Cancelled

She remembers the baby lizard lurking in her shoe rack. For fear of coming in close contact with it, she decides to consult her mother’s closet which is unfortunately full of old stuff, low-neck shirts and even ballistics. She doesn’t know what they do there; to gather dust, smell of moth balls, most likely.

At any rate, none of the free sandals go with her white top and khaki pants. The best the collection has to offer, clearly, is the pair of ancient bowling shoes, only used once, with three stripes of white on the brown surface. Or she thinks it must’ve been brown before. She can never be sure; too long has passed since its date of purchase.

She tries it on, bows a little in the dark to employ the help of her fingers. The closet is too dusty and reeks of damp wallpapers. Smoke rises from the floor at each movement; ironically, a vacuum cleaner stands in the corner hoping to be plugged in, if it can be helped.

Then the shoes fit. She stretches herself straightly, sighing, muttering some word of praise, half-meant.

She passes the full-length mirror and takes a quick look at her reflection. In the image, her wholeness seems in monochrome, the shades of white, gray and black only differing by small degrees. A few strands of hair hang lazily across her forehead. She parts them slowly, frowns at the little colorless pimples that crop up the surface and sees them deepen in ravine-like creases on the skin.

“I’m getting old.”

Just then, she feels something wriggle inside the left shoe. In panic, she quickly slumps down the floor, ignoring the stain the dust may leave on her pants. As she wrenches the shoe off, she bears witness to the clammy, tiny, trembling creature which she almost crushed with her toes. The scream dies in her throat. Instead, a look of intense shock comes over her face as if to substitute for the more correct reaction. The dust floats up; the shoe lies on the floor, the lizard beside it, silent, staring and scarcely visible.

Her legs start to shake and the thin hair stands on them.

In the mirror, she can see a much more colored wraith. She stands up and flicks the dusts off her attire. Carefully, she sticks her hand in her body bag for her phone. She keys in a short missive to her boyfriend, canceling the date. Many things have to be said between them before she’s able to face him again.

For now, she wants to be let alone.

The Rope around your Neck

You just said it. As you close your lips, I see a glimpse of the future that awaits you and me. I knew things aren’t going according to plan, I just know.

I watch as my love life go down in flames. I watch it go farther down the slippery slope en route to hell. I don’t care anymore for the passersby who have made a tradition of shamelessly glancing at my tear-stained face. They seem to remind me of the fact that this is a public place, not for private one-on-one brawls. From afar, I can see the nearest IBM building, the bungalow style McDonalds and the traffic lights at the entrance gate of the park. Further on, I can see the orange shade of the clouds and the pale stripes the sun makes against the sky.

And I can also feel and see your tears as potently as I feel my fist clench. You look as though you were trying to remember how to breathe, like an old morose character from a novel. Yet, you’re wearing your hip attire: Giordano polo top, your skinny jeans , Chuck Taylors, your ugly crying mug. Your posture is an embarrassment to me and for the first time, so is your proximity. I look at you without understanding what you just said. I refuse to hear you further.

There are your hands sinking lower and lower to your pockets. I have the feeling that if you have a choice, you’d retreat from me as far away as possible, never to reappear. But if you do, I’d hurt you more, more than I just did. So you change your mind. And you cower while I tower. Under normal circumstances, I’d find this extremely hilarious.

Now, my patience is at a stretch and I long to inflict you endless pain. Look on the bright side, I’m also very tired to recommence the beating and the bicker match.

And then I notice the purple marks on my arms, clear signs of your feckless struggle. Right now I see you feel so mortally sorry that you’d ever pick up a fight with me. I’m on the heavy side, excess fat and all (you even call me a blimp if you’re annoyed), and a temper to match. Next time you try to resolve an issue with me, try to recall what features I have first. You don’t have your mother to defend you now and worse, you’re not much of a troubleshooter. We’re both unreasonable when put to the test, remember? I’d only set you free on the condition that you’d suffer first, worse than you can handle.

You’ll never get out of me alive.

Common Misconceptions of a Broken Heart

by: RDV

She heard them sigh between murmurs, the things that often made her run away to the opposite direction. She should've been on the verge of breaking down when he whom he had started assuming to be her own ended up in the arms of an unworthy rival. Of course, she had been glad to have proven the girl a fool on many occasions and of course, she would never understand why she had to be the one for him.

She was better on all accounts. Bitter, after that.

