon enough, Elaine. If you get another one of those attacks…well, let’s not guess what might happen to you. I think the doctors are trying to find out what’s wrong with you. Then again, no one’s invented disembodiment’s medical definition yet.”

            Despite the shooting pain in her arm, Elaine found all of a sudden that she could smile.

September 29, 2009

5:45 am

            She was feeling lighter all of a sudden as she walked the street back to the dilapidated apartment. “That can’t be good,” she thought as she hurried back. Already she could feel the pains that had plagued her since yesterday suddenly begin to lessen with an alarming rapidity. “Almost as if I am losing it…”

            “Elaine!” she heard Luis shout as she rounded the corner. She nearly stopped in her tracks as she saw Luis about to step off the apartment building’s front step into still-deep water.

            “Don’t!” she shouted but he was already floundering in the water. Despite the weakness in her body, she still plunged into the water and made her way towards him. She managed to seize his hand before he could drop the flashlight he was holding. With an effort, she brought them both to the surface before he reached out and grabbed a pole to pull them both to safety. They clawed their way to the sidewalk, where they lay for a while, trying to catch their breath. 

            “Where did you go?” he gasped, looking at her with wide eyes.

            “To find out where Tia Myrna is caring for me,” Elaine grinned triumphantly. “Saint Raphael’s Hospital, just near home.” She didn’t speak of what she’d seen, of finding herself lying motionless under IV lines, of seeing her relatives weeping, and the doctors’ grim faces as they conferred on her case. Her throat was raw enough from screaming anyway. Just as she suspected, none of them heard her.

            “Yes, yes. Just don’t do that again,” Luis said, pulling a sodden lock of hair out of her face. It was then as if he seemed to notice her pallor. “Elaine?”

            “I think I’m fading,” she whispered, resting her head tiredly on his shoulder.

“You can’t be. You need to hang on till the flood recedes. Or you can go on without me,” he insisted concernedly.

“I can’t!” she retorted fiercely. She took a deep shuddering breath before looking at him. “Please, can we leave later today? I don’t think I’ll last a day or two unless I get you home before then…”

            “Don’t talk like that, Elaine,” Luis said, his voice betraying his fear as he scooped her up and carried her upstairs.

September 29, 2009

10:00 pm

            Elaine was afraid to breathe now. With each passing hour, she could feel a little more of herself getting detached from her surroundings. Even now, the only things she could really see were blurred forms and shades. “I might go altogether…” she thought before she felt some pressure on her hands and arms.

            “Luis?” she whispered as she felt herself being lifted, almost as if she was being carried. Thankfully, she could still feel the warmth of his body against hers.

            “We’ve got to leave now. The flood is just a little lower,” he said reassuringly. “Do you know the driest way out of here?”

            She nodded feebly. “Left of the building. Keep walking till the corner, turn right, walk straight till the highway. There are jeeps there. They’ll take us straight to San Mateo. Then once we’re in town, it’s easy to get to the hospital…”

            He nodded before tightening his grip on her. “Please just hang on. A few more hours, we’ll be at the hospital.”

            “Hopefully,” Elaine pointed out. She knew that some ways to San Mateo were still closed, and to try to circumvent them even on a jeepney would add to their delay. “I’ll try to help…tell you where it’s safe to pass.”

            Luis nodded again as they made their way out of the building. “Why didn’t you leave me when you had the chance?”

            “I told you I couldn’t,” she said after a long while. “Besides it might not have made a difference unless I brought you home.”

            “What?”

            “Freddie was joking that I’d only wake up for you…”  

            For a long time neither of them said anything, up until Luis hailed a jeepney headed for the north bound road. Elaine clung on to him, almost sitting on his lap although there were very few passengers at that hour. The last thing she thought before blackness claimed her again was how she would have liked to see the night wind whipping Luis’ hair across his face as they journeyed in the direction of the rising stars.

September 30, 2009

5:00 am

            Suddenly the jeepney stopped with a lurch. “This is as far as we’re going to go,” the driver called to his bewildered passengers. “Look at that water.”

            Luis swore explosively. “We can’t cross the river on foot!”

            “Yes, but I can’t force this engine across it,” the driver scowled irately. “Get off, go find another ride.”

            Luis glanced down at Elaine, who was seemingly asleep. “I’m sorry about this,” he said in her ear before slinging her over his shoulder and clambering out of the jeepney.

            The girl stirred and whimpered as Luis took a few jarring steps over the rocks leading to the swollen waters. “What’s happening?” she asked, looking at him dazedly.

            “We’re going home the hard way.”

            She closed her eyes in resignation. “We’re by the river. Just keep going by the highway. We’ll get there…”

“Not fast enough!”

