"Where to?" asked the cab driver as I buckled up in the front seat.

"Cebu Business Park. The Keppel Building," was my sleepy retort. "And please step on it. Take the coastal road. I'm running late." 

The taxi sped towards the city. The radio played love songs, the air-conditioning was just right, and the air freshener smelled good– the canister told me it was apple scent. Tired and practically sleepless the night before, I was on the verge of dozing off.

"Have you heard of the Mayor's plan to put up a sign in the coastal road a la Hollywood? Sounds like a real waste of taxpayers' money to me."

"Yes I know that." I snapped back. I wasn't in the mood for small talk. In fact, as much as possible, I avoided conversations with taxi drivers. 

"And," he continued. "He even has the tendency to rule with an iron fist. But even though he acts like a big bully, he hasn't done enough to curb crime here. Good thing the vigilantes are doing the job for him and his useless police force."

"You approve of those guns for hire?" I asked. Although, quite surprisingly, a lot of people approved of the vigilantes—even some members of the media— I didn't think killing criminals was the best solution.

"Yes," He answered. "Anything to curb crime here."

"Killing muggers or snatchers will not solve anything. It's a crime itself. And are you sure it wasn't the mayor who 'inspired' all those vigilantes to execute all those alleged criminals?"

"Not really."  He answered. He was whistling a tune that drowned in the music of the radio. I couldn't understand how he managed to keep a cool composure amid the morning rush hour, where scores of vehicles clogged the road and made driving a tedious– even hellish –task. Harried-looking students, office workers, and other commuters littered the sidewalk, anxiously flagging down jeepneys, buses, and taxi cabs.

"Well, if you really eschew iniquity, then you should abhor every form of violence." I said.

He shrugged.

"I want to ask you a question."

"Go ahead."

"Who did you vote for mayor in the last elections?"

"Chikoy Meneses."

Meneses is the incumbent mayor of Cebu who ran for a second term and won. Strangely, I wasn't surprised at all. I expected the answer.

"I'm sure you knew of his reputation, even before the elections. Yet now you are complaining that he's a bad mayor. Then why did you still vote for him? Why didn't you vote for his opponent in the first place?"

"I didn't think his opponent was any better. But more importantly, I voted for Meneses because he was the popular choice. I didn't want to waste my vote."

I laughed. "But now don't you think you wasted your vote even more? You're close to calling the guy an asshole, yet you are one of the reasons he won."

The song "Simply Jesse" was playing on the radio. I winced. I hated the damn song. I asked the driver if I could change the station. He nodded.

I was fiddling with the controls when a dog darted out from nowhere. Cursing, the driver turned the steering wheel sharply to the left. I saw a brown blur zip past the passenger side: we had missed the dog by inches. But now, driving in the opposite lane, we were careening towards an oncoming truck. The taxi swerved back to our lane and the driver shook his head. I slumped back on my seat.

"Damn strays." He said, visibly shaken. 

"That was close." I agreed. 

"Do you mind if I smoke?" 

"No," I said. "Go ahead."

He rolled down his window and took a pack of Marlboros from his shirt pocket. 

"Do you want one?"

"No thanks, I quit years ago." I said.

"Good for you."

Although he was a bit rough around the edges, the driver seemed cute to me. Cute enough to ask for his name.

"It's Rodel," he said. "Rodel Mendoza."

"How long have you been driving a taxi?"

"Right after I finished high school. I needed to help put food on the table."

I nodded.

"How about you? What do you do for a living?"

"I write."

"Really? I've always admired writers. What do you write about? Do you write in a newspaper?"

"I used to. Back when I was still in college I wrote freelance for the Metro Cebu Enquirer."

"What do you do now?"

"I'm a copywriter for an outsourcing company."

"Sounds good."

"I can't complain. It pays the bills."

A ringing phone interrupts our conversation. I fish out my cellphone from my jeans pocket.

"Jake here."

"Jake it's Benjie."

"What's up?"

"You're running a little late. Where are you?"

"I'm in a cab. Be there in five minutes tops."

"OK. Hurry up, I need you here ASAP. The boss has been on my tail all morning."

"Sure."

"Thanks Jake…. Bye."

I love you.

I didn't say those words aloud. I never have, as much as I wanted to. I am content to keep them as thoughts. And I've kept them inside for years: Words unspoken, words unwritten.

"We're almost here." Rodel's voice cuts like a knife through the silence.

I pull out my wallet and hand him several bills.

He looks at the meter. "Sir this is too much."

"Take it. And please. Call me Jake."

"Thank you Jake."

"Here, take my calling card too. Give me a call if you need anything."

