Fiction Rebel

Showbands Must Die

noreply@blogger.com (SPLICE) — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 16:32:00 +0000

They fail to create. They simply replicate. Ladies and gentlemen, purist showbands must die.

For all the talent and creativity and imagination that the Roman Catholic God has showered upon humanity since the time when a serpent cajoled a certain woman named Eve to taste the forbidden fruit somewhere in paradise, showbands have continuously failed to live up to the expectations of He-who-must-not-be-named, i.e. God. They play their instruments in much the same way as the original creator of the pieces they are playing have played them, thus the apparent disregard for their knack for creativity.

And creativity isn't creativity if you won't create in the first place. More to the point, you don't create something that's already there. That's just silly, I tell you, if not plain ridiculous. You don't create a song and muster an ounce of creativity for trying to shape a parody of a musical piece that's already been there.

One more thing why purist showbands must vanish from the face of the third planet from the Sun—they tamper society's morality or, worse, they inflict perversion on the minds of men. Yes, men. I have been able to watch several showbands in the must and I had a hard time refusing to succumb to the temptation of throwing empty beer bottles at the way of whoever had the microphones in their hands. They burn the short wick of our patience for their relentless imitations, oftentimes sporting absurd clothes that border between the intolerable and the horrendous, pushing us towards the thin line that separates indifference from annihilation.

Their female vocalists, too, tend to dehydrate the bodily fluids of their male audience as they run out of saliva from drooling too much for one simple reason: these descendants of Eve seem to have emptied their wallets despite the fact that they have this so-called job. They wear skimpy clothes next to almost nothing. Now that certainly might cause a massive heart attack on the part of the Pope. Otherwise, it might seduce him to a state of phallic nirvana, but that's another story. Add up to their ultra-trimmed dresses the fact that they oftentimes sing tunes that titillate the libidinous senses of mankind. Bottomline, they demonize the virgin minds of those who have not gotten laid in their lifetime.

There are more reasons to say here, but these will do. So yes, purist showbands must die for the sake of the music community and of the larger population.

Observations 5

noreply@blogger.com (SPLICE) — Thu, 16 Oct 2008 17:19:00 +0000

I have to shave my mustache. And the hair that's growing just below my chin should be mowed. For several months now, I haven't visited the barber and let his scissors cut its way across the top and sides of my scalp. I have this long-time dream of growing my hair to a certain length, say down to my shoulders or just a few inches below it. To date, I have yet to fulfill that goal although I would have to say I'm quite well on my way. Three to four months and I think I'll be able to nail it.

Back in high school, I always had a short hair. It was part of my routine to slather on some hairgel and shape it accordingly, which is to say that it was a habit of mine to keep my hair intact, wind and all. Lately, though, I seem to have lost that practice. If my memory won't fail me, it all began during my first few months in college. I was a carefree student back then, never minding if I was wearing the same shorts the other day when I'm off to school. In campus, the least of your worries will be how you look. The most would have to be how you think, or if you still remember yesterday's lessons. And what can I say? Five years thereafter and I haven't changed much. I'm 22 and hell do I care about how I look. I am as rugged as you would expect me to be although, of course, I do take baths and change clothes.

Which makes me wonder. How much have I been spending lately on shampoo? These are dire and trying times, and I don't want to remember myself a decade from now in retrospection that I could have and should have saved a hefty sum by having a bald head. But certainly, you would have to kill me first before your razor can shave all the hair off of my head. And of course, not without one bloody mayhem. But that's already stretching the imagination to great lengths. Don't get me wrong. I'm for peace. In fact, I'm so peace-loving I shit white doves with a twig and leaves in its beaks. Beat that.

Degressing more, I recall a film my better-half and I watched a few weeks ago. Across the Universe. All of the tracks used in the movie were from the Beatles, to which I'm a huge fan, George Harrison notwithstanding. One song, Revolution, speaks of peace and Lennon's protest against the street activism that swept America during the height of the Vietnam war. From the looks of it, you can fairly say he's a passive activist, a term that verges between oxymoron and pure insight. At that time, Lennon wanted to change things but not from the same lense as typical street protesters would have it, the likes that barge into government offices and barricade entrances to public property by literally flooding the roads with an ocean of humanity, causing havoc to anything that stands in its way. I'm not John Lennon, but there are times when I do tend to favor vigilance through that same approach which he once tried to practice. And since I'm more into Harrison than Lennon, I might as well at times be as quiet as the Quiet Beatle, who happens to be Spike Wilbury, which is another way to name Harrison.

