It was three in the morning when a distant clattering sound of tumbled-down trashcans echoed in an empty lot beside the dark highway. Houses were more than a hundred meters away so it instantly became a hidden and unauthorized dumping site of illegal materials and chemicals. Normally, one would suspect a starving stray cat rummaging for food or a poverty-stricken garbage collector looking for plastic bottles, glass bottles, or boxes which one could sell in exchange for a few hundred pesos but it was neither. An old television with a broken screen and a chopped-off pedestal stand mysteriously flickered on and off, producing weird electronic noises. A scrawny feline sleeping in a ragged box awakened and hissed at it out of surprise before running away. A strong rush of unsettled air circulated the area, whipping garbage bins around and spilling garbage. A deep, sinister sound emitted from the unsettled gas, darkening in color as it continues to rush around in irregular behavior. This dark unsettled gas was a malevolent entity that has been lurking in dark and isolated places. Its existence feeds from evil thoughts and deeds but is also in a constant battle to form and exist as every act of goodness chips away its life. A piercing grave sound was once again heard as the inconsistent body of gas continued to ramble around. The entity is in desperation to once again possess a human, to manifest its power in a living matter that it could manipulate and control. It has possessed multiple vile people from way before. It has possessed both men and women even long before the 15th century, in search for someone in every generation of a certain family that stands as the protector of the one thing it desires to devour and surcease from existing.
A few meters away from the disturbed place was a police officer in civilian clothes dragging a body bag made of thick plastic. He was hauling his colleague's dead body whom he just shot in the head an hour ago. His car was parked and hidden behind the tall grasses not too far from the road but unnoticeable. He knew the place very well, he was certain that there were no CCTV cameras for another hundred meters and no possible witnesses around to catch him in the act. The atrocious killer threw away the heavy corpse with a huff and wiped his sweaty forehead using the back of his gloved hand. He paused for a rest and rammed his shovel to the ground which he carried on his back.
"You are such a pain the ass even in your death, Fernan." He said, inhaling deeply. "Well, you asked for this. I told you to stop nosing around my business. I warned, more than once. Hadn't I?"
After a quick pause, he started digging a grave for his victim to rest in. This vicious law enforcer is Euphert Benitez, a 40-year-old perfidious policeman who had protected several corrupt officials who did not just reward him extravagantly but also promoted him during their reign in exchange for his bloody service. He had done a lot of dragging and burying of people he intentionally killed and those who were ordered for him to execute. This is more or less his tenth time discarding a dead body so it did not take long for him to quickly and cautiously finish the dirty work. Benitez removed his gloves and burned them on top of his victim's grave. As he watched the remaining evidence turn into ashes, he rotated and massaged his tired arms from digging. Once he made sure that everything was clean and unsuspicious, he trudged away like he just disposed of his normal garbage.
"Boy do I need coffee!" He blurted out as he stretched his back.
The uncontained and volatile entity felt his presence and moved quicker than before as if it was being magnetized. There is nothing more appealing to this evil entity than a man with a heart filled with spite and malice. It stormed out of the place where it was first seen and raced towards the sullen Euphert Benitez. Trees and shrubs brushed harshly against the strong trail of wind, alarming Euphert. He swiftly drew his gun and aimed it in the direction of the trees but he saw no one.
"Is anyone there? Show yourself!" No response. He scanned the whole place vigilantly. A strange sound of inaudible deep snarl was heard east of him so, he pointed yonder.
"Putangina, face me!" He yelled.
The black stray cat from earlier happened to pass by. Startled by its sudden appearance, the surprised man pointed his gun at the innocent cat.
"You damned cat!" He said as fear started to grow inside of him.
The black cat hissed with great volume, its eyes dilated, ears back and flat against its head, and its body arched and trembling. He felt a strong, cold breeze behind him. Stricken by fear, he slowly turned his back and before him wafted a black cloud of unearthly matter. With shaky hands, he raised his gun and aimed at it. Before he could even fathom what was happening, what it is, or where it's from, the dark ghostly apparition inhabited his body at warp speed. Euphert fell on his knees as he struggled to breathe. His body ached and his veins strongly pulsed. He felt a hot surge of blood streaming in him, from his head to his feet. He groaned as his brain seems to be on fire and his heart bursting from hyperventilation. After a moment of torment, he fell to the ground.
It wasn't long when he opened his eyes again. It wasn't the vicious police officer anymore. It was someone or something else. He rose from the ground and picked up his gun.
"It's been so long since I last took hold of a weapon." He said as he dusted the sand off his shirt, "This is such a nice body to live in. Tt's as if it is my own." He chuckled. He glanced at the stray cat fiercely glaring at him. He pointed his gun towards it and shot its tail.
"Nice gun." He said as the cat yowled in pain.
He started to walk away with a grim plan formulating in his head. Upon reaching the possessed human's car, he stopped to look up at the night sky, where the moon was still shining brightly. He stared at it with despise and odd desire.