******

"Pastilan, Jake Castro." Sonya says, "Haul your ass off that office chair for a minute. Workaholics die young. It's summer after all. You're already too pale."

"Sonya, I'm OK."

"No you're not. You need some sun. Let's go to the beach this weekend. I know a place. You'll love it in Calanggaman Island."

When I was a little kid my mother brought me to her hometown in Negros Oriental. We took the bus, an eight-hour ride. The trip made me dizzy and nauseous. The trip made me puke. I puked so much, my stomach hurt. I puked until I emptied my gut. I puked bitterly-sour digestive juices that scalded my mouth and burned my throat. I puked like I never puked before. My mother was so pissed-off she told me she wouldn't bring me along next time she went home. Then she beat me up in front of all the passengers. After that I didn't go on a long road trip anymore.

Until the trip to Calanggaman Island.

To get there, Benjie said we needed to take a four-hour bus ride from the North Cebu Bus station to a town called Maya, located at the northernmost tip of Cebu. We need to leave at 5 am, he says, to avoid the early morning rush hour. It is Friday, after all: a weekday. Then we will board a local outrigger boat or banca that will take us from Maya to Malapascua Island. Finally we need to ride another banca to Calanggaman Island. Sonya hates boat trips. She can't swim. Benjie is a licensed scuba diver. I don't hate boat trips; I'm a decent swimmer.

I hate road trips.

Hodophobia is fear of road travel.

My shrink—an overpaid balding asshole-- says that like all fears and phobias, hodophobia is created by the unconscious mind as a protective mechanism, and at some point in my past, there was likely an event linking road travel and some emotional trauma.

Duh. Tell me something I don't know, Doc. Tell me something worth the bloated fee I'm paying you per hour, Doc.

I'll tell you something I do know, however: One symptom of hodophobia is drying of the mouth. Another symptom is excessive sweating. Other symptoms are dizziness, nausea, shaking, heart palpitations, and the inability to speak or think clearly.

I know this because I felt all those symptoms as soon as I boarded that bus to Maya.
The passengers thought there was some lunatic onboard with them. My friends thought there was some lunatic onboard with them. What's worse is I puked all over the bus.

I'm just glad my mother wasn't there.

Like any tropical island, the beaches in Calanggaman Island are lined up with coconut trees. The sand is white with the texture of fine powder. A few years ago I went to Boracay alone. Going there didn't involve a long road trip. So I went. There's an airport in Caticlan, so I took the plane. The beaches in Boracay are also lined up with coconut trees. The sand there is also white with the texture of fine powder. But the place is crowded. My friends go there precisely because they like it crowded. They go celebrity hunting.

At first I didn't enjoy my stay in Boracay. Things changed, however, when I met a German guy named Felix. It was the first time I ever experienced a one night stand with a guy I barely knew.

Calanggaman Island is not crowded, it is peaceful. No celebrities, no crowds. No trash littering the beachfront. No noise caused by jet skis or speedboats. Because the island is deserted, there are no cottages as well, so we needed to put up a few tents. Calanggaman Island is so small; you can walk around the entire island in 30 minutes. There is a sandbar that stretches several meters across.

"Come on Jake, let's hit the water." Benjie says, peering into my open tent and slathering a generous amount of tanning oil on his arm. He's already in his board shorts.

"Jesus, you're still doing some work? I told you to leave your laptop at home."

"I think I'll stay here in the tent for a while," I said. "I got tired of the trip and I need to finish this."

"Sonya is already sunbathing in the sandbar. Don't you want to join her before we have lunch?"

"In a while."

"Come on Jake, life is short. Take it easy."

"Yes life is short. Especially for me."

"I didn't mean that," Benjie said in a low voice. "As you wish. See you later."

Inside the tent, it is warm and I am sweating profusely. I turn off my laptop and doze off.

******

"Come in." Dr. Lisondra said as soon as he heard the knocking on the door. It was a little past midnight and an odd-looking couple walked in. The man, my father, is middle-aged, burly, pot-bellied and dressed rather casually in a plain black t-shirt and jeans. He had a gun tucked away in his belt. I noticed the gun right away because it was silver. And even then in the dimly-illuminated room, it glinted unmistakably.

The girl, I gathered, was barely out of her teens.  I did not recognize her. She wore a white maternity dress that ended just below her knees. The girl clenched the man's arm tightly as she glanced around the room with unease. "Sit." barked the man, motioning to a monobloc chair nearby. Dr Lisondra approached him.

"Is she ready?"

The man fished out a pack of cigarettes from his jeans pocket. He mouthed one, lit it, and took a long drag. "She doesn't have a choice, Doc. I call the shots."

