As the first episode of the Philippines Graphic Literary Workshop (PGLW) slowly came to its conclusion on February 28, we knew that we had one more thing that we can offer our bright young fellows: a starting platform for their creative endeavors. Here, we present one of their final outputs from the workshop. We also asked them to provide an artwork that they think best represents their stories. Read on.
Lisa had never been to the beach before, so her parents gifted her by flying with her to a resort.
The waves, though ticklish, frightened her. She begins clutching the slipper strap between the big toe and index toe, scared of losing it in the water, the sand soft sinking for every step she makes. When she looks around, some visitors in the resort have taken off their footwear, frolicking freely on the warm sand; she doesn’t recognize anyone else.
She remembers her parents saying, “Mom will be at the villa, and papa will rest, OK? Happy 15th Birthday, dear.” Afterwards, Lisa nodded at this info, knowing they are all nearby. Her heart would soon be overcome with a lonely boredom.
Those hazel eyes then scanned the vicinity of the beach once more. From afar, she finds a man, no older than 43, his ribcage evident in his posture, slugging an empty net behind him, wiping off sweat from his worn, wrinkled hands. His shirt is reduced to a mere tank top, and the color blue seems to be drained away from his knee-length shorts.
“Sir,” she begins, but he gives her a glare.
“I don’t work here,” His head jerks to the general direction where she knows the main hub is.
“No, um—” Lisa stutters, “This place, this is a beach, right?”
The man grows irritated by the minute. “Go find your mom or something.”
She doesn’t detect the frustration in his voice, so Lisa once again scans her surroundings, smelling the sea, feeling for the sand underneath her feet. She soon grows impatient, looking around and finding a shoe near her, blemished in its sandy glory. Its shape is that of a woman’s size, a peach color peering from each grain. She knows it’s not her mom’s because she doesn’t have plain ones.
“Do people always leave shoes at the beach?”
The man glances blankly at the shoe. “People like you do,”
“But I have my slippers on,” Lisa tries to rebuke him.
The man, exhausted from entertaining her, shakes his head. His bare feet idle against the waves.
“Who cares? You’ll leave them here eventually.”
Andrea Guevarra, nicknamed Drea, is a Quezon City-born 3rd Place winner in UST’s 40th Gawad Ustetika who currently lives in Sta. Maria, Bulacan as a personal servant for her singular-braincelled cat, Mango. When she isn’t engrossed in video games, horror movies, or Korean drama flicks, she ventures off to write either short stories, experimental fiction or interactive fiction on things that scare or disgust her.
More details on the artwork here.
