The thing was, LD and I were friends. I mean, close friends. Closer tham best friends, actually. We had been sharing the same friendship together ever since we were Pre-School (Her Mom and my Mom were Best friends, too.), that was why I witnessed all the struggle he had been ever since. He was obese, and his obesity was not just any other’s obesity. His case was different, because no matter how I tried to convince him to lose weight, and no matter how hard did he tried to at least engage on the idea of losing weight, he just could not still drop a pound. He had just gotten bigger and bigger, to the point that it was already alarming. If Andrei was fat, he was twice (or maybe twice and a half) fatter than Andrei. “Well, good then. Let’s go there together,” he said once he was done making up for a breather. “Seriously speaking, boy, I have not taken a pee ever since the lockdown started. Crazy, right? I did not know

“What-what are you trying to do? Why-why do you have a knife, Samatha?” I asked, the trembling of my voice was enough to suffice my veins with overflowing fear and tremor. “Whatever this is, this is not a good joke. Stop it, you are scaring us!” I even added. LD clenched his fists, but it did not look like he was planning to punch Samantha, or perhaps trying to take the knife away from her. To me, he was clenching his fists because just like me,he was afraid too. Afraid that maybe Samantha was not kidding. Afraid that maybe Samantha was not in the right mood for a prank. Samantha moved closer at the same time our hearts moved closer to our rib cage, too. She raised the chopping knife in the air, pointing the sharp edge of the rectangular weapon to my direction. The rusts, the bronze color that sparked as the light of the yellow bulbs inside the comfort room shimmered over the knife reflected our faces on its surface.

I was stuck on the same spot where I was standing after I heard what Travis had said. It did not sink in to me in any ways. His words felt like a pile of loose sands to me, slowly falling out of hand and disappearing in the air without giving me at least a single idea of what was going on exactly. He wanted me to call the police, which I would normally do so because I was obedient when the one giving me orders was Travis, but then it’s a little off to me to call the cops without at least knowing the reason why. I just stood frozen beside him, eyes were worried where to look at, and lips were worried what to say. After a minute or two, I finally had the gut to ask. “Why do you want me to call the police?” I doubted if I asked the right question. Regardless, Travis still answered anyway. “It will be rude and unprofessional of me to say things to you that only police are allowed to say, Chuck. That’s why if you wan

  “I guess so, too.”   That was the last words I had heard from Mrs. Jean. After that, the next voice I was able to recognize was Travis. It was not an easy thing to get a glimpse of. There had been tens of mouths blabbing in the area, so doubts came first. But then, during the exact three seconds when the crowd decided not to say a thing and just went into complete silence, it was when I was able to hear his voice. It was a sobbing voice. It sounded like he was crying, perhaps grieving because it was just surreal in the ear. I had not heard him cry once, that’s why I found it hard to believe it was really him. Travis.   When confirmed, I squeezed my way through the barring people until I reached the entrance of the door where I saw Philip standing by his Dad, while Chuck was on his right along Mr. Tan and Mr. Homer. I looked down to the floor, and I saw a pool of blood swarming on the floor. Two dead bodies were scattered uneve

CHUCK We did not know we spent about twenty-two minutes of waiting on the small bench made of wood and bamboo before a 4x4 truck in matte black color happened to shed its front yellow lights through the darkness of the gateway. It was a complete mind-boggling question to think of. Why would a 4x4 black truck make an appearance on the gate, when it was not even related to the crime scene, and it was not even related to us? That was where the four of us went wrong. Or perhaps the two of us only. It seemed that Rabiya and Travis knew something we did not. “I assume it’s him,” Rabiya said as she let go a deep sigh along the pointing of his right hand towards the direction of the unloading station just on the left side of the gate. Travis answered, but while talking, he started to move forward and stop when he reached the closed wings of the gate. He had then pulled out some