“Luis, if I don’t make it, it’s not your fault---“

            “Elaine, I’m not going to lose you!” he shouted.

            For a few moments, both of them were silent, hearing nothing but the crickets and the trickling of the floodwaters. Finally Elaine opened her eyes and caught Luis’ troubled gaze. “Then you have to force me to remain,” she said as a slight smile spread on her face.

            “How will I do that?” Luis asked in bewilderment.

“I’m not sure.”

“Elaine, we need to help Tia Myrna fix the house. Make sure Freddie gets through school. And we should graduate from school too,” he pointed out almost pleadingly.

“Yes, that…” she murmured. 

“We’ll work together to get a better house. Freddie can go to any college he wants.

Elaine, I can’t do it alone. Don’t you have anything to live for?”

Elaine sighed heavily. “I wanted to see the world.”

“You will do that. Don’t go. You need to fight.”

She stirred slightly as if her hand was trying to grasp his. “I think I’ve got one more reason.”

“What is that?” Luis asked but Elaine had fallen unconscious again. Luis blinked back the tears stinging at his eyes before continuing to make his way through the frigid murk.

September 30, 2009

2:00 pm

            “I’m sorry Mrs. Del Mundo, but after so long a time, and with no real diagnosis, your niece’s chances of recovery are slim. You might need to consider ending this course of treatment.”

            “She has to wake up! I can’t just disconnect all of it….no, it would be a sin…”

           At that moment, the hospital room door swung open for the eleventh time that day. “Tia Myrna!” Luis greeted loudly.

            The middle-aged woman jumped back in shock upon seeing the muddied, haggard young man who had seemingly materialized in the room. Suddenly, Luis strode over to Elaine’s bedside and took her limp hand in his. It seemed as if in that moment he had been relieved of a terrible burden he had been lugging all the way from the lowlands.

            “Elaine, wake up,” he begged as he kissed her fingers. For a moment, the doctor moved to try to pull Luis away, but Freddie, who had been sitting in the corner, stopped him. In the meantime, Luis was brushing Elaine’s dark hair back from her face. After a long moment, he tentatively bent over and brushed his lips against hers.

            After a moment, Elaine coughed slightly and took a deep breath. Her eyes fluttered open and she whispered Luis’ name.

            At this, Freddie yelled and jumped up while Tia Myrna nearly fainted away. Elaine chuckled weakly before pulling Luis’ ear against her lips. “Thank you. But how did you know to do that?” she asked.

            “I figured out what you didn’t tell me,” Luis grinned before kissing her again.

A/N: Prompt: Sparkle.

Dare

December 2012

            If anyone had peeked into the windows of Café Agogo that rainy afternoon one might have gotten the impression of a tiff in the making between two people who should never have sat down to an afternoon snack. However, the long-standing patrons and the staff of this cozy establishment were already aware that this was merely part of an everyday ritual.

            “Only you would have the audacity to give me this,” Ida Almario said, pointing to the small charm that dangled from the bracelet she still wore on her right wrist. “Imagine, remembering the time I made a fool of myself in front of you!”

            “But how would we have met otherwise?” Mark quipped almost carelessly. Never mind if he was seated right within striking distance, or to be more exact, just right beside her. No place could have been safer.

            Ida merely rolled her eyes as she stirred her cup of espresso. "At least when we met, he managed to bail me out. Some thanks I gave him," she told herself. She finally caught his gaze. “If anyone told me when I was sixteen that six years later, I’d be with you I would have told them to soak their heads," she stated grimly.

             “Of course you would have,” Mark said wryly before taking a sip of his chai.

            “How could he stand that stuff?” Ida wondered quietly. It was one of the many things she found puzzling about him, even after all that they’d gone through from their college days onwards. “Actually how could I stand him, period, after all of the drama he puts me through,” she thought before swallowing some of her own drink. The hot, bitter liquid warmed her from within, but she knew that had nothing to do with the heat that was rising into her cheeks.

            “You’re blushing,” he pointed out. “What about?”

            “You?” she retorted playfully.

            Mark clucked his tongue. “You think about me too much.”

            “Maybe,” she shrugged. “You’re so complicated, that’s why.”

            “Too much psychology,” he smirked.

            “It’s just you,” she retorted. “I don’t know why I dare to love you anyway. I just do.”

            One of Mark’s eyebrows shot up. “Dare?” he repeated.

            Ida nodded slowly. “I realized you were going to be dangerous. And that I was going to make your life at least a little more interesting.”

            He snorted. “Biggest understatement you’ve said in six years, Ida.”

            She sighed and reached out to touch his hand lightly. “Mark, to be honest, we’d be a disaster if we ended up for keeps.”

