I was glad to finally see my little sister after several months of being away for work overseas. I only get a few weeks of stay before being called back by the agency for another year or so. She cleared her schedule for me, on our first weekend together. From the station, we got some supplies for my stay en route to her place. I wanted to just hole up and loaf, I told her. At least that was the plan. When you get to a certain age, you would prefer peace and quiet over anything else. The lesser the interaction the better. Carrying grocery bags, I followed her to her apartment on the third floor where we had dinner and a few drinks to catch up. There she shared about her romantic escapades, or what was left of them, and confessed that she feels squeamish about staying around for long. When I asked, she said that it was because of the “lack of color,” whatever that meant, and seriously considered moving into the city or at least somewhere near to the land of the living. “Even my landlord looks utterly the same as my drywall.” she declared. I thought it was weird of her to say that, but true enough, when we chanced upon this old guy heading down for more drinks, I saw what she meant by it. I will tell you more about it, but the feeling that I got looking at him was rather strange. I could not help but stare at him as we walked by. It was as if something was missing in his expression. Something lacking that I was compelled to search for it. His face was like an unfinished canvas. The artist who was working on it just left and did not come back, that kind of feeling.

That same evening, I went out for a walk around the neighborhood. Although I wanted to turn in early, I just could not shake off that feeling from earlier. Besides, I figured that it would be the best time for me to get acquainted with the place. I mean, I’m always at the open sea, and walking on land is considered a luxury for my kind. Late nights mean less human contact. It was sort of a compromise, so I took it.

I eventually landed on this hole-in-the-wall sort of pub. It was situated just a few corners from my sister’s place but I doubt if she frequented these parts. You could say that my sister is on the dapper side. While the pub has a Manila sort of nightclub vibe, which gives out a sleazy impression. I would have wanted to have her around with me since I get really awkward around people quick. Anyway, my night apparently was just getting started, but mind you, I am an early riser. I like getting up before the sun does but I also need my late nights too. Call it a balancing act. But I get less sleep to compensate for it, living in both worlds; night and day. For me, mornings are for the clearing of the head, sanitizing the mind, while late nights are for refilling the tank.

So, there I was sitting at the corner stool, drinking my stout, watching the golden bottles shimmer under their display illumination. I suddenly felt like a giant mackerel lured in for the bait. A beautiful woman suddenly appeared behind me and asked for a light. Of course, I responded accordingly to the request, albeit mechanically, just in time before it got weird being how I am around people. The woman unconsciously showcased her jawline when she tilted her head away from the flame, finger-combing her hair to the other side. This has also revealed how tiny her head was underneath all that mane. For a moment there she caught me staring at her. I thought I scared her off. While it was true that I was fascinated by her looks, I also envied how particularly proportioned her head was with her frame. I always want a tiny head myself. I remember as a kid, friends always teased me for my huge head. I never heard the end of it. This was one of the reasons why I stayed away from home whenever I could, like when I went to university and eventually got a job from really far away. With enough burn on her cigarette, she stepped back and said thanks as she walked off. What a cool cat, I thought. Thinking that was the end of it, after a few more drinks, about half an hour later, the woman reappeared only this time she was with two others younger than her. This time, I saw them approaching me as they walked through the shoal of fishes who were lured in this place like me. “I’m sorry to bother you again, but can I borrow some light?” I always thought it was weird how people phrase that — “Borrowing light.” Anyway, even with much anticipation, I was still caught off-guard. And again, I mechanically responded to the request doing precisely as I did the first time. And as if it was a rehearsed choreography, she did exactly as she did then. It was Deja Vu. She tilted her head, accidentally showcased her jawline, weirded out by my staring before stepping back.

And just like that, she was gone. She got swallowed in the open sea of the crowd. Her two friends remained, however. To my surprise, they introduced themselves and ordered drinks for three. I rarely get the chance to tell you truthfully, I thought it was some sort of a sham. But it was not. I did not notice it at first, but the two girls were in fact twins. One of the twins told me that I looked rather familiar but I was quick to dismiss that notion, since I was not from around, and explained that I was just visiting someone. “Were you with some girl earlier down at some apartment on St. Mary street? Yeah, I think that was you alright.” The other twin hopped in excitement as if it was a discovery of the century. “Yes, yes, you were with your girlfriend heading upstairs.” I knew I didn’t see them in the building, but I confirmed that it was me and that it was my sister that was with me. They gave me a dubious look and turned to each other. “Right, your sister. we get it.” Then there was a friendly heckling that took place. While that was going on, I could not help but realize something about the twins. Something strangely familiar.

“You guys mentioned that you saw me at the apartment building where I was with my sister, right?” There was a pause before they affirmed it.

“Then you must be living there as well, are you not?”

That was when they told me that the landlord is their father. And during that same instance, I was reminded of that weird feeling when I met their old man that afternoon. As if something cold was poured all over me. The twins had that same look or should I say impression. A blank sort of mesh on their faces. Do not get me wrong, they both had full features, they were young, strikingly beautiful, but looking at them just gives you that sort of feeling that something was out of place. Like a desolate land or a barren plain. And the funny thing was when I turned to my drink to give it some thought, on my peripheral, they both appeared normal to me. Or should I say better, fuller? I do not know if I am making sense, but that is about the only way I know how to fully explain what I had seen or had not seen… The more I looked away they sort of appeared normal. And when I turned back to look directly at them, certain features or if I may say, certain body parts on their appearance were missing. As in gone, and they change each time as if the blank patches have a life of their own. I thought my eyesight was messing with me or probably the alcohol, but they were about the only ones I saw like that in the room. Now, it was at that point when I could no longer evade the awkwardness anymore.

“Oh-oh, I think we know what’s going on here.” one of the twins started.

