The Aswang

 

Reyna’s eyes opened. Her heart pounded as if she’d just run a marathon.

It took a moment to recall that she was sleeping in her childhood bed at her mother’s house.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

The sound came from the darkest corner of her room.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

It was unnatural, like nothing she’d ever heard before.

The lump of clothes on the side chair moved.

Reyna sat up, staring at the black shadow in the chair. After a while, she took a deep breath. "My mind’s playing tricks-"

Her pants slid off the chair.

She turned on the bedside lamp as if it were a weapon. With her heart jumping into her throat, she turned to face the thing in the chair.

It was empty.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Reyna jumped out of the bed, ran out of the room, and straight into Millie, her mother’s maid, the woman who had raised her. Millie pushed Reyna behind her, firmly shutting Reyna’s bedroom door.

"Do you want to sleep
in my room? It’s protected."

Reyna didn’t challenge Millie’s strange question. Millie was an old-school Filipina. She came from the Negritos, a long line of Filipino aboriginals. They believed everything was alive and had a spiritual essence, from rocks to water, air, and even dark creatures that modern man cannot believe in.

"Come!" Millie demanded. "Sleep in my room. I will pray over you, and you will rest."

"You look horrible," Reyna’s mother said, stepping out of the dark hallway.

"Sorry to wake you up," Reyna apologized. "Millie is helping me because I can’t sleep."

"Millie should mind her own business," her mother said, her lips pursing together as her eyes seemed alight with fire.

"I’m sorry, Miss," Millie mumbled, head bowed.

"Leave, Millie."

Millie didn’t move.

"Mom, it’s okay. Let’s not make a big deal out of this. Millie is a part of our family."

"She’s always spoiled you," Reyna’s mother said, sounding as if she were hissing. "It’s why you’re so disrespectful."

"You asked me to come here for some emergency, and then when I get here, there’s no emergency. The only one who’s being disrespectful, Mom, is you."

Reyna’s mother spat out a litany of complaints against her daughter in Tagalog, before finishing off in English, "I am cursed to have you as a daughter."

"You could’ve said that part in Tagalog too so that I couldn’t understand you."

"Go back to your room," her mother commanded.

It brought Reyna back to her childhood, when her mother cut her with words, broke her heart with rejection, or made her feel as if she was never good enough. It was a teenage Millie who had taken her in her arms and comforted her. Millie had always been the soft place in Reyna’s memories.

"No," Millie said, "Go home now."

"That’s enough!" Reyna’s mother screamed. "Know your place, girl."

"Mom," Reyna said. "Don’t call Millie that; she’s a grown woman."

Reyna opened the door to her bedroom, and this immediately calmed her mother.

Millie began speaking rapidly in Tagalog, her face turning red.

Reyna’s mother shrugged her shoulders, letting the maid know she didn’t care.

"Kulam!" Mille screeched at her mother.

Reyna didn’t speak her mother’s language, and she had no idea what Millie had said.

Her mother pointed a bony finger at Millie and said, "I curse you. If you love her so much, go with her. Stay in the room with the Aswang. It will feed tonight."

"Mom?" Reyna called as her mother walked away. Reyna bit her lower lip, pushing away the familiar taste of rejection as her mother ignored her.

"I’m sorry you got thrown in the middle of that," Reyna said to Millie. "What did she say to you? I’ve never seen her that angry."

"Go!" Millie said. "Don’t come back."

"I intend to," Reyna promised.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

Reyna turned to look at the shadow that had moved in her room, but Millie slammed her door shut.

"Let’s go," she said, running down the stairs.

At the bottom of the stairs, Millie tried to flick on the lights, but they didn’t work.

A large shadow stood in front of the door.

Tick. Tick. Tick.

The viscous shadow came closer, and then something shot out of the darkness, grabbing Millie by the throat. Blood splattered on Reyna’s face. Wings unfurled from behind the creature; its wingspan blocking out everything around them.

Millie gasped and made loud, wet, gurgling sounds.

Reyna screamed as she realized that it wasn’t a hand around Millie’s throat but a long, tubular tongue. Stuck on Millie’s right jugular vein, the creature drank as if Millie were a juice box. The ticking sounds she’d heard earlier were the chattering of the creature’s sharp, pointy teeth.

Millie’s flinging hands shoved Reyna away, jolting her into action. Reyna jumped over the stairs, screaming, and crying simultaneously.

She ran out to her car and immediately locked the doors. She grabbed the keys from the center console and started the car. Driving away, she saw her mother watching from her bedroom. How many times had her mother scared her with the story of the Aswang? How many times had she promised to feed her to the Aswang for being such a bad child?

Reyna wiped away her tears as she thought of Millie.

"I promise I’ll kill it," Reyna said to the darkness. "I’ll find a way to destroy that thing." Reyna wasn’t sure if she was promising to destroy the Aswang or her mother.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

The Aswang

All rights reserved.

Copyright © 2023 by Marissa Pedroza

This intellectual property is protected under the copyright laws of the United States of America. Any reproduction or other unauthorized use of the material or artwork herein is prohibited without the express written permission of the author.

The Exorcist by William Peter Blatty: Review

Sometimes I’ll reread a book to see if it is as good as the first time. Then, there are times when I’ll reread a book because the writer is a master. It’s like watching an old Bruce Lee film; you just want to see the master at work. You want to see how he created the magic, how he scared so many people across the world. Being able to elicit emotion from a reader is always the goal, and William Peter Blatty’s The Exorcist has surpassed that goal many times over.

