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Fiction

After the Ascension

(Short Fiction in the Style of Joaquin Antonio Penalosa’s God’s Diary) When the Cherubim settled down and the fluttering of wings turned into soft rustlings, the Father said, “So tell us, My Son, tell us, what happened.”     The Father knew everything, of course, from...

Fence Sitter

THE SWEETEST RAMBUTAN she had ever tasted grew on their neighbor’s tree. When it was in season, the tree brimmed with loose hanging clusters of bright red fruit covered with fleshy pliable spines.  Birds flocked to feed on them and bees buzzed with...

Holiday Pay

It’s fascinating how having money can make most inconveniences suddenly feel bearable. This was what you were thinking of when you finally       As an employee of a BPO company in the city, you lived from paycheck to paycheck. That meant that for every...

My Body, for Sale

-1- Azalea stood in the dimly-lit alley, the cold night air biting her skin. She clutched a tattered piece of paper with an address scribbled on it, her last hope. The door creaked open, revealing a man in a sharp suit, his eyes scanning...

Parivaar, Family

As the plane prepared for the final descent, I could see Lap Kok’s blaze of lights. For a while it seemed the universe had inverted itself and heaped its billions of stars into this tiny former British colony. This was my first trip...

If I Could Be Free

“I envy all of them.” I greatly pitied myself for just observing what was happening around me. Sitting up straight in my bed, I saw from my window, a bunch of kids playing with a ball outside the hospital. I saw them kicking...

Random Pickings

Over the Stilt Houses at the Fishery

“They’re still having a meeting. You can sit here,” a friendly woman offered me the plastic monoblock chair beside her. I couldn’t tell her age. Her voice sounded like she was in her early thirties, although her coarse skin and hunched posture told me otherwise. But I said friendly, because her eyes told me ‌she was smiling despite the face mask covering half her face. Also, she was the only one who greeted me and gave an explanation why even though the hallway was full of people waiting, no one was coming out of the office to talk to any of us.

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...

A long goodbye

He did not know how long he was standing in front of the airport’s large, expansive glass wall, which offered a misty, drippy view...

THE EXILE

It was Christmas break. Susie and I had all the time to do whatever we wanted to do. The one thing we had long wished for, since her uncle told us the man’s story, was to see the bearded exile who lived in the house across our homes. The front of the exile’s house faced our front door. Its back side faced Susie’s huge window in their house along the bay.