My Santa Story

Have a happy Christmas

My dad made me sleep earlier than usual that night, my favorite sleeping bag by the Christmas tree. I remember watching the snow kiss the glass on the window, slowly melting into angel tears. I remember the scent of pine settling all over the room, like magic. I remember getting lulled by the rhythmic pulse of the white Christmas lights strewn all over the room, ending wound around the Christmas tree.

I fell asleep at half past eight, dreaming of the story my dad told me about Santa Claus and his team of reindeer coming down the chimney with gifts and a promise of a better year ahead.

Santa Claus did not come that night. Nor the next night. Nor the next night.

Neither did my dad.

They found him three days later, stuck in the chimney with a broken neck, smelling of burnt wood and pine and Christmas promises that will never come true.

How to Write Vaguely

Let it start with a what if, slowly unraveling. Put it to paper. Thrown in huge chunks of unabashedly flagrant words. Make them as colossally superfluous as you can. Make them sound real and uneventful. Place them beside your commonplace words. Make your reader believe you use those words everyday in your usual conversations. Give them murky references to other written legends; you can quote anyone with equally vague thoughts that use one or two words in your own piece. Find a relationship. In the slow-growing journal of nothingness, make a reader feel like s/he should know this, that s/he’s a part of this. Like it was written with him/her in your mind. That this is exactly what s/he’d write. Let your piece talk, repeat words, make grammatical errors. Call attention to your writing style. Have a dictionary handy. Open a random page and use the fifth word in a sentence that makes absolutely no sense. Let your thought jump from one topic to another. Talk infinitely about nothing. Rage, rant, blabber. Confuse, confound, dazzle. Ignore spell and grammar checks. In your mind, be hailed as a good writer, the best in your personal multiverse. Some people are bound to find their souls in your piece.

It's vague why this picture comes up as vague.

Chione

She is very young and love him immensely, her love bigger than the sun and the whole universe.

She would rush after school to that lake in the woods behind the abandoned baseball field. She would sit there among the dried leaves and watch the rainbow fish chase each other just below the dark water, sunlight glinting off in a myriad colors and momentarily blinding her. She would wait.
And wait.
And wait.
Until he comes, late in the afternoon. She would hear the crackling of the dead branches from afar, and she would blush. She knew what was going to happen next, yet she didn’t mind. She would see him ducking under branches and hear his clear whistle in the air. She would blush, and slowly take her pants off for him, because she didn’t want him to wait.
He doesn’t have much time, because he had to get back to his wife and his kid out of wedlock.
He would take her there and then, and whisper his empty promises that make her heart quicken. Her eyes would shine so bright with the heat of her love she scorched the landscape around her, turning a few petrified trees brown.
And he’s gone. Just like the whisper of his undying love for her, with not even the faintest trace of an echo in the stillness of the woods.
Yet she would be back tomorrow, still hoping that it was the last day she would be a mistress.
One snowy winter he comes bounding into the woods and looks guiltily at her, sitting by the lake that was starting to freeze. He says he needs to be gone for a few hours but will be back that evening. His lie was so thick it was dripping on the ground and fizzles in the ice. She sees this and makes no comment, as she slowly removes her pants and kicks off her shoes, kicking away the lie that was reaching for her.
He takes her, and tells her to wait here for him; he’ll be back when the sun goes down.
And she waits, wishing the rainbow fish have not died a few days earlier due to the sudden drop in the temperature.

He leaves the town with his wife and son for the city. The rumors have started making their way to their house and it was too much for him, the whispering in the walls in the middle of the night, the accusing eyes of the rock star posters he had in their room, the slow murmur of the unnamed lover in the pipes when he bathes.
So he leaves, taking a job at a supermarket that hired minors because they were a lot easier on the pocket to employ. Life has a funny way of reshaping reality. And he, taken by the sudden surge of life in the city, slowly forgets the town from whence he came.
He has three more children to come before his wife succumbs to old age and withers away into the likeness of her heart, broken and empty. She dies in her sleep, dreaming of other young men taking her into their arms and giving her all that she has ever hoped for, the same dream she has had for the last seventy years of her life.
Their children have all grown and fled from the shadows of their tiny one story apartment in the filthiest part of the city. They’ve grown wings and made enough money to erase their past into nothing but sketches at the back of a forgotten notebook. They rebuilt their selves into something new, something dynamic, and something that’s not true.

