ALTERNATE REALITY

Entry No. 1

As far as I was able to remember anything, my mind and body had already been wrought to endure a lifetime of pain. Only those who were treated unfairly could understand justice in the form I have fashioned. I take other people’s lives and hold them in my hands. In a strict sense it’s just a profession, something to help me survive in a world where dog-eats-dog. Bite my bullet! In the face of death, I could just as well grin. I laugh at the situation I’m in then stare at my past. This is sweeter than being on the other side of the circumstances.

My father worked as a farmer for a rich landlord back in the province. I was nine, young enough not to do anything on that fateful day, yet old enough to remember the faces that did us harm.

Not being able to meet the quota of crops set by the haciendero, the harvest of my family was burned. They later came to our house and brutally raped my mother. Screams begging for mercy and pity came from my father, both like a curse and a hopeless plea. He was a coward – an image of fear secured on my mind. I knew he could have done something – anything – but he did not. After an hour that seemed like an eternity, both of them were dead. Seven gunshot wounds were found on my mother’s body. My father only had one. The shameless cry for mercy from the head of my family is something I would never forget. From that time onward, I have decided never to suffer the same fate they had. My father is the biggest coward I know!

I lived with my grandmother who decided to take me far away from the place I was born. We left the jungle of the provinces and settled on the concrete swamps of the city. Not much difference. We still live on a land not ours waiting to be evicted by the police or some goon hired by the landlord. In fact, we moved from squatter to squatter more than the number of times I had my haircut. At every place we had to move to, security could not be found.

I remember things quite clearly. My grandma had a fistfight with a neighbor over a measly five-peso. I could have told her five pesos is just a drop of blood from my earnings right now. Once, she suffered a broken nose for allegedly selling cigarettes on someone else’s territory. I admired her. She has the bravery of ten men and the courage to assert herself. Later, as she would tell me, everyone needs to be brave in order to survive.

The pain of my childhood was never buried on the nightmares I had. In fact, it became a daily routine. The scream of my father echoing on my head – and the sight of my mother being painfully raped. I never told anyone about the constant dream I had. I made a promise that I would be strong. If I think about the past that I had, the only cowardly act I knew I have done was not having the courage to kill myself. I’m coming to terms with that thought. The agony of defeat is something that never crossed my mind. I was too strong for all of them. Suicide was never an escape. It was an alternative.

I have a scar on my head, on my shoulders, and on my neck. It’s an eyesore to an otherwise pretty face as grandma used to say. But I take the ugliness of my scars not as a blemish but a ceaseless reminder of things that needed to be done. The scar I would create for my revenge would thrust deep into their souls. The bastard I blamed would pay dearly. And he did. Every pain, every anguish are embedded on this marking. Everytime I look at the mirror, it strengthens my resolve to continue with my revenge.