            “Funny you should say that,” he said, bringing out a small box from his pocket. “Because I was about to ask you to marry me.”

"He did not just say that!" Ida thought as she tightened her grip on his fingers. "Mark Angelo Lorenz, now would be a very good time to say you're just joking," she warned him.

His brow furrowed in confusion. "And what if I'm not?" he asked seriously.

"Well..." Ida trailed off. "I have to refer you for a psychological evaluation."

"You're one to talk," he shot back.

"No really," she said, searching his face for any hint that he was going to burst out laughing, or that he was merely going to smirk before telling her that he had just meant to string her along. "But God in heaven, he really is serious!" she realized with a shudder.

"I'm just curious. What would you do to me if I was just joking?" Mark asked lightly.

"Anything from hitting you upside the head to moving back to Barcelona immediately," Ida said, finding that she was now on the verge of laughing.

"And what if I'm actually serious?" Mark asked, taking both her hands in his.

This time Ida didn't bother hiding her smile as she leaned in for a kiss.

A/N: I love writing this, secretly. It’s twisted. Like its real life antecedent.

Poker Face: A look at several angles

Part 1: Double-Talk

2009

            She always lies to him, and everyone knows that.

            “Get out of my sight.”

            “Dammit, won’t you stop already?”

            “You’re getting me so stressed! WHY?!”

            “I don’t like anyone. You know that.”

            But of course, anyone who hung out in the org office, or at the bench could tell what she really meant.

            “I don’t want to fight with you, not today.”

            “I know why you’re torturing me, can’t we just set the record straight?”

            “I’ll play rough with you if you want it.”

            “I love you.”

Part 2: Getting a Rise

2009

            “Hey I did NOT say anything!”

            Of course it’s no use protesting. It’s just for the sake of the game. She holds his gaze as he demands, “Say what you just said.”

            “I won’t,” she retorts. Their hands are both on the table between them. She knows that even with that huge slab of concrete in front of her, she is far from safe.

            “I’ll go over there and make you,” he threatens.

            “Yeah, I dare you.”

            “I’m going over there.”

            “Yeah right.”

            Faces flushed, heavy breathing. He smirks and laughs, “You just want me to go over there don’t you?”

            “Hell no!” she retorts, but he’s already at the bull’s eye.

A/N: Prompt: Parasite. Sometimes payback isn’t immediate. Twenty years though is a decent time span…

Behind the Bar

            “We don’t need this hanging on to our lives, Marielle, Can’t you just let go of it so we can move on?”

            Thomas Zamora still couldn’t exactly figure out why of all the things he’d ever said in his forty-two years of life, those two sentences had a way of floating in the soup of his memories. He shook his head to clear it of the echoes of that twenty-year old argument. After all, there was a long summer night ahead of him, and brooding over the past wasn’t exactly going to help him on the job.

            He really wasn’t sure where Marielle Benitez was after all these years, if she’d done what he’d told her to do, if she’d somehow moved on with her life, or if she even got close to the things she had once aspired for. He couldn’t quite give a good answer though if anyone asked how he was doing. Twenty years later, he was still stuck at the Extravaganza Bar. “At least I’m the manager now, not the bartender,” he reassured himself as he smoothed down his shirt and pants.

            He looked around the darkened main room, which was quite full of students of all shapes and sizes. Lights of all colors were darting across the walls and panning across the ceiling, bathing patches of the room in weird hues. A platform with a short ramp had been constructed at one side of the dance floor, clearly for some fashion show or exhibition that this group was planning. From his place behind the bar, Thomas could also see a knot of students gathered around a glass wall lit up with UV lights. They were penning messages on the glass in fluorescent ink. It had taken Thomas the better part of the afternoon just fixing that glass slab in place. “Still, these interschool parties bring lots of good business,” Thomas thought to himself as he watched the two student emcees on stage begin to regale the crowd. Quickly, he readied the tally sheets for the drink coupons he and the other staff would be collecting later.

            He had to suppress the knowing grin that formed on his face. Twenty years ago, he’d managed to rip several more free drink coupons than he’d been allowed to have. He’d been two or three beers in when he marched up to the bar and took that seat next to the girl wearing beads and feathers in her hair, and a white slit dress. The rest, as his friends liked to say for some time after, was “a history of disasters in the making.” Still, the year was 1988, and he didn’t really care then.

“They sure weren’t kidding though when they said that there were cute girls in Chemical Engineering,” he chuckled to himself. He’d been twenty-two years old then, about to graduate with a degree in political science. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t already met any beautiful women his age, or with interests closer to his. Something about that guileless girl named Marielle had taken hold of him almost from the get-go. At the very least, she’d been good company, making relatively few demands on his time or on his personal space.

