We locked ourselves in this morning. The frontdoor lock died on us. The knob from the inside turns this way and that, but the door wouldn't budge. Dumar toyed with the lock this morning, the silver-finish one that I bought yesterday, because we had foreseen that that lock was giving in, which it did this morning, the moment Dumar touched it. Dumar is our boarder-turned-little-brother, only that he's taller than Anne and I combined. (Last night he couldn't get in and had to give me some missed calls. He was at the front door and his key was useless.) While my wife cleaned the sala, which had a mountain of mess--things we don't really need and things we do need but just not right now--Dumar fixed the lock, removing the old one, which was somewhat embedded in the door's wood, and replaced it with the new one I bought. My hands were so weak I could only hand him the handyman pliers and screwdrivers, and hold the door firmly. I still have cramps on my left leg. We are still recovering from the forced departure of our maid (see previous entry). My head is numb and my dreams are weird, meaning I am really tired. I fixed Anne and I sandwhiches for breakfast. Neither of us could cook. That means that the cats will also be eating sandwhiches. The old lock and its keys are in the trash by the way, which I have to dispose of tonight. Oh, the domesticated life.

Day six of life after we kicked out the maid. What is it, what is it that my wife and I keep doing recently? Oh chores. Wait. My back is telling me something. Oh, that it hurts. Househelp, I tell you, needs to be replaced, like used-up batteries, every so often. Every three months would be good. Polite and effortful they come to you. Then the weeks go by and their annoying habits and ways of taking over your lives begin to surface. And you want to kill them. They want to squeeze every little thing out of their stay in your house--food, television, salary advances, time off, more food, avoiding chores or doing them late, bad cooking, taking too long in the bathroom, sleeping in the afternoon.

When you tell them, the first time you meet them, that you are willing to pay for their service, you should make it clear you don't want to put up with a moodswinging always pouting Eat Bulaga-zealous person who can't understand your intstructions, despite your sharing the same language, nevermind that you sequence your orders and use simple declarative sentences. Always, you are threatened by the onslaught of domestic wrinkles. Often, you simmer into a rage and when you tame that temper, you are still in a foul mood, and that's inside you own house, which should be your sanctuary from the absurd world. (Insert groan here.)

Haaaay.... at least the maid is gone. And the more we take over the chores and rediscover where all our things are, the more we have control over our domestic lives.

I am actually writing a science fiction story set in the near future when maids are drugged every three months in order to forget the last three months. Their bank accounts of course don't lie and they and their families do get the money sent to them. But the fresh start is there. The chores they have forgotten to be aware of, their bodies still remember, and will remember again. But it's back to the getting-to-know you stage again--and they are all polite and effortful just like the first time. The moment they hint that they want to remember the last three months, or that they wish not to forget the next three months, you fire them, and get a new maid. Or you forcibly inject them with the reboot drug. What? Oh, my wife is calling me. She's done with the laundry. I'm going to hang them all to dry. Tsk. Someone's gotta do it. I'm forgetting something, what is it what is it? Oh, I have to cook rice.

I've asked my wife to buy another rice cooker, because I've turned to cinders the last two cookings of rice I've tried to perfect. You really shouldn't deal with the assembly of food when you are tired. Food are sensitive. They feel you. Plants wither around depressed people and love birds die when housed in a cage inside a home where a couple does nothing but stab each other with invectives. The same goes for rice. Eventhough you did not intentionally neglect them, all they know is that you have neglected them. And when you say sorry it's too late. They're gone. Cinders. Technology to the rescue.

Though his mask hid his face, Erwin's jaw dropped. Above the San Francisco bridge, the Hob Goblin dangled his screaming girlfriend with his right hand, while aiming the other at the traffic below. "Noooo!" Erwin screamed, his voice muffled by the winds. The Goblin let out a sarcastic laugh. He truly was enjoying this. Erwin's muscles tightened. Standing on one of the bridge's thick support wires, he couldn't do a thing, though he was a sprint away. "Take one step and I drop her. Take one step and I rocket the support wires till maybe a dozen cars slide off into the cold waters below." The scenario was similar to what the earlier Goblin nearly pulled off. "I know what you're thinking, hero, but the son outlives the father, the successor outperforms his predecessor." Another long laugh. "Deal with me!" Erwin pleaded. "Let them all go!" "As you say, webhead." The frames of life slowed down. Erwin ran and dived for the girl, his right wrist aimed at the Goblin, the other toward a spot on the bridge. The Goblin fired rockets. Erwin's web splattered on the Goblin's visor. Erwin grabbed his girl while the other webline connected; swinging from that one, he saw that the Goblin had recovered, that the support wires had snapped. The Goblin took to the air, eyeing Erwin. The bridge was groaning. Cement and steel tilted and cars began to slide to one side. Erwin threw his girl toward a support beam and fired webbing to both cushion her impact and keep her there. Gunfire from the maniac above, slicing his webline. Now, Erwin was airborne, in a free fall while the Goblin sped toward him, ignoring the girl. Erwin took out his cellphone, as he saw cars beginning to fall from the bridge. A hero is never alone. "Hello, Clark? Putang-ina tulungan mo ko!"

