I. Living Room

We were all gathered in his living room which had a wall of mirrors on one side and wide open windows on the other. I was sitting on the arm of the sofa and as I scanned the area, I felt this warmth inside—the kind of warmth you get when you’re in a huge family reunion, the feeling when you know that you’re at least part of something.

He said that this was probably the second-most happiest day of his life, being with all our family and friends. I just sat there on the left arm of the sofa. It was dark brown. Or black.

He told them about the day we met. He was at a meeting on the something-eth floor of so-and-so building when his beloved teddybear (whose name I forgot) flew out the window. I was in front of the building when that happened, and of course, picked up the bow-tied bear which now had a bloody forehead, thinking how peculiar, a bear out of nowhere. I remember staring at the bear, blood running on this face, looking up and seeing an out-of-breath man saying “Fuck”.

The people went “Aww...”

I don’t think they really understood the story.


II. Kitchen

We were all gathered in the bedroom, telling our stories and laughing at them. I had my back to the floor and my legs on the door. There was a knock on the door and it was Tita (the Tagalog word for “aunt”), who asked one of us girls to help her cook. Of course, only one of us was actually capable, so she got up.

Tita was talking to a tall man in a black suit (I don’t know who that was because his back was turned). Tita moves a lot when she talks, and when she turned to her left, her eyes went wide and she ran.

The kitchen is not your typical square-ish kind of room. It was rectangular, a hallway joining two rooms. The floor was covered in blood.

Something was apparently off. Tita entered the kitchen running, panting, and slipping. I do not know what exactly happened—maybe she hit her head on the counter—but when she sat on the floor with her back to the cabinet, her hand fell in a way that you know that she’s dead. The walls were covered in blood.

There was a bloody hand (I’m not sure whether it was a right or a left) on the bloody floor. It was just a hand. I thought it was she-who-knows-how-to-cook’s hand, but she was also on the floor with both of her hands still intact. She sat on the floor with a cleaver in her hand and blood all over. She turned to the hand which was on her left, supported her body with her left elbow on the floor, and started chopping. The kitchen was covered in blood.


III. Aquarium

Everyone was gathered in the apartment. The investigation began as soon as they found out about the blood. They said that when the police came, the place was already flooded. That is an understatement; it is an aquarium. You had to be in diving gear to be able to survey the area.

Books, the globe, the sofa—the only things missing were corals and those things with fins and scales. I remember because I flipped through the pages of one book on the sidetable in the living room.

The apartment is located at one end of the floor. The police sealed the doors of the other units and created a dam. The apartment is on the something-eth floor of the so-and-so building. The windows were opened simultaneously by the divers, washing away the books, the globe, the sofa and everything else which didn’t have fins and scales onto the street below.

I thought it was stupid, because you can’t simply clean everything and make it go away.