Cross and Conflicts

CHAPTER I: The Girl with a Horrendous Past

This story is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to people, events or places in real life may either be coincidental or used fictitiously.

What I’m about to tell you is neither for the ostentatiously religious nor for the feeble in imagination, and definitely not for the minors—those who do not wish to embrace the maturity of ideas or accept the novelty of a concept. With that said, I cannot guarantee that I’ll be able to satisfy your tastes; after all, I’m just the narrator who happens to be in possession of detailed disconcerting events. Honestly, I fear for myself—my life, to be specific—for having resolved to bring this to light, for I believe that the casual morbidity and the intricate ideology may not be plausible to many, and may cost me everything. Hesitant that I was, I still decided to stage this intrepid stunt because this narrative has haunted me for years, has plagued my sleep, and has dreaded me to divulge this to anyone welcoming.

In the year 2014, thirteen years before I penned all of this, was when it all started. There was a woman. Her knees were nailed on the tiled floor. Her heart was beating wild. Her chocolate brown hair had been disheveled, and her tears seemed ceaseless as these poured. This happened one cold stormy night, yet she was bathing in sweat. Nothing, nevertheless, could eerily be colder than the muzzle of the gun on her right temple.

            The weather heightened her dread with the heavy raindrops smashing against the structure of their house and as thunderclaps crashed above. Her light brown eyes reflected only darkness as she directed them at the man beside her.

            “Wh-Why? What have I done for you to do this to me?” The woman asked in anguish, alarmed at the bullet that may perforate her head at any second.

            The man looked appalled at the sight of how he was ridiculously pointing a gun at his own wife. She means the whole world to him, but he was convinced that he had to kill her. His love for her is genuine; on the other hand, it’s also toxic. He is the kind of husband who’d do anything to make his wife happy, yet he is also the kind of man whose selfishness might overshadow the good in him.

            “I love you so much, but I have to do this.” A warm tear trailed down his left cheek as he delivered those words.

            She looked at him incredulously, for of all people, she couldn’t fathom how he could be serious to end her life.

            “No! Please don’t! I love you. Please don’t do this t-!” were the last words she uttered before a hole surfaced in her temple.

            The little girl who was merely thirteen years old witnessed how her father pulled the trigger that made her mother drop dead on the floor. Blood splattered on it that made her too stricken to produce the slightest sound. Minutes earlier in her bedroom, she awoke in the middle of the night because of the boisterous noise brought by the thunderstorm. It made her frightened, and at times like this, she’d seek refuge in her parents’ bedroom. She expected to see them cuddled together in their king-sized bed, but she saw something else.

            She was about to knock on their door, when she figured that it was ajar. She took a peek inside and saw what will be the most horrifying scene in her childhood.

            Her tears flooded and a shiver crawled over her entire body. Though with juvenile mentality, the little girl’s instincts prodded her feet to run back to her room that instant. She made sure to lock the door for her senses didn’t betray her; her murderer of a father heard her hasted steps from the master’s bedroom and had already followed her.

            Inside her closet and hidden in a heap of clothes, her whole frame was shaking as she clamped a small hand over her mouth. Her father had the key to her room. Previously, his access meant security; now, it meant horror that she wished he was never entrusted with that in the first place.

            A scream was about to escape from her when she heard her door being unlocked and the knob being twisted. She succeeded in suppressing it. She made certain of it for death was just a few inches away from her. Her father looked for her under her bed before he stood in front of her closet. Her doom was absolutely eventual by the second her father would open the closet and shoot her on the spot.

            His hands were already gripping the handles of the closet. This made her tighten her hand around her mouth, and her tears addressed her terror, because she knew how she would end up in his hands. Her father was about to open it when a scream resonated from somewhere. She recognized it. It was their maid’s. He wasted not a second and scrambled on his feet to check the commotion. Once he was out of her room, she waited for a while before she came out of the closet and decided to get out of their house.

            Meanwhile, Joana, the petite Bicolana maid, had screamed after seeing her mistress lying cold and defunct on the master’s bedroom. She wouldn’t have seen the gruesome scene if she hadn’t checked what was happening there after she heard her employers arguing. Her male employer suddenly appeared on the door and was already behind her. She knew not his presence until his gun connected at the back of her head and drilled a hole in it.

            Bang!

