I was nursing a bad cold and got up at 1:30 in the morning to get ready for work. I watched the Powerpuff Girls on Cartoon Network then started to get dressed. Then around 2:20, I walked 75 meters to where I wait for jeepneys.
I was at the spot where I wait for jeepneys to commute to work and elsewhere. I've waited at this spot at this hour, hundreds of times. Then the guy with the gray or off-white ski cap and jersey stepped off the motorcycle and I knew I was screwed. When I tried to walk away, he showed me his gun, a cheap-looking chrome plated revolver that he had tucked into his shorts.
It all seemed so weird at the time. I didn't actually feel afraid. It was more of an "oh shit" feeling than anything else. He was a small guy, maybe a teenager, maybe not. He didn't have any stubble or facial hair. It was hard to tell his age with his ski cap on. When he threatened to blow my head off if I didn't give him my cellphone, he actually had a very soft voice, one that you would not expect from a mugger.
Like the idiot I was, I actually asked him if I could keep my SIM card. Surprisingly, he said yes. While I was taking out the SIM card out of my phone, he asked me why I was crying. I told him I had a cold. He told me to give him my wallet, but like a moron, I actually told him no.
By then, i had my phone disassembled in my hands and had extracted the SIM card. Then another guy I hadn't seen took the battery and cover off my hands. Then They sped off in their motorcycle. I didn't catch the license plate and all I know is that it wasn't bright colored, was kind of old, and wasn't a scooter. There might have been three of them, but I really could not be completely sure.
In seconds, I was hailing a tricycle to report it to the police. When i got to the police station, I told the officers on duty what happened. What followed was almost two hours cruising the Libertad Public Market and the surrounding area in the police pick-up, violating human rights of people who happened to be wearing jerseys, shorts, and ski caps. They informed me that the usual modus operandi of these people was to stay in dark, empty lots and when the time came, cruise the area until people like me showed up.
The fact that the pick-up was constantly going into the direction opposite of what I told the cops was distressing. I started to feel my sweat run cold everywhere. They left me at the station while they looked for their contacts. I spent an hour watching some Kevin Costner movie. Then I borrowed a cellphone and tried to call various people with my SIM. I called the sick hotline to work and told them what happened. The desk officer then helped me file the report and let me wait until the RMG guys came back from getting to their contacts.
In a few hours, I was breaking into a fever and I had started to feel paranoia and actual fear. It wasn't like I thought it would be. It was less distressing. Work can even be more stressful at times.
By the time the RMG guys came back, I was as sick as a dog turd. My eyes were getting blurry from the fever-hat and my sweat had started to run really, really warm.
By 8:00 am, the cops told me I could go home and they would contact me in case anything happened. I'm doubtful. I took a trike home and dragged myself to bed, unable to sleep. Then I called up my coworkers and bosses again to say I definitely couldn't come in. It'd probably be a black mark on me, even if I was actually a victim, but I doubt they would care.
Given the fact that my phone is pretty rare, I think I can probably manage to find it in one of the more notorious fencing places in the city.
I'm now wide awake, unable to sleep, sweating profusely and zoned out. Too tired to be mad. To tired to care.
Late Again
Commuting in Bacolod is more painful than it really should be. Jeepney drivers are just so uniformly stupid. what most of them really need is a kick in the teeth.
Read to Judge
I'm at a crucial part of my life and no one else knows it. Something important to me can very well end and there doesn't seem to be any real way to replace it. All that's left to do is to dream of a better life and to fail at making dreams reality.
Wouldn't it be great if we could just stop time and fold space so we can be anywhere we want? But even if I could, I wouldn't know where to go exactly. Maybe to some mistake I made so I could correct it. I could push people off rooftops and in front of passing trucks with impunity and just go off to someplace else.
I've been extra fake and extra irritable these days, a consequence of being in hiding, I suppose. Being in hiding is a lonely proposition, even if it keeps you protected somehow. Being this way is not the way I want things to be. It's like I can't help but hurt people, but all the time, I want to be hurt more.
I want to stick my head in a gutter and have a bus run over it. I want the people inside the bus feel a bump in the road, right at the moment my brain and skull is flattened into a pink, gooey, slurry on the side of the road. I want stray dogs and rats to eat the uncollected pieces of grey matter that get left on the street after the clean up crews do a botched job of collecting everything.
I want my head to collect the stray bullets that cops fire off into the air on New Years. It'll probably happen when I'm all tucked into my bedsheets. I can just imagine my corpse being left undiscovered in my room for a day or two until they come to collect the laundry.
I want to use a grenade like a telephone after the pin had been pulled out. I'd cradle it close to my head, knowing that thinking of folding space and traveling through time would be all moot in a matter or seconds.
Silly, but...
Wouldn't it be great if we could just stop time and fold space so we can be anywhere we want? But even if I could, I wouldn't know where to go exactly. Maybe to some mistake I made so I could correct it. I could push people off rooftops and in front of passing trucks with impunity and just go off to someplace else.
I've been extra fake and extra irritable these days, a consequence of being in hiding, I suppose. Being in hiding is a lonely proposition, even if it keeps you protected somehow. Being this way is not the way I want things to be. It's like I can't help but hurt people, but all the time, I want to be hurt more.
I want to stick my head in a gutter and have a bus run over it. I want the people inside the bus feel a bump in the road, right at the moment my brain and skull is flattened into a pink, gooey, slurry on the side of the road. I want stray dogs and rats to eat the uncollected pieces of grey matter that get left on the street after the clean up crews do a botched job of collecting everything.
I want my head to collect the stray bullets that cops fire off into the air on New Years. It'll probably happen when I'm all tucked into my bedsheets. I can just imagine my corpse being left undiscovered in my room for a day or two until they come to collect the laundry.
I want to use a grenade like a telephone after the pin had been pulled out. I'd cradle it close to my head, knowing that thinking of folding space and traveling through time would be all moot in a matter or seconds.
Silly, but...