I first read The Exorcist when I was a teenager, and believe me when I say I’d never been so afraid to read the next page. Now I’m at the point where I want to understand, “How did he do it?” How did Blatty scare me (and the rest of the world) so effectively with simple words on paper?

It’s difficult to read The Exorcist without constantly comparing it to the movie version. First, the movie seemed more about the possessed than it did about the internal struggles of priests fighting the ultimate evil. Blatty gave us two priests to “see” through, Father Karras, a man who believed in science over an invisible all-knowing God (his secret was that his faith was weak, so weak he questioned if he wore the collar every day more out of a sense of debt for the Jesuit’s paying for his education than for a belief in any god). And then there was Father Merrin, a man who specialized in possession, ancient beliefs, and archaeology. His faith is strong and unwavering. He understood that the only way to fight a spiritual battle was with spiritual weapons. He didn't question it, and he had defeated evil many times before.

Blatty gave us great characters through which to view evil. After reading the novel, I couldn’t help but question why so many people thought that Blatty was anything other than a man of faith. The book is intense and asks all the questions that any man asks as he struggles to understand God in a world that doesn’t seem to require Him. The way that Blatty builds the plot is a work of art. And let's not forget Lt. Kinderman, the detective who doesn’t even know about the possession of one little girl; he only wants to catch a murderer. This was an intense, dark, and great read. My recommendation: don’t read it in the dark and as always… it’s much better than the movie!

DO NOT FEED THE ANIMALS

It always kills me a little inside when I see posts about people on food assistance. The posts generally make fun of these people and plays into the stereotype that people participating in the food assistance program are taking advantage of “free money”. They are lazy, unemployed nobodies taking from all of us; living high off the hog on the taxes we pay.

Well, let me tell you why these posts kill me. 

1. If you’re going to make fun of “food stamps” then get with the times. There is  no such thing as food stamps. It’s SNAP benefits (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program). If you’re going to insult a whole group of people, then at least get the name of program right.
2. There is nothing funny about poverty. I have yet to meet someone in poverty, and you have to be impoverished to be eligible for food assistance, who wouldn’t immediately trade places with those of us who are employed and make enough money to pay taxes. BTW, those exact numbers are: you have to be at or BELOW 130% of the Federal poverty level.
3. Over 70% of SNAP benefits go to households with children. Let me say that again, these are children. They didn’t ask to be born to impoverished parents. They didn’t ask to be the butt of jokes, but they get to attempt to come up from that.

These Facebook post probably wouldn’t bother me as much if I had never been a Foster parent. I know first-hand the stories these children tell of missing meals. Of eating crackers and ketchup for supper when the benefits ran out. I’m not saying there aren’t people who find a way to take advantage of any situation. I’m just saying, if you’re going to be upset at where your tax dollars are going, here is a few situations we should be outraged about:

1. How does 2.3 Trillion unaccounted dollars sound? That is not a typo. $2,300,000,000,000.00 lost by the Pentagon, announced by Donald Rumsfeld, forgotten after September 11th. What… crickets? $2.3 Trillion, I’m sure those poor kids eat that in a month. Let’s make another post about how awful they are.
2. $2.21 billion hit from Energy Department Loans (2015). Green energy is supposed to save us money, but so far we are $2.21 billion in the hole. Yes, that’s our tax dollars.

There is so much waste, I could fill an epic tome, but I won’t. If it makes you feel better to mock the poor, then so be it, just don’t pretend it's because you really care about how your government spends your tax dollars. If that were the case, I'd see posts about governmental fiscal waste instead of a meme about poor people.

We all know that poor children and their families hold all the power in the world… which is why we blame all our woes on people on “food stamps”.

No racist slant here, right?

These poor kids are used for every tacky point ever made

Why Write?

I remember writing before I could read. I would fill pages with crayon drawn pictures and then I would sit and tell whoever happened along, what the pictures represented.

As a poor child in the Philippines, books were not something that I was exposed to until I hit the shores of America. In these great states, I discovered something grand and beautiful. I felt like Dorothy walking through the gates of the Emerald City the first time I entered a library. The land of make-believe saved me from having to live in the hardship of my reality. A poor, unwanted, abused child growing up in the racially divided times of the early 70's. When my nose was between the pages of a book, I was not in the library anymore. I was no longer getting yelled at, or being bullied. I was in the land that the book had so graciously transported me to; and when I told stories, I found it was the first time that I had control of my world.

It became clear to me that the world I lived in was so small. As grim as my young world was, there were great things just beyond my reach (I knew this because I read it in a book).

I wrote because writing was a release for my inner demons. When I was writing, I wasn't hurting. When I wrote, I felt beautiful, smart and maybe could even pass for a super hero. However, when I stop writing, the world encroached upon my self-satisfaction and forced me to realize that I was just another wounded soul hoping that eventually the pain of life would ease up.

With time and healing, the pain became the foundation of emotional, mental and spiritual health. But now, where did I and my life long friend, Writing, stand? Did I need her any longer now that there was no need to release the past? It took a long time for me to come back to my old friend. I was more mature, a different woman in a different place. But, had my friend Writing gone the way of some of my school friends? Did writing belong in the world of pain, and it was now time to walk away from it? Did I want to risk being forced to live in a world of hurt just so I could continue this relationship with writing?

In the end, it wasn't my choice. Writing just would not let up, calling my name as if she were an abandoned child looking for her mother. So I went back to writing and found that my stories had more definition. My relationship with writing had never stopped growing, although I'd once thought maybe it was just a tool of survival for a broken little girl. I learned quickly that writing was so much more. It was in my blood, it was me and I was it. If no one ever reads one word that I write, I will continue to write because I love it so. It has never failed me, and so I will never fail it.