Siege woke up with a fork stabbed on his right leg, just above his knee, while the drunken scent and snores of naked Latino men and women hung all around him, on a love bed so large and so soft he felt he would drown. He lifted the dead-weight of an arm of a woman hugging his waist. Where are my pants? he thought. Siege flicked his head and shook it. He ran his hand through his hair. Pizza. He reeks of pizza. How long have I been out? He pulled the fork out of his leg. Some of the skin came off with the fork. The wound healed in front of his eyes. What universe is this? He knelt on the bed. He was at the center. All around him were naked sinewy bodies. To a harem he shall go, he remembered saying and then pressing a button. There! On the carpet. Siege stood and his knees wobbled. Why do I feel so weak? He avoided stepping on one butt and breast after another. He got out of bed. So stoned are thee, he whispered to the crowded bed, the remote beside his right foot. It all made sense. Someone tinkered with his relaxation program. Oh he's going to kill someone in his dorm. Siege pushed the button and the room faded like a TV screen; it went dark and then bluish, the default setting of his immersion program. Siege crawled out of the desensitization tank and saw his roommate at the center of his red bed, with a fork on his leg in a sea of naked sleeping men. I guess, Siege thought, I have to recalibrate the program. The real world keeps butting into his fantasies.A knock on the door. He wrapped a towel around his waist. It was the pizza guy, a long haired Latina girl, the one whose breasts he avoided stepping on. Siege licked his lips and let the towel go. Maybe the program is fine as it is. As the girl was handing him the pizza and her bra, the naked men on his roommate's bed woke up, and walked up to him. To a harem he shall go. He thought of pressing the button again. And decided against it.

Teacher Noel's heart skipped a beat when he saw the rows of girls all in skirts. The permutations shocked him. Christmas morning came early. 

Storm's gone. I miss it already. I was forced, yesterday, to use this one umbrella, a really big one, with the signature colors and seal of my alma mater, the kind of memento you keep in boxes that age in your attic. My wife had brought with her one of our umbrellas, and I had ruined my green one last rainy season--never got it fixed--and it was pouring yesterday, what with those hard winds slapping the rain around, hitting me with a carpet of water at each wind's shove. I ran back inside, stepped out of my wet shoes, ran upstairs, and pulled up a chair to step on. The big umbrella was on top of our closet. Tearing the plastic wrapper, I sighed as I stepped back from the window, to give the umbrella room to unfold. It was big after all, and as it openned up, somebody's laundry slammed on the window, and then vanished, caught up in the torrent of wind and rain. I closed the umbrella, went down stairs, put my shoes back on, and openned the door. When the wind shifted and rammed me with rain, I took back my sigh. I had a dome on top of me, big as a beach umbrella, shielding me from hard rain and torn up shreds of plants. If only I had a pair of rain boots to match my umbrella's color. 

Category: Sudden Fiction in English

Ramirez could barely see through the blood in his eyes. He smelled his own stink, tasted his own blood, everything he ate and drank had gushed out, and when a switch fell down voltage routed his whole being, sending a thousand tiny painful simultaneous stabs to his core, his feet kicking puddles of his own piss and shit; he would scream if he could, but they hadn't sewn back his tongue, as they had promised, so when he tried to curse them all he did so from his barely moving lips on his bluish-red swollen face that hung on a limp neck. All he could do was mumble.

A hand grabbed the hair on the back of Ramirez's head, pulled it up and settled it on the chair's backrest, leaving his jaw to fall open and saliva to ooze out. "Just tell us what we want to know," said the gentle but persuasive voice.

"Ab jub balaaa," Ramirez tried to say.

"We know, we know. You just balance the books, sign the checks," the voice said in a sing-song mockery, "and keep the money in the bank for your distinguished clients. On and on, you've been repeating that since we hauled you in six hours ago." Mirano's hand let the head go and it fell down and sagged to the right. Had it not been for the restraints, Ramirez would have fallen over.

He won't break, this man, Mirano thought, at least not in the time we've been allowed to tease out the clues from him. Mirano whipped back to his Captain, who nodded. The Captain wants to talk. The door swung close behind them.

A match struck and inflamed both cigarettes. Mirano and his Captain inhaled deeply and then winced. The abandoned factory still smelled of rusted metal. The thick air of the evening was stale, just like the hole they're in.

"They have his family, Sir, that's why he is this--"

"We got something."

Mirano threw his lighted cigar and killed the tiny embers with his heel.

"We can't break the encrypted files in his laptop, but there's a pattern we saw, and it might be a clue..."

The door swung open and a raging Mirano grabbed Ramirez by the head. He screamed in the half-dead man's ears, over and over, the same question, till the Captain managed to tear his grip from Ramirez's face.

Mirano sighed and inhaled the smell of puke and blood and piss and fear in the room. He paced frantically as his Captain spoke to the tortured soul: "Just tell us what we want to know." And the Captain's eyes slid from the pulp on the chair to the pacing man who said, almost under his breath, a question that will get them closer to the heart of things.

"What is the missing pulse?"