Sarah Borja

  September 14, 2035

  Neon Goddesses and Melted Ice

  Where bodies move to drown memory, and memory dances back anyway

  The club is a cathedral to hedonism, yes, but tonight it is also a sarcophagus. Neon bones welded together by basslines that hit like falling scaffolding. Bodies grind against bodies, sweat-slick and fevered, pilgrims in worship of beat and flesh. Sarah Borja dances at the dead center, orbiting the DJ booth like a burnt-out satellite. The strobe-light crown flickers across her hair, giving her the brief illusion of sainthood. She does not smile. She does not need to.

  Vodka scorches its absolution down her throat. Each swallow an iron communion. The dancefloor bucks and heaves beneath her boots, tiles quivering like vertebrae threatening to crack. For a heartbeat, it feels holy. For a heartbeat, she almost forgets the sour aftertaste of rotting meat clinging to memory.

  The bass drops, heavy as regret. Her favorite tune, sweet poison dressed in synth and drum. For a moment, she almost remembers being younger, softer. A woman who thought death was a thing that happened offscreen, in news tickers or cheap horror films. A woman who didn't know what devotion looks like when it tears itself apart in front of you.

  She closes her eyes, and the dark behind her lids blooms red. The flayed man appears, strips of skin swaying like morbid streamers. Three people, cornered, eyes wide with faith as they open their own throats and minds to a bullet because cornered rats still pray to gods. A family of three, dissected and hung piece by piece, a grotesque mobile that swayed gently every time she breathed too close. The copper tang of blood still clinging beneath her nails, stubborn as guilt. The third scene is too fresh. Too raw. It gnaws at her, small teeth scraping bone.

  She opens her eyes. The dancefloor is smoke and moving silhouettes. Everyone is beautiful, drunk, desperate. Everyone is trying to bury something. A failed marriage, a bad childhood, a boring job. But their nightmares wear the soft faces of bosses, lovers, landlords. Hers wear the grinning masks of devotion, the dripping entrails of art.

  She tips her head back and drinks again, lips numb, tongue heavy. Vodka seeps down her throat, chasing away ghosts that only retreat a few inches before circling back.

  Outside, Manila keeps breathing its rancid breath into the night, alleys slick with rain and secrets. Inside, the club trembles with the collective ache to forget. And Sarah keeps dancing. Like tomorrow is just another corpse she hasn't found yet. Like forgetting is an act of violence she can do to herself, over and over, until the music stops.

  She squeezes through the tide of sweat and perfume, bruising past limbs that smell of gin and loneliness. The bar rises before her like an altar of cheap glass and sticky prayers. A man stands there, late twenties, European face washed pale by Manila neon. Yet something in his slouch, the tilt of his head, feels... local. Like concrete soaked in acid rain.

  His eyes look excavated, joy stripped out like copper wire from an abandoned building. She orders another drink, voice roughened by bass. They lock eyes, brief contact between two satellites drifting in different orbits.

  She throws the first word like a bottle into the sea. He catches it. Says today should be the best day of his life, but the world had twisted sideways turning blessing into curse. His words smell of fresh ruin.

  She says the world never made sense. It came out wrong from the beginning. Built on bone, paved with broken gods.

  He smiles, small and crooked, like a child caught stealing light. He is cute, yes, almost tragic. Like a golden retriever who lost its master at the pier. Maybe it's the vodka speaking, maybe it's the rot behind her ribs whispering that tonight doesn't have to mean anything.

  She leans in, breath warm, cheek grazing his stubble. Flirtation as temporary salvation. He answers in kind, surprise flickering behind those drowned eyes.

  They drink, they laugh, they drown. The club's rhythm chews them up, spits them out wilder, more feral at the edges. Bass rattles Sarah's bones until the guilt loosens, drifting somewhere she doesn't have to look at it. His words come slurred, half apology, half prayer. She cuts him off with a kiss, tasting vodka, sweat, and quiet desperation.

  She asks if he has a place, voice low, words sharp as broken glass. His answer comes eager. She smirks. Outside, the city steams under sodium lamps, rain-slick asphalt glinting like old scars. His executive van waits, squat and silent. Black windows, black paint, and the smug hush of old money. Must be some kind of bigshot, she thinks, or just another rich kid playing adult.

  The door slides shut behind them with a soft click that feels final. Inside, leather seats and the heavy scent of cologne and anxiety. There's a partition wall ahead, polished to a shine, promising silence that can be bought. The driver doesn't ask, doesn't look. The van glides forward, tires humming over wet asphalt like a lullaby sung by machines.

