1 One

Whenever her daughter forgets to close her window on nights when she was too preoccupied with either painting or staring at photo-books of ancient newspaper caricatures, Dorothy Sanbilan - mother of two - would be there to scold her the next morning. Dorothy was a woman of discipline, and through years of hardship, she had developed a resolve founded by will and grit alone and backed up by the Christian doctrine, she was on a path to mold her daughter the way she had been by her parents - or the lack thereof. She was orphaned when she was twelve.

She found Cara on the floor, snoozing like a baby. Around her, scatters of paintbrushes and half-empty - or half-full - tubes of watercolor paint riddled the floor. On a bad day, she would have flipped out. That was a fact of life in the reality that is Dorothy Sanbilan. She was a time-bomb ticking on a daily basis. In fact, just last week, she went berserk when she had found out that Cara had been feeding a stray cat that was probably rabid to the teeth. She made sure the cat never laid a single paw on the yard again by barking like a dog herself. That was a crazy feat to do, even to her own idealistic mind, but she was glad she did it. Nobody seen her do it.

She regarded the scene of crime and let out a deep sigh. Cara was usually neat, everyone in the household was - she saw to it that they were - but this was just wrong. Unwashed, unkempt paintbrushes? Bottles of oozing, drying watercolor? Colored feet? Opened window? That was just wrong. And as said, on a bad day, she would have flipped out. But she was in a practically good mood. She had read the desirable headline for the local newspaper earlier that morning - LOCAL CONGRESSMAN BUSINESS FRAUD - and that was enough to make her day a hella good day. And a cup of coffee did her some good too.  

So instead, she sat on her daughter's bed and waited for her to rise, which was, about ten minutes later. She spent these minutes scoping out the view presented by the window - left open by Cara, yours truly, the night before - and stared at the painting her daughter presumably painted before she fell asleep. She wasn't particularly interested in art - she was a businesswoman slash disciplinarian that thought art was sometimes the work of the devil - and the only time she would involve herself in art is when she has to go to art exhibits with her daughter when Kevin was busy with his football. But as uninterested as she was with the whole art scene and work of the devil jiber-jaber, she always saw beauty in her daughter's paintings. It was both beautiful and graceful. And the way her daughter manages to paint in her condition, is beauty in itself.

She shifted her gaze, she had grown bored at stillness of the outside world beyond the window. Somewhere not distant, a car was honking, yet that quiet, charming morning silence fogged her mind. The painting caught her eye, this time she took the liberty to scan it more thoroughly. 

Oh dear she must've been dreaming when she made this… Dorothy looked at her daughter, looking, looking, looking for the right word to describe what her daughter had made. This… this.. thing. What is it, even?

She found herself clasping both her hands, feeling a mild shake rattling her fingers. She looked up. The painting was still there, of course. The creature's mouth that held a dozen human limbs looked wider, seemingly capable of stretching more and more and more for more limbs that her daughter painted with her own feet.

And so on that early morning when she had found out that Cara had forgotten to close her bedroom window, beauty wasn't what she had seen on her daughter's painting, but dread.

That same day, four hours later, Dorothy jumped on her car and on her way to Alfred's pawnshop with a few thoughts on her mind. First, the menacing figure her daughter had painted and it's strange resemblance to a century old tale she had gotten from her granma. Second, the business fraud of a congressman she had read earlier that morning and how she was going to use it as a subject for preaching to her children later that evening. And lastly, how to get rid of the painting she had snuck away from her daughter's room.

Alfred's Pawnshop was strategically situated on a busy corner of Molave street between an aging town theatre and a bustling twenty-four hour convenience store that was more of an inconvenient once the town kids started getting drunk on the outside tables. The pawnshop opened twenty years ago on the day the church burned to the ground, and since, has never skipped a beat with Alfred -  a war veteran himself - behind the counter ever since, with his thick foggy glasses and yellow teeth. Although on this fine saturday morning that smell of quiet lackadaisical ambience hanged on the air, soon will come the bustling of people headed for the city centre just a few blocks away. The boisterous stir of pedicabs and cars shall break the blur of morning and just like that, the day will ensue and subsequently pass like another page in the imaginary history books that may well be forgotten for all of time.

She walked into the pawnshop and waved at Alfred with a snappy hand, one that resembled a kind of weird salute more than anything. The old man behind the glass window nodded in response, hands presumably busy with whatever it was it had been doing.