“At least until I gave her the German measles,” Thomas thought wryly. He was pretty sure that fiasco had been one of the dealbreakers in their relationship. “Ironically, it wasn’t even because I got her sick,” he mused. It had been the other implications and the possibilities of the months and years after that sickness that had forced their parting of ways. The year had been 1989, and he learned he could care a little, maybe even too much.

“I told her what she could do, what she had to get rid of so we could move on with our lives.” He had rationalized this over and over again. Besides, it still made him shudder to remember the sight of her beckoning to him as she sat up in bed with her face still red from the rash. She already had it growing inside her even then, and for him to hear the news from her at that moment had only added even more shock and sourness to what was already a scary situation in itself. “Imagine, feeding off her only to come out deformed when it pleased…” he thought. He couldn’t imagine months, or even years dealing with that fact. That had been one of the reasons he’d left, or rather insisted that she leave.

He shook his head as he finished straightening up the bar as a thudding techno beat began to play as background to one of the silly acquaintance games lined up for the night. He handed out glasses of iced vodka with jelly and bottles of beer to the first few students who came up to the bar. As he cleared the first few coupons away, he saw another coupon flash on the bartop.

“A glass of iced tea please,” a raspy voice asked. Thomas looked up and felt his heart stop momentarily. “I must be dreaming,” he thought. After all, he couldn’t be seeing himself in front of his very eyes, all possibilities of astral projections and time travel aside.

“Are you alright, Sir?” asked the young man who’d handed over the coupon.

            “Y-yes. You just startled me for an instant,” Thomas said, laughing a little nervously. He pinched himself discreetly to make sure that he was wide awake. As he poured some of the amber liquid into a tall ice-filled glass, he tried his best not to stare at the student who was now conversing with a young girl. “First attack of déjà vu,” Thomas thought as he sent the drink down the bar.

            The boy was wearing a smart gray button down while the girl was in a black satin dress. A roving spotlight illuminated them for a few moments—the light caught in the boy’s light brown eyes, while it played among the unruly curls of the girl’s dark hair. He was lightly tanned, while her face was fair and rosy-cheeked. “While Marielle had been a dark beauty with straight hair, bright eyes, and a red dress, and I had come off looking a little pale even while wearing dark blue…” Thomas noted wryly as he listened to this boy cracking a joke that made his lady friend laugh. After a few moments, the scene was too uncanny for him to continue watching. It was as if history had melded into this moment yet also seemed on the verge of splitting. “He has her eyes, dammit, and her smile!”

            The young man excused himself to talk to some friends who had just entered the bar. The girl fished in her purse for a coupon. Thomas swallowed hard and braced himself. “Young lady, do you mind if I ask you something?” he asked when she handed the slip of paper to him.

            She shook her head wryly. “What about?” she asked.

            “What’s the name of that friend of yours?” Thomas asked.

            The girl glanced towards her companion, who was apparently being ribbed by the newcomers. “Mark Lorenz. We go to Saint John the Baptist University. Why?” she said by way of an answer.

            Thomas gripped a glass tightly if only to contain his reaction. “He just reminds me of someone I once knew. An old friend of mine,” he said.

            The girl nodded a little skeptically. “I suppose Mark’s family is from all over,” she quipped.

            “He….is his hearing alright?” Thomas asked slowly. “It’s the only problem that he can possibly have, since he seems okay.”

            “It’s not perfect, but it works,” the girl replied, her brow furrowing slightly. “Why, deafness runs in your friend’s family?”

            “No. It’s just a hypothetical question,” Thomas replied, handing her another iced tea. He had noticed this girl deliberately moving her lips in a more exaggerated fashion, while Mark had been observing her mouth. “Either he’s reading her lips, or he just wants to kiss her.”

            The girl laughed before sipping her iced tea. “I suppose it’s the loud music. Makes it that much harder for him to hear me,” she said.

            “Doesn’t he have hearing aids?”

            “He does. I keep saying since he’s taking ECE that he should find a way to make the darned things more efficient.”

            It took Thomas a few seconds to decipher the acronym. “Electronics and communications engineering. That’s a very challenging field,” he remarked. “He must have gotten that too from Marielle.”

            “Yeah,” the girl said as a proud smile brightened her face. “And he’s a student leader too.” She drained the last of her iced tea. “I’d better get going now.”

            “Enjoy the rest of the night,” Thomas said. He watched as this girl sprung from the bar and went up to Mark and the rest of their friends. Thomas’ eyes lingered on them as the girl told something to Mark, whose face took on a perplexed expression. A moment later, he shrugged and patted the girl’s shoulder affectionately. For the first time behind the bar, Thomas felt something pinch a little deep in his chest—a feeling he’d come to name later as regret.