  Sarah doesn't wait. She moves first, climbing onto his lap, knees pressing into the leather, the hem of her dress riding up until it barely pretends to cover anything at all. Her breath is warm on his cheek, fingers threading into his hair, tugging just enough to remind him who's in charge. His eyes go wide, startled, but there's hunger too, something feral waking under all that boyish ruin.

  The van picks up speed, sliding through Manila's bruised midnight arteries. Neon leaks in through the tinted glass, smearing them in sickly pinks and feverish blues. She kisses him hard, vodka-bitter and breathless, her hips rolling slow at first, then faster, until the partition wall itself seems to pulse with each thrust.

  He tries to speak, but she shushes him with a hand to his mouth, breath ragged, hair falling across her face. His hands hover, uncertain, until she drags them to her hips, nails biting skin, telling him without words: hold on. Outside, the city sprawls, restless and ugly-beautiful, but inside the world collapses to breath and sweat and the wet sound of skin meeting skin.

  The van keeps moving, eating up the night. Rain streaks across the windows, warping billboards and headlights into smeared hieroglyphs of a city that never sleeps. Sarah's heart beats in time with the city's pulse, but harder, rawer, as if she could drown the memory of devotion-torn corpses in each shuddering motion.

  When the van finally stops, she barely remembers the route they took. Doors slide open, and suddenly the quiet hits harder than the bass ever did.

  The elevator waits, polished steel reflecting the ruin they've made of each other. It opens directly into his home, an entire floor claimed by marble, glass, and soft golden light. First, absurdly, there's the shoe closet, rows and rows of imported leather standing in silent, ridiculous judgment.

  They barely see it. Hunger shoves them forward. Shirts half-off, breath tearing from lungs, laughter rough and wild in the hush of too much money. She pushes him against a marble island in the kitchen, kisses sharp enough to bruise. He grips her thighs like he's afraid she'll vanish, but she's already pulling away, dragging him by the wrist down dark hallways that smell of polished wood and expensive emptiness.

  They crash through rooms, pausing just long enough to tear at zippers and buttons, to catch breath, to press mouth to sweat-damp skin. A mirror catches them, reflecting flushed faces and desperate hands. For a moment she sees herself, hair tangled, lips parted, eyes sharp and dark, and doesn't look away.

  They reach the bedroom at last, huge bed waiting, sheets too white, too clean. Beyond the glass, Metro Manila sprawls out in quiet ruin, tower lights blinking like dying stars, roads winding through darkness like veins under bruised skin.

  She pushes him back onto the bed, climbs over him, breath coming fast, hair falling forward like a black curtain. The city watches through the window, indifferent and eternal.

  She keeps moving anyway. Devouring him with nails, teeth, hips, driving thought and memory out one sharp gasp at a time. Outside, the skyline holds its breath. Inside, there is nothing left but sweat, skin, and the hollow promise of forgetting, if only until dawn.

  ? ? ?

  James Arambulo

  September 14, 2035

  Pastel and Quiet Cathedrals of Blood

  Dinner table warmth holding back the red-tinted echoes waiting behind his eyes

  James Arambulo's key rattles in the lock, a small metallic prayer before the door sighs open under his weight. The condo smells of garlic, cream, and something softer. Life, maybe. Or at least its illusion.

  From the hallway, the scene unfolds like a domestic diorama under cheap fluorescent light. Mira, barefoot, apron tied too loose, stirring chicken pastel with a wooden spoon. Steam curls around her face, blurring it like a memory half-remembered. The TV drones low, its anchor reciting tragedies that feel far away, as if distance could disinfect them.

  Ate Jane stands by the living room table, iron in hand, shirts folding into neat submission. Each crease a quiet battle won against disorder.

  "How was work?" Mira asks, voice light, unaware. Or maybe she knows and just doesn't want to see the blood still dripping behind his eyes.

  James answers with practiced softness. Stressful, but manageable. He tries not to think of the flayed man, skin peeled back like a grotesque flower. Tries not to see the burning slum in the back of his eyelids, roofs sagging under heat like wax figures. Tries not to see the family of three, dismembered, posed, domesticity fossilized in death. His tongue tastes of bile, but the words come sweet enough.

  "And you?" he asks, almost desperate for the mundane. Mira's complaint flows out like a blessing: files sent in the wrong format, numbers refusing to dance the way they should. Human errors, fixable. Clean.

  Dinner is almost ready, she says, could he set the table? His body moves before thought catches up, muscle memory older than grief. Plates on the table, spoons on the right, forks on the left. Ritual makes things real.

