April 27, 99

OF CLASSES AND TRACTORS
There is a class. But it is in the men's room, right up next to the urinals. A teacher is explaining history. I am in one of the sealed off urinals, trying to piss without causing undue distraction but I know they can see my feet underneath the dividers. White tile. Glaring light. I slip on the Ring of Sauron and make myself invisible.
___ There is a test. A history test. My sister Nessa is fretting because she wasn't able to study well for it. I spot the new colored textbook in her bag and I say "You have the book naman pala. All you had to do was memorize." But she's too dejected. I head off with some other co-ed college classmates to the next class. Except that we're in the Ateneo high school campus.
___ There is an apartment on the higher floors of a building. I am on the balcony, loking down at the gloomy parking lot below. No lights. Early evening. There are xmas lights strung out across the balcony of the apt. but they are not lit. The Xmas lights spell "Merry Xmas from Amon & Beth" (my relatives).
___ There is a field of dried brown grass. I am climbing a mildly sloping hill to a small house where we find the TRACTOR. Our new friends tell us that this tractor will help us till the land, even if the land is sloping. It looks adequate. I look around. Everywhere there are farmers tilling using hands and tractors. But the ground looks dry.
___ Then there is another class again.... except it is now outdoors amidst the grass, both green and dried... and amidst the carabao shit, which is strangely small and non-odorous. We try to find places in the grass to sit but all the good places are taken. Some of us resort to squatting on our haunches to listen to the teacher.

April 28, 1999

THE MAN IN THE WALLS
I am shaking in fear. There is a meal being held in an airy patio-style terrace of a large house: steel garden chairs painted white, glasstop table. And I am relating to my friends the nature of my trepidation. I tell them that there have been murders at the house where I live and we cannot find any traces, except for a clue which leads us to believe that there is someone living in the house with us--- in some secret hole somewhere, between our own walls. We sometimes hear scratchings and shufflings in the silence of night. As I recount the tales, my blood chills and the room goes steadily darker and all around the table are transfixed and horrified by the details. Soon we are all afraid.
___ Then I am back at my house. I know the confrontation must be made, and I have done enough research to figure out who has been living here with us. Turns out it's a french illegal immigrant who's been there since the early 19th century. We search for the entrance where he accesses the inside of our house from whatever hole he's made in our walls. And we find it behind a large Daredevil poster on the wall of one of the dead kids' rooms.
___ I stand at the hole, and I call him out. Eventually, he appears, frazzled and grizzly, with a slightly lunatic glint to his eyes--- skin whitened with his indoor existence, beard dusty with cobwebs all over him. We try to talk with him, reason with him. It doesn't work. Soon he gets up and loses patience and returns to his hole. It is understood that no stalemate was arrived at and that he will continue hunting. At one point my mother is crying because there is no hope of stopping him. I am ready to kill him should he appear again. But my hopes are slim and his subterfuge is expert.

BUS STOP, DAWN STREET
But somehow, I find myself at a bus stop with other 4A guys and we see newscaster Apa Ongpin and another guy, in suits, having disembarked from either a plane or a bus, and looking around for a place to put their floppy Samsonite bags.
___ And then, I am walking down a street in the night. Spying children playing everywhere, except that someone tells me that any one of those children can be had... for a price. I walk away in disgust. It is almost dawn and I enjoy the cool air, but am revolted by the pedophilic offer.

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