'Hav'n't seen you in awhile, Dors.' He said, it was clear he had some sort of throat disease. The husky tone made sure to indicate that awful fact. 'Listen, Fred.' She whispered, and walked around the booth, making sure to do so at a casual manner. The security guard eyed her sharply before turning away.

'I hear you keep a lot of things for a lot of people?'

'Ah yes.' He said, smiling. Revealing absolutely yellow teeth. 'I'm known to keep things for people, I do.'

'And the cost?'

'Heh - you see, the price depends on the item, Dors. Do you have it with you?'

'It's in my car--'

'Why don't you bring it in, and meet me at the back room? It'll be busy here in a minute or two. Sonny!' He nodded to the security. 'She's cleared to follow me back there so don't you even think about it boy.'

The back room resembled more of a box than anything one would surmise as part of a building's interior. The remains of what once was a singular window that served as a gateway to the outside world hanged in the middle of the room. It had been cemented shut. A sloppy job, but seems to have gotten the job done. The world inside the room almost felt heavy, and the sound of the busy city street outside faded into an inaudible murmur. Cabinets, and more cabinets lined three of the four walls, and litters of small boxes stacked on it like giant jenga pieces. Although the room had that air of an old rotting storage room where dusty articles are stored seeming for all eternity, it was nonetheless clean. This detail made her at least as comfortable as she could be.

Alfred sat behind the table and carefully studied the item she had brought with her that morning. The old man fingered through one of his drawers and produced a magnifying glass that glinted under the lightbulb.

'Seems to be an odd piece of artwork.' He said, and studied the item some more. 'I have to admit, I like it. I'm not much of a collector myself but I would pay money to--'

Suddenly, she remembers. Like a forgotten memory that casually resurfaces into the mind's eye. All these years waiting for the secret word - or painting - that would pull the curtain down from this memory. That grim tale her granma used to tell, that tale she would tell her over and over and over again when they were out on the back porch awaiting for a sunset she oddly associated with dripping blood. She was an only child, so she had to listen to whatever the old woman had to say: riddles, true stories, fairytales, gossips, and even griping.

This had been the story that frightened her the most. Maybe even scarred her as a kid.  The tale of a fish monster swallowing a coastal town as repentance to the people that had stripped the sea of all the life that gave them a means of livelihood. The monster had been described as twice the length of a coconut tree,and had hundreds of sharp pointy teeth. A gaping mouth that can devour a single fishing boat on one swoop. The coming of this monster was said to have been preluded by the sighting of a man-fish - one that walked among the people and spoke their tongue - days before the arrival of the monster. Some even said the man-fish was the monster itself, taking on a form of a land-walking marine animal that surveyed the world of men. She thought how hilarously frightening it would be to believe it as a kid, but she did. And the rain that came before the monster, the raining of fish.

'--when we had that trip to Palawan the years previously. But this certainly caught my eye. I think it's a beauty, Dors.'

'Dors?' He asked. The short but well-built woman in front of him seemed to be lost in her own thoughts. She was not in character this morning.

'Yes, Fred?' She said, as soon as she snapped away from the dream-like visage of her reminisce.

'How much?'

'It's not for sale.'

'That's a shame.' He uttered in his gutteral drawl.

'I really like it, though.'

'I want you to keep it for me, Fred. Have you decided the cost?'

'I won't ask you where you got it from, but I want to ask you why you don't want to keep it yourself?'

'I have some things... things that have to be taken care of, and it might get in the way.'

The old man Fred asked no more, he only nodded as if fully understanding what she just said. In fact, he believed he understood it, he believed he knew what she meant right there and then. He sat there a moment longer, and produced a form for  her to fill up, not for legal matters - stuff like this goes under the table, per say - but for formality's sake. God knows it was the only thing keeping this business afloat, away from the plight of ruin and collapse, a sense of balance from the turmoil of the outside world. Everything was just formality, at this point.

He did not believe Dorothy Sanbilan to be an art enthusiast, although he had seen her in a couple of local art exhibits, but that was because she had been chaperoning her daughter, and the procurement of such an odd piece of art certainly raised a couple of odd questions in his mind, absolutely, but the fact of the matter is, he didn't care how, why or where she had gotten it. The only thing he wanted at that moment was to get rid of the woman, and be alone with the painting.

He would stare at it for hours, study every brush stroke, and maybe even talk to it like his own mute child. He had taken a liking to this particular artwork that he had not felt for people in a long time.

'I'll see to it that it is well kept, Dors.' He finally said. Outside the room, a bustle of people murmured and talked. The stir of a pedicab sluicing past became almost as distant as the last war itself.