  Before dinner, James slips into the nursery. Amara, one year old, chest rising and falling in slow certainty. Small fists curled by her cheeks, a quiet rebellion against a world she doesn't yet know can betray her. How time flies, how fast innocence ripens toward sorrow.

  He moves to the bedroom. Their shared refuge, walls still holding laughter like fading perfume. Photographs nailed to plaster as if love could be pinned down and kept from fleeing. He strips off the day, changes into softness.

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  At the dinner table, they gather under the yellow hush of a single ceiling bulb, its glow chipped at the edges by moth wings and tired plaster. Steam rises from the chicken pastel, swirling lazy ghosts between them. Mira ladles it carefully, the spoon clinking against ceramic in small, homely beats that almost drown out the noise clawing at the back of James's skull.

  Amara squirms in her baby chair, cheeks flushed, eyes wide in that permanent toddler astonishment at everything, spoons, shadows, the flicker of TV light across the living room wall. James and Mira feed her in turns. Small spoonfuls, gentle coaxing, laughter spilling over the table like broth. Between each mouthful, James catches Mira's eyes, and something wordless passes between them. An old promise, still alive, still warm.

  He chews the pastel slowly, lets the cream and salt melt over his tongue. It tastes of garlic, pepper, imperfection, and for a moment, it is the most delicious thing in the world. Because it is hers, and because it is now. The day's horrors slip loose for a moment, falling somewhere beneath the table, drowned by the scrape of utensils and Amara's delighted squeal when Mira makes the spoon dance.

  Yet in the cracks between laughter and steam, the images bleed back in. The family of three from the report. Their home turned mausoleum, bodies split open and arranged in positions that once meant comfort: an embrace, a hand reaching out. Now grotesque art. Love dissected and displayed. James swallows hard, the pastel sticking in his throat. His gaze drifts to Amara's small fingers drumming against her chair, to Mira's hand steadying the bowl, and he feels the tremor under his skin. How easily this table could become that tableau. How thin the membrane that keeps horror on the outside.

  But tonight, in the radius of this light, they are safe. Whole. Mira's quiet chatter about work, Amara's small laugh echoing off the walls, the clink of spoon against bowl, mundane sounds that feel sacred in their fragility. James forces himself to breathe them in, to taste the pastel again, not as a shield, but as proof: they are alive, they are together, and for now, no one has come to tear them apart.

  Outside, Manila's night keeps its secrets. The TV mutters distant tragedies. But here, steam rises, soft and forgiving, and James lets himself believe that in this small, imperfect condo, they can stay untouched a little longer. Just long enough to finish dinner. Just long enough to remember what it means to be human.

  ? ? ?

  Rocco Dalisay

  September 14, 2035

  Smoky Saints of Friday Night

  Where laughter and marinade hold the line against what crawls unseen in the dark

  Friday night seeps down the quiet spine of the townhouse row, warm air humming with the slow pulse of weekend relief. Someone's celebrating something, a promotion, a birthday, a child accepted into some good school, but the details dissolve under the softer, sturdier truth: it's Friday, and that is reason enough.

  Rocco Dalisay steps out of his front door, arms loaded with the only way he knows to celebrate a Friday: fine imported steak still beading cold from the fridge, and bottles of decent craft beer tucked under one arm. Daisy, his basset hound, waddles at his heel, nails ticking across the smooth driveway, ears brushing the freshly washed pavement.

  Out front, the neighbors have turned the row into an open-air sala. Foldable tables dressed in clean cloth, chairs sturdy enough to lean into after the second beer. A Bluetooth speaker hums out old Eraserheads songs remixed under warm bass, and fairy lights hang in careful lines, bulbs clear and bright. The grills, still shining under the smoke, coals already banked just right, embers licking the edges of marinated pork belly and chicken thighs.

  Daisy noses her way into a polite swirl of other neighborhood dogs, coats brushed out for the evening. Rocco watches her for a second, grin softening the heavy cut of his jaw, then the kids appear around him, faces lit by curiosity and the glow of well-kept lights.

  "Kuya Rocco," one boy asks, voice small but steady, "how do we get as big and strong as you?"

  He gives them the grin first, wide enough to catch the reflection off the polished car windows nearby. Then flexes, slow and showy, the muscles rolling under his sleeve like something alive. "Hard work," he rumbles, "dedication, and always listen to your folks."

  The kids' laughter sparks across the driveway, running ahead of them like dropped marbles.

  Someone hands him tongs, grease-slick and hot. He takes them, rolls up his sleeves, and folds himself into the circle around the grill.

