She displayed that usual look of a girl who was raised in a country and spent just a few years trying to adjust to what living in the city is. She is my cousin Aileen and looking at their house bridged the chance for us to see each other again and have a few exchange of thoughts and ideas after a long time.
We were looking at their house with wide amazement in my eyes, having not seen the shelter in a long time. I was wondering why their house all of sudden grew up in size with a wider courtyard this time. My cousin was doing all the explanation with ease in her rustic voice. The neighboring houses which I saw and which made the area looked so congested vanished like trodden mushrooms. The house was really big that I was unable to repress an air of envy. On the other hand, it looked portentous matched with the gloomy, foreboding atmosphere around.
Beside the house was a private road adjoining a fenced in yard further right. The yard which seemed like a pine-tree seedlings garden was so commodious and was fringed intervally with pine and juniper trees. We saw some people busying themselves with a sundry of unusual, peculiar, odd-looking, and gargantuan dead sea creatures. I saw some fish bigger than a horse, three times a horse's size perhaps. Just behind us was Aileen's father tending to his horses, giving them molasses in small buckets and guiding them to a hearty grass indulgence. Later, my uncle told me that those people in the pine tree garden were selling the creatures at 750 pesos per piece. My eyes glowed and the excitement in me swelled internally. I had been thinking of making 'calamares' or fried squid bathed with flour.
Seeing their big size, my uncle beckoned that he wanted one and so the seller bustled in our direction unbelievably carrying a heavy weight of the giant squid. He threw it towards the front yard but was unlucky enough to notice the horse indulgently grazing some grass just in front of the house. The weight landed on one of the horses and it right off the bat gave the four-legged animal a lethal wound on its trunk. The horse was motionless for a couple of minutes and my uncle was really mad.
The horse was bleeding to death and before it gasped for its last breath, the seller turned frantic and uneasy to show how apologetic and conscientious he was with the horse's misfortune. He started hopping upside down. His head was like an electric drill hobbling on the tablets serving as a pavement towards my uncle's house. The guy reminded me of the character in the game, pogo loco. My cousin and I were amusingly watching him do the stunt. He was amazing.
I thought like it was the end of the world. My eyes were nailed to the flowing water in the creek as I was walking sideways to get to the nearest variety store in the neighborhood. Then I halted, I looked again closely at the creek to make sure I was looking at the real thing. It was too quiet and looking at the creek made the scene more horrible.
Flowing in the creek was not water but a very slimy liquid which gave me the idea that it was lava coming from a volcano though there is no volcano in the village. I also thought that water pollution in the area has gone bad that the whole thing occupying the creek was soapsuds. I thought there was a threatening catastrophe so I had to hurry then while eyeing at the bridge just a few meters ahead of me. The cataract of flowing matter in the creek almost overlapping the bridge prodded me to speed up.
Once my feet settled on the bridge, I gave a quick look at my cousin's riparian house. I must have been in illusion that I just saw my cousin's upper body emerge from the creek and sink back in right away. She seemed like her though she had longer hair, angelic face and, was wearing a blue shirt. She gave me a frightening look with her big eyes. That gave me a second thought whether what I saw was actually a cousin or a mermaid. (A mermaid in a creek?) If she were my cousin, then she would have been the only person visible to me at that time. The whole surroundings was really eerie.
After crossing the bridge, I finally arrived at the variety store where I bought three bags of fishballs. I remember my dad and his friends were drinking at home that I was on an errand to buy them appetizers. With three bags of fishballs in my hands, I felt frozen. I couldn't move, the stuff seemed so heavy that my feet were pinned down on the ground. The store owner suddenly disappeared and when I directed my eyes at my left towards the pavement, I saw two of my neighbors pass by. They offered me help but out of nowhere, my younger brother came rushing towards me and volunteered to carry one of the bags.
As we set our feet to head for home, my brother messed up with the fishballs, dropped the bag and the fishballs with its sauce just exploded on the ground. I was so damn disappointed in him that before my waking world, I started hitting him countless times with my knuckles on his head.
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