"You contemptuous deity." He sneered, lazily pointing the gun to the sky, "Beautiful, desirable, yet merely lucky." he said, drumming his gun in mid-air after every adjective.
He climbed up to the roof of the car effortlessly, "But I have got to commend you for your bravery, Bulan. That's why Bathala ordered people to protect you from me."
He sat down with crossed legs, still with the loaded gun in his hand. Bulan is believed to be the deity who lit up the night sky. The brave god of beauty and illumination according to folklore. The dark entity possessing Benitez's body, on the other hand, is the spirit of the Bakunawa. The rumoured colossal sea serpent (sometimes a humungous alligator or reptile) who was mesmerized by its beauty, vowing to devour it.
"I have lived in a lot of human bodies, absorbing all their values, beliefs, and even their own selfish desires. I have seen how people, places, and cultures change. I have seen them reform and revamp a lot of ideologies, ways of life, everything. It seems like I have seen the world remodel a lot of times." He continued talking to the moon as if it was a real person.
"But you, Bulan, along with the other deities in either the sky or the earth, you're the only ones unchanging and consistent. I have watched people praise and worship you up to its gradual dissipation stemming from their knowledge of religion, or science, or now merely of sentiment that we're just stories. All of you are rendered mere nature. I have heard people discuss logical explanations about your existence. I have witnessed their thirst for the truth slaked by science. All of their claims, credible and plausible, were deemed factual. They have explained wit-fully what you all narrated in simple terms and explanations. Adlaw, Bulan, even I, Bakunawa, and many others are rendered folklore and hoax. People today are not simpletons anymore, they're complex and curious."
He let out a small laugh as he realized how ridiculous he looked, talking to the moon. He scratched his head using the mouth of his gun, "I definitely look delusional, if someone could hear me right now."
"The thing is, Bulan, with all of these changes, curiosity, and rapaciousness--where people heedlessly scramble their way to the top, heartless and all--I live, I get stronger, and I continue existing. And that's not even the best part yet. With all these revising and adapting, I learn and replenish. It's so nice to be evil yet untampered rather than being untampered per se but benign."
This dark entity has dwelled in a lot of evildoers with different levels of wickedness and wrath, eventually embodying a variety of evil. It assimilated shrewd drills and strategies from the different perspectives he had possessed. He witnessed how evil shifted from aggressive and rash to devious and smart. He now fathomed the canny ways to succeed.
He tapped his gun three times to respite from solid peace before concluding that the moon will never reply. "You make it so easy to believe that you're just a piece of matter orbiting around the earth."
He slid down to the ground and opened the door of his car. "This time around, I'll suppress my intrinsic appetitive desire to consume you as much as I can and focus on flourishing and devising strategic ways to attack instead. I came to an epiphany that my staunch obsession renders me unwary, making me pregnable to your irksome guardians--oh, the thought of them infuriates me!" He smashed his hand to the car out of fury as he remembered all its failed attempts, especially the ones where it's almost close to victory but still ended up in chagrin.
"This time, your protector will perish. And I will finally kill you while I enjoy my time here. This is the gift of being untampered and capable of change. And by the way," He pulled out his wallet and presented Euphert's police I.D to the sky. "I've possessed yet another man with mutual darkness as I have. It's beyond convenient to dwell in someone who's already as evil and dangerous as I am. All I need now is a fresh start."
He gave the moon one last look of contempt before it entered the car.
"I will win this time." He murmured.
The poor inhabited human drove away with a malignant spirit manipulating his body. Once again, the dark entity found a suitable host to control and use to perpetrate his plans. It is now more menacing and dauntless after gaining experience and better knowledge of the material world. And with a body of a diabolical personality, he had grown indomitable.
Clouds in the sky started to obliterate the moon. Suddenly, a loud thunderclap roared from the sky and an unexpected rain poured heavily. The villain took this as a response and a smug smile forms across his lips.
"You did not see this coming, haven't you?"
Luna and her grandfather typically spend their Sunday afternoon gun-shooting. Bagwis, Luna's grandfather, just recently paid off his late 18th birthday present for her. It was this simple indoor gun range he had been paying in monthly installment for a year. Luna and Bagwis stood in good postures and comfortable stance as they competitively shot their targets. Both of them had been attaining excellent scores and neither hesitates to ruin the record. Severo, Luna's father, who was regulating the game called for ceasefire and they halted in unison. They unloaded their guns and took off their earmuffs and protective glasses. "Nicely done, Luna. I'm impressed." Bagwis said amusedly. "Thanks,tay.I guess I was in such a good mood." Luna said with a big smile on her face.