In that case, I won;t be needing to shave my mustache. Not until I turn to Hinduism.

Observations 4

noreply@blogger.com (SPLICE) — Fri, 10 Oct 2008 16:19:00 +0000

It doesn't feel like noon. The sun is still hiding behind the thick rolling clouds from above. Maya birds hop on the concrete ledges of the room's narrow balcony every once in a while, chirping as they do on a busy day. It's a Saturday and the town, from where I sit, is still asleep, or maybe the rest of the people are still enjoying a siesta after a festive meal. I can't hear a thing other than the music bursting from the left and right ear pieces of the headset. The tunes from the radio station I am listening to are riveted with distorted guitar sounds, pounding drum beats, chugging bass lines and rough vocals. They call it rock music.

While waiting for the next track, several advertisements were filling the airtime. One in particular caught my attention, which is about a liquor drink revealing how guys could be like Tom Cruise even if they are not. The tip is to mix the gin with other ingredients. After concocting the cocktail, the advertisement assures men that women will come flocking from Bermuda to Bahamas to their side and have a tasty sip of the alcoholic nectar. Well, what do you know? Maybe they were right when they said that alcohol consumption causes pregnancy, but that's a long story.

After a while, the disc jockeys go on with their banter. They're about to conclude their last set with a barrage of rock songs. But before anything else, they give a quick rundown of the station's programs for the rest of the day. Wishing their listeners a pleasant weekend, an up-tempo melody ensues. It's the Kaiser Chiefs.

And then, Razorback's Empire Accretia. Which reminds me of one thing.

It was way back when I was still in my second year in college. I was trying to expand my knowledge on playing the guitar and making sweet music from it. Acoustic music was the delight of my ears and any record that simply featured vocals accompanied by the chords strum from an acoustic guitar attracted my attention the most. But one day, in a serendipitous moment, I discovered this OPM band. The first time I heard the group's melodic blues riffs accentuated with the fitting touch of a distortion effect, I was struck with disbelief. Who is this band, I asked myself. I never knew before that this rock and roll band reminiscent of southern rock music ever existed in this side of the world. Quite frankly, they've influenced my taste for music a lot. And the rest, they say, is ancient history.

To this day, I am still rediscovering the roots of classic rock, the blues notwithstanding. I try as much as I can to widen my search and go beyond Chuck Berry, and even beyond Robert Johnson. Aside from listening to these kinds of music, I also try my best to do tangible research, as in sifting through the pages of books and documents by the hand in search for precious bits of clues.

That's it for now.

Observations 3

noreply@blogger.com (SPLICE) — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 16:41:00 +0000

I am writing five minutes before one in the morning. It's the dead of the night, an unholy hour if you will, and there's nothing to break the silence other than the endless spinning of the blades of the fan and the sound from the pounding of my fingers on the plastic tiles of the keyboard. My eyelids are starting to roll down but my senses are fighting-off the tempting siren call of sleep. There's no better way to ward-off the spell of dozing into bed than a good warm cup of arabica. Although I am feeling a little bit lazy from a full-day of wandering around the mall named after this continent, I will try my best to pick-up my ass, pour water into RC's basin, and heat it up until steam shoots out of the tiny hole of the electric utensil, signalling the time to transfer the boiling liquid into the mug.

