The Philippine Online Chronicles

Half-awake or half-asleep, after midnight.  As vapory droplets of mist trickle down a leaf midrib.  When the only sound one hears is that of the cricket. It is said that darkness begets darkness and as the gray turns to pitch black, you feel the presence of heartless, soulless, formless entitities. You call out for rescue but even the benevelont God  seems to have abandoned you to the scavengers of Death.  Those that lay in wait for a chance -- just one -- to get you.  And it won’t matter if you are ready; not even worth it to not go peacefully, or is it?

The silent hound

The chilly breeze at 4 am nips at the boy’s arms, passing through the polyester school uniform straight to his thin torso.

Freezing cold showers are not enough to wake him up at this godless hour, having finished his homework at past midnight.

Half-awake. Half-asleep.

He trudges through the pavement, watching the heels of his leather loafers munch away at the sparse leftover gravel from the cars that sped home the night before. One foot after the last. Left foot, crunch. Right foot, crunch. Such a monotonous chore, thinks the boy, as he approaches his destination. He can see the faint light at the baker’s.

Suddenly the crunching stops. Not because he stopped, but because all his faculties are now focused on a silhouette.

And he finds himself staring at a pair of piercing, red eyes, reflected by the moonlight. Standing there, mute as a log.  Only the eyes breathing fire.

As his pupils accommodate the sight, he begins to distinguish furry chest, four agile legs. Is it a German Shepherd? No, only a St. Bernard could be that big, but no way could a St. Bernard be as muscular.

He can’t stop walking. He doesn’t know what to do. All he knows right now is that he’s drowning in those eyes, red as the setting sun. Being drawn toward them.

Now he starts thinking. Thinking that the hell hound will pounce on him at any moment, and there would be no escape – not even if he tried.

But as fast as the panic sets in, it dissipates, as he passes the creature unharmed.

After several steps he looks back, finding the hound gone.

Being the deadbolt that he is, he goes through with the task at hand, clutches the hot bread close to his chest, all the while contemplating what he had just encountered.

Being fascinated by natural history, he asserts that it was definitely a guard dog. The size of a Hummer, yes, but still just a dog.

Then he comes to exactly where they both stood facing each other minutes ago, and sees that the vacant lot where the hound was positioned earlier is fenced in concrete. As high as a house. Gateless from that side.

Even if the dog ran as fast as it could, he still would have seen its silhouette, when he he turned back earlier. Impossible for any living creature to be able to jump that high a baluster. Or could it?

Harry’s closet

The room is more like a closet than a room. It is underneath the stairs near the kitchen. Plywood walls let everything in and nothing out. Cramped. Dank. No ventilation. Topped with a putrid mix of insecticide in the air and cockroach waste and rot.

The boy, who now considers himself as nearly a man, having earned a degree, lays spent. He thinks of the exams hell week just past and of his girl friend threatening or promising to come over. “No matter,” he whispers. Supine on the mattress, swimming on the sheets, with eyes closed, he tries to catch some sleep. But it eludes him.

Half-awake. Half-asleep.

He hears the muffled cries of a woman, husband gone, with three children to feed. He imagines her -- gaunt, with skin clutching at the bones.

“Ma…”

The youngest, a boy, begs for a sweet treat. What he gets is a stern warning. The next one will leave a mark on his thin frame. He knows the ritual; it has happened many times before.

“Eh? Who cares, mother&*@%^$!”

The eldest arrives, shouting his goodbye to his friends. Coming up the steps as a master sergeant clad in boots would. With a defiant air about him.

No warnings for this one.

Palm cracks against cheek. Glass breaks. A blunt object hacks the air again and again, never missing its mark.

“Ma, stop it!” The daughter shouts, and now the warnings come as fallout, in the form of invectives and trash talk.

The voices start to fade, and the man in the room below dozes off.

To sleep  perchance to die

It is one thing to have sleep disturbed by noise, and another to wake up from the pinpricks of a sleeping limb.

The man woke up to both.

Only difference is he wasn’t able to move any part of his body. He wasn’t even able to open his eyelids, let alone arms or legs, even if his life depended on it. And his life did depend on it.

He knew it from the moment he heard three voices simultaneously whispering loudly in every direction. Their voices mingling, overlapping, swaying from side to side.

He knew he needed to move. So he tried his eyelids again. They wouldn’t budge. He tried his arms and felt as if parent rocks were on top of them. He tried his fingers. One by one. Nothing. He focused his attention to his toes. The big ones. Still nothing. He tried again. And again. And yet again.

Finally a toe moved by a millimeter. It was enough. He opened his eyes to the deep darkness, not sweating, but cold as winter, and gulping in air as if he had just finished a three-mile run.

He woke himself up. But how was he going to sleep again?

Epilogue

Most of you may not believe in ghosts, some not even in the existence of spirits and souls. But sometimes, somehow, when you’re alone in the dark, hearing nothing, seeing nothing, taking each agonizing step along a familiar alley, or groping for the switch, it’s pretty hard to shake that feeling.

A feeling that electrifies the hairs on your spine, just below the neck, with the overpowering nerve impulse coursing through both shoulders to the arms, and upward to the cheeks and temples.

And in some way, a part of you admits, there, in the light shade of the snickering yellow moon, as the wind lightly blows on your face …

… you are not alone.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/devontt/109976216/sizes/m/in/photostream/