Bagwis parked his old car in the cheap garage he manages to rebuild after every typhoon. Officially purchasing the indoor gun range for his sole grandchild pleased him. She was eighteen when he promised her the entire thing and fulfilled it a year later. He still can't forget the look on her face when she first heard of it, she loved gun-shooting the most. Bagwis was somehow responsible of forming his grandchild into the atypical adult she is now. The young lady prefers being alone and shooting guns as leisure instead of the usual stuff regular adults enjoy such as going out with friends, drinking, shopping, and the like. He can't even remember a time Luna brought home a friend, not even on her birthdays. This does not worry him since Luna never fussed about it anyway. Going to school and partaking in academic activities already counted as her whole social life. Despite these, Bagwis never thought of his grand daughter as odd or different
A week went by without progress in Bagwis' case. There were no possible suspects since nobody from the neighbourhood saw the face of the culprit. They claim that they only heard growling, clashing of metal, and Bagwis yelling as if he was in a fight with someone. Security footage shows that Bagwis opened his door around ten in the evening to a police officer who delivered him mail. He drove away a moment later and never appeared again. That police officer was Euphert Benitez. They had summoned him to deliver a statement the next day. According to him, he was distributing the mail his late friend Fernan left from volunteer work. He used to volunteer for a nursing home by endorsing it to the families in the area. When he died, Benitez stated that he had the heart to continue the job his friend used to do as an act of commemorating his philanthropism and doing something edifying once in a while. He happened to pass by that night on his way home when he saw Bagwis parking his car. Benitez
On her way to her grandfather's house, Luna messaged her mother that she might come home late. She received a text back from her, telling her to go home by eight. Luna slid her phone back into her bag and grabbed her coin purse from the same pocket. From the yellow light of the tiny bulb that illuminated the vehicle's inside, she collected eight pieces of silver peso coins that she passed forward to the driver. Two younger students in front of her instinctively received her money and relayed it to the driver. Jeepneys are the most used public transportation in the Philippines, most commonly dubbed as the king of the road. They have been around for a long time and mostly dominated the highways. Jeepneys also add vibrance and life to the dull streets through the unique art painted on them. When passengers load the vehicle, they relay their fare to the person nearest to them until it reaches the driver. Change is then passed back to the pass
The passage continued to the narration of a girl's ability to make love potions. She was Susan, and she lived in Samar, a province in the Visayas. Marina heard of Susan when her cousin invited her to come with her to Samar searching for the famous potion maker, unanimously endorsed by anyone who found love that her cousin was aware of. Marina thought it was a frivolous trip, but she agreed to come since she wasn't charged with any expenses throughout the whole trip. She left Celestina to Letty for a week while they left for Samar. Susan was beautiful and enticing. She had a voluptuous body and skin of faint brown, healthy and unblemished. She was the most beautiful she had ever met. Her conceited cousin, to her surprise, did not patronize her beauty nor goaded her to criticize Susan out of insecurity when she met her. They both agreed that she was simple yet ethereal. Susan did not just make philters. She could cast spells, too, since her
Luna stared at her window, watching raindrops trickle down the misty glass. It had been raining all morning, and luckily for her, she didn't have classes every Wednesdays. She sighed. She was supposed to de-stress and mellow out today by doing the groceries, checking out discounted books, and visiting a puppy café, but the weather seemed to disagree with her plans. Luna wasn't the type of person who spent a lot of time on her phone. The consumption of social media for hours doesn't help her relax. What alleviates her stress are the classic long walks, taking silent moments in the park, and simply exerting physical effort to unwind. It is only through this that she felt more in control and motivated. Luna slumped herself on her bed and closed her eyes, hearing only the heavy rain falling on the roof like tiny rocks incessantly plunging. Her phone suddenly buzzed, notifying her of a message from Poppy. She listlessly rose from the bed and grabbed the phone on her bedside table.
It just took her a couple of minutes to reach the place since it was past the rush hour. Luna unmounted her bike and checked her phone to make sure if she was at the right place. She parked her bike a few meters away from the bakery and securely locked it. She saw an old woman sweeping in front of the store and timidly approached her."Good afternoon ma'am, hello. I'm Luna and I'm looking for Dorothy Martes, am I at the right place?" She asked in the most courteous way she could. The old lady stopped sweeping and quickly kept the broomstick away thinking she was a customer."Yes, what can we do for you?" And she hurriedly walked towards the door. Luna was quick to stop her from acting upon her storekeeper's instinct by carefully tapping her shoulder."I'm sorry for the sudden visit. I just came here for this." Luna replied, and retrieved the book in her bag. Confusion ran across the old lady's face and her un-filtered re
Luna pulled her phone out of her pocket. She opened the music app, plugged in her earphones, and listened to a shuffle of songs. She plans to skip school today and go to Bacoor, Cavite instead to search for Wendy Tores or any of her relatives. Hasty she was but she did not think so. She was losing time and her headstrong desire to search for her grandfather got the best of her. Now that she had a chance to do something about the situation, her brain sort of just gets this mental itch to go for it and it will not stop bugging her until she finds her. This risk she was willing to take is nothing compared to the threat of life pending on her grandfather's fate.Three minutes later, the old, rusty, and loud train approached the platform. With heavy mechanical whirring and dark smoke puffing out of the train's pipe, the Philippine National Railway or PNR train set to a halt. The doors slowly opened, letting out hundreds of sweaty passengers from kilometers away. It's as early as eight in t