The Seasonal Greeting

In afternoons to evenings my grandmother, Laling, seats at the balcony of our abode with her fan swaying hither and thither, issuing a throb of wind towards the bunch of flies, dodging every saber-like approach of her lame foot; leaning with her back crunching as the very weaker parts touched the fiery wall of her ancestral mono-block. The sides of her face were dappled with curves and veins like of a web; her cheeks moved on a circular motion as if chewing meat of an elder venison. Smoke soon float on her face as she open her mouth with a cigarette clinging at the side of her lips as if an elephant nostril was mounted on it. One thing amazed me that time, when I perceived that the smoke secretion was slowly diminished from her mouth as if quickly extinguished, and soon the trick was revealed: I noticed the butt of the cigar lay outward, and the remnants from the kindled part was actually in her mouth. That gave me the will of concern to ask:

“Tiyang, aren’t you hurt with the burning in your mouth?”

“Not at all, child,” she said.

With that inquiry, thoughts of her past I mused, labored every piece of recount from our relatives of her life as a youngster, and pursue the questionings one from the other.

“Since when the Japanese occupied your place?” I asked.

“Why you ask?”

“Many fails to touch this concern on your life; I still wonder what’s life back there through your goings.”

“Never in this sweet cigar I taste with thoughts of the past in me; I only recall the time when me and Conching constrained to taste our own dung out of curiosity.”

As she blurted the last few words, I had seen a drop of smile occupied her parting lips, made an essence like of a dean to her novice. She slid her arm on her winter gown, furred with hair-like blemishes as though bleached superfluously; her arms were clinging with excessive skin a person gets from aging. The fan on her arm continued to sway in irregularity while her eyes were fixed on above sky. She lit the cigar with competence, and swiftly turned it backwards toward her mouth; smoke soon came out from her mouth like of a dancing viper.

The air of the afternoon came as a breeze blended with the smoke, creating aspirations of knowing what is beneath the disadvantage of making smoking a habit; of what the lungs endure on every sip of caffeine and nicotine that sooth the unknown feeling of the chest, while trembling during the act of inhaling the spontaneous provocation of illness. Her earnest voice broke my reverie:

“Rice was always a big deal in our times,” she said, “especially when our mother waits every night to check our earnings from selling lotto tickets; I remember a time when me and Conching decided to check out the theatre house to see a play of our pondered actor, disregarding the anger our mother might assert - and we went on without thinking, handed our whole-day earnings on the theater attendant, and enjoyed the rest of the show,” Tiyang paused for a second, smiling on her details, then went on, “when a hand from the dark took a grasp upon my hair while Conching on her bicep, and in one moment, mother took shape, dragging us out of the theater house, marveling foul words, but to both of us, still muttering words of escape.”

The clock struck with a resonant tone, proclaiming the hour of three, pushing our conversation to its anticipated end; but to Tiyang, the hours were like a mere sand of life, slowly pulling her soul out of her, towards the abyss of her losing senses. Her mere countenance seemed inordinate on the way she looks at life, not concerning the danger of the continuance on the usage of the thwarted habit. Her form of quaint acceptance towards the approaching dawn on her life conceived the frightened being that hid itself beyond Tiyang’s sanity. Moments of her leaving every quarter of the month made me eliminate every possible future of her not going back at us, until an unexpected day of her arrival with a handful of hardened bread hid inside her bag of insurance, remained as the seasonal greeting every month.

“What happened next?” I asked, “I suppose your mother really had a hard time on both you.”

“Hard time indeed, son” she paused for a cough, then said, “we received a well-measured hit of mother’s stick: from head to foot we’ve had had our sweet hit; the ironic thing was the smile on Conching’s face and a muttering laugh coming from my bleeding lips, as if inviting more of the stick, regardless on how it can be fatal as it break our mild, young skin into blisters and scars at the last assault of it - that made a cleft on my lip’s upper part”:

Tiyang had shown the crevice that now recede at the back butt of the cigar conceiving the thoughts of the past grieving, and then marveled an impetuous account of the next scene from the latter:

“Mother took us the next day at the fort of the narrow-eyed soldiers, urging Conching to do the household chores while I get rid of the wasps with the torch. Sipping cups of coffee, bearded men were leaning at their own tables as if revitalized and became crude on the situation they had incited. I was sweeping the smote flies towards the door, when one of the bearded men approached me: ‘Are these all dead, servant?’ I did not answer; the question seemed prolonged in my head. ‘Deafening question, huh?’ One of the wasps started to quiver; the throbbing of my heart became a fiery around my temple; my nerves began to palpitate; my eyes were dreary. An approaching boot was seen at the side of my left eye, as though addressed for a servant; blinking was a form of escape, as I mind of my job in the room as an imbecile doings.”

“…and, the wasp?” I asked.

“Let me tell you this, son: life, in many ways, is a journey either on hell or Eden; it’s just a matter of optimism that we consider the path we’re heading to. At that time when one of the wasps moved, I assumed already the end of me in that room; but my first concern was Conching, feeling safe at the hearth, loading the piles of wood in the fireplace as though the light intricate the wasps to appear.”

“But wasps are intuitive, not minding the steps they’re taking.”

“Well, that’s the point. I’m on that peril situation because the wasps invaded the room of those narrow-eyed; I’ve chosen to accept the job with a personal reason in mind: I hate wasp, they sting me for no reason, as if I’ve had left an important gratuity for them; I hate dealing business with them, they always get me into trouble.”

The cigar on Tiyang’s mouth transfigured in the form of a crumpled pipe, withered by inhalation, with the remnants still intact, promoting solidarity as a way of prolonging its stay on the body of the main constitute. Tiyang soon took the cigar out of her mouth, kindled it, and then returned it in its own place. She stood for a moment, made a stretching activity, and then sat once more at her mono-block.

The newly-born smoke flew at my face with freshness, as if crawled from the Atlantic air, accumulated the cold sting, leaving my nose on a craving duty. My view became misty through the growth of the incongruous heaviness of the secretion of the smoke, resulting to Tiyang’s feature of a woman facing the afternoon hue with dust mites scattered. Her eyes moistened with tears, with a peculiar smile appended on it.

“Wasps are really good stingers, can’t imagine them pushing they’re needles –“

“Don’t imagine, son!” she said impetuously, “the wasps I mentioned moving had its over-dues after receiving the boot from that narrow-eyed. Wasps, son, are intuitive indeed, but the move the man enacted doesn’t really had any excuses in any way to be permissible upon a living thing; wasps’ default mind have their ’sting-at-all-times-or-be-eaten’ scheme; where did they get that? I don’t know, but I assume you, our Creator really have had a purpose of mounting every moving elements their weapon of survival: us, arms, feet, and teeth; them, wings, and butt-needles. Those bites that I’ve had were the wasps’ completion of their aspired sweet treats: as a supposition, perceived as their first and probably, their last, grabbed it without minding a thing; approached their death like ephemeral creatures - and I’m quite happy as a vessel for them.”