The little girl was already at the entrance of their house when she heard the gunshot clear in the distant. It was loud enough even under the rampage of the storm. She was unaware of the story behind it, but she knew it wasn’t good news. She opened the double door and a blanket of thick rain was revealed before her. The raindrops swayed violently and lightning cracked rambunctiously in the sky that made her think of retreat. The liquid thickness even concealed their frontyard where beautiful memories now lay before a wrecked household. She was now sandwiched between danger brought by nature and danger brought by her own father. The former was more considerable.

            “Hey,” a voice said. It sounded so near that it made the hairs in her entire body erect.

            Her father was already standing a few feet behind her. The maid’s blood is sprayed on his white T-shirt.

            The little girl didn’t think twice because she surely wouldn’t have the chance to. Without looking back, she sprinted towards the wrath of the thunderstorm leaving a threatening man holding a gun inside their once wonderful abode.

Though she was covering her ears, she shrieked at every strike of thunder and lightning. The path she was tracking was too slippery and obscure, and the wind seemed to vacuum her into the wilderness. She remembered that their frontyard is too wide as her father wanted it. The wideness appeared to be siding with its author since she was losing the direction towards an exit from the vicinity.

            Not far from where she was walking scarrified, a ray of light appeared before her. It came from a flashlight. She decided to head to its source and call for help. She felt somewhat relieved despite her pounding heart and her falling tears. She swore to let the police know about what happened back there at their house. She would even tell the whole world if need be.

            She gradually came to where the light she saw was shone. She realized that she had led herself to a cluster of Banyan trees.

            “Help!” She shouted only to shut her mouth again when she found who was holding the flashlight.

            “Oh, there you are,” her father said, plastering a maniacal smirk.

            She had to bolt away from him immediately, but a fresh wound exacted by a rigid bullet buried in her right calf didn’t allow her to. She shrieked at the top of her lungs because of the excruciating pain she felt. She saw blood oozed from her nasty wound that made her cry even more.

            “Pa,” she sobbed, “It hurts a lot.”

            “Really, honey?” He replied, sarcasm in his voice.

            “Paaaaa,” she begged.

            She hoped that he would tend to her wound and tell her that everything’s going to be alright just like he always did before, but he looked different at this moment. He looked like a hideous monster in the guise of her sweet caring father. He loomed before her like a beast, even more colossal than the trees behind him, prepared to maul her at any second.

            She half anticipated it since she thought he had a change of heart when he stared at her for almost a minute. His mind didn’t give a thought about sparing her life though. He just wanted to catch a last glimpse at the child while she’s still breathing, before he raised his left hand and pointed the gun straight to her forehead.

            Her eyes widened and more tears streamed from them as she raised her hands in a defensive posture, for her father’s index finger made its way to pull the trigger. She closed her eyes while feeling the coldness of the rain as she waited for her impending painful doom.

            The sound of a gunshot became impossible to be heard nor it would have sounded, for a stroke of some kind of intervention, a severed branch previously struck by lightning hit him in the head. He fell unconscious.

The intensity of the storm lessened, but it still showered gloom not only over Intramuros, but also to the soul of the little girl limping in the middle of the unfamiliar darkness. The coldness had made her numb; even her bones were shivering. She couldn’t feel the pain of the gunshot wound anymore. All she was aware of was that she was tired. Her eyes drooped, and her small body desperately called for rest. She needed to sleep because it was already past her bedtime.

            She came upon a muddy road that served as the aisle between columns of rickety-looking houses. Unknown to her at such point that she came as far as the suburbs of the city, and that electricity there isn’t available. People were in deep slumber and the weather which forced them to wrap themselves in the comfort of their blankets may surely not give them the benefit of waking up.

            She tried to yell for help, but her voice defied her. Just as she accepted that she could not trust it anymore, she spotted a nipa hut closest to her distance. Having mustered her last ounce of energy, she urged her weary feet to head over there. When she got there and mounted herself onto its bamboo stairs to get to its small porch, exhaustion swallowed her, and she shut her eyes.

Disturbed by sensing a presence in her broken porch, Sister Lita, an extern sister of a monastery from a distant province, abruptly abandoned sleep and went out of the only room in her hut to check what it could be. As she opened the door, she almost stepped on a wounded girl.

The bags under Sister Lita’s eyes appear that these will be heavier the more she aged. She is also tall, has greying hair, and has what other people would deem as a witch’s nose. Her nose is exaggeratingly long that this was the first thing the little girl registered the moment she saw her.

            She woke up with a tended wound by the resident quack doctor of the community as she was quickly informed. There and then, she wasted no time to relay what happened to her in the previous evening and asked the extern sister to accompany her to the police. To their surprise, however, the police had already dispatched officers to her residence, and they only found themselves before a house burned to bits.