***

I plug the headset's end into the computer's audio socket. Listening to the same song for a number of times isn't my usual habit. But this time, I digress from that. I can tell you something about the song, at least because I am a part of the band behind the melody and the lyrics. The song begins with a simple bass riff that repeats itself twice before the percussions and guitars barge-in. The medium tempo is reminiscent of classic rock. And the melody, too, gives shades of the 70s vibe. Somewhere between the song, the lyrics pour-in with a pitch that is slightly high, intermingling with baritone back vocals. The verses tell the story of love, that's for sure. But not the mushy, tear-jerking melodrama type. Enter the chorus part and you'll know why its title "The Stranger" aptly fits the whole song. The pounding of the skins is nothing short of the classic rock years; the sound of the toms and snare and cymbals being beaten appear relaxed at first, rising to a crescendo as the song pins your ears to its refrain and chorus. The bass lines stop and thump fittingly in the verse sections. The guitar explodes into a bolster of rage right smack in the chorus, only to return to its gentler tone by the time the song hits the refrain part, texturized in no small way by the weeping of the wah.

And for the nth and last time, I listen attentively to every bit and detail of the composition. I check for sections which exceed the amplification limit, making sure that everything else is near to being flawless, spotless. Close to perfection, but never perfect enough. There's no such thing as a perfect song. Subtle errors and tweaks make any song more beautiful, more real than it is supposed to morph itself into after the recording and editing processes. Certainly, the influence of the classic rock era lingers throughout the four and a half minutes of play.

Removing the headset from my ears and head is a liberating experience, albeit an abrupt one. With the gadget no longer covering my right and left pina, my senses are brought back into the living conditions of the early morning—distant barks from alert and rabid canines, the rustling of the leaves and palms as the wind hammers its way across the rusty iron roofs and concrete walls of houses below, and the fading in and out of the rumbling noise from the engines of passing cars driven by late-night drivers, perhaps intoxicated men beating the deadline of their wives waiting impatiently before the doorsteps of their houses, two-by-two-by-twelve lumber in hand and angst in mind. It's no fun way to rock the early morning.

***

Hunger. I can feel the gastric juices trying to melt my intestinal walls, worsened every minute by this dark caffeinated substance. I bite small chunks of onion-flavored crackers in the hopes of eliminating this pain in my belly and of awakening my spirits which are already on the verge of collapsing down to bed. Or on the floor given the insufficient energy I have right now. Perhaps I'll be reading the book we bought back in Manila in a little while. It's an anthology of the winning works during the 1980's for the Don Carlos Palanca Memorial Awards for Literature. It's a compilation of brilliantly written short stories. It's an orange book of 566 leaves from front to back cover. Thirty-five masterpieces neatly arranged according to their chronology of reaping the laurels, or bagging the bacon, the whole swine even, whichever you prefer.

Somewhere along the pages, I point my index on "The Hand of God," a short story written by Conrado de Quiros. He is a kababayan, which no doubt is one of the main reasons why I managed to churn-out two hundred and twenty-five pesos just to grab myself a copy of the book from the shelves of National Bookstore. The book's cover doesn't reveal much. Its color might be inviting for the eyes sensitive of neon colors. But I'm fairly certain those who have read the title of the book and who have an intricate taste for Philippine literature and its rarely spoken contributors cannot help but wish to peer into its treasure trove of lucid and lurid words and phrases and sentences and paragraphs. The fellow from Naga City sure has a huge knack for literary fiction inasmuch he does, or even more, with writing columns four times a week for a national daily.

I dream of coming close to his legacy one of these days, years even. But I'd rather not follow the exact footprints he has left behind through all these years. I don't want to become a parody of my own influence. I want to etch my own mark in history, like most others say. But that may take hundreds of nights of toiling with my fingers, of wringing my hands against the pen, or hammering my shaky fingers across the keyboard. A magnum opus simply doesn't happen overnight, or overday. The artisan chisels away every block of wood, every shard and every bark of it in the contiinuity of time, no matter how painstaking, with emphasis on the pains, much so on the taking.

For the moment, I have to struggle with this torturing battle with hunger. I nibble every flake that cometh from as far as my mouth could reach into the hardened piece of flour. Sip coffee and smoke.

***

Time for a little insanity, or less sanity.

Here goes.

Animosity. Curiosity. Incredulity. Vanity. Perfidy. Tapestry. Monastery. Pottery. Menagerie. Riddle-me-this-riddle-me-that mockery. Numerology. Cosmology. Astrology. Genealogy. Analogy. Buddy. Puny. Juicy. Meaty. Skinny. Flimsy. Hairy. Artsy. Story. Anthology. Mythology. Oology. Eulogy. Abundantly. Fascinatingly. Witty. Dummy. Magically. Profoundly. Salty. Animosity. I've. Said. That. Already.