Tiyang’s optimistic views nurtured and lofted the young mind in me, etched a gullible approached on every critical proposition of men and deference of argumentation; embrace them as form of teachings; relieve them from personal prejudices; treat as cultured-precious pearls; blackened as the acceptance was established. Every piece of her word clinging on her sentences appeared to be needles of the cerebra: every poke an idea comes out; disregard the questioned views - stapled as requisites.

“Wasps are really cultivated creatures; narrow-eyed men are such fierce creatures: participating in the war of the worlds, pushing their believes in the extended place an average man can’t possibly understand.”

“But they’re lucky people, with the strength of their country wall at their back, supporting them against the fiends of their own kind;” Tiyang, pallid and sweaty, continued, “my brothers, sons, and daughters are the ones who had the taste of the war, claimed their lives one by one by hunger and sickness, with their stomach calling for a feed.”

Tiyang slowly had her tears, moistened her dry, wrinkled facial, took out her cigar, compelled the butt into the ashtray.

Never, even once, that I have seen Tiyang cry of any reason. I grew up knowing that she is a person of stout movement; that crying is the last option she could take in times of her life at stake. In her very weakness, I had seen a normal grandparent, swaying her old-aged fan, while cherishing her cherry cigar clinging upon her mouth, while getting rid of the flies in the afternoon air of her passing time. An average life, indeed.

“I feel sorry for being insistent,” I said.

“No. It’s just me, son, who couldn’t take the pile of the past out of me. They always chase me even in my sleep. I was caught between the world of the dead and the living.”

“It’s time for you to disregard the things of the past; you don’t have any fault of whatsoever, in the conclusion of their dear lives, you've had become a great daughter, sister, mother, and grandmother with the people you love. Hence, there’s nothing to cry about. You’ve been good.”

With the words I had spoken, she never realized how eager I am to fill the void conception within her. She never had an illustrious life: from her sister, to us, an equivocal affiliation, she was proud as a part, which could never be replaced with her past lifestream. The dedication she had shown through the decades laid as a service to us, was for her could only be repaid with a good treatment, which I am certain we had given her.

The afternoon light became a steadfast revolution as the replacement of the above sky from azure-fine day, to a vesper-specked night was such a beauty in the eyes of an spectator; never deemed by any one of any mortification of the momentum mirth built from a conversation under the afternoon sun. The smoke from a lighted cigar would not be visible against this rare beauty of nature; but the permeability of the latter was not the gravity feature, the taste and appeal on the nostril of the fine mist were the paid attributes of the forbaded stick: the pod that carried the mood at its exploration.

At the last moment on the remains of the daylight, a figure was formed seating with its back stretched against the bamboo chair at the balcony of our renovated home, waving its hand good-bye, while slowly prevailing towards the northern light.

Mama soon came out of the front door.

“Place this candle on the grotto; it’s your Tiyang’s third-death anniversary.”

The Death of Mr. Townsend

Charley felt uneasy when he woke up two-forty-six in the morning in vain condition, “What happened to me last night? My head hurts.” He slightly bent his robust shoulders to have a good stretch when he noticed bloated patches of nerves scattered all over his arms. “Am I drunk last night?” he murmured while striving to gather himself up to prepare for work. A stench of rotting meat filled his nostrils that almost made him blow his throat out - realizing how he cleaned his fridge last Tuesday, got rid of anything that might cause an unpleasant smell for he had - usually - difficulties of eying every day his things because of his bread-and-butter needed a full-time effort to be maintained. He was a computer programmer: almost consumed everyday by stress, fatigue, and the clamor that he nightly obtain through the answering machine: “Hey Mr. Charley, just wanna remind you that Fran, you’re little girl, has a camping tomorrow; don’t fool me with your naive alibis, cut it out!” Sophia, his ex-wife, regularly called him every night to fetch the financial support of her daughter as they both decided to part ways behind the reason of immaturity.

Charley left his bed for a good sip of coffee when the pendulum of his clock abruptly stop from its usual swinging, and fell on the ground that made a resounding thump as it hit the placid floor. “That’s weird,” he said. He stepped out of his bedroom and probed his box-like apartment in search of the light switch. As soon as he reached the living room, he noticed that his eyeglasses were left beside his lampshade stand, so he ran back for them. Upon reaching the room, he had seen his glasses were deteriorated: the rim was bent in an unusual way that it was hard to be recognized as it was; the glass parts were scattered all over on the lampshade table, and some of it were missing. "Am I really drunk last night?” he muttered, “I can’t remember a thing." He reached the phone and dialed the number of his office mate, Lisa, to ask what happened to him the night he got home as it struck his mind that they were together until dawn. The moment he raised the mobile console and reached his ear, he noticed that the line was cut. The stench of rotten meat got enough of him. He threw the mobile console straight to the mirror, and the scattered pieces of the latter broke into his face that made him crumble on the floor, “What in the world is happening!”

Outside his apartment, sounds of different variety filled the entire vicinity, and lingered to his aching head that caused a poignant attack that made him thump his head on the floor a dozen times that open-up a swelling on his forehead, with blood pouring down on the floor - he stopped. He managed to stand up and continued his pursuit to the missing light switch that seemed to be allocated by such entity for he knew the exact location of its position even with the lights off, but then, looking the whereabouts of it. He continued the probing that he started to get bored of, and unlike his pursuit to the missing switch, he doesn’t have any aim in mind while he probe the place. It seemed that he was walking at the longest road of his faith; and the stench had clearly consumed his whole sanity that he started to see a kind of reverie that laid him a lot of trouble through walking. His surroundings swirled with mists all over, creating a cyclone-cone view with all the objects spinning around as if a storm rummaging the room; it made a transfiguring state with every piece, changing the atmosphere to a form of eerie schism. He stumbled several times to flower vases, and other mud pots of the room. “This looks so real,” he said. When he reached the end of the ravine, he saw a cliff with grasses spreading the platform across the other end; marching fawns filled his eyes with specks of blood from a certitude spot, moved his view to the matter where the blood spots were formed; and at the middle of it, a man wearing a specified trouser for officers; his polo-shirt was shred on the collar part as if shrewd by a clawed vermin; the man’s tie was oddly wrapped around the pulse, changing the color of the arm to a russet-clot patch, allowing the veins to be malignant, down to the nails with formed blood by the pressure of the knotted swelling - hanging to a tree-branch with a rope gripped on his neck. He seemed to be alive at that moment for he was still wiggling that made the stems to crack and the leaves to fall. As he planned to get near on the man, he was struck by an imperturbable feeling that kept him from walking. He knelt down on the dry ground and smiled on what he witnessed. He seemed to recognize who the man was and doesn’t bother to be alarmed on the man’s current state of torment.