She swooped inside the classroom in her morbid stilettoes. It was nearly four in the afternoon and the professor hadn't yet shown any sign of arriving, nor did the time present any semblance of progress towards the future. She fished out her Stat notebook in the hope of understanding what she formerly did not, until her constant admirer, Jude, came along and nestled himself in front of her. In response, she flashed him a glare. But Jude didn't look anywhere close to being glared at. On the contrary, he smiled, smiled as sweet as he never had.

"You're so sour I could almost taste your jealousy."

"What do you know?" She snapped. She knew he knew more than she wanted him to.

They exchanged glances for a spell, until he turned around, stooped down and reverted to his former position. By then, he had his own notebook and calculator as arsenal. She scowled. She didn't like him then; she liked him even less now.

"No thanks but no."

"Some people just don't know when they need help."

"Some, yeah."

"I've heard that two-way anova somehow found its way to our exams."

Really?" She said lazily. "Frankly Jude; I don't see why I should suffer any amount of loss if I missed a single problem. I can manage perfectly okay, so go."

"I somehow knew that you weren't very well known for your mood swings; I didn't know it was this bad."

"Runs in the family. Sorry."

"Come on. Just this once."

If she intended to reply, she soon changed her mind. Her attention was now fully monopolized by the sudden motion the classroom door had assumed. People started rushing in and the cold subsided in the embrace of new presences. Sonia and Kris came in, arm in arm, giggly grin on their faces; her world fell apart, again.

"Been feeling that way myself lately." He said out of the blue.

"What?"

"Murderous jealousy."

"Shut the fuck up, Jude."

"And what should I do then? Abide by your faulty reasoning? You should be over this a month ago."

In his inistence to make it a subject of conversation, she spat him a nasty look.

"That's very grown-up, venting your anger on me."

"Like you're not a part of it."

"Sure I am. But you display me in a bad light. I didn't do anything wrong but to like you."

"And that's it, right? You shouldn't have. You're making me feel only shittier than I should. God, I hate you."

She let her head down, her throat trapped by a tightened feeling that usually comes after hope ends and luck runs out.

"No need stating what's so obvious."

"I hate you."

"Oh yeah. Continue doing that." He frowned at her, then, "You're far more desperate than I knew. I'm so sorry."

"You should be." She said. "Now leave me alone and I'll stop blaming you at once."

"Oh, really? From what I see, you're not in the position to bargain."

"Well then do me a fucking favor. You know I can't be reasonable anytime I want to. Take yourself as an example; since when did you take this seriously?"

"Don't appeal to my conscience now; it would be too late and histrionic. I'm the one who's trying to help here."

"Not knowing that you're screwing me up worse and worse. Thanks a fucking bunch, Jude." She half screamed, half whispered while showing all the insensitivity of an ice pick. Thankfully, the class was in a pressing business to firestart an overwhelming noise.

"This isn't the gratitude I imagined from you. To be quite honest, you dismay me."

"Thanks for realizing that. Now will you please?"

He nodded and walked away from the overheated argument, knowing he wouldn't be called back. She repeatedly tapped her pencil on the desk after a patterned rhythm. As she stared at the work she'd finished, amidst all the hullabaloo, she realized that she really needed him that badly.

"Fuck it. I should've dismissed him after the class." She muttered under her breath. Soon as she was done saying it, the professor came in. That's what reassured her that she was failing this course even worse than she failed him.

Weighing Scale

by: RDV


Sometimes she was afraid that she was just making him up. Often times, finding someone to bore with her presence has become a chore; and yet, he was the only one who never gave up on her.

Last night, he stared at half a moon against the basin of scattered stars, almost to the point of wonder. He then simply shook his head as if to say something that would make a crazy difference. She waited, held hear breath and pulled closer to him. The night was more like the night after Graduation Day, beautiful but ominous. By that time the mosquitoes had begun to bother them, or at least she could feel her hands overflowing with the urge to slap her bare skin. Being unable to feel or see what he did, she kept her mind closed to certain temptations then lurking inside her. He surely seemed more interested in the formation of the clouds than commencing a speech.

Instead, he asked her to name the glimmering clusters of mythological traces. She pointed out Gemini, Scorpio, the Big Dipper, the Little Dipper and whatever she could remember from her first grade Science class. She guessed she knew exactly where Libra was located, her zodiac; or rather she hoped. But as she looked more profoundly into the sky, dark and conspicuous as it was, she saw nothing resembling the sketch of the mighty Libra. She blinked, looked down and looked up again. The air had taken on a colder temperature and eerily, so did he. Yet, he didn't say anything.

Right, no way that was falling in love. She was so sure. She would stand there with him until the world echoed with her sighs. She would never leave him, not like that.