Chapter Ten
1039 Words
Chapter Ten
Lights Out
HE WAS smiling wildly in that photo, beside him was me who looked a bit irritated.
His arm is draped over my shoulders while I my arms are crossed.
He was my closest friend. Someone whom I consider more than just a best friend. My confidant, my comfort zone, Blade.
I also looked at the other slightly faded photos and another one caught my eye. It was a photo of me, Blade, Lumence, Gamence and Vanessa.
Vanessa and me are being sandwiched in the middle of the three boys. She was smiling contentedly while I look like a constipated kid. Blade had his usual boyish grin, Lumence was smirking evilly and Gamence is flashing his indifferent facial expression.
I think I was only six years old that time. Too young, perhaps too naive to realize that this friendship will crumble one day. Like a brittle paper that turned into dust and then forgotten... like it never existed.
Like friendship was a myth and happiness is an illusion.
I scanned the other pictures and more of the fragments of my past ricocheted inside my head. I stopped once again when I saw another memorable photo.
It was a photo of me in that place.
Our old house.
It was me inside the blue room with a transparent wall glass mechanism. I was like a prisoner inside it while Blade, Lumence, Gamence and Vanessa are talking to me on the outside. Their hands gently caressing the fiber glass that that separates me from them.
It was a stolen photo but it precisely captured the reality before.
The beginning of the darkness.
It was that year when the epidemic erupted in Metropolitan Manila. I was nine years old, already sick and pathetic. But I never thought that I will face worse things than my existing medical condition that time.
I hide that photo inside my pocket before proceeding to pick another one. But it was not a picture that I picked--it was a candle and it is familiar. I think this is the lotus scented candle that my dad gave me on my ninth birthday, two years before... he died.
"Arylle?" Nanang knocked on the door.
I was taken aback from my reminiscence when I heard Nanang's voice outside my room. I scrambled to returned all the photos and other things inside the box. My only intention is to get the the key of our of mansion that I hid here. But I decided to also keep the lotus scented candle as well.
I heard another knock on my door.
"Arylle, are you okay? Aren't hungry already? I am already done cooking lunch."
"Yes, Nanang. I'll just take a shower then I'll go downstairs."
Nanang seems go agree when I heard her walking away from my doorway.
After I showered, I decided to finally go downstairs and eat. I am starving, anyway.
I comfortably walk down the stairs wearing my white t-shirt at black jogging pants. Nanang immediately rushed to me like she did not see me for ten years.
"You finally decided to eat! The food is already a bit cold. Let's go..." she said in a preaching voice.
I let her drag me to the dining area to please her. All the plates and utensils are already properly placed on the table waiting to be devoured any moment. The sour and mouth-watering scent of Sinigang enticed my nose tha my starving stomach growled even more. I was about the sit on my chair comfortably when our doorbell suddenly rang.
My butt stop mid air, a few centimetres away from my chair. Nanang and I synchronizingly turned our head to the direction if the main door.
Nanang's forehead creased in confusion and mine remained indifferent.
"A-Are you expecting some visitors today, Arylle?" She asked with baffled expression.
This is the first time that doorbell rang for the seven years that I spent in this house.
Who the hell is that?
Instead of answering Nanang's question, I decided to just walked out of the dining area and go outside to check who it was.
I checked the digital monitor of our gate but there was no one outside. I opened our huge gate with knitted eyebrows to confirm if there is really no one outside and I was right because the only thing that welcomed me was the warm breeze of the afternoon wind... no traces of a person can be seen aside from me.
I tried to look to my sides but there was just no one here. I absentmindedly stared at our doorbell and gently caressed it.
If there was no one here, then who the hell pushed this button?
"Arylle! Why did just suddenly leave your food and who rang the doorbell? Do you have a visitor?" I heard Nanang's high pitched voice behind me, her footsteps indicates that she is currently walking towards me.
I licked my lips while shaking my head. "It's nothi--" I was about to close the gate when I noticed something on the ground.
"Nothing? What was it, Arylle?"
My eyes remained fixated to the thing lying on the ground.
It's a basket of black roses with a black ribbon.
The hell is this?
I crossed arms while intently looking at the alien basket. I once again tried to briefly glance at my surroundings hoping to see the person who left this thing here for unknown reasons. I signed when I could not find anyone again.
I stared at the basket of black roses on the ground again. I tried to slightly tilt and shake it a little using my bare right foot.just to check if there is a bomb or something. When I was sense no harm about it, I finally decided to pick it using my hands.
I felt Nanang behind me, trying to take a peek to the thing I am holding. I heard her gasp when she what it was.
"Who gave you that, hija?" She curiously ask with a hint of amusement in her voice.
"Do you have a suitor?" Her voice was laced with giddiness.
I creased my forehead.
"I don't. Maybe some confused person put this on the wrong house."
-C. N. Haven-
- Writer
