JAB
a short story by: CB
Today unfolds like a newspaper on the roadside. Talks about oil price increase, about labor union strikes for better wage, about petty and heinous crimes, about mutiny and rebellion, about another EDSA revolution, about bomb threats and the never-ending war somewhere out there in Mindanao. The economy is a sinking ship: worker lay-offs, farm foreclosures, bank bankruptcy. Gamblers petitioned to legalize cock derby. A priest was shot by his boyfriend in a cheap motel room. The president wants to declare Martial Law.
We have reached our level of incompetence. Everybody is now part of the problem and nobody is part of the solution. Not even you.
Everyday we are running out of great ideas. Scarcity, ladies and gentlemen, is upon us. But in the midst of all this chaos, the trick is to keep on breathing.
I am in my office, as usual, waiting for something unusual to happen. Eight hours of paper work. Eight hours of boring shit. Eight hours of doing what I resent.
“This is not what I wanted to do with the rest of my life,” I say to myself.
The clock that hangs on my office wall tells me that I’m just wasting time. But the truth is, aren’t we all?
“Something’s terribly wrong with the world,” I say to myself. “Something rotten I can almost smell it.”
At home, my wife is sitting comfortably on the couch reading a paperback romance novel, while my four year old daughter sits on the floor doodling on a pad with crayons. They look at me as I walk pass them.
I didn’t smile or greet them. I never do that anymore. I want them to get used to me the way I’m getting used to them. For me, they’re just a bunch of parasites that I couldn’t really get rid of, so I try to be a good host and not think of them at all.
Having eaten my dinner at some fancy restaurant, I go to my own room. Change my clothes. Lie in bed. Think.
My wife confronted one time and asked me if what was wrong with me.
“I never wanted to grow up,” I told her.
She became hysterical. She cried and cried and cried. She told me that I’ve changed. She accused me of having an affair with another woman. It was drama, really. I should have awarded her a FAMAS.
“I couldn’t afford another woman,” I said. Then reluctantly: “It’s just that…I’m tired.”
“Tired of what?” she shouted at me. “Of me? Of us?”
The day I wish I was fucking deaf.
“Tired of thinking what to do next,” I explained.
Bewildered. Discombobulated. Sobbing, she asked, “What?”
I didn’t answer her. Instead, I went to our room and said without looking back, “I need to go sleep.”
In my office, I contemplate about suicide.
Killing yourself is certainly an act of freedom. It is the only way we could ever cheat Death or boredom or God. There are so many ways to commit suicide. A rope or blanket is accessible. A razor blade or a gun is perfect. Drinking poisoned water. Eating Racumin. Overdosing yourself with drugs. Some people would even go to the extreme and sky dive without a parachute from the top of the highest building.
The most interesting kind of suicide is ’suicide bombing’ or anything like that. You don’t only succeed in freeing yourself, you free others as well. Taking them with you to oblivion and beyond. Leaving unpaid debts, unfulfilled ambitions, unconfessed sins, unborn children, untold lies and everything in between.
It is an acceptance to your own mortality and a contradiction to the so-called inevitability of death. If one can kill himself without fear or doubt, he is entirely liberated from a world of ennui.
Suicide is the only free-will you possessed. Believe it, or you’re nuts.
“I can kill myself any day I want,” I say to myself.
At home, my wife and my daughter are eating something in the dining room. I wonder if it was Racumin.
In my office, I ponder what is left of the future.
I have money in the bank. I own a car. I wear expensive clothes and shoes. I have a nice house in a peaceful subdivision somewhere out there.
Comfort and security.
But the question remains: Comfort? Security?
“From what?” I have to ask myself.
My boss tells me that countries bigger than the Philippines are planning on a nuclear war.
“The past keeps coming back to shape the present,” I say to myself.
A worldwide nuclear holocaust would mean another Stone Age. Another Neolithic period. Another Renaissance. Another Industrial Revolution. Everything is spinning on a merry-go-round.
History repeats its shit.
Today the wife tells me that she and her daughter are leaving me. I am sitting on the comfortable couch, tying my shoes, on my way to work. She is standing in front of me. Teary eyes and all.
“Where?” I ask.
She explodes into rage and screams, “I can’t stand what you’ve become!”
“You’re acting like you don’t know me!”
“Okay,” I say to her, “do what you want.”
Weeping, she says, “You will never see us again!”
I say, “Fine.”
Carrying her daughter and their luggage, she left.
I stand up to leave, too.
Out the door she shriek, “You’re fucking insane!”
In my car, I grip the steering wheel a little tighter.
“I realized,” I say to myself, “that love is something unstable.”
It moved away from me, and it won’t be coming back.
In my office, I could not remember the name of my boss.
At home, well, there is nobody home. I am all alone. I have this feeling that I am always alone.
“My imaginary wife and daughter left me in silence,” I say to myself.
I sit comfortably on the comfortable couch and turn on the television. I watch an idle channel showing static. It drastically is music to my ears so I turn the volume up.
How lovely.
Today I bought a gun to keep me sane.