That's it. Enough. I have to read the book now.

Observations 2

noreply@blogger.com (SPLICE) — Sun, 21 Sep 2008 22:02:00 +0000

If you have twenty-seven empty packs of cigarettes ducktaped against the upper part of your wall, a small rectangular area framed by white-painted lumber, then you're a chain smoker. That array doesn't even include the countless other packs I've smoked in the past five years since the time I learned to suck the smoke out of that burning tobacco inside a narrow paper roll. The cigarette packs might already add to several hundreds by this day, September 22.

The morning weather feels a bit cold, not like the usual daybreak where the sun explodes madly, its rays sinking right into my sleepy skin and the space of the room. I can clearly see the trees by now, their leaves and branches bending in the gentle push of the breeze. The roofs of the houses below and from the short distance are already visible. Up there, the sky appears like a vast carpet of sky blue and gray stretching from the East to the West, where the fabric is littered with patches of nimbus and cumulus rolling in extreme slow motion.

Just outside the window in the ledges, I hung the towels that we used last night after taking a short dip in a swimming pool in a resort a few kilometers off from this rented apartment room. Apparently, the mighty sun is coward enough to hide behind the skirt of clouds suspended in the Eastern horizon lines. It may take another day before the towels dry-up, depending on whether the coming days are warm enough to vaporize their dampness.

I cannot smell a hint of nicotine. For that, I have to draw another stick out of its paper coffin; a white box neatly and tightly embraced by a thin plastic coat with that golden insignia; and I have to burn some butane from that cheap synthetic lighter.

As I exhale the white fumes that found their way in and out of my lungs, the smoke immediately and swiftly rode the mercy of the air sucked into the rotating blades of the small industrial fan that has accompanied us in the dead of rainy nights and in the hottest days of summer. I do not know exactly how to survive the torching afternoons without the assistance of that wind machine, especially at the time when we still rented the elbow-room studio-type apartment that has glass window panes covered almost entirely with street dust. Our place back then was right in front of a concrete road frequented by cars and rugged tricycles that seek to evade the onslaught of heavy traffic. I never knew that this town would have a taste of that during early mornings and sunset. But gazing in hindsight, I do recall now that a lot of it has something to do with the fact that this little municipality short of being a city stands like a small American state minus the towering buildings and the taxicabs; this place is a melting pot of different cultures. People of shapes and sizes from across the country flock here for one reason or another. "Mula Aparri hanggang Jolo," as a popular noontime anthem would have it, which was later on revised into "mula Batanes hanggang Jolo" for geographical accuracy. Interestingly, we also have Koreans here, even people from India, either as IRRI researchers or lending investors typically labeled as "bumbay," turban in the head and five-six in mind.

But going back, there are two plastic bags filled with used clothes sitting on top of the soft cushion of the wooden rectangular chest-slash-chair. The first bag, the one with the yellow and red stripes, has all the shirts and shorts inside it. The second bag, white and more compact than the other, contains a mix of jeans and more shirts. With two bags for a full week's worth of laundry ready to be taken to the nearest laundry shop, it's another hundred pesos or so down the drain for us. Ah, the price we have to pay, literally, for not having enough space to hang newly washed clothes.

Across from where I am sitting, behind me, the Squier Bulletstrat is waiting to be fiddled by my fingers once more. Beside it, the old blue electric guitar is resting its neck near the corner of the wall. I haven't played the latter for a few weeks now. After the time we dropped-by at Yupangco and left for home with a huge but slim carton box, I knew things would have to change. There's a new ax in town, and it has three single coil pickups in its arsenal. It's my weapon of choice thus far.