Dr. Lisondra frowned, shaking his head. "Just let me prepare my instruments."

My whole life I've been accustomed to total darkness, surrounded by shadows and obscurity, five months of swirling around in a liquid void. I never saw the sun; I don't think I ever will. The first time I saw light, I was almost blinded. That light is the same light in this room now, a faint glow coming from an old, dusty overhead fluorescent lamp.

The girl is crying now, and she is strapped to a bed whose once white sheets are dotted and caked with dried blood. She emits a loud howl not unlike that of a wild animal and not even the burly man almost twice her size could restrain her. He cups a big hand over the girl's mouth and she bites it, drawing blood. "You useless fuck!" he exclaims in pain, and smashes a fist into the girl's face. At once there is silence, and I see dark blood trickling from the girl's nose. "That shut you up."

Not long ago while swirling around in the warm liquid void I used to call home, I felt a burning sensation envelop me. Suddenly the warm liquid had become too hot, too scalding. It burned my skin, my eyes, my whole body. I screamed. But nobody heard me.

"You know this is a very risky procedure, especially for the mother." Dr. Lisondra says. "The surgical procedure always is, Mr. Castro. We can try the chemical one, which is relatively safer. We tried it on your wife a few months ago, remember? Again, this would involve injecting her womb with a brine solution and then…"

"Just get this over with, Doc." The man growled. "I need to be at the station early in the morning tomorrow. We opted for the surgical procedure, so we'll go with the surgical procedure.  Don't worry about her."

"Very well," Dr. Lisondra nodded, putting on his surgical gloves.

Even then in the dimly-illuminated room, Dr. Lisondra's silver instruments glinted unmistakably. Even then, I feared for my unborn sibling's life.

And I shiver in this jar.

******

I wake up to the sound of Sonya singing from her tent. I am drenched in cold sweat and disoriented from my strange dream involving my father. The events in the dream, especially a scene telling of an imminent abortion, are told through the eyes of my unborn half sibling, an aborted fetus swimming in a jar of formaldehyde.

Did I really see that scene in my dream for the first time?

Jamais vu.

It is darker than usual and a faint light resembling that of moonlight seeps into the tent. I unzip the mesh door and step out.

It is night time. A cold breeze blows and I'm shivering. I look around, and there is no sign of Benjie.

The singing is getting louder.

It is the most beautiful voice I've ever heard.

I call out Benjie's name. Nobody answers. I unzip Benjie's tent. It is empty save for a couple of plastic bags containing our lunches: sandwiches, some bananas, bottled water, and canned juice. The food is untouched. I grab a sandwich and a can of pineapple juice and set off to look for him.

I circle the island, and see no one. Sonya's voice belts out a sad song of farewell. It is in Visayan but it is not a familiar song. I feel drawn to it like a moth to a flame.

Sonya's voice soothes my nerves and I forget my problems at the office. I forget the whole ordeal on that bus to Maya. I forget the whole ordeal many years ago on that bus to Negros. I forget that I hate my mother. I forget that my psychologist is a balding, overpaid asshole.

I feel my hodophobia vanish. I feel at ease.

I forget that I am stricken with AIDS.

I sit on the sand at the water's edge, and let the lapping waves of the sea lick my bare feet.

******

Letter from Benjie Delima to Jake Castro:

Dearest Jake,

Sorry for leaving you and Sonya like that. I know I worried you with my disappearance and I owe you an explanation.

I wish I can tell you that I know and feel what you are going through right now. But I can't. I can only imagine. I can only say thank you for trusting me enough to tell me about your problem. You are my closest friend. I've known you ever since we were in college, and I will never forget everything that we shared: our hardships during our activist days, sticking it out together as student journalists through the last year of an embattled campus newspaper, not to mention all our drinking sessions in between classes. You know that I owe you much, most especially for everything you and your parents have done for me. I wouldn't have finished college and landed a decent job if it weren't for you and your family's financial support. I know I couldn't repay you for your friendship but at least I would like to try.

There is this legend that the mythical creature sigbin who they say inhabits these parts can be a cure for AIDS. I know you might be thinking I've lost my mind but I don't want to discount the possibility that there is a certain truth to it. I am hoping that I might be able to bring home a cure to help you. It is this hope that has driven me to find this creature, if it indeed exists.

About an hour's boat ride from Calanggaman Island is a place called Nalumbusan where they say a vast population of sigbin can be found. While you were sleeping and Sonya was busy in her tent, I set off via rented banca and boatman to Nalumbusan. What follows are notes I've written about my experience so far.