  Smoke coils thicker now, turning the driveway into a half-lit cathedral of plastic tables and grills. Oil sizzles, fat drips, and laughter stacks itself in ragged layers over the concrete. Bottles clink, beer foaming gold under a a glistening fairy light bulb.

  The neighborhood gossip slides around the circle like a stray cat. Someone's cousin ran off with a married man, someone else lost a promotion because they "weren't family," whispers turned ritual. Then the question floats to him, light on the tongue but heavy under the ribs. Anything interesting at work, Kuya?

  For a second, something cold and wet crawls up Rocco's spine. The laughter and music blur at the edges, colors go sharp then too soft. The family of three claws its way back from the dark. Limbs sawed off and hung like grotesque pendants, flesh turned to statement. The smell. The quiet after the first look, when language itself surrenders.

  He crushes it back down. Buries it under ribs thickened by years of burying worse. Tonight is fire and smoke and borrowed joy.

  So he leans back, belly shaking, voice booming. Tells them about the college girl in Jollibee, four punks circling her like flies on cheap gravy. How he barely crossed the tiled floor before they bolted, knocking over trays and chairs, squealing like kids caught stealing communion wafers. His laugh roars out, loud enough to make Daisy bark, her ears flapping in comic protest.

  The neighbors crack up, teeth flashing in the dirty amber light. Even the kid who asked how to get big stares, half in fear, half in awe, as if heroes really do live two doors down. Someone slaps his back hard enough to jostle the beer in his hand. Oil pops on the grill, smoke snakes higher, curling around them like a blessing disguised as ruin.

  And in that moment, Rocco feels it. The raw, unsteady miracle of being here: tongs in hand, sweat trickling down a thick neck, neighbors drunk on cheap beer and cheaper secrets. Daisy lumbers over, nudges his calf with her wet nose, looking for scraps or comfort or both.

  The music thuds, the fairy lights flicker, and for a breath the world outside, blood, reports, concrete floors washed clean of something that won't wash away, stays outside.

  Only fire, laughter, and the warmth of other people remain. The ghosts retreat, at least for tonight. And the street smells only of grilled meat and spilled beer, not the copper tang of memory.

  ? ? ?

  Lino Ilagan

  September 14, 2035

  The Living Room of the Half-Remembered Dead

  An ice-cold glass, a city's heartbeat, and the vow never to look away

  Lino Ilagan sinks into the condo's couch, bones folding into tired leather. The room holds its breath around him, four walls of deliberate emptiness. No photos to catch stray memories, no paintings to soften the angles. Furniture chosen for function, nothing more. Not a bachelor's affectation of minimalism, but the slow erosion of years lived like a half-forgotten suitcase in transit.

  Metro Manila's night seeps in through the window, neon scars trailing across blank walls. The city outside pulses, restless and alive, but none of that life crosses the threshold. The lights stay off. Shadows stretch and settle.

  On the coffee table, a single bottle of ginger beer stands next to a half-finished glass, the ice inside melting slow as confession. The cubes drift, knock gently against each other, then drift apart again. Lino watches them move, imagines tectonic plates beneath the surface of amber liquid, continents shifting, lives cracking open.

  His reflection stares back at him from the black mirror of the turned-off TV. Hair messier, face heavier, creased by too many late nights and quiet regrets. He was handsome once, the kind that turned heads in halls of power and whispered backrooms. Maybe he still is, beneath the exhaustion that clings to him like wet cloth.

  Eyes close. Breath holds. The week replays itself in the dark behind his eyelids.

  He drifts to the memory with the Secretary of Justice. The room is dressed in warm wood and old republic gravitas, but the warmth never quite reaches the marrow. Afternoon light pushes through tall windows, catching motes of dust that drift like tiny ghosts over polished floors. Framed portraits of past Secretaries line the walls, eyes locked in permanent, sepia judgment. A single air-conditioning vent hums overhead, steady as an exhausted prayer.

  Lino Ilagan sits forward in his chair, elbows on knees, voice level but heart beating faster than it should. Next to him, NBI Director Elias V. Ortega leans back, arms crossed over a suit that smells faintly of stale coffee and rain-wet Manila traffic. His gaze sharp, eyes trained to catch lies even in reflection. In front of them, Leticia S. Dionisio, Secretary of Justice, sits with practiced poise, her warmth real, but filtered through decades of being too often disappointed.

  Lino begins. Twenty-seven sites raided. Ashtree flagged them as probable nests for Jiro Lim Uy and Gino Sanchez. All but one turned out empty of the quarry, the one site proved to be a treasure trove of evidence. The other twenty-six? Ghost houses and side crimes: stolen copper, undocumented guns, one pitiful weed grow, a stash of counterfeit denim. The unit handed those off to other branches, cleared the ledgers, ticked the boxes.