Which reminds me of the CDs I have in my possession. Quite a large number of them are music CDs, or audio CDs, ripped from other albums or bought at the nearest pirate center. For fifty bucks or so, I was able to purchase rare finds, records that are nowhere to be found in any of the authentic and capitalist music stores here. Damn the buggers, the filthy corporate agenda. Here's something cheap and I'm going to stack my library with loads of it before the authorities track the ubiquitous scent of pirated copies sold along the sidewalks. As of this writing, my collection of pirated CDs retailed by our generous Muslims brothers and sisters are close to a foot high when piled on top of one another. I am planning to make a ziggurat of it. It's entirely enticing it's ridiculous.

Observations

noreply@blogger.com (SPLICE) — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 10:12:00 +0000

My eyes stare beyond the open windows, penetrating through the thin screen of smoke from the cigarette. They gaze at the dark horizon ahead, from where the clouds are hardly visible as they blend with the sky at dusk. Tiny specks of light, like distant dots that shine in the gloomy background, afford my vision a fleeting perspective of that far shore. I sit on an iron chair with a pad that's barely enough to comfort my ass, and I listen inattentively to the melody bursting out of the computer speakers. The most that I can hear is the squeeling of the electric fan that's blowing its winds to where my better half is sleeping.

Every now and then, engine roars from the passing cars below the narrow street mingle with the audible noises in the room. I can hear a few chatters of idle bystanders and indistinct voices of busy passersby. There's only the laptop's monitor to illuminate this room of five square meters, apart from the light from the street lamps finding their way across the room until they hit the wall three meters to my right, revealing a small fraction of the clothes lined in the rack.

I feel the tip of my nose with my left hand, letting my thumb and index fingers run up and down its bridge, skating on that piece of skin daubed with grease from the humidity of the late afternoon. Slowly, I reach towards the ash tray and extinguish the dying flame that's scarcely burning near the filter of that stuff they say is dangerous to your health. It must be since it kills. And then I light another stick. If there's anything in this world that's out to punctuate my twenty-one years, it might be this aggregate of paper, tobacco and filter rolled into one.

I need a good cup of caffeine right now. So I stand up and fix myself a warm serving of coffee. There are no servants here. I—we—do things my—our—way. Three teaspoons of that substance infamous for causing diabetes. Two teaspoons of arabica. And four teaspoons of that milk known for being the brand of bears. Quite an odd mix I must say. But I reboil the water first with the help of RC—rice cooker—we bought a few months back with our meager pay. It's state-of-the-art. It has one red light that indicates when it is still heating the liquid inside. It has another LED, this time an orange one which brightens when the water is already boiling. It has plastic handles on opposite sides, like a small pair of genetically altered wings that are incapable of flight. RC sits proudly atop a carton cube near the power outlet. We stick its tail inside the outlet every time we need to drink a cup or two of coffee.

The square digital clock, small enough to fit my pocket—but my boxer shorts doesn't have any—reminds me about the time. 6:38. Some scientists say space and time are one and the same thing, that's why some wise-guys call it the space-time continuum. They're inseparable, like two sides of the same coin. You can't separate the two. I can't. Can you?

And then the water boils. I can see the steam squeezing its way out of RC's little hole, climbing upwards the ceiling until it has nowhere else to go but sideways to the exit window.

I pour the hot liquid into the mug, watch it mix and unify with the three powders on top of one another, and return from whence I came. This time around I switch the light on. Yellow light emanate from the bulb hidden inside the circular paper frame of the lamp hanging on the vertical wood that divides the large window into two sections. I take a virgin sip from the mouth of the porcelain and feel the warmth of the creamy concoction diffuse through my belly from my neck. And then, after picking it up from the tray, I smoke the cigarette that has almost burned itself whole.

I stood up, cigarette in hand and mug on the other. I took a short foot sojourn to the ledges from where the window offered the largest opening in all of the concrete walls. The view from the third floor is stunning; I can see the trees from a mile, blackened by the shadows of this humid Saturday evening. From where I was, the roof of the house below looked like a big jigsaw piece, partly completing the whole puzzle of rusty roofs that stretch to as far as a few hundred meters visible in broad daylight. But tonight, this one is the biggest isolated piece I can gaze at. The view is stunning in its untarnished simplicity.

