MONDAY CAME, two days after that sorrowful night.
A body was found with a slit throat in Eurydice-11, lying on a pool of blood and with a spilled, white and pink liquid everywhere, which appeared to be liquor. Two bottles of branded alcohol and numerous plastic cups laid around the body. A razor blade which was rusty and bloodied was in its hand.
It appeared to be bloated postmortem as it started to decompose. It gave of a putrefying, sulphurous smell which mixed up with the pungent aroma of the liquor, making the cops who were on the scene nauseous. Two days into decomposition, blood pooled on the body’s back and feet, making the skin appear black. Bloating has set in, pushing forward the eyes and making the tongue pop out a little. The scene was horrifyingly grotesque.
The monsoon started to kick in. The students were expected to
Dusk sets in gradually to a night,Birds of dark feather now take flightCold blackness arises to feathery orange,Sleeplessness resonates in rageDawn erases footsteps like the beach,Eyes that fear are closed stitchedIN HIS ROOM lit only by the cold, cyber realms of his computer, Mickey wrote poem after poem. Remnants of scars on his forearms reminded him of years and instruments past. Typewritten poems became his liturgy and coping mechanism. Gone are the years that his only sense of calm was the sharpness of a rusty piece of metal.Yet Mickey found himself secretly longing for it. Petrarchan words in lines and sonnets stopped working. Why did it stop work
CLASSES RESUMED THE FRIDAY thereafter. Another chilly August day with light drizzle every now and then. While the cooking pot of opinions and gossips and commentaries at Van Duke boiled down into a simmer, it never quite disappeared. Mostly fueled by the poisonous silence a week after Dean Ramos’ funeral and shortly just a few days after what seemed to be a prank. While most accepted that Dean’s death was self-inflicted—although only for the reason of accepting something and not dwelling on death any longer—a small few are convinced that something is definitely sketchy about two suicides at Van Duke exactly a year apart. Some of Dean’s teachers and acquaintances that were quite dear to him simply dismissed these and found the conspiracies tasteless and absurd.What remains of the Midnight Club did not exist on our plane of existence. Isaac became a recluse, growing a five-day-old stubble that made him look
IN THAT CITY, no one is distant from another. In the dark recesses of someone else’s apartment, Isaac laid bare on the bed with some guy he goes to after-school tutor with. “Are you coming to my 18th?” Gio Mendel asked. “I don’t think so, Gio. And, I don’t want to.” He was silent for a moment. “Is it because of the other day?” “Because of what?” “Because I told you, you know?” “Because I told you, what?” “Jesus Christ, Isaac. Stop acting so obtuse. You are fucking hurting me.” Gio looked at Isaac directly. He did seem hurt. “I have nothing to do with your feelings,
BACK WHEN EVERYTHING was slightly off the status of okay,“Shit! I got foundation on my shirt, man!” a heavily blushed and contoured Isa Marie whined.“Oh, girl…” Christie Claricel tried rubbing the brown liquid but it further smudged the suffragette white uniform they both donned.“One chance for a great juniors yearbook and I effin’ ruined it.”“Turn that frown upside down, girl, here I’ve got an idea.”Quickly, Christie grabbed Isa’s arm and ran through the red forest of metal lockers in the corridor up to the dingy restroom at the end of the hallway. She propped herself up on her knee, trying to catch her breath.
AGATHA LEON HAS ALWAYS been swallowed by forests her entire life.She was a baby Moses left in a nest on the ground in 2003 at the western ridge of town by Hailey’s creek. John Webcracker, who was a Parisian at the local church, was going on a week-long Lenten meditation in the forests with noting but a knapsack of non-perishables. One afternoon, he heard the cries of a lone infant in the wilderness of leaves and branches as the crackling of the river’s water crashing along the jutting rock outcroppings harmonized with the baby’s cries.The Parisian was at the brink of fainting upon the sight of a Moses as if God itself has sent an infant to salvage right in front of him. Like his Lenten rituals in the forest and his unexpected finding of the baby was no coincidence but a message from God in a bottle.Soon, the heavens started to
IN A LUNCH SHADE in the furthest of the campus sat Isaac Acaban and Mickey Conan, both seemingly in a competition of who had the baggiest under eyes. Neither had enough sleep for the past weeks.“What do you need from me?” nagged Isaac.“I just wanted to apologize for whatever happened the other night. To be honest, I’m still all loose from you saying that…”Mickey paused for a moment, arranging his thoughts. He closed in.“…it could be one of us.”The two were silent for a while, picking at their lunches but not really eating any of it.“Could be. Listen, Mickey. I want you to go through this in the most rational way. Your fears won’t do anything. Your smarts would. Think about it.”
YOU’RE NEXT.Agatha showed Mickey and Isa a piece of cardboard with stenciled letters, a note which signified that anyone of them could be the next Dean or Gwy at any moment in time.In front of them is a plot of land in the courtyard of Agatha’s apartment that was recently dug up. A small bonfire made of sticks poked in the burial site lit their faces in oranges and yellows. The late afternoon breeze swayed the colors like waves in the ocean.Mickey, Isa, and Agatha stood in one row behind the bonfire.“They killed my fucking dog,” Agatha whimpered in grief.“I found this cardboard next to his body when I woke up. Someone must have slipped poison in his meal. Why did they have to include him? This is so fucking unf
ALL I DID WAS RUN.Sweat dripped down my temples and stung my dry eyes as the piercing darkness of the alleys came rushing at me. Its footsteps lacked faster and faster in a tempo so horrifying that it was about to swallow me raw.Guilt-stricken minds felt nothing but fear today.As I ran and ran, I snatched a look from my peripherals to see a horrifying vision so clear and distinct that I could not have been mistaken. It was the decaying body of my sister coming at me at lightning speed, rotting flesh flying through the breeze created by her run. Her mouth gaped open like the blackness of the abyss of the ocean trench and her left eye dangled down like a swinging pendulum, leaving a hole in her skull that seemed as if it was staring back at me with a menacing glare. Her hair flew in strands all over the place as it decayed from her scalp and the wind blew them away, leaving a bruised brown spot like a chemother