  Elias breaks the rhythm, voice dry, threaded with irony. Ashtree is so thorough it tripped over crimes they didn't even know existed. Maybe their contract with Nine Heavens Solutions should be made permanent, he says, words rolling out flat, half challenge, half resignation. Lino lets it hang in the air, unanswered. The clink of ice shifting in his memory.

  Leticia listens. Really listens. Eyes steady, hands folded, wedding band worn down to a thin oval. Her response slices cleaner than her voice suggests. One success out of twenty-seven... that's not precision, that's roulette. She speaks of foreign assumptions baked into alien algorithms, of dangerous precedents dressed up as progress. The air feels thicker now, as if the portraits themselves lean in closer to hear.

  To make it permanent, she wants local analysts to pull the code apart. To feed it the unspoken logic of Manila traffic, clan grudges older than the city grid, and the everyday paranoia of a country living too long in the shadows of power. Pair the machine's cold math with the mess of human profiling, see what shakes out.

  Lino nods, words spilling next. Surveillance on Calvin Uy, Jiro's uncle. Ashtree flagged movements that don't fit: routes he hasn't driven in years, conversations outside his usual circle of echo. Money twitching in small, nervous ripples. He's clean, Lino admits, but something's off. The data doesn't lie, but it doesn't quite speak either.

  Leticia leans back, the chair creaking under thought. If we follow him, she says, we craft a story that sells: government guided by intelligence, not instinct. But if it turns out empty, she wants to stand before the cameras and say they acted on patterns, not prejudice. Every move logged, every choice justified, a paper trail dense enough to bury any hint of bias.

  Outside, the light fades, trading warmth for dusk. Inside, the silence feels alive, thrumming under the paneling and the portraits and the polite language of power. Lino catches his reflection in the lacquered table surface: older, heavier, haunted by a case that refuses to close. Elias breathes slow beside him, the edge of a cynic shaped by too many closed doors.

  And Leticia sits in front of them, warm but unyielding. A reformist spine braced against the weight of what must be done. The room holds the three of them, distant but bound, waiting for the night to come and decide what shadows they'll cast tomorrow.

  The present drags its feet as it returns to Lino Ilagan. The condo remains unmoved, a hollow of bare walls and unspoken things. Metro Manila's night bleeds in through the window, painting strips of sodium yellow and neon bruise across the floor. The ginger beer is just meltwater now, nothing left but the faint sting of old sugar. He finishes it anyway, swallowing down something that tastes more like guilt than ginger.

  The memory refuses to stay buried. It claws back, raw and stubborn. The thing he kept from the Secretary. The mercy lie.

  Sarah and Rocco went in first. Guns steady, eyes trained, but nothing prepares anyone for a room like that. The living room, meant to hold laughter and quiet TV shows, turned into a theater of horror. The mother, the father, the teenage son, taken apart limb by limb, then brought back together. Flesh arranged to mimic ordinary life. A family portrait torn to pieces and pinned back into place by monsters who thought themselves poets.

  The photos in the report were precise. Forensics loves precision. Each limb numbered, each angle documented, the flash freezing every drop of dried blood into something that looked almost mundane. But nothing about it was mundane. The boy's school uniform still half-tucked, the father's belt looped back around a torso no longer whole, the mother's hair brushed smooth as if death demanded courtesy.

  Lino had stared too long at those photos. Long enough that details crawled off the page and into his nights: the scuff mark on the floor where someone had kicked during the struggle, the crooked picture frame that no one bothered to straighten, the quiet violence of a room made to look normal.

  It stays with him now, humming under the skin, beneath the pulse in his temples. The glass in his hand sweats condensation that runs down his wrist. He doesn't wipe it away.

  He feels the anger, low, simmering, patient. The kind that doesn't explode but erodes. It scrapes at the inside of his ribs, looking for a crack to get out. But Lino knows better than to let it spill. There is work to be done.

  The condo around him stays mute. No pictures on the walls, no souvenirs, nothing to soften the edges of memory. Outside, Manila keeps living its million lives in fluorescent color. But in here, there is only the echo of that living room, and the promise he made to himself when he read that report: remember.

  Remember every cruel detail, so that forgetting never becomes an option. So that when the reckoning comes, it comes with eyes wide open.

  Author's Note

  A chapter of agents, shadows, and a city that never truly sleeps, only turns its gaze away.

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