I took the last puff. I grab the cigarette by its butt with my right hand and threw it spinning into the air, whirling aimlessly in the vastness of the space before me. Then it landed on the roof below, scattering the little fire it has left into tiny fragments of red spark. And then it died. It disappeared into the black of the night like all the rest of the people traipsing the little pavement that stretch out further into the darkness ahead where more houses hid themselves.

Another thirty minutes spent in one of the shortest trips in this world.

The Princess in the Stars

noreply@blogger.com (SPLICE) — Fri, 11 Jul 2008 22:43:00 +0000

Tonyo had to do it. He was a father first and last, and none of the depths of his understanding of the law can stand between him and justice now. Gun in hand and heart in mind, he stormed through the front door of the business tycoon's office, wielded the .45 caliber pistol with his right hand, veins throbbing like mad, pointed it to the man sitting behind the wooden desk, and may God have mercy on his soul.

Business is business.

Later in the evening news:

Shipping Company owner shot in the head, death linked to sea tragedy. Suspect is still at-large.

Sitting on the Mahogany chair facing the front lawn of the mansion, his hands were trembling yet no tears were to be found strolling down on his cheeks. Eyes fixed on the orchids that stood before him from a few meters while staring right through them as if searching for something, moonlight revealed his face from the corner of his eyes down to his scarred chin. The light afforded a glimpse of the inner part of what appeared to be an old Spanish house big enough for a family of three, which has become a family of two barely three weeks ago. It was midnight and the breeze from the west seemed to his skin like frigid breathes of air from some distant polar region. The walls from the inside of the house were elaborated by certificates from law school and legal conferences from abroad. Paintings of Malang and Amorsolo shared that vast space of concrete separating the sala from the dining area, a wall that stretched into the darkness that led to the veranda at the back.

Tonyo was fifty and he lost his only daughter on the ship that sank on that typhoon-ravaged morning somewhere in the waters of Romblon. At the back of his mind, all he could think of in the past few days were the savagery of nature and how his frail daughter had to endure the tempest and its onslaught. She was young, barely seventeen, and had a bright future ahead of her. She was Tonyo's only legacy in this world, and after fate took its toll he could hardly imagine what awaited him in the coming days. What was clear to him like crystal, though, was the fate that awaited him for the next hour. For now, his only companions were a bottle of liquor and his pistol resting by his side. His wife, Ramona, was asleep when he left, and was still asleep when he came back. Eight long hours, he mumbled, eight hours between this old house and that wooden desk.

He stood from where he sat, hands still trembling from the tightening clench of the fists, and fixed himself a shot of rhum. Every sip of the liquid seemed to burn his throat, drawing a grimace on his face that partially revealed the wrinkles on his forehead. What with all those years spent on studying and practicing corporate law, defending the company that served as his only client for more than half of all those years, close to three decades. Bottle in one hand and glass on the other, Tonyo turned around and glimpsed at the wall as far as the illumination from the moon could provide. Parchments laminated on wood and glass thrive in that part of the house.

The Naval Industry and the Law: The Antonio dela Cruz Seminar Series...

This Certificate of Recognition is hereby awarded to Antonio dela Cruz for his 20 years of commitment to work and for sharing his talent with Suplico Shipping Lines...

For his dedication to serve the company in the past 10 years, Suplico Shipping Lines hereby awards this Plaque of Appreciation to Antonio dela Cruz...

And somewhere along those hanged merits a lone medal clung desperately to a nail. It was Francine's. Her talent for the visual arts earned her several other awards during her early highschool days, and there in Cebu she received a study grant to pursue her interests in a world that only a few are able to comprehend and relate to. Like Malang. Like Amorsolo. Both Antonio and Ramona were hesitant at first to send her off to a distant school, especially because Francine was their only child, more so because she was often sick. But as things turned out, not even the legal prowess of Tonyo could prevent her from fulfilling her inclinations. She was a child who was passionate about the arts. A year before Francine first left home to travel to her school in Cebu, she only had one thing to say to her father. "Pa, I'll be coming home anyway, so don't waste those tears."

She'll be coming home. And I won't waste my tears, Tonyo recalled in hindsight as he poured another shot of rhum in his glass, hands still shaking. In all those years that her daughter was away, he feared for her life. But now that the sea has taken her away for the rest of his life, he feared for her death.

