I was still in fifth grade back then and attending school felt like a coerced responsibility. I had to sleep earlier than usual since I had to be fully awake by five in the morning. Of course, "fully awake" for me meant being stirred to life by a cold shower and the rants spewing out of the radio on weekdays. What can I say? Back in our place, we start our day with a full serving of diabolic sermons from radio commentators first thing for breakfast. Or at least that is as far as I can remember if my memory won't fail me. Suffice it to say, though, that Mondays through Fridays were days of burden for a young learner, and to this day I still have the eye bags to prove my point.
Come Saturday and my siesta would stretch from dawn until dusk, and sometimes from dusk until the next evening. Either way, my body would willingly submit itself to a full stretch of rest on weekends that oftentimes I forget to eat. If anorexia was a fad back then, and somehow I felt it was, I could easily pass for a popular restaurant commodity otherwise known as toothpick, but that's another story. Going back, I could very well recall one lazy afternoon when I touched the freezing hands of death, which is the only way I can literally justify a horrifying experience with an understatement.
The room seemed dark, the dim flourescent light barely illuminating the small space. I was lying in bed close to its edge and there was silence. From where I was, I could somehow see the kitchen table for the door was open. Eyes partly closed, eyelids blinking in slow motion, I leaned on my left side. My hands were clasped gently as they protrude from the left side of the bed as if ready to drop and fall on the floor had they been severed from my wrists. I wanted to get up and take a brisk walk across the living room and back. But I felt the combination of weakness and stupor cling hard to me like a leech.
No one was around. Or so I thought.
The next moment I opened my eyes, somebody was already holding the palm of my hands. The object, very black and appeared like a lady, stood then knelt before the edge of the bed, still holding my seemingly lifeless hands. From what I saw, I could tell the black image was a woman, completely veiled by a dark thin cloth that stretched downwards. Her ebony hair was slowly swaying even if the windows were shut and the room was devoid of breeze. She was faceless, the contour and details of her face barely recognizable. As she held my hands, I felt a searing chill run across my spine. Her hands were freezingly cold. The warmth of my body seemed to have escaped through the pores of my skin, the coldness being channeled by her hands straight into the thin frame of my body. I swear if my bones had a life of their own, they would have already instinctively escaped from the flesh that held them back and venture away from that ghastly apparition.
I was not able to move a muscle. I was nailed from my position. I was helpless. From deep within the tubes of my lungs, I knew an explosive scream was waiting to erupt any time. But I felt very dead right in front of that veiled black ghost. Almost the entire duration of that frightening ordeal, she was kneeling, holding my hands with her own and speaking words I had no idea what dimension in this vast universe they were from. My stare was locked onto her as I lay immobile throughout. She kept on repeating unfamiliar words, phrases that echo like a Gregorian chant, reminiscent of mantras, the meanings of which only the dead could reveal.
And then she was gone.
I could not recall now if I pissed on my pants while I was at the mercy of that terrifying sight. I was scared as shit for the next few weeks I had to sleep at night beside my brother who's four years younger. For years I kept mum about that experience knowing how others might see me. Insane? Maybe. But insanity has its own saneness that even the most rational person in this world could hardly summon enough of his wits and begin to explain what it was that I saw. I never believed in ghosts all the while as I only manage to get a hearty laugh upon hearing ghost stories of other people; of how they were able to flee from a floating coffin that chased them in the middle of the night; of how women leave half of their bodies and fly in the night sky, wings flapping and eyeing for their next victim; of how abysmal creatures rise from the gorges of the earth during the most unholy hour only to disturb unwary passersby—and how disturbed they truly transform themselves at the end of the day.
But, truly, that ordeal changed the way I look at the world. Though half of my brain still tells me I might have been asleep that time, the other half simply won't refuse to abandon the idea that that was evidence enough to believe in the existence of other beings.
I was in fifth grade back then, and I was as thin as a G-string. I am now a college graduate with a beer-belly to boot, trying to earn my daily bread with a freelance work just enough to feed myself and meet the bare essentials of life. I do not know why in the world that experience happened to me, but it sure did struck me quite hard. To this day, a recollection of that ordeal gives me slight goosebumps, even while typing down this trip from memory lane.