He feels that Death has finally looked in his direction and has decided he would be next. He takes what property he has, puts everything in a luggage that was only slightly bigger than his wallet and heads back to his home town, there to welcome Death finally.
He gets off the plane and the rough tarmac is unfamiliar. He hails a cab and gives the driver directions to where he used to live, and the driver says he recognizes the place. It was no longer there, razed to the ground by an arsonist who couldn’t resist. He sighs, and asks the driver to drop him by the old abandoned baseball field at the end of what used to be their street.
He walks the breadth of the field and is surprised to find the woods still standing, if a little sparse. A shiver runs down his spine, and memory holds his hands and leads him down the path to the lake. A collage of his little lover’s face goes off in his mind, like a photographer with a Polaroid gone insane. He chuckles to himself, thinking how old the girl would be now and how withered and pruned her skin would be.
He sees the lake has been sealed off and a warning sign dangled uneasily off the perimeter chain around the lake. The lake has frozen over, and he goes over to sit on the same spot where they used to. He sits on a huge branch of a fallen tree, and gazes over the lake, the late afternoon sun making orange splotches appear at the corner of his vision.

Chione

Something catches his eyes on the ice, glinting with a dull light. He looks down the lake and sees the girl, forever frozen in her youthful beauty, still waiting for the lover who will never return.

A Day in the Life of a Bisque Doll

They were as blue as the cloudless summer sky, some were greens and blacks. They stared out of that perfectly flawless artificial face. The favorite doll of all sat apart from the rest of that court of dolls. She was set on a pedestal, with her human hair wig flowing in impossible tresses. She was a Christmas edition, with a gold green red gown with holly patterns running down the bodice. She looked over her court of dolls with contempt and hatred, her long papier mached lace covered hands reaching out in judgement. By the light of the moon through the faux stained glass of the window, she glowed with the reds and blues and yellows and oranges of the mountain scenery that was depicted in different media all over the bedroom. Her unusually red lips dripped with viscious unspoken words for the other dolls beneath her feet.

Her antiquated terrible beauty has been a curse, and she was the only doll in her court that has been kept in a box for over a century.

Dedicated to her who loved ageless dolls and him who fears them.

The Man Who Wouldn’t Be Naked

There’s just too much story written on his skin: The tale of his sordid affair with the ground when he was younger, the kiss of the bamboo against his foot that opened up his flesh to a whole new keloidal perspective. The intimate whispers of the garish whiteness that is a community of panau that tattooed his back with a map to his youthful meanderings. A solitary dead wart masquerading as a mole down the small of his back, still clinging on for dear life to the possibility of love it has never found. The little reminders of a tryst with the pox he once had, screaming for attention every time he sheds his clothes, begging for a little time to be once again exalted. The little bumps along his face that still stand witness to the caresses of the air, a lover’s forgotten touch.

He wouldn’t be naked, even for my sake. He wouldn’t be naked, and all I wanted was to show him how beautiful the stories on his skin were.

Live Wire

A cat framed in lazy repose
With tongue lolled out red as rose
Eyes wide, back arched in a gentle rise
Caught in eternal leathery surprise
dead_cat_wire

The Unnamed 6

Chapter 5
Of King and Queens and Promises

We settled in the barrio life as well as can be expected. Eventually even the hard bed became comfortable, the creaking floor a lullabye, and the strange sounds in the night like friendly whispers in our ears as we drift off to sleep.

Mark and I became close. Closer.

