On lazy afternoons, I like to take a stroll on a path not far from the stream. Sometimes I’ll venture over, dip my paws into the cool water and have a little drink. If I’m lucky, a curious fish might swim by, and I’ll snatch it up for a second lunch. Then, I’ll find a spot for a nap until my nose catches a whiff of something delectable and I feel his soft fingertips scratch the top of my head. I’ll wake up to a fried anchovy being offered from his palm.

  Crisanto isn’t my owner; he’s a long-time companion. On some days, we don’t see each other; we go off and do our own thing. And then there are days, when I’ll sit beside him while he waits for Dalisay, a young woman he loves who lives in a wealthy village on the other side of the stream. He’ll strum on the bandurria and hum a song to himself. When she finally shows up to their discreet meeting place, his face lights up. The look of love they share between each other burns brighter and hotter than the sun. She’ll wrap her arms around his neck and pull him close until they’re nose to nose.

  They don’t waste a minute of their short time together on these afternoons. He’ll hold her in his arms and whisper endearing words in her ears. They’ll make love on the grass. And I’ll sit nearby licking my paw, savoring the taste of that fried anchovy. Every now and then, I’ll look over and watch them lie side by side in happiness.

  These lazy afternoons by the stream are truly what makes life blissful. I look forward to them every week. But today, something is off. My whiskers prickle: they feel a dread. I smell an awfulness in the air. Only creatures like me can sense these things. I sniff the air again. I smell the sweat of raging anger.

  I slow down and approach the area with great caution. The couple are nowhere to be seen. Instead, in their place, are five men. I recognize the Chief of the wealthy village. He has his long sleeves rolled up and a splatter of red across his crisp white buttoned-up shirt. He lifts the bolo over his head. And right before he drives it down to the ground, I hear a weak cry, “No, Papa.”

  He wipes the blade clean with a cloth.

  “Don’t touch them,” he says to the other men who look shaken but remain loyal and silent witnesses. “Let them rot here,” he spits on the ground. “My family’s honor has been saved from this disgrace.”

  As if taking life away from another being isn’t enough, the Chief kicks the bodies down the slope. They roll down to the bank of the stream.

  On this day, I learned that not every love story, no matter how pure and good-natured its characters are, ends with “happily ever after.”

  *****

  Crisanto was born to a poor family; the youngest of four children. He hardly ever saw his father, but when his father did return, he’d bring a pack of smokes and drink. His mother cared for him and his siblings the best she could, but she was hardly home, too, as her time was spent working long hours at the garment factory.

  Although familial love was a rarity in his own home, Crisanto discovered friendship with the cats loitering around the neighborhood. He’d leave out a bowl of treats. That was how I met the poor boy. I’d fight my way to get my share, but he’d bring out more for me when the others had gone. Most boys like him grew up to be exactly like their parents. Everyone thought he’d turn out like them or worse. If he had a few dollars to his name, people suspected he got it through peddling or begging. But I saw the good light in him. I sensed his goodness by the gentle way he scratched the sweet spot under my chin and when he nuzzled his nose against my cheek. He was his own light in the darkness, until the day he crossed paths with the only love he ever had, and on that day his light burned brighter.

  When his family fell on harder times, he took up a gig at the town square as a side street performer. He assembled a ukulele out of a candy tin box and fishing lines and gathered a bouquet of roses from a nearby garden. The latter almost killed us. The owner’s dogs had chased us down the street for a good twenty minutes.

  He offered any passerby a song and a rose. The price: whatever amount they felt his musical wooing service was worth. He’d serenade and win their crush’s hearts for them or renew the love between disgruntled couples.

  He had an amusing voice; a tinge off key, a little off rhythm, but some found his songs sweet and charming. His voice, especially, caught the attention of one young woman. Their eyes met. The connection was instant. I was a witness to their first gaze. In that moment, Crisanto began to sing to her. He strummed faster on the strings; his fingers followed the rhythm of his heart, now invigorated by a new emotion he’d never felt before. The passion in his voice grew stronger; suddenly much more in tune.

  He drew in a small crowd. They listened. They watched him serenade the young blushing woman. Once the song ended, they broke into applause. He bowed, relishing the first time having an audience. When he looked up, the young woman was gone.

  His heart sank; head down, shoulders drooped.

  “With my luck, I’ll never see her again,” he said.

  I reached up to him, scratched the spot above his knee. “My dear friend, Crisanto, she’ll return,” I reassured him, “With that passion you unleashed in your song today, how can she not?”

  Of course, to his human ears what he heard weren’t words of reassurance, but “meow, meow, meow.” He chuckled and mimicked my words back to me, then scratched my head.

  Once the Chief and his men have left, I race to the spot where they stood but nothing could have prepared me for the horrific scene. The sight of two bodies, side by side, shakes me to the core. My whiskers stand straight up.

