Fiction by Edmond Julian dela Cerna | May 30th, 2010
You have been very busy preparing for tonight. It is the last day of the year, and you have been on a holiday rush, along with others, who are milling about in the mall, jostling one another in the supermarket. You decide to tag me along so that you can have someone to carry the bags of groceries, which are enough to last for a week. I suspect that all of them are for tonight; you’re the type who welcomes the New Year lavishly. Have you checked our purchases? Have you noticed the seemingly countless round fruits in Styrofoam and All-wrap bearing their weight in my hand? As we ford through the crowd, I try to keep close to you, lest I get lost and won’t be able to make it home with you tonight. (Walking the distance between the mall and our house is out of the question; it would be too far. And I can’t call you up on a cellphone—you simply refuse to give me one although I have always said that I’m old enough to have one.) I can already imagine myself—while we hurry through the throng of the holiday-fevered shoppers—being alone in the huge mall, crying, like how a child would, looking for you, running through the maze of people, beset with fear that will last until the stroke of midnight. I don’t want to spend the rest of my year wailing. It’s one of the countless things you have taught me—to welcome the New Year with happiness.
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Fiction by Edmond Julian dela Cerna | September 27th, 2009
He was acting strange around the house lately, my father. Often I would find him peering through the jalousies. As though in participation (or probably in some unfathomable sympathy) the whole world would fall quiet—the occasional barking of the neighbors’ dogs, the sound of children playing, and the gurgling noise of tricycles, all would suddenly wane.
Bare-chested and potbellied, he would pace around the house, anxious, then later, he would sit in front of the TV, switching channels as swiftly as the tube could accommodate. Mamang would sit beside him at night and complain of getting dizzy from the bright flashes of channels being changed now and then. At daytime, as Mamang left for work, he’d usually settle on a basketball game. Though jobless since the day I learned fathers ought to have a job no matter what, he wasn’t like this. He used to go around the village without a shirt on, meddling on other people’s lives, influencing other husbands to emulate him.
“It’s my job,” he had boasted at dinner when asked by Mamang, “I am the king of Cabantian, and I have to constantly oversee the status of my kingdom,” to which Mamang just rolled her eyes and sighed.
So much for being the invincible king, I thought after noticing his unusual behavior for the past two days.
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Fiction by Edmond Julian dela Cerna | September 16th, 2007
It’s About Time You Meet Her
You knew her though, or someone you knew of. We were all aware of her existence that, like wallpapers, we never really took notice. Hers was a familiar face in the crowd with that look of desperation crawling right into you. Her face caked with pustules that nobody dared to touch. Her body looked so thin, her skin tightly embracing her bones. She didn’t possess those black-rimmed glasses and buck teeth (though she had one missing on the upper mouth); she didn’t have braces that completed the criteria for everyday geeks. Her mother barely covered the basics; another strain on their budget was certainly out of the question.
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