He would usually get up earlier than I did, he would go prepare breakfast, ready the clinic for me, and have everything set when I come in. In the evenings, I would prepare dinner, fix our bed, settle down on my side of the wall, and we would talk. Some nights we’d sing. Sometimes he’d cry. But mostly, we find ourselves just looking at one another.

December came, and so did the first major change in our barrio life. It happened thus:

We usually close the clinic down by six pm, just as the sun is setting. Without electricity, it’s kind of hard to get home in the dark. But on that night, we closed past eight pm, and the darkness was absolute. We had our first appendectomy, and as things are as they are, it took us about half of the day. Fortunately, everything went well, with little complications, and we had asked the patient’s father to stay with him in the clinic, and to call us if anything happens during the night. Exhausted as we were, we managed to pass by one of the two stores, and got ourselves some canned corned beef for dinner. When we got home, I prepared the corned beef, adding potatoes, onions, lots of garlic. Mark cooked and prepared the rice. At some time before nine pm, we were having dinner, and on that night we chose to have it outside the house.

So we sat under the stars, toasting our little clay mugs. And like on any other nights, we talked. And we talked. And while we were talking, I stared at his eyes. And he stared back. And I felt like I was falling into the darkness of his eyes. It was an strange feeling. It felt like I was wheeling out of control. He reached out for my hand, but I took it away politely.

After eating, while I was washing my hands, he came up to me. He stood a few feet away, just watching and watching and watching. I felt little earthquakes in my belly, the way I did when I was in highschool and my crush would look at my way. Little earthquakes that spread through my body in little tremors. Ripples on ripples on ripples. It was an oddly familiar feeling. Something I was so sure I would never feel again. Something I was glad I was feeling again.

I asked him to not look at me that way, because it made me uncomfortable. He said he couldn’t help it. So I let him watch me. He watched me when I washed my face. When I dried my hands. We entered our hut and I went to my side of the wall. But when I looked up, I saw he still had his eyes on me. I went to prepare my sleeping bag. I felt my heart skip a beat. I told him I would be getting ready for bed, so please turn around. He asked me to hurry and turned away. And, curiouser and curiouser, I wished he hadn’t.

When I was done putting my sleeping attire on (which was what I usually wore: a pair of old jerseys, and flannel pants), I asked him to sleep beside me. He needed no second invitation. He pulled his sleeping bag closer to where mine was, pushing the divider out of the way. I asked him to share my sleeping bag, which was large enough to hold a party in. He looked at me, smiled, and whispered a hurried thanks. He was also in his jerseys and scrub pants, which is what he usually wore to bed.

That night, I slept deeply, knowing that when the sun comes, I would be his mistress.

Chemistry 101

Episode 1

Hindi ko talaga lubos maisip kung bakit at paano ako napunta sa trabaho na ito. Oo, alam ko na pinili ko ito by my own free will because it was ultimately a desperate decision to finally give in to the wish of my mom—she had been nagging me to work here ever since I graduated from college three years ago.

Three years have passed at wala pa rin akong pera para makabili ng tunay na Louis Vuitton! (Kahit fake nga hindi parin aabot dahil 24 pesos nalang ang nasa savings account ko!) Hindi ko na nga tinanong yung high school classmate ko na may dala-dalang ganun nung nag-reunion kami recently, kung magkano ang bili nya dahil alam ko, sa presyo na yun, baka makapagbigay pa kami ng birthday party para sa isang libong bata sa Africa. Yung isa ko nga na classmate din, ikakasal na pala sa December! She never had a boyfriend, and we were always teasing her na baka lumaki syang matandang dalaga. Ayan natakot siguro kaya nung nag-propose yung boyfriend nya of two years, eh “Yes” agad ang sagot nya!