The scenarios that he had been through drifted slowly around him; wrest everything within his eyes could reach: the dry ground shone up to its peak; the ravine was contracted as one huge rock formation and transformed into a big chest-like furniture, later recognized as a monster-like closet for its antiquity. He gathered himself up planning to probe the new place he was currently into. Upon reaching his level of stance, he noticed a bed - a master one - filled with blood down from its bed sheet up on its poles. He saw a foot swung against the beams of the bed and made a resounding noise when it dropped on the floor. The resiliency of the stench filled the room and shown its fierceness that plagued a struggle on his breathing - almost knock him down. He crawled towards the foot and saw some blood on the carpet where the foot was laid down. His breathing became more difficult while he slowly approach the foot for he found that the rotting stench was coming from it. When he had seen the rest of the body parts through the spectacle crowded with blood-feasted worms and stuffed flies circling around the corpse, a reel of flashback plagued his thoughts, continued to linger for eternity.

“Luis, you’re fired! You dumped all the resources of the company!”

“You dope, fat-ass moron! Fire me, and I’ll kill you!”

The Edifice

The day was pale, same as the darkness encompasses every inch of the remnant of a passed morning. The hue faded into spot of orbs that cradled the battalion of gnat that aggravates the placid pavement of an average one. The time of waiting amid the worldview won’t fix any trial that shook one’s faith to the pointed end of an hill edge. The waiting might be over, created a hope through an hour of waiting for the light to appear - supine bodies encircled the withered grasses to promote a solemn truth. Now that the descending hours were proclaimed and served as a primer of the mourning, let the abomination proceed.

He measured the underpass of the blue manor, trying to fit in through a beaten hole; curtailed by everything he had passed through - sharpened ends of shred planks; nail-like stones withstand everything with a pitch dark aura of the tube place.

The other end concealed by heights of the surrounding wall revealed a spectacle that pursued amazement and nausea. Poles, rolled with pointed chicken wires brightened the surroundings through the dresses hanging were of greens and oranges. The sky and wind conspired that made his breathing more profound and steady.

He made a crunching sound because of the bushes and trunks were scattered all over; yawning of a cat made him startle as he walked stealthily through a beaten path that was headed to uncertainty with scarcity of light source. The moon was at its dimness form; clouds were everywhere like ashes into solid form.

The place he was into occurred in the late era of his ancestral domain - rumored to be owned by him some time until it was taken by the English Monarchs, oppressed his race, and expatriated to some part of Asia, and the whereabouts of them was still unknown to him. Thunders came in series of cat-calls, bushes were twirling as if dancing in the air as the wind as its partner. “Storm’s comin’,” he murmured. Flashes of light filled the above sight, creating images that evoked visions to his mind.

As he advanced over a wooden fence, screeching of some parts of the house could be heard: windows banging, door’s grunting sound.

The beaten path to where he was glancing was emblazoned with bushes, dimmed by the nocturnal parades happened were of patched-plum like of a thin-haired pillars; touching of it would enact considerable forms of anxiety with great thoughts aggravated. The sand - with rubble all over - was hard to step into for he was just wearing a sandal-like footwear of strings and wood mounted. Patches of blood were dripping from his wounds, procuring mud that could wear-off tissues as healthy ones - for the irons scathed them. A piece of shroud was lying on the steps as he had seen it through keen blinking. The steps of the front door bore a carpet-like covering for its furs were considerably blemished with thorns of nylon-dried threading.

The knob, as he approached it, shone through the moonlight of the evening, aligned directly to the moon from the knob itself; the threshold made from wood carried the rigid wall that support the upper and the lower integrals of the abode; the knob, as it constitute to the structure of the door looked auspicious for the engravings of the wooden part of the latter promulgate the intrinsic property of a genuine, Asian type of home: amulets, alibata scriptures, ying-yang stamps, Chinese formulas that made it stand among the houses of pale features.

He marveled on the instincts that played his mind, suggesting a command of entering the house without proper probing around its vicinity, which was classified unethical in his principle. Starting at the rooftop, he glanced to it with grief of not witnessing its glory days, giving him affirmations in his visions of how it looks like before the intrusion of the monarchs. The alignment of the parquets as the components of the roof were characterized with horizontally placed positioning; encrypted with alpha-shaped letters written on parchments and attached in the very block of the parquet.

“I believe in the markings of great purpose," he murmured.

The adversity of climbing to it was seen as a challenge; completing it without touching the palpable exteriors of the house was a trick to be taken as regardless completion, making it a quiet clamor of aspiration. To reach the peak of the abode without rendering devastating steps of stratagem was the main category of the problem, seeing the much quivering steps to take when arms were clasped in the very weak parts of the said edifice. The night continued to showcase its peril atrocities: pitch-dark image, shivering cold dusk, stale air streaming. Moments of silence preceded the features that made his decisions more of a reverie; murmurs from all corners of his mind started to flourish, blurring the needed thought as an oasis encapsulated by a sandstorm.

“Drew back, mister.”

“Non-sense of continuing.”

“Mama wants you back.”

“Pick-prick-trick-thick. “

He followed the voices within as it controlled the buttons and levers of his frail mental state. The blood rushing through the healthy neurons were slowly hindered by the thoughts of unseen beings; the stark of breathing was established, came in consecutives for him to fall in the dry pavement, face first. Losing of conscience was at stake, endeavored to be parted by the visions of an unknown place: it was characterized with eaves of low heights; chairs were scattered with broken foot one by one; the floor was carpeted with Arabic notes and other dialects that was unknown to his knowledge. His hearing was devoured by mute thumps like a head continuously struck at the temple.

The scenery reproached his eyes with the rustic wash of the walls; the bulbs mounted near the eaves were tinted of green and blue, sparking as if the connection wires were rat-eaten; tables, along with the deteriorated chairs, were trimmed to perfect cylindrical shape showing the middle hole of it as the main attraction, as if finished with a poke of a sharpened lance. The columns that support the lower parcel of the edifice were breaking on every attempt of him to stand and establish a well-balanced stance.

“A place for praying purpose,” he thought.

