Explore more Articles in

Fiction

Lighter

It was Kimmy’s last night at work. Before the shift ended, she grabbed a box in her locker where she kept all the lighters random people had left lying around in the designated smoking areas in the building. At lunch break, she went...

Echoes of the Blue Fire

Our ancestors believed the butat-iw were bad omens. They appeared when I was alone—wild orbs of floating blue fire, the size of my Baba’s fist. When in great curiosity I tried to reach for them, they would vanish with a soft hush, only to...

The Weight of Small Things

Fear is at the back of her mind, a shimmering heat in the distance, a glowing ember in the dark. Silently acknowledged but never confronted, because naming might push her off the deep end. But it is there, biding its time, like a...

Something More

BY THIS TIME next year, Teresita could be elsewhere, unmindful of the biting cold. She could see herself walking along a cobblestone path strewn with scattered leaves from maple trees that lined the streets. It would be October, and the foliage would be...

Mawr

“Do we ever win, Mom?” Raniw smiled at the young ginger cat, barely out of kittenhood, who asked the question. “No, Runi, we will never win. Death finds our hooman in different ways. It’s just that the people we seek to protect could be used...

House of Lola

Notwithstanding its idyllic ambiance, Dumaguete City in the early '70s was a cheerful city overflowing with enigmas and desires. Amidst the brackish environs of Escaño Beach, a few kilometers from the city proper, an old house stood. In that rustic 18th-century house, there...

Random Pickings

Household Melodies

A dragging sound of slippers, slow and heavy. It was my father’s footsteps, for he had never walked as if he were in a...

Magatos a badas

So magatos ba tu a badas na di nin den mabago so paniniwala ko kano ginawa ko. Nasambiyan so mga di kaaya-ayang galbekan ko,...

The X-Ray Tech’s Love Story

We began speaking Filipino when we learned we were both from the Philippines. I had gone to him for x-rays ordered by my primary...

The Untermensch

Bernard was an Untermensch. He had the “power” to get into accidents. It first manifested when he was ten years old. A bully had...