i remember looking out the window and seeing leaves move with the wind.
mostly shadows and light, moonlight. i used to wait for a witch to come by
and peer at me through the glass.
i sometimes hear crunching noises. that meant that my cat
caught for herself a dinner. a bat. she was a good hunter.
i admired her swiftness. poor bats.
we had a pond in the old house. the water
was murky green. me and two boy-cousins always stood at the edge
and pondered what lay underneath the pool. i was four like one of them.
the older one was eight. he was the philosopher. we were his assistants.
because he was older, he had more ideas, and he would tell us stories
and fantasies about pond creatures and monsters...and we would
believe him.
the Moriones mask is a paper mache head of those Spanish soldiers
who came to the Philippines a long time ago.
one sunny day, my uncle decided to show me the mask. i had never seen it
so i was curious. he couldn't resist scaring me with it...and and my
three year old brain told me it was a monster. i ran. one of my aunts ran as well.
she and uncle and me played the tag game. he sped with the mask,
and made some growling sounds. thinking that we could hide in a second floor room,
me and tita hid upstairs. then we saw a hideous head popping out the
window. my naughty uncle had plopped the paper head on the end of a long long
stick and made the head dance above...making me and tita scream, shriek,
and laugh.
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