As he resort for the last option, he sat on the carpeted floor while trying to decipher the signs and symbols below his eyes. He had decided to take this position to keep the columns from creaking. His eyes probed the internal quality of the room, seeing a couple of altars stood solid against the wall of rustic features, he be-lowered his eyelids to keenly observe the objects and assessed its place as a tabernacle: the mattresses piled were of brown complexion, as if kindled in the fireplace and placed again for certain purpose; a wand-like rod stood at both sides with woody features, golden strings rounded to cover it wholly; the cross on the center was crowded with withered flowers apt to be disposed.

Seeing this spectacle of solemnity, he slowly rise from seating and groped from his pocket a piece of stone he got on the road while trudging towards the place. He aimed and threw it to one of the columns at his right to check its stability. It made no sound of affirmation by its weakness, though the exterior of it was softened by termites and moisture and other kinds of wood antagonist. The column started to secrete battalions of termite through the hole he made of the throw.

“Pick, pack, pow,” he murmured.

The support of the first level started to give in for the dust above begun to fall like of a snowdrop alighting down on the grey meadows; the nails were trembling as a sign of frailty, that made him crawl in a wandering movement. The creaking sound made a resonance into his mind - a feverish piece of the soul.

The movement of crawling from every signs and symbols of the carpeted floor, corner after corner, supine like a blind - met by a bestial figure: it had eyes of grief, nose of a parson, mouth of an ogre. Behind this, a rectangular hole was seen.

“By gawd!” he exclaimed.

The loud crash soon preceded, flooded his ears and clouds of dust on his eyes that resulted his body to rummage in the pitch dark hole he fitted into.

A lump of numbness was felt by his hand as he discovered it on his head; blood trickling down on his face full of scratches and dusts out of the wooden pillars. His body was quivering: every muscle suffered torn ligaments, leaving his soul unscathed. Voices from the dark, he heard:

“Leave it be.”

“Stars aren’t here.”

“In vitam eternam.”

Fatigue wholly occupied his bodily spirit, clearing his mind from the voices that aggravated his lucid sanity. His eyes began to blur, preceded by series of blinking that ended to a swoon of rest.

Falling grits were seen in the corner of his mind, uncertain if genuine or out of reverie. The scent of jasmine awaken his spirit, transferring his view of the room to its original position. The bricks and pieces of plank blocked the now square-like hole, causing him to agitate in a state of ferocity. His eyes were flooded with tears from the irritation by the wood husks of the crash. The possibility of assessing the room’s current state was blurred by the russet hue-fog of the bricks, made him hanker for the view of the altars.

He was confronted by the concern he had towards the altars, consecrating his mind hastily, unearthed his thoughts of concubines, wives, sons, and daughters. His part commissions of various immoralities were lifted body, parading within his thoughts, streaming along positive mirages. The secretion trial of his past, mournful state paused in points of gravity events, made him shiver with dripping perspiration running down from his temple; the side of his leg quiver; thoughts of anointing liquid from cup to cup made his body lay on the ground askance.

The light as it occupied the hole revealed inscriptions of different dialects; symbols from the bottom as he looked at it, traced by his eyes upward, revealed a dot of light, but looked far; he couldn’t reach. His breathing changed into impulses as he inhaled ashes of the russet bricks. Moments of touching the sides of the hole, he felt some watery substances in one of the sides, groped in the fist-size hole, and a stream of heavy water soon flooded his space. A grotesque feeling of dying struck his plan of escaping, concluding the mutilation of the subterfuge, “all hope is gone.”

The stream of heaviness - accompanied by excrement, scum, clothes patched with blood, girdles full of stabbed-like holes - hasten the rise of water by centimeters to meters, transformed the dot-like hole to a volcanic-size cylinder. A spark of bliss strangled the curled veins of his mind, through the hope seen on the view of the light source; preceded by muttering of novenas, peculiar voices, sermons from preachers to priests, and voices of distinguished accent as if his father and another man on a conversation:

“The beauty of our family was consumed by the berserk anger of the Golden Arbiters, judged the center of our chastity; strangled each of our women; forked the very heads of our ancestors; making jokes of claiming kinship to us; smothered the breasts of my wife until sliced in half in honor of their ruler; tied the old ones in the poles of their ship, with cloisters of crabs, left to meander amid the waves of the ocean, as if heading in some part of Asia, as though the wind as the appointed captain.”

The clear vision of the scenery was concealed in the eyes of the bearer, asserted the heavy gratuitous escape through the grasses of plum-like pillars, amid the poles with rounded chicken wires, along with dresses hanging were of greens and oranges.

Emancipation of Minerva

Creed and faith would consume a man of no value

With grievances of a feeling, and the strange sight of one –

Make believes and crimson volleys,

Would catapult the desired dignified fate of a one;

With a single grunt, would reveal a man

Who was destined to thrive.”

The planet obtrudes the boulders

With a single notion in mind,

That the Kaiser would be persecuted

Caused by a crime of making maidens palpable –

Lest of being oriented as a clergyman.

Heather once approach a nun,

Who points out the difference of make believes from the believers,

Which was oriented by the former that greatly manifested

The truancy of defeat for none.

Met by the temperament of Gods through dignified truth,

The planet pursue her cravings of the being

Who alighted her from the premises –

Which the spectacle between her and the Kaiser collide.

The being flew to the auroras; to the matters of whirling light

At the side of whining souls; to the hands

Of the admonishing flare – asunder to the planet,

Which forms inscribed the marveled truth.

The Kaiser rolled the wings of possible options: that he could

Mortify the planet’s well-being, with a clinched truth in hand,

Aimed the absolution of the Gods.

Noonan's Den

The tower of the magnificent one prospered,

Filled with youngsters – fourteen or seventeen;

Searching lights were fastened into places;

The admonishment to Mr. Noonan does quite persist.

Where the young ones were inhabited

Comes along with shackled chain with gruesome bolts.

Those who were characterized of vanity

Should be spurn out to a hell of den.

Trained by honour with a pinch of reluctant faith,

These children of tomorrow should never be expected to come home.

Rather to be persuaded by authority – pursuit Mr. Noonan sprinted to his suit,

To wrest the poor girl with such indignation.

Series of whining would be heard at the strike of dusk,

While dead rhymes of the chains resounding all throughout the dawn.

Should I nag Mr. Noonan for what he had done?

Either be placed on a torment, or be feasted by the maggots of his vengeance.

The creed of mine feuded me in a hell of a time,

Caused by him who hoarded the poor little ones.

I was hankered by such damnation, for which I myself, could never overcome;

Should never I, could ever comply.

Falls of tears flooded Mr. Noonan’s den,

Which came an instance, craved by authorities.

One thing was for sure wished by the children,

That a day would come that they would fledged out of Noonan’s tightened grip.

