late this afternoon i went to benguet general hospital (that's in la trinidad) to visit my uncle. unluckily though, i was there an hour before visiting hours started. so i patiently sat outside, smoking, while waiting for three o'clock.
twenty minutes into my waiting, a guy approached me and asked if he could bother for a light. i obliged and took out my zippo lighter. "whoa! nice lighter," he said. "thanks," i replied.
the guy was large like me (by large i mean someone having vital statistics of 40-40-40), about my age, about 5'8", with messed up hair, wore a red shirt, black shorts, and slippers. he was eating a bag of cheeze curls. and judging by the amount of cheeze curls crumbs spread over his mouth and fingers, he was enjoying the treat. he offered me some but i politely said no. he then sat beside me and started talking. he said that he wasn't really enjoying the cheeze curls and added he'd rather have a combination of ice cream (ube flavor) and marlboro reds instead. i wasn't asking about it, but he said it anyway. maybe just to get the conversation going. weird guy i tell you.
then he started to ask about me. what i was doing there? i said i was there to visit my uncle but was an hour early. he said he was there because his 8-month old kid was sick. where am i from? i said i'm based in baguio, but was born in mandaluyong. he said he was born in kalentong, grew up in quezon city, but was relocated to los baños, laguna, before settling here in benguet four years ago because he got married. he also asked about my work. i said i work for an energy company as their press/public relations guy. "that's cool," he said. i never asked him anything though.
he then asked me why i was in baguio, being born in mandaluyong and all. well i explained that both my parents were both working and nobody was available to look after me. we were living in makati then. so my grandma (mother's side) brought me to baguio. he then asked me if i ever imagined what it would've been had i stayed in makati. well i said, all my friends in our neighborhood in makati are either dead, a junkie, or unemployed, so maybe i'd be one of them too. he agreed, nodding incessantly, while munching on what's left of his stash of cheeze curlz.
he then asked me if i knew his friend.. a certain bienvenido.. i don't know.. i really didn't catch the name. he then named dropped another one, and i still said their names didn't ring a bell. he said those guys were two of his closest friends in quezon city. they're now in jail because they were convicted of the murder of this certain lady. he said it was the san pablo massacre. he then narrated that this bienvenido courted this lady but was never given a chance. the guy, being a spoiled rich brat and all, abducted the lady and while at the car, shot her in the body five times, stabbed her in the face ten times, and cracked her skull with a baseball bat. they then dumped her body at the highway near carmona, cavite.
"ok," i said ".. that was quite a story." but he didn't stop there. he said he was planning to visit the guys this december and talk about the "good-ol'-days" they had. he remembered the time when the three of them were addicted to shabu (crack). while on it, being the entreprenuers he claimed they are, they'd sell the same stuff to friends and kids (talking about 13 year-olds here). other than that, he said that on occassion, he and his friends would drive around town and run over unsuspecting beggars and hobos. they take their dead bodies and put them in the trunk and take them to what he referred to as the "pier" where their contacts (i don't know if these are doctors) are standing by to "butcher" and "dismember" the bodies and salvage good, functioning internal organs (liver, heart, spleen, kidneys). he said he and his friends earned a hefty sum from this... enough to sustain their parties and caprices for months.
just as i was starting to gross out, i looked at my cellphone and saw that it was three. so i said to him i was going to my uncle's room. before that, he asked for another light. i said see you around. he said yeah. weird, i never got his name though.
i'm out.
No comments:
Post a Comment