Minsan, kung iisipin mo rin, nakaka-pressure talaga, thinking about how my friends from college now have relatively stable careers, making lots of money, and enjoying it. Tapos ako, ayan nagpapaka-bum after my recent resignation because of my so-called work-related depression! Kaya naman nung sinabi sakin ng mommy ko na hinihintay parin daw ako nung kaibigan nya sa Taiwan na mag-trabaho para sa kanilang company, eh “Yes” narin agad ang sagot ko! Biruin mo, three years at naghihintay parin sila sakin! Ang tindi rin ng dedication nila, no? So I decided, why not give this a try? Wala naman daw mawawala eh!

So now I find myself, sitting silent and awkward at the passenger’s seat of my boss’ car. I just arrived in Kaohsiung, and my boss personally picked me up from the airport. Nasa expressway na kami, and looking out the window, it’s just like Manila, but instead of the slums and shanties, puro buildings and factories ang makikita mo hanggang sa horizon, and instead of slow-moving traffic, we’re hitting 110 on the speedometer.

I thought to myself, this is it! My boss seemed nice naman, as we both tried to start and hold a more substantial conversation than talking about my trip. He can speak English, though it really is as simple as it can get, but I know we can both manage to bridge the communication gap. I will be training here for one-month, he told me as he explained the agenda for the next few days.

The Unnamed 5

Chapter 4
Coming Home

We set up a makeshift hut at the edge of the barrio, with the help of the townsfolk. It was a one storey affair, an uncomfortable division in the middle of the room, and nothing else. It had a single window looking out to the woods beyond, and the door to the barrio. I hung some paintings I made with me on my part of the wall, and he pictures of his wife and kids on his. As there was no electricity, God only knows how long the single burner we brought was going to last. By sun down, we have set up the little hovel we will call home for the next couple of months. I prayed electricity would find us soon. I have also left my mobile phone as there was no signal at all the first time I stayed here.

In the dark I could hear him fidgeting in his sleeping bag. I asked if he was awake and he said he was. He said he was finding it very hard to sleep. And so we talked. And finally, he introduced me to him.

His name is Mark Reyes, married for five years, with two kids. He had breezed through graduate school with flying colors on scholarship. He had been practicing for a little over six months now with three major surgeries and countless minor ones under his belt. Since his internship he has dreamt of setting up his own medical missions all over the country. This for him is a dream come true. On special days he goes golfing, target shooting, spelunking, diving, balling, or whatever fits his fancy. He loves to watch the sun setting, the moon rising, and believes that every star has already been chosen by any one lover out there wishing for something.

He has the most curious eyes, so dark they’re almost black, but in certain angles they’re almost gold.

He talked about his family, too. Wife, kids, marital issues. Most of the marital issues flew right past my head, as I have never been married. At this point, dawn was nearly upon us. A few birds have started to test their songs against the stillness of the night. I suggested sleep, even for a couple of hours, before we do our day’s duties. He agreed, and I turn to my side, facing the wall of paintings, and closed my eyes.

It must have been past ten in the morning when I got up. I fixed my bed. There was breakfast waiting on the low squat table we had, two fried eggs and a fried chicken leg. Mark was nowhere to be seen. I hurriedly ate and set out to do my daily tasks.

A blast of icy cold wind kissed my face when I stepped out of what would be our house for the next few months. It was early November, and the cold was unbelievable up here in the mountains. It almost felt the way the biting winters of New York felt, minus the snow. Wrapping a shawl around my shoulders, I proceeded to the middle of the town, a good ten minute walk from where I was staying, to set up the mini clinic. I found Mark already there, directing the towns people about. Eventually, the clinic was set up, with one bed against the wall which had the window, a table and chair at the far end, a wooden file cabinet across it, and some of the paintings I had. It looked cozy, and primitive.

By ten am on my watch, we were officially open. We had one of the towns men announce our opening, and by eleven am, the people started coming to the clinic. There wasn’t much to do, really. Just routinary check up, med prescription, and health advisory. But by two pm, I was exhausted. Mark had gone off for some food and I was left in the clinic.

I was reading through our log, when I chanced to look out the window. I let out a little yelp of surprise when I saw the old woman from before standing there, looking at me. When she saw me look up, she turned, and walked away, and never glanced back.

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