The Leader's Companionship

Self esteem makes a person believe that he/she is superior among others – leaving the left out ones freezing cold. Ingenious conceit could prevent a man from beginning a well-kept truth about his true vision about life and its whereabouts – seeking for intrinsic psyche that able us to think that living without a guided truth is a possible idea. Look at what the past proven conceptions did for those who patronized it, never include the people beyond our thinking could reach; people plagued by their act of heroism that made them established within their minds that they are apart from the mediocrity of the rabble. Inferiors are once superiors and , through an outrage act, befall – cruising in the mud blood’s pit.

Is serving a man is a deed of nobility? Out of duty? Creating such an ego within leadership, conceiving the ideas of his companions; disregarding the beneficial integrals of its diversity. Don’t block the free-flow of brains among other streams to wash away the aridity of thoughtless self-proclaimed born leaders.

Grieving from the outcome that ends the mirage of dreams, formed through such prejudices, makes one believe and prove that a single mind don’t belong to the naive flow of thinking: thwarting such predecessors and out of indignation, bustling the proposed the idea. The creed of sharing is disregarded in the form of racism; the act of reconsideration is afflicted to noble deeds, lest for having thrown amid the judgmental eyes.

No one can perceive the true aim of such procrastinates for having volunteered themselves of a certain duty, fitted for the unexpected ones – that the heart of spontaneous deeds come from the unexpected; that lucid beings are the normal ones, never the conspicuous’. Are they willing to sacrifice the thrones they’ve thought once theirs? Could it be possible for us to expatriate them towards our class? They are just there, trying to be first class; trying to be one; voluntarily to be one; more than what it takes to be one; succumb in the liquids of desire to be one; but woke up mourning, through such defeat from the unexpected ones.

Believers of them through the crisis of facts could be pursued in the gates of doom. People that share thinking of life without the concerns of their fellows which are all greeted as one; the lefties imagining that their objections would be heard, considered, and classified for a basis of alterations. The proclaimers doesn’t even bothered to be a catalyst of this act – for the sake of being the front liners of limelight.

As long as this routine remains, only the sanctions from the inferiors would be considered as the conceivable truth.

The addressed forms of self-considerate plebeians would reign, not in the manner of good purpose, but for their own way of administering their egos with an ample false praises from the lass and lad of the group, hoping that they will be a predecessor of this crave-for-power attempt.

The boat of persistence shall rise, despite the ones who obtrude and pull it into the mud pit. The concentration of constructing a key for battling out the connivance of the self-proclaims’ deeds for a presumable success shall be halted and suspended while there’s still time for planning reconstruction.

Every motive of them should be considered as a process of daunting the colors of deserving, while lurking in the hoods of knowledge mockery.

In this process lame degradation, superiors must be axioms of great thinking; inherit the benevolence of our Almighty; pull the analogy of it to the inferiors, so the latter would infer a hasten notion of consanguinity. The remnant of this act constitutes to the wholeness of the bestial deeds of the “procas.”

A gnat under a man's corpse

Feel free to fly my friend.

Land down on the nearest thing ahead;

Crack a joint for a good-will stretch.

Wrought the stench’s whereabouts route.



Look through wide spaces; feel free.

Fly around mirages of good looks,

To provoke a spectacle, peril crowd;

Would elapsed a minute to a man on his grave.



No little friend – don’t you be afraid.

Stuck on a loaf of meat? Bet you could come out.

Even if it’s a plank, or an approaching fly net,

Elusive enough is what you are.



Witnessed a crime? Be carried away is prohibited not.

Palpable parts – don’t stand a chance to survive;

Craved clots of blood – don’t be stubborn, accommodate none.

Trickling corpuscles might dried up; guess what, you’ve once stuck into?

Fragments of an Idled Person

Just lie around, don’t come back

Great things might reach, flounder.

Out of what’s in store, be efficient

For what used to be indolent, stand up.



So reluctant, please don’t give up,

Show things that might hold them up, be brave

Expatriate them from their natives, second thoughts

For we believe they can, I know they will.



One mind stands out, please hold back

For sooner or later, the outcome might persist;

The notion would take effect, certain it is

Believe and endear Him, please you should be.



Crave for what they had been, so do I

Sympathize his discoloration, how great he is

For he still lay around for a couple of feuds to come

Now that he is there, waiting for the drawbacks to flood.



His rubbish could unshackle him, I do hope

For the things they’d been through, strive

Would stand up at last, though hopes and dreams – he will

Holding his staunch of faith, I’m certain he would succeed.

Persecution of Minerva

Lights mingled through the auras

Of a formulated mind, ceased to surpass

Passing the predicament of discomfort

There was the planet that lost its turn

As the artillery revolves and mounted

Her feet from the mud blood’s pit.



She ran from nowhere of tomorrow

Only to discover that she was eyed by the Kaiser –

A being that flew at dawn, and eat at dusk

Armed with his robust physique, and set himself off

In pursuit of the planet who welcomed carnal sin.



They came amidst the ravine of faith

Casting different spells that was unable to detest by both,

Created sets of polycarbonate holes

That was promised through soothsays, the doomed lives of the rabble.



Time elapsed its way through eternity,

Accompanied by the music of pianola, perchance?

That could evoke the requiem of mankind

Apt to pursue the human-made barrier that protects

The Kaiser and the planet from their befall.

Circling above them were the blood-feasted souls

Who came despite of Cerberus’ persistent mutilation,

And Mateu’s hypothermal caresses – greeted by the Kaiser

And in a single pretentious shudder, the ferocious souls wept and vanquished in a single blow.



By that time of perilous conflict of the two

Here came another entity, who taunted to end the Kaiser’s lifetime fornication,

and the planet’s carnal.

She who wept through all these was begun to be vulnerable,

proclaimed herself as amiable as a sheep’s wool, though she’s not as silky as it.



Brewed by the scenes of the instances,

The Kaiser managed to flee from such entity,

For he recognized who this was, who bore a golden-gemmed spear,

paired to a velvety-white silk that wrapped the entity’s robust.



As the Kaiser flee from the atrocious being,

The planet was left with it, who stooped in front of the entity,

And blurted the words that she bore a million lightyear from home:

“Carnals consumed my very being, thy wisdom and faith would stay,

apart from its withered cycle.”

The Star Child

I wandered along with my youth, afraid of what might happen when anxiety once again strike me barefooted. So frightened, I insisted to my parents to let me meander outside even at the break of dawn while they’re complaining, “What in the world is running on your mind?” to let such ideas out from my lips. It had been my habit to go out alone after every plate that I’d took and got rid over the sink. So routine that it almost blew my head off from the thought that I was starting to get enlisted to the famous “sloth list” of our Supreme Being. That was the time that I let myself avail the ailments of insomnia; assumptions of it lingered on my mind through the half-years of my pathetic life. I became persistent to my housemates to let me do all the household chores just to give myself a bit of fatigue that I’d thought would help me usher myself to a great rest. But like what I’d expected, nothing turned out to be different. I, who became more vigilante at first, took the sacrificial chair for the bad elements of insomnia to take over my mind and physique.