The life of an eleven-year-old boy was once literally frozen in time in the hands of death. Lucky me, I was the boy.
Come Saturday and my siesta would stretch from dawn until dusk, and sometimes from dusk until the next evening. Either way, my body would willingly submit itself to a full stretch of rest on weekends that oftentimes I forget to eat. If anorexia was a fad back then, and somehow I felt it was, I could easily pass for a popular restaurant commodity otherwise known as toothpick, but that's another story. Going back, I could very well recall one lazy afternoon when I touched the freezing hands of death, which is the only way I can literally justify a horrifying experience with an understatement.
The room seemed dark, the dim flourescent light barely illuminating the small space. I was lying in bed close to its edge and there was silence. From where I was, I could somehow see the kitchen table for the door was open. Eyes partly closed, eyelids blinking in slow motion, I leaned on my left side. My hands were clasped gently as they protrude from the left side of the bed as if ready to drop and fall on the floor had they been severed from my wrists. I wanted to get up and take a brisk walk across the living room and back. But I felt the combination of weakness and stupor cling hard to me like a leech.
No one was around. Or so I thought.
The next moment I opened my eyes, somebody was already holding the palm of my hands. The object, very black and appeared like a lady, stood then knelt before the edge of the bed, still holding my seemingly lifeless hands. From what I saw, I could tell the black image was a woman, completely veiled by a dark thin cloth that stretched downwards. Her ebony hair was slowly swaying even if the windows were shut and the room was devoid of breeze. She was faceless, the contour and details of her face barely recognizable. As she held my hands, I felt a searing chill run across my spine. Her hands were freezingly cold. The warmth of my body seemed to have escaped through the pores of my skin, the coldness being channeled by her hands straight into the thin frame of my body. I swear if my bones had a life of their own, they would have already instinctively escaped from the flesh that held them back and venture away from that ghastly apparition.
I was not able to move a muscle. I was nailed from my position. I was helpless. From deep within the tubes of my lungs, I knew an explosive scream was waiting to erupt any time. But I felt very dead right in front of that veiled black ghost. Almost the entire duration of that frightening ordeal, she was kneeling, holding my hands with her own and speaking words I had no idea what dimension in this vast universe they were from. My stare was locked onto her as I lay immobile throughout. She kept on repeating unfamiliar words, phrases that echo like a Gregorian chant, reminiscent of mantras, the meanings of which only the dead could reveal.
And then she was gone.
I could not recall now if I pissed on my pants while I was at the mercy of that terrifying sight. I was scared as shit for the next few weeks I had to sleep at night beside my brother who's four years younger. For years I kept mum about that experience knowing how others might see me. Insane? Maybe. But insanity has its own saneness that even the most rational person in this world could hardly summon enough of his wits and begin to explain what it was that I saw. I never believed in ghosts all the while as I only manage to get a hearty laugh upon hearing ghost stories of other people; of how they were able to flee from a floating coffin that chased them in the middle of the night; of how women leave half of their bodies and fly in the night sky, wings flapping and eyeing for their next victim; of how abysmal creatures rise from the gorges of the earth during the most unholy hour only to disturb unwary passersby—and how disturbed they truly transform themselves at the end of the day.
But, truly, that ordeal changed the way I look at the world. Though half of my brain still tells me I might have been asleep that time, the other half simply won't refuse to abandon the idea that that was evidence enough to believe in the existence of other beings.
I was in fifth grade back then, and I was as thin as a G-string. I am now a college graduate with a beer-belly to boot, trying to earn my daily bread with a freelance work just enough to feed myself and meet the bare essentials of life. I do not know why in the world that experience happened to me, but it sure did struck me quite hard. To this day, a recollection of that ordeal gives me slight goosebumps, even while typing down this trip from memory lane.
The life of an eleven-year-old boy was once literally frozen in time in the hands of death. Lucky me, I was the boy.
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