Distrust

She feels her throat drying up, her knees trembling ever so slightly while she waits for a certain ‘Markus’ to show up. Markus. What kind of a name is Markus anyway? It doesn’t sound very mysterious. If he was really as good in his job as he claims to be, he could have chosen a better name.

Watchdog. Why not Watchdog? She makes a mental note to suggest this to this man, Markus, whom she hired over the internet.

Her hands found their way inside her bag. She pulls out a pen and twirls it between her fingers, throws it from hand to hand, twirls it again.

“You can kill someone with that.” Markus sits in front of her.

“I, uhm—“ she stopped. All powers of speech abandoned her. For a while she feels stupid and betrayed. But then again, isn’t that why she called Markus in the first place?

Markus neither smiled nor frowned. This was business. He pulls out a folder from his bag and places it on the table. She looks at it as it taunts her. Inside that folder were things she may or may not want to see. She feels sick. No. Not now. Not yet. You don’t know anything yet, she reprimands herself.

“I have to ask you first. Standard procedure, you understand,” Markus said. “Do you want to continue with this?” his eyes revealed nothing.

Do you? Really? A moment of reluctance fades as quickly as it came. She nods.

One by one it all came pouring out of the folder: photos of children, of a woman, of a home. Receipts, tickets, a marriage certificate. It spreads on the table like a disease. A brief shock. Disbelief. She closes her eyes to make it all disappear.

Then finally, acceptance.

“So this is how it feels” she says. “to be the other woman.”

Mandatory Scary Story

So here’s MY scary story. It happened for real last November 1. No, it’s not about my trip to the cemetery. I always think that with crowded places like that, you’d rarely experience something weird or scary.

So… ever had a bangungot?

They say you had a bangungot when you experience something so dreadful that you actually die in your sleep. Which doesn’t sound entirely bad compared to dying by a freak accident, right? Okay that’s beside the point. Anyway, I never believed in those things probably because believing in them would mean validating its existence and I’m too chickenshit to actually admit that those things are true. Whatever a bangungot is and whatever it represents, I think I was thisclose to having one of those last Saturday. Yes… coincidentally November 1.

So I was in my big-ass bed.

I was playing with Brando (my PSP) and I felt my eyes getting heavier and giving in to gravity. I was lying on my side and had my back at the door. Still holding the PSP, I felt my body giving in to sleep. But it was a light kind of sleep. I was practically half-awake so I could still sense everything that’s happening around me.

Then… I felt a part of the bed sink as if someone sat on it. I felt the bed sinking deeper as if whoever sat on it was leaning forward now. I would’ve looked behind me to see who it was… if only I didn’t know that the door to my room was LOCKED. So I remained perfectly still and wished that the heavy thing goes away. I looked at the curtains.

And then squeezed my eyes shut. After a few seconds the heavy feeling went away. So I sat up and turned to look. Then.. I’m not shitting you guys. You gotta believe me. I can still remember it vividly. There was a girl. A small girl standing at the side of the bed. She was leaning on the wall and her eyes were small and chinky. She was wearing a black dress and her hair was long and curly. It was also brown.

I swear I am not shitting you guys.

She was handing me some kind of paper. I looked at the paper and saw that something was written on it. Right now, I just can’t remember what it is.

Then… I closed my eyes again. I opened them and found myself in the EXACT position I fell asleep in. I was lying on my side, holding my PSP and facing the window. Everything was in place. There was no heavy feeling.

So… tell me then, was that one of those bangungot experiences? Did I just have one? Right now I’m still getting the jitters when I try to recall that. So this blog post is a tremendous effort for me.

Oh well.. I hope I don’t have another one of those dreams again. Or was it a dream, really? *cue in suspense music*