“Landor, I’ve been thinking an idea of taking you to the county hospital to have a check-up,” mama said, “you seem to be out of shape.”

Since the beginning of this phenomenon in my life, my mother started to get worry on me and for that, she always locked me in my bedroom because of my insistent doings of the chores.

It was 1873, the time when I began the habit of probing some of the remote caves within our county – this could be the worse effect of an insomnia plague. This event of mine quite managed to took off the anxiety that tormented me almost half of my stay here on the pavement; and very soon, it shifted its priorities to my insomnia that seemed to be hard to wear off, but the sooner I’ve thought it was too late for my case, I was wrong. The moment I arrived to my fifth cave of the day, I’d felt a sudden burst of frailty that caused me to get weary from head to toe. It was followed by series of hiccups that before I notice it, my eyes began to emit tears – the reason behind was still unknown to me – I fell on the sandy ground. A dream flooded my subconscious: it felt like I’m on a cruise ship, gasping some fresh air of the night. The cruise ship where I’m embarked was hastily transformed to an – according to what I had seen – a sunken ship filled with treasure chests spilled exurbanite gold nickels that made me blew my preserved breath and caused me to drown a few seconds – then I woke up, gasping stale air from the misty cave.

I gathered myself up – like a person who suddenly woke up in the middle of a Trojan feud – and oriented my eyes on the scenery. My eyes began to blur with dark light which ended up for my feet and hands to act like a blind, rummaging in their own rooms. I slid my hand in my right-inner pocket when I remembered that I brought a lighter with me. I drew it out and tried to ignite the pieces of paper I’d put on a bamboo-like torch. The time I’d spent on this activity made me accommodate another anxious ailments. But the moment I’d felt its ray of agony, I soon knew that it already spared me – like an arbiter to a pauper. The light soon revealed millions of dusty orbs, wandering around like the rabble whose in pursuit of a potential individual. As I was able to convince my feet to run, the chain watch in my pocket bursts an out loud ring that made the hidden bats grew berserk and flew towards me like I was the subject of envy. The fire on my torch abruptly created an outburst of smoldering fire that caused the bats to withdraw their frenzies and retreated from me. I, whose quite shocked on what I’d seen, pivoted on the other way and collected my feet to run. Through the labyrinth-like paths, I’d made quick choices on all of them, and as I’ve peeked to the end of the road, a quick glance of the holes that I’d passed gave me an uncanny feeling and a pinch of nostalgic discomfort. A memory of my mama perceived my thoughts of somebody and managed to enter my impenetrable mind.

“You shouldn’t be here honey,” mama said. The word she had just evoked made a resonance and lingered in my thoughts the whole time of my sprint.

The moment that I was about to reach the end of what I’d thought was a sanctuary, I stumble to some pieces of bones of different parts: came rolling towards my collarbone was a single skull which I’d noticed with its oblique shape and an indefinable structure of its features. It had a narrow bottom, the jaw part; a large back part that seemed to be too vast for a human head; and the unthinkable shallowness of its eye sockets that made me startle.

I snagged it and became bewildered on the next scenarios that came towards me. I perceived that it was the exit of what seemed to be an endless tube-cave.

I arrived at home exactly lunch time because the time I departed from our abode was three in the morning sharp.

“Landor, where have you been?” Papa said, “we’re looking for you all over the place for the past half a century.”

Mama rushed beside me, for she noticed that I was starting to weep without any basis of torment. She asked me if I’m hungry, I shook my head, and my reflexes moved to the bathroom. I didn’t know what was happening to me. It all seemed to be an irrevocable event that was better left in the pages of history. Mama knocked on the door, caused me to agitate real absurd that I attempted to jump off the window with my subconscious still feeling bewildered. The moment that I was about to jump, Papa galloped towards me to spread his robust arms that caused my body to stir a little, then pinch by pinch, I began to eliminate what seemed to be an aura that possessed my lucidity out of me for a few hours.

The skull that I brought home with me was “exceptional” – the only word my father managed to utter. Together with Mama, they brought the skull to the nearest orthopedist of our town that seemed to be drunk almost every morning during his duty in the local hospital. Mr. Owenright’s eight years of stay on his pledged profession didn’t quite gave him enough nicks to support his vices, and a daughter who he brought to his mother when he and his other half decided to part ways through some conceived reasons. After these predicaments of him, he developed his faculties from naive to a more subtle characteristics that made him conspicuous by the town – ones neglected him in time of his agonizing poignant attack, for he was mistakenly perceived of an illness that struck him since his youth and resiliently attacked him whenever he was vulnerable – insanity.

“This thing’s weird,” said Mr. Owenright. “According to my encounters with different types of boneheads, it seems that this one stands at its best.”

The doctor came out of his office to have a quick smoke while I was approaching my way to his office.

“Are you the one who saw the odd skull, boy?” he asked me. “I’m afraid that it didn’t belong to our cycle of life.”

Confused on what I’ve heard, I didn’t bother to stop to persuade him on that matter, and as an elusive move, I’d approached the door of his office. There on the bench, I’d seen my parents, whispering on each other with a language that was quite peculiar to my knowledge. They asked me why I was there, and Mama took over the situation.

“Son, you shouldn’t be here, you’re not feeling well these latter days,” she said. “Let’s go home now, I’ll just leave your father for a –”

According to the story of the people who witnessed my possession, I touched Mama’s lips, and slap her that made my father to agitate, and run after me and knocked me down.

“Why did you do that to your Mama?” Papa clamored.

I got up quickly, thrust Papa against the wall and tried to knock him down. Mental agony once again took control of me that time and not to recognize everyone that I’d known. I was about to throw a vase to Papa’s head when I stopped, felt a sudden change of motives – I turned on my back to see an approaching pipe heading for my head.

I woke up and saw Mama weeping against my chest. She thought at the moment – through her bewildered mind – that I was consumed by my poignant condition. I threw a shameless smile at her and she knew I was back to my sanity.

“The doctor took the skull out of town,” Mama explained. “They’ll have it test for its DNA was presumed to be an alien component.”

Days had passed on my face, trying to peep out of the window of my locked-up bedroom – barred at all corners to ensure and keep the entrapment of me. Time elapsed hastily that made me grew anxious; I almost ripped myself through the unshackled nails pinned on a bar of wood, screeching it against my face and temple. I heard banging of doors and windows throughout the house, and see clear through the hole I’d made on the parquet floor.