  My first instinct is to deny. It can’t be them! I move in closer. I circle the bodies; two, three, four times, each time telling myself that it can’t be them. I can’t determine for sure. Thick blood coats their shattered faces. I only smell the pain they endured, the grief in their hearts. Then, the faint whiff of the fried anchovy. I find the little piece beside his hand. My stomach churns; my appetite is dead. It hits me, right now, that I’ll never see them again.

  I snuggle between them, their bodies still warm. But soon their warmth starts to fade and, as the sun sets, they’ve become stone cold. Their skin darkens fast to a deep purple color with sores opening up. Maggots swarm the bodies. I try to swat them away but it’s no use. They consume the flesh until there’s nothing left, just the bones which begin to sink into the ground.

  By dawn, their bodies are gone, and two tall green bamboo shoots have grown in their place. Throughout the day, more bamboos grow along the bank. Somehow, I can still feel their presence around me. I hear the strumming of his bandurria, and their voices singing together in perfect harmony.

  *****

  The young woman did return. I looked up at Crisanto to say, “Ha! I told you so!”—“meow, meow.” His face lit up; his smile so wide I thought his face would split. He plucked a rose from the bouquet and gave it to her with an exaggerated bow.

  She smiled back, took the flower, and thanked him.

  “May I ask for your name,” he asked.

  “Dalisay.”

  He strapped on his ukulele and began to play around with the notes in different keys until he found the right one. He came up with the lyrics on the spot, choosing words to rhyme with her name. He stumbled a few times; sang a note just a tinge off-key, off rhythm. A sweat droplet formed on his temple. I wasn’t sure if it was from the sweltering heat of the sun, or his jittery nerves. I wondered what happened to that fiery passion he had shown. But, surprisingly, Dalisay found it entertaining. She laughed. He laughed with her, too.

  Every day, she’d stop by his spot. Sometimes she’d stand behind the small crowd he’d drawn. He possessed other talents besides singing and playing the ukulele: juggling knives (until one close call almost severed a fingertip); telling folk tales with puppets he’d fashioned out of socks, paper bags, shoelaces and dolls he’d dug up from a dump.

  When the show was over, she’d drop a dollar into the collection jar. Crisanto spent a portion of it one day on two cans of cold coffee from a vending machine, in the hope she’d chat and have coffee with him. He was filled with delight when she accepted. For a whole afternoon, they were in their own world; the noise of traffic and pedestrians around them were shut out.

  Dalisay was, unlike Crisanto, born into an affluent family, the youngest daughter of a village chief. She came downtown accompanying her mother and two sisters, who spent their time in luxury shops. While her sisters fussed over designer shoes and jewelry, she roamed outside the shops to watch the various performances. When it was time to go, she told him she’d come again, and she gave me a good scratch under my chin before parting.

  “She’s the one!” I exclaimed. A lady who's not afraid to touch a scruffy black cat like me. Crisanto basked in the afterglow of the meeting. While it made me happy to see my dear friend had found love, I was na?ve about the courting rules of humans. Someone of her social standing and wealth couldn’t possibly consider someone like Crisanto, who was, in society’s view, at the bottom rung of the ladder.

  They skirted around the unspoken rules. They met up and drank coffee from the vending machine with six feet between them. They pretended to be strangers, walking along together in the crowd, only to steal a touch; hands brushed against one another, eyes locked then turned away, mouths passing on a secret smile. These small moments weren’t enough; they itched to be closer. They snuck into an alley where they embraced each other tight, afraid to let go because that would mean the moment would end and they’d be forced to go their separate ways again.

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  The situation elated and depressed him. He yearned to see her more. So, he took it upon himself to serenade her from outside her window.

  “What a terrible idea,” I tried to tell him, but he nodded and petted my head and said, “Yes, I also think it’s a romantic plan!”

  With whatever foolish courage he had, he took the ukulele and played outside her window. Dalisay and her sisters listened from the balcony. They giggled and cheered him on. The neighbors listened, too, from their balconies or porch. All were amused, except for the Chief. He looked at the young man like one who had discovered a rat in the kitchen—utter disgust and disdain.

  The Chief was a prideful father. He wanted no one beneath their status to associate with his family, much less a street performer courting one of his daughters. He set his guards upon chasing us out. They wrangled the ukulele from Crisanto’s clinging hands, then smashed it on the street.

  The following night, he serenaded again outside her balcony window, with only his impassioned voice.

  Looking back on this incident, I should’ve stopped him. But of course, an idiot does what an idiot does; and this idiot was an idiot in love.

  As I expected, the Chief sent out his men to get rid of him. They roughed him up a bit, spat on him and gave him one last warning, “Get outta here, boy! If you come back, we’ll do more than a spanking.”

