The Angelic Conflict (Extended Published Version)

Untitled Part 2

THE GIRL opens her eyes and within a moment regrets it. Why must she awaken from such a beautiful dream? How crueler can the world get?

But a ray of sunlight dances on her cheek, warm and promising, yet taunting and its source concealed. Inaccessible. Its intensity tells the girl that it is over a little past six.

The girl attempts to sit up and soon well learns of her fettered arms. She tilts back her head, looking up at her hands, which are still tied to the feet of her bed, ash-colored nylon packaging rope chinked around each delicate wrist. Thereafter, she realizes that she still lies on her wooden bedroom floor, where she has obviously fallen asleep; and recalls the events that had recurred a while ago, in the wee hours that have passed by: her guardians (a paternal aunt and her husband) had rebuked and screamed at her again.3

For the first time she had attempted to fight back— to escape; but her guardians held on to her arms, their fantastic Chains of Spiritual Liberty, and when she tried to wrestle with them and break free, they called for one of the male ushers from their church congregation to help her aunt's husband tie her down. With the additional aid, they then fastened her hands to the feet of her bed, and stripped off her shirt and shorts so that her aunt could pour and rub oil all over her body, on every inch of flesh. The girl wriggled naked on the ground as the men clutched her extremities to the floor. She screamed back at them. Cursed them to their graves. She did not deserve this. No one did. Yet the religious cuckoos she had been forced to live with for the last six years thought otherwise.

Now that her head has cleared, the girl easily cuts the ropes by twisting and grinding them against the sharp metal edge of the bed; they loosen, eventually break; and the girl rises from her prostrate position, alternately massaging her wrists with either of her thumbs.

With bones aching the girl stands up and quietly rushes to her cabinet. Her guardians are probably exhausted and would sleep in till noontime. She must act quick.

The girl does not bother closing the door for locking it would be comprised of pushing the bed against it, an act that would produce too much noise; and she deems the risk not worth it. Her bedroom door has no doorknob of its own anyway, much less a lock, as though privacy is not a right for her to be had.

"Fuck," she hisses. It was the very reason she was caught last night. She was changing into her sleeping clothes, and just before the girl could pull down her top, her aunt barged into her room. The captious old woman instantly caught the kiss mark tattoo on the girl's right hip bone, which was clandestinely acquired three weeks ago. The aunt summoned the husband, and though the girl explained otherwise, the couple mused that the tattoo looked very much like a woman's vagina, subsequently concluding that the girl was possessed by Jezebel, the demoness of promiscuity.

Not that the aunt and her husband approved of tattoos in the first place, or that not having any design that resembled the appearance of any kind of genitalia would guarantee a punishment of a lesser degree. She had learned permanent bodily ink markings were on the top of her aunt's Most-Taboo list the first time she got a tattoo roughly two years ago at age fourteen. It was just a little star on the back of her right ear, small enough you would think it was a mole that had luckily formed into the shape of a star.4 The girl's transgression was met with an identical sanction: exposed on the ground, drenched in "holy oil," being yelled at by her aunt to "come out! Come out in the name of Jesus! Oh, Jesus! Rackakaka shuramiwa pueshumina buuuuuuu!"

Those passing retributions are history, though; because she will make sure that the most recent one would be the last.

The girl opens her closet and grabs whatever clothing she can get her hands on— an indigo shirt and a maroon skirt. There is no time to be critical. The girl then bends over and pushes aside the other clothes to access the secret compartment underneath. She lifts up the cover, and almost gasps to find nothing. Not a centavo from her lifetime savings from doing online transcript commissions services she secretly did at computer shops. Shit. Her aunt must have stumbled upon it and of course she wouldn't think twice about confiscating it.

The girl snatches a pair of flats, which she slips on hastily, and her small body bag, which contains nothing much. Just a small phone she had managed to buy for herself in secret (since her guardians forbid and took gadgets as channels of Satanic influence); a used kerchief; a roll of tissue; a gray jacket; what little loose change she has left in it; and a watch, which she immediately wears on her left wrist, the case on her pulse.

The girl takes a hairpin from under the cushion of her bed and hurries towards the window. She unlocks the padlock with the hairpin; and once unfastened, opens the iron-grilled fire escape. She glides through it, not bothering to reclose it. This is her permanent escape.

The girl grabs the hem of her skirt before sprinting across the roof, over the firewall, to the adjacent street. She slides down a gutter pipe into a little narrow lane. It is a Saturday. Not much people have been roused. A little boy chewing gum and playing with a broom bristle passes through and eyes her; but no one else seems to have seen what she has done.

The girl strides through the street. She pulls out her phone, turns it on, and messages Cruz, hoping her acquaintance answers and that he is not mad at her. She has drawn on him a couple of times before.

Can we meet up?

Round the corner she stands in line at the bakery shop and buys a five-peso mammon only as big as her fist. She sits on the sidewalk beside a scrawny little tabby cat licking its asshole, meager breakfast in her hand, perceiving the aroma of coffee from the bakery, wishing she had something warm to drink, too; but she had to buy a bottle of water instead for the travel and she could not afford both. She eats the bread in three bites.

Cruz replies:

Today?

Yup.

Sure. I'm available starting 1 p.m.
Can we meet somewhere in QC? Maybe at a food chain?

OK. Just message me exactly where.

The girl checks the given address on her phone's map and calculates the time it would take to travel. She also tries to figure out how thick the traffic jams would be and what transportation she would take. She does not regularly leave the city, but she has good geographical memory and skills. She will take a jeep, then a train. She will probably use her feet for the rest.

The girl counts the remaining coins and small bills in her bag before standing up. Her father will not know of this. He will not know of her running away from the prison he has left her in. Of the decisions she's made. She will not call him and her guardians will not bother telling him unless he asks.

And why would he ask? Why would he care? He has never bothered knowing how she's been doing, right? Not even through a phone call, a quick message on Viber or Facebook Messenger. None. Half a dozen years of chilly indifference.

That is why she stopped in the first place: stopped pleading for him to come home to Philippines. He has a good job contract abroad, and if he left how would he support her needs? As if the only thing she needs in life is paper in her aunt's wallet. She has learned to accept it: her father no longer prioritizes her. Perhaps before, but not anymore.

The girl will stop. Stop hoping that if she lived with her father, the pain and sadness would end. Her only shot at happiness now is herself. She will do life on her own. She will pursue her dream without anyone telling her that the world she wants to get acquainted with and live in the rest of her life belonged to liars and thieves, or that she is selling her soul to the devil.

She will stop dying, and start living.

The girl looks over the horizon— there are dark clouds in the distance— and takes a deep breath. She then proceeds to her destination. Wherever it might be.

***

  1. Another fresh chapter of legalistic bunk in her life, officially initiating the series of incessant howling in the Spirit and chanting of unintelligible words, most notably "halamensuuuus!" and "shangalangalaaaawh!"  

  2. A boy from the church's youth group had assisted her in getting it, eventually telling on her. Needless to say, she no longer trusted anyone from the congregation since.