“You, son-of-a bitch! I told you before not to expose those bags out of its ground.”

It seemed that Mama was in a feud. At first, I didn’t recognize who she was against with.

“Take the skull with you; bury it, or more effectively, crush it with the Francisca hammer.”

The Francisca hammer, our family-own, was considered to be the wealth of our generation of Peruso – came from the other generations of our roots as a heritage apt to be passed to the next one. Through that, I became certain that it was my Mama, saying some instructions to someone.

The next of the scenarios made me think that time was running out for me. As I cultivated my clairvoyant senses, there was the feeling of discomfort, buried my amiable behavior and completely sucked up the inner being that manipulated the whole of me. The power of anticipation ruled my very being; summoned some of the worse type of mental torment that knocked me off my feet. Series of banging and thumping could be heard throughout the house, accompanied by eerie gunshots that made Mama to scream her lungs out. When I peeked out through the window I saw Mr. Owenright bearing a brown envelope fastened to his armpit; knocking against our door with such ferocity while the policemen – which I was certain to be with him that night – fired their revolvers on the knob.

“I have with me the result of the DNA to that freakin’ skull!” Mr. Owenright exclaimed, “this is certain to belong to your womb, Mrs. Peruso.”

At that point of his last blurted words the feeling of agony, mental torment, and anxiety relinquished the abode of my lucid sanity.

Forgotten Relic

Leaders among the world have their own sets of reforms on how to well preserve the genuine relics of their native country: scrolls, pots, vases, etc. Some of the places within their scope are also preserved – from houses, streets, churches, and even century-old trees are also included to the preservation priorities. Almost one-third of the division of budget are spent to these types of conservation projects to shorten the diminutive threat of culture extinction.

But the effects of this culture ailment leave a problem that most of us didn’t quite notice – a problem whose remnant left over isn’t that noticeable: the domination of foreign languages against our native one.

Most of our co-Filipinos today think that in order for them to be competitive on their chosen fields, they have to well-manage their subtle English matters, not knowing that on every step that they take on what they think is the better path, merely leads them to the utter pits. Due to this indolent behavior, many think that to have a brighter future, they must engage themselves into the world of pretentious English men who wants to be the dominant inhabitants of our world of not proud-to-be natives. The notion of this alarming tyrant manifests on our current condition and yet, no one is bothered to take a single amount of action. Alarmed and unconscious – this is currently our stand in the present; hopefully not in the near future.

Mr. Conrado de Quiros (a columnist of Philippine Daily Inquirer) was right when he pointed in his opinion write-up entitled, “Tails and Wags,” the notion of eliminating the implementation of using the English medium in teaching the known complicated subjects: Math, Science, Physics, and other fields of profound teachings. He (Mr. de Quiros) was right when said that, “What in the world is wrong in expressing a scientific calculation in the medium of our vernaculars?” The point here is that the children are having difficulties on grasping their craved knowledge on a particular subject, doubling up their efforts because of the English medium. Why not teach them in their native talks – if they’re Hiligaynon, teach them through Hiligaynon; if they are Kapampangan, teach them through Kapampangan. Instructors are not going to be devoured by simply doing that, and at the same time, the children will certainly be gratified knowing that their native talks would be the primary key to their success of snagging in the offered knowledge of their chosen fields.

Take a look at the Japanese and the theme speaks for itself – see the difference. They teach their novices in the language that they perfectly know, and look at them now, continuing the growth of their prosperity; with simultaneous success of not losing their connections around the world.

It would just take us a matter of loving our country in order for us to love our language. Make ourselves efficient out of what is in store for us. Include our language to our well-kept genuine relics.

A Day in the Library

The counter was thronged of people with envelopes clinging on their arms as this garrulous woman called out behind the printer:

“Go in the monitor room. It’s flooded with students.”

A young man with his waving stomach galloped inside and approached those whose arms were making clatter sounds at the keyboards.

“Print these, please.”

“There’s my payment yonder.”

“My ID’s missing. How will I get by?”

Holding his pen with its pointed end at the tip of his finger, it started to maneuver with a gullible approach to the twittering mouths of the impatient lass and lad. His hand movements shifted from one paper to another, with the tapping on the other end of his pen, as though a code was being retrieved. At one moment, he misspelled a surname from an ID, while he witnessed how the rest of it occupied his table – to be recorded. The scene was accompanied by the incessant noise of chairs, tramping the glittering floor as they were moved by their occupants into place.

The section from where he was formerly posted was housed of books lined up as the encoder swiftly focused on them with a column on his knees, and a single on his hand. His eyebrows curved in the failing sensation by the barcode reader, without any affirmation with his fourth swipe of the book, and a few more tries, relentless.

The woman charged on the desk-counter was encoding dissertations handed early that morning, making her signature style of writing letter “g” look as an “f”. The series of numbers on the upper left of this form were formulated to be a standard arrangement following the system of how these books are placed. At first look, the author’s name was not visible, and with further inquiry eyed, this will be found at the top middle, lower middle, with its initials sometimes written on awful errors. The surnames were found at the end, certainly do, and often at the opening, following an unknown pattern.

Soon, all forms were fixed at the monitor room, and the occupants were, as if languor by the work of their hands, begun to pour out by singles, then by groups as minutes elapsed, making the room preserved its tranquil enjoyment. This happened between one-o’clock and three, and as expected, less and less came. He decided to leaf with clippings he took out on the personal drawer. They were fastened on a folder, with a notebook under it; written were categories lined as numbers: health being 8, media 14, etc. The grandeur of reading these articles cradled his thoughts apart from his duty, with his elbows rested on the table, and arms to hand with their palms open and abreast – his chin resided.

His head moved like of a typewriter alignment as he skimmed the content of various categories. Fonts of bold to courier widen his eyes starting to fall to slumber, regenerated every time he leaf to succeeding pages as if reading a declaration scroll. His legs were wandering on different positions, one lifted, the other upside down, one on the leveled position, shaking. Wagging the sleepy sensation? That I don’t know.

He failed to ward-off the needless feeling of the afternoon siesta. His creative thoughts visited him in no time, and the destination at this hour was at the farthest south of the globe – wild-western feud, and he was caught in the middle. Feeling the need to go within this reverie, he was caught by the shin of an approaching plank, with his arms tied, his ears incapable of hearing. The sand he was facing smoked in perfection, he thought, with the rolling of circled dry grass here and there. For a moment he was on the guillotine, then at the back of a steed starting to gallop, with his feet tied – he was awake.