  The next day, while he was preparing for a puppet show, an old woman approached him with a white box and a rose. She said she was a housemaid for the Chief's family and had come on Dalisay’s behalf to deliver a message and the white box with the rose. She glanced from side to side, making sure no one was listening, and whispered something into his ear. She gave him the box before hurrying away as if fearing she’d be caught.

  Crisanto opened the box. It was a brand-new bandurria. He held the pear-shaped instrument in awe, like a father cradling his newborn child, with a hand under its delicate short neck.

  *****

  The Chief and his men return with bolo knives strapped over their shoulders. My claws come out. I ready myself to pounce on their faces and dig my nails into their eyeballs. But Crisanto and Dalisay’s voices stop me. They tell me to wait. Revenge is coming but the time isn’t now.

  I do everything in my power to hold myself back. I stay close. I watch the men. They gawk at the tall bamboos in wonder, but the Chief isn’t swept by the beauty surrounding him. He orders the men to cut down every bamboo.

  The men balk.

  “It doesn’t feel right,” one says.

  The Chief’s expression darkens. He bores his menacing glare through each of his men’s eyes, daring them to challenge his word.

  They pick up their bolo knives and begin to cut into the bamboos. But on the first strike, they stop and touch the deep wound they've cut into the wood. Their fingers are smeared with blood. The bamboos sway back and forth; the wind howls like it’s in pain. Then something happens that shouldn’t happen in a tropical climate: the warm air drops. It gets so cold; the men can see their breath. Suddenly, they become aware that something is watching them. Their eyes dart from side to side.

  “What the hell’s wrong with all of you?” the Chief growls.

  “I see them. They’re not dead!”

  They point in every direction and cry.

  “It’s her!”

  “And him!”

  “Their shadows are around us! They’re everywhere!”

  “ENOUGH!” the Chief barks, “Cut them all down!”

  He swings the bolo knife and hacks into the wood. With each strike, blood spurts out; the wind’s cries have turned into screams; the air has become frigid. But the blood continues to flow hot from every bamboo he cuts down. Blood splatters onto his face and clothes. Blood soaks the ground; it gushes into the rising stream coloring it dark red.

  The Chief looks at his men with his large, crazed eyes; face drenched with sweat and blood. The men pale; afraid to move in the middle of a grisly field with bamboos rolling into the stream like bodies. They witness the corpses of Crisanto and Dalisay being swept away by the red currents.

  The wind around them moans, “No, Papa!” The words crystal clear in the voice of his dead daughter.

  *****

  A fish swam up to me. It circled around my legs. I raised one paw, claws out, and struck. It swam away. Disappointed, I trudged up the slope and found a good spot for a nap; it was under the shade of a tree. Then, the whiff of a fried anchovy tickled my nose. A hand stroked my head, the other offered the fish in his palm.

  I sat with him while he strummed on the bandurria to pass the time, waiting for her to come to their discreet meeting place. When she finally appeared, his face lit up. They ran towards each other and wrapped their arms tight around one another. They savored the moment. After they made love, they lay in the grass, basking in the afterglow, and talked about the future.

  They had dreams of a life together. They spoke about these dreams on Sunday afternoons. They'd run away and build their home and family. They’d do it far, far away somewhere; it would be just them in their own world.

  While they dreamt about building their world together, I felt someone was lurking. I sniffed the air. It was a scent I’d smelled before. A mixture of cigar and strong cologne. I followed the scent trail. I found the peeping Tom. It was one of the Chief’s men, hidden in the tall grass. His eyes fixed on the couple. A sneer on his lips.

  I bared my fangs; my claws; all my anger. “Hsss! Hsss!”

  He fell on his ass. He took one look then bolted. I ran after him, and by the time I came back to the stream they were gone.

  The following day, while Crisanto was packing up his instrument after a performance, he found a small black box addressed to him. I detected something foul inside. It was a horrible distinctive stench. He yelped when he opened it. He kicked it away. A dead rat rolled out of it. The maggots had half-eaten the creature. I knew what the message meant. One glance at his face, and I knew he knew, too. But the threat wasn’t enough to scare him away.

  They were going to run away. They’d travel as far as they could. They’d hide away somewhere in the mountains. Maybe sail across the sea to another country.

  *****

  At night, the mansion appears like a mournful face. It is silent with the occasional outburst of weeping inside, behind shut doors and shuttered windows. Only a single lamp by the first-floor window softly glows in the large, darkened place. The Chief slouches in his ivory throne chair nursing a glass of whiskey, his eyes staring off somewhere.

  I hop off the fence, make my way to the back garden. The old housemaid who delivered the bandurria to Crisanto rests in a rocking chair on the patio, looking as mournful as the house. She beckons me to come closer; she’s got a little treat in her hand: a fried anchovy. It would be rude of me to decline such an offer.