Tonyo had to do it. He knew the ways of the company more than anybody else who worked there. He knew by instinct and by experience that Suplico Shipping Lines would do the same thing to her daughter as the company did to its victims in the past. Many times in courtrooms he drew the lines between what is legal from what is just, ably defending the company from the cases the relatives of the dead filed against Suplico's company. In all those years, the strings of maritime mishaps that blotted the maritime records of the company were purged and cleansed, purified back to life by the concerted legal efforts of Tonyo together with the rest of the company's legal arsenal. For the worse part of its existence, the company had to resort to threat and intimidation when the first sign of defeat is hinted at by Tonyo. He had the gut instinct of a seasoned attorney. He knew what to do and what must be done just so to extend the company's business for the years that lay ahead of it. Tonyo saw how the company ignored the woes of its victims of the past. He perfectly saw how the company mandated each of its worker to prioritize the company's assets and welfare. Besides, it was their company first and last, as they were told.

Roughly ten years ago, he had to stand before court and yet again defend the shipping company from getting sued. In the end, an agreement was made between the company and the victims of the sunken ship. Each benefactor would receive a handsome pay of two hundred thousand pesos after signing a piece of paper. That was the last time he did. Now, he's given up.

He sat back to his Mahogany chair, one of the many furnitures his boss, the company owner, gave him. One can say he sat his ass on the face of his dead boss by literally sitting his rear on the chair, but Tonyo's thoughts were busy ploughing through his array of memories. It appeared to him at first that Mr. Suplico Guo was a fine old man going to his eighties. But the first few years of work with Mr. Guo firsthand showed Tonyo that behind those crooked smiles hid a vicious man with an unrelenting thirst for money. Greedy Guo, as he would brand the man for the rest of his legal affiliation with the shipping company in secrecy. Those years would prove to be cunning. Yet he cared less about who the man was. As far as Tonyo was concerned, he knew that in the world that he and Mr. Guo shared, business was business, business is business, and business will always be business. Tonyo poured another glass of rhum and glanced at the Mahogany table with intricate carvings of ships and ocean waves that his boss gave him just last Christmas party at the office. This and all the rest of the furnitures handed to him made his mind rebel from the wanton obscenity of Mr. Guo to fiddle with lives so long as his bank accounts were well-fed.

Tonyo stood up, eyes clear of tears but vision murky, his hands trembling no more but his body swerving a bit from the alcohol. Tonyo knew he had to do it, too. He cared for his daughter more than his life, and he won't shed a tear. She'll be coming home anyway, he thought. He reached for his pistol, went towards the orchids basking under the flood of moonlight falling from the skies, and stared towards the paintings in the room. From a distance, he saw how Malang seemed like Amorsolo and how Amorsolo seemed like Malang. He saw how his proofs of excellence seemed like the lone medal, and how the lone medal seemed like the countless number of parchments suspended in that room of part-darkness and part-moonlight. The mansion that seemed like an old Spanish house from the view from the winding roads below the hill, where a few orchids stood atop like proud soliders at the end of a war, was empty except for one soul lost in dreams and another soul outside lost in reality.

Somewhere in the distance Tonyo heard the faint echoes of sirens filling the silence that enveloped his surroundings.

He thought how Mr. Guo might be enjoying a festive rest inside a wooden box now. He thought of Ramona, of how she had to endure a monumental loss barely three weeks ago. And he thought of Francine. He thought of how her body might still be floating, wandering aimlessly in some obscure part of the waters of Romblon, waiting for time and serendipity to find her lifeless flesh.

Tonyo had to do it. He pointed his gun below his jaw and soon a disrupting sound bounced through the walls of the house, across the darkness that consumed the sala towards the room where a soul lost in dreams awoke into what is to become a nightmare. Ramona rushed outside, only a few seconds before the sirens sounded closer, close enough that the red and blue lights that flickered from the hood of the cars lighted up the place. The orchids were now drenched with blood as if they were watered down with a substance from Mars. There in that lawn where a soldier of the law lay in repose, where the orchids stood above the fallen body like a small crowd of infants, the stars revealed themselves and their light for the first time in the night sky.