A man in front of him lend his ID, signed at the form and ushered his feet at monitor 1. With intervals the man with his head aligned on the monitor took glimpses of him as he was recording the in-time and marked the form with the current date.

It was the online encyclopedia the man was absorbed into. The subject of his search was not visible, and only pictures of trees with a village house with grotesque carve of faces as a spout from gutter was seen. He made this monitor view through passing a series of time on the man’s chair, pretending to work at the blinking error on the monitor beside the man’s seat. With shrilling voices heard from the monitor’s speaker, he jerked his head to query on the man absorbed in the monitor. Sudden turn of the latter’s head furnished with a scornful grin, the monitor broke out with its picture descending on its portrait view, soon with static movements, then out.

An omen of cradled memory focused to shorten the length of time made lapses in this trial. Short with its peak, a thorn on its way, and the product was anticipated. This branch of memory mocking was at least consumed with a personal desire.

Severely freckled, within the boundary of ulna and to the biceps, static numbness runs through with the vessels incorporating within the flow as it became faster in an upward terrain of body positioning, and the lower movement a speedy trial delivering the friction against the walls, resulting to pores arousal; the outside surface of the skin turned out to be a meadow with straightened grass and disillusioned cows. The reaction of the body where it occurred commands the affected part with spontaneous movements without any knowledge of the body’s existing soul.

“Are you okay, boy?” he asked, with a courteous regard in need seeing the man was actually a boy, considering his ID number with “09,” the current year.

“All of it was a mistake, sir. You are not heading somewhere; you’ll be in vain…vane…faded soul.”

Without any idea on the boy’s statement, he started his feet towards the door to report the broken monitor. His eyes were cloudy, their eyelids almost touching the lower part, and it seems that he was half-awake with his broken reverie still hanging in his head, avoiding it by looking down on the floor with the tone of his tramping feet resounding in his head, arranging them to secular rhythm, his left being the clapper cymbals, the other as a bass and snare as interchanging purpose when he desires.

Monaural sounds grouped in shallow, outer layer of his ears came in without any direct roots around the room. His eyesight scrambled around his surroundings and changed into a kind of milieu of smiling faces, clattering keyboards and flying papers, leaving a remnant smoke like of a passing jet plane. The more he initiates deliberate movements, his stand with this situation groped hard to take grasp of being eluded. The actual positioning of his stance was protruded outside the monitor room, and half his body was in the middle of the room’s door in equally shared parts, mixing the latter sounds with the stale-waxed air of the outward way of the room.

In the glare of luminescent bulbs built to circular finish, visible in his eyes, traded a narrowing on parts between his eyelids, adapting in the ray of light cruising through a line that act as a bridge that transport its glow within the pupil which caused temporary blindness on his total view.

The memory that enhanced his view of the situation was found behind his colossal ambiguity, and the signs of pulling sanity from beyond his other side struck every sensitive reason to maintain creed without lamenting behind the bars of pretention on the belief that a rescuer of the unseen will alight from his white-washed chariot behind the wills of faith.

“All of it was a mistake…” a resonance in one straight line of his reconsidering. Hiding the truth at the back of his sidewall at the tone of the man’s query aggravated the gleaming blanket that a long time of searching at his deepest, and beliefs would never be possible to be discovered. He was never an open man to anybody. Alongside his killing times were his knack of plotting venues, characters and additives in his mind, and playing with them at the heat and sweat inside the bathroom. These subjects of utter illusions were all out of his fondness with moveable graphics at the center of picture-reflecting, four-cornered box aided by tangled wires of its reflector. This console of dreams was his partner in every venture of endorphin secretion and became a habit. For others this was a prerogative of mishandling the imperative obligation of the mind to scour the imaginable milieu out of nothing at all.

The lights went out with the ringing of bells penetrating the door appended by foams with bristles on all corners. The man at the counter soon came in with the barcode reader clinging at the side of his arms, pulled out all plugs of the monitors and shut the door even with his existence. On a sudden hit of conscience in his view, all things were within proximity. The man who occupied monitor 1 was gone. Monitor room again relinquished.

The quarter of the afternoon arrived with heat and roars by the exuberant students at the entrance. The loud conversations out of humiliating remarks spark a shrilling grief in him. He was now stationed at the counter, with the front desk almost deserted of anything this section might persist. The horizontal red light thinned as it touched and spread through the canvass of the barcode stickers on books; the books lined up underneath the table were of classics, health, and Rogette’s infamous modern, all heading to the room labeled for binding.

Monitor 1 was out again, and the files from the rest were endangered by this err, only accessible by the provided network gained through the main head. The connection from the web was hitting its lowest rate resulting to irritation of its users. The monitor room was soon completely out of users.

An unfortunate happening for the garrulous woman: a gift from the unseen upon her delegates. The cause of diminutives on their work was added on the columns of book shelves. They were walking right in the middle in a swift motion, and abruptly parted from one another as if following a synchronized formation directed by the head at the counter. She was never a callous woman. At large and at them she was a mother goose upon her chicks, guiding them to do no wrong at the state of pressure and ambiguity due to the rush and howling of the students; and during mealtime she was their commander, waiting for any orders before the clock makes its spawning feel of the noon that it is a chance to take a break. But now it was different. Her hands on this situation were at their best – pulling there, push here, with her temple a pair of nerve lump, greening as though they were also speaking as she commands them. Along these commands were the laughter and provoking comedy that were hidden in every single frown with her range and parameters.

Three of them met at the section were books, and the shelves of rusty color, suffer more of the rage and humid bearing within the palms of the morning battalion. The stacks were each compiled with their call-numbers aligned, preceded by “St093” to “St096”. They arranged every row, ensuring that none of them was forgotten to be embraced, and brought about on their alignment with clever fingers – thumbs as their aces. One of them complained of students who disregard the essence of returning into place the books they had borrowed.

“Foolish ones,” he remarked. “How could they forget to return these precious classics back on their thrones?”

“That’s the reason we’re here,” the other said. “Even with this dire of dirt on my palm, I’ll make them stand at their shelves in every end of the afternoon – how noble I am?”

The last hour stretched with continuous mobility at all sides and turns of every soul, working their way to call it a day through the past tedious afternoon. The woman at the counter soon changed flip-flops to high-heels, turned and cried good-bye – disappeared to the vertical stretch of the hallway. There followed the entrance of the blue-shirted group, with their introductory laugh, sweep and wipe here and there, moved the chairs and tables at the heat of their reflexes – and they soon left, only the four of them at the counter, giggling because the face of one has whiskers of dust and dirt.

Then they were all silent. As he was about to take the form of their time record, the rest jerked their heads upon him, facing their very backs with sinister grin, and murmurs cradled to carry out in him.