  “Oh, I had a feeling you were going to come by,” she says, giving me a gentle scratch behind the ear. “It’s been a miserable week; the mistress is beyond consolation and her other daughters can’t stop crying either,” she wipes the tears from her eyes, “but that wicked and hateful man doesn’t give a damn except for his pride, his honor.” She spits out the last word from her thin lips like she’s tasted a vile spoiled fruit.

  “Make him pay, my friend,” she continues, “for what he did to my little Dalisay and your friend, Crisanto.” She opens the door that leads to the kitchen and encourages me to go inside.

  There’s a heaviness in the house. It fills up the space, seeps into the cracks in the wall spreading its gloom like an infectious disease. Upstairs, the mistress and her daughters wail, overwhelmed by the sickness of grief. A stench of booze comes from the sitting room.

  The Chief pours himself another glass of whiskey. He downs it in one gulp. The lamp beside him flickers before it dies out. He straightens up in his throne chair, alert and on edge. "Who’s there?” his words stumble drunk from his lips.

  I creep closer.

  “Show yourself! Don’t hide from me,” he shouts, “I’m not afraid of ghosts. And I don’t fear the ghost of the selfish daughter who dared to dishonor her family!”

  The closer I get, the bigger I grow. I feel my limbs stretch longer and stronger. I grow as large as a panther.

  I clamp my claws into the chair’s arms. The wood breaks from my grip.

  I tower over him. I can rip his head off in one bite. It’s so tempting to do it, but it’s not me who will serve his punishment. His fear reeks of whiskey and his cowardliness. He is shaking, whimpering, and uncontrollably urinating under me. The glass slips from his grip and shatters on the floor.

  “N-not me! Not me! Don’t kill me,” he begs, “I’m so sorry, so sorry, so sorry...”

  I lean close to his ear, making him feel the sharpness of my teeth. “You’re the wretched creature,” I growl, “for what you did your soul is destined to spend eternity in a hell like no other.”

  “Tell me what I can do. What can I do to be forgiven?”

  “Go to them. Give them the blessing you denied them in life.”

  The light of the lamp flickers on. The Chief leaps to his feet. He looks around the room, bewildered by the emptiness in front of him. He anxiously scans the space but finds only my eyes staring up at him. He’s alone. His eyes are as large and crazy as when he cut down the bamboos, raged with madness, but this time something in him has snapped. There’s no rage in his eyes; it’s terror.

  He goes to a cabinet drawer and grabs one of the most expensive drinks in his collection: a bottle of cognac. Then, he calls out for his old housemaid to wrap up some suman in banana leaves, remembering it was his daughter’s favorite rice cake. When the housemaid asks him what the cognac and suman are for, he says nothing and takes the food with him and runs out of the house without a word, leaving her baffled. Of course, I know where he’s heading. I run out the door, too, into the dark night.

  The bright full moon shines the way to the bank of the stream. I watch the Chief stumble in the dark. He pours every drop of the cognac into the water and places the suman on the ground. Then, getting down to his knees, he pleads for Dalisay and Crisanto to forgive him and that they have his blessing, and he hopes the food offerings will be enough to appease their spirits.

  I wait with bated breath. At first, there’s only silence. No signs that the spirits have heard him. He takes it as a good sign, perhaps the calm means peace. He begins to laugh until he’s in tears. But it ends abruptly as a dark figure of a woman rises from the water. Her face hidden behind the long curtains of black hair. Beside her another figure in the form of a man rises. The moonlight sheds a faint light on his face.

  The Chief catches a glimpse of a hanging jaw attached to a single thread of muscle. His instinct to flee kicks in. He scrambles to his feet but steel strings sprouting out of the soil seize his ankles, his arms, his legs. He struggles to break free. He screams for help, but his scream is cut short by the steel strings whipping themselves around his neck; the fourteen strings of the bandurria.

  They pull him towards the rising water. The last thing he sees before submerging into the stream, now a turbulent river, are the unforgiving cold white eyes of Dalisay and Crisanto.

  The river rages on and floods the town. With no time to gather their things, people head to the mountains, away from the water charging through their homes. I run up the mountain, too. Cold and soaked to the bone, I take shelter under a tree with a little girl whose cries stop as soon as I curl up beside her.

  The people wait to return the next morning when the river has calmed. On the way down they stop and listen to a bandurria being played. My ears perk up. I know that music. No one can, however, pinpoint where the music is coming from. It surrounds us.

  “Look over there,” shouts a girl.

  She points to the river, and everyone’s eyes search the water until they've spotted Crisanto in a dinghy strumming on his bandurria, and beside him, Dalisay resting her head on his shoulder, listening.

  I long to join them, but I know I can’t go where they’re going. It’ll be a while before I can see them again. I crawl up to the little girl’s arms, and watch the river carry the couple far, far away to the world beyond.

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