I must say I haven't enjoyed my stay here that much. Even in the town proper, there is no running water, no electricity, and if, God forbid, any medical emergencies might arise, the nearest Health Center is at least a two-hour hike away. Because I decided to travel light, I only brought along clothes and my cellphone (which-- because of the lack of nearby cellsites in this place-- is virtually useless). 

I am by no means a picky eater, but I've grown tired nonetheless of subsisting on a daily fare of ground corn and balanghoy dipped in guinamos, or dried fish, canned goods and rice. In fact, I'd give anything for a bowl of steaming sinigang na baboy or humba right now. I also long for ice cold beer, but the only booze available in these parts is warm tuba which, when swallowed, leaves a sour and acidic aftertaste as though you were sipping vinegar instead of coconut wine. The only consolation I have here is the townsfolk. They are the most hospitable people I've ever met. I was greeted with smiles, not the customary wariness of jaded city folk such as myself. And Noy Domingo the town Mayor has been very supportive of my search since day one. He even sent Fredo and Lauro, -- two of his best tanods-- to serve as my guides and accompany me to the place where there have been recent sightings of the creature. 

The place, Barangay Kanduhawan, is a couple of days away on foot. According to Fredo, it is a densely populated area frequented by kaingeros. We were on our way to Barangay Kanduhawan (after bringing along some supplies of course—canned sardines in tomato sauce, rice, and dried fish that would last us several days) when I asked Fredo about the sightings. He reported that one day some kaingeros were making their way back to a heavily-wooded spot they set fire the night before. They were surprised as soon as they arrived because there wasn't a trace of a fire in the area: no burnt vegetation, no ashes, and no smoke.

"So?" I asked, not a bit amused. "Where's the mystery in that? Maybe the fire didn't spread because it went out. That's the reason why the trees and weeds in the area were not burned."

Fredo flashed me a knowing smile. It was a smile that annoyed me a little. He didn't seem to mind the mid-afternoon sun that was beating down harshly. "The fire didn't go out prematurely sir. It raged for hours. What's baffling is that when the kaingeros came back, the place was stripped bare but there wasn't even a speck of ash on the ground."

"I can vouch for this, sir." Lauro cut in. "One of the kaingeros is my cousin, Felipe. He said when they reached the area, it was very hot and everything smelled of burnt wood. But the surroundings told them otherwise. Everything was clean, as though the place had been cleared long ago."

"How is that incident connected to our search for the sigbin?" I asked.

"If you have done your research sir, you should know by now that the sigbin's staple food is human blood, squash, and charcoal." Fredo said matter-of-factly.

"Do you mean to say that a group of sigbins devoured the burnt remains of the kaingeros' site?" I asked, skeptical.

Lauro nodded. "It is obvious, Mr. Delima. There is no other logical explanation."

Of course there are other logical explanations. Much plausible explanations, I thought. Was it remotely possible that heavy rains washed away all the traces of a fire the night before? Probably not. But it was entirely possible that the kaingeros had fabricated their story.

It's ironic. I am acting skeptical about the existence of a mythical creature native to these Visayan Islands but deep inside I'm hoping against hope that I find one, and fast.

The journey to Barangay Kanduhawan was unpleasant to say the least. Sharp branches scraped my face and arms; annoying insects were everywhere, buzzing around my eyes and ears; I had emptied my water bottle and I was dying of thirst; I was exhausted and I practically begged the two guides that we stop for a few minutes to rest.

Fredo wouldn't consent. "Sir, we can't stop now. It's already past five. A few minutes more and it would be nightfall. We need to get to Felipe's house before it gets dark."

"How long before we get there?"

"There is a river nearby, sir." Lauro answered. "Across that river is my cousin's house."

"Could we at least stop for awhile when we get to the river?" I pleaded. "I need to refill my water bottle."

Fredo gave Lauro a worried look, and said: "Certainly sir. But we must hurry."

We quickened our pace and reached the river Lauro had described just as the sun was disappearing over the horizon. The setting sun cast an eerie, orange glow and illuminated the surface of the water. I refilled my water bottle halfway and took a long swig.

Suddenly a series of loud, high-pitched shrieks pierced the late afternoon air. It appeared to be coming from deep in the woods.

It made my skin crawl. The sound didn't come from an animal I've heard before. It didn't come from any bird or bat that I knew of and it was enough to for me to drop my water bottle and turn to Fredo and Lauro. I threw them a questioning look.

Lauro crossed himself.

"Let's go sir." Fredo said grimly. "You can drink later when we get to Felipe's."

We waded through cold, chest-deep water to the other side of the river.  It was dark when we reached Felipe's place, a small, one-room hut made of nipa. We ate a spartan dinner of sardines, some native vegetables in broth, and boiled, ground corn.