“Do you think we should tell him?” sounding worried, the other depended for an answer.

At this point, I thought I was going to faint. Either because of what my mind could not comprehend or because of my behavior, of me being rude to my new friends.

The more talkative twin chased after my gaze and reassured me that I was not losing my mind. Then soon confessed that they have this rare condition that they too could not explain.

“We don’t even know what it is called.”

I wanted to give myself a pinch but I did not want to be more inappropriate. Clearly, they were bothered about it.

“Half of the town has it. But of course, we could not just go telling everyone about it. It is not a medical condition since the ‘onlookers’ are the ones basically experiencing the inadequacies. Does that make sense?”

“Yes.” was the only thing I said since I did not know what else to add.

“And we could not go out without anyone ‘normal’ tagging along. As you can tell, it is quite hard to comprehend.”

“And I assume the lady who was with you earlier was your chaperone?”

“Yes, she’s our guardian. She was just making sure you are okay.”

I did not know what to make of everything I learned that evening, I think the twins felt really awful too, in fact, they were really apologetic about the entire thing. I told them I was the one being stupid and less empathetic, and that I should be the one apologizing. I know I’m an awkward type of guy, but I knew how to break the ice. So, to take back the night, we ordered some more drinks until we could no longer handle our liquor and went back to the apartment. We were smashed.

The next thing I remember was the morning after when I woke up in the twins’ bed with nothing on. They both shared a bed. The twins were nowhere to be found but they left a note which they both signed thanking me for last night and hoping that I could stay around longer. I picked up my clothes and washed my face and when I opened the front door, the beautiful woman from the night before was right there leaning against the wall with an unlit cigarette on her lips. I thought I was going to have a heart attack. The woman did not say anything and just stood there with her eyes piercingly fixed at me.

“Oh, it’s you. Do you need some light?” I searched for my lighter, patting everywhere but could not find it. Then she took something out of her left-hand jacket and lit the cigarette. I thought it was mine, but I let it go and just walked past her. Up to now, I’m still not sure what that was about. But I think that was her implied way of warning me. She was, after all, the twins’ guardian.

Letter

It must have been his fourth cup. At this point, he was beginning to feel the weight in his chest for not being able to hear from his mother. She has not sent a word for months. If hope was ever a commodity, it sure did not deliver as advertised. He would have chosen to stay at the cafe longer, but he was conserving the little money he had left. Midway through his letter, he began to notice that his hands looked tired, older, it was as if they were no longer his. What is worse, the sun was preparing to set and his eyes hardly kept up with the impending gloom. Then, at some stroke of luck, the only lamppost on that street was lit. Under its light was the woman he often sees working nights. A sudden change of heart, he unpocketed some loose change and bought another cup of coffee and stared behind the window. “How lucky is the man who could afford her.” he sang to himself. He would have spent all his money on her companionship only it would still fall short to make up her rate. Instead, he created a world in his mind about how he and she made a happy life together. No more cheap coffee, no more working late nights, only a warm and cozy embrace under a scrap blanket his mother had handsewn. It would have been a good narrative to end his letter.

Tryouts

Stamina was even a tougher obstacle to get the scholarship. Apart from his apparent physical disadvantage, the determination to overcome this feat was nowhere to be found. But the fear of starvation offered a far more sinister kind of motivation. It was not long before the coaching staff posted the results of the tryouts. Of course, he did not make the cut. But he was not at the bottom either. He will have to find another way to afford the semester. He took whatever good he could find though. It was not all too bad, he thought — no matter how few, he still ranked over those names on the list. He would celebrate that evening and got some laughs from it down at the bar.

Tourist

It was his first formal invitation since his arrival in the city. He intended to land an impression on the faculty members to showcase his attributes or at least to get acquainted. The professors spoke of Foucault, Voltaire, Nietzsche, and others whose names he couldn’t remember. Those names he had managed to capture resonated with him but regarded no friendly affirmations to his personal pursuits. He was an outsider, after all. A tourist from far away, desperately latching onto the cliffs of their summits. But no matter what, no matter how perilous the traverse, he decided to stay on the climb.

This is a true story. It was a windy night. The tropical storm was heading westward and what we were experiencing according to the weather report was the tail-end onslaught of the typhoon. It was supposed to be over soon, but it seemed like it was just getting started. There were just light rains thankfully, which meant lesser floods in most areas but the strong winds compensated for the lack of it. We were sleeping soundly in our condominium studio apartment my wife and I had just recently moved into when the storm got worse. Everything was going according to plan, it felt brand-new, starting a life together as a couple. It was quite a high finally landing on our own feet. You could say that we are still new to this sort of life even though we have been together for several years. I admit, however, that we were too eager about making it work. Sometimes it feels a little bit too soon. Either way, it had to be done at one point or another anyway. Nothing was going to stop us, we wanted nothing more.

The building construction was still on-going though. And there were only a few of us who were occupying the new structure. There were about eighty to ninety families or owners for all forty-four floors, which includes the penthouse, two commercial floors, and the three car-parking floors.

It was about past midnight when a series of loud banging noises woke us. My wife, being a light sleeper, complained about it first and couldn’t seem to get back to sleep anymore. I couldn’t as well, I don’t think anybody could. Apparently, the source of the nuisance was caused by the strong winds banging the doors of the unoccupied units. It was the storm, there was no doubt about it. And the barrage came mostly from the upper floors. And there were a lot of them since most units were yet to be turned over to the owners or were still up for sale. Unlike the other condominiums you’d normally find around the metro, the developers hand the property over to the owners bare. Meaning, there are no furnishings, fixtures, nor tiles, no paint jobs whatsoever. Just an empty concrete box and a door with no lock.

We just moved in, a little over a month give or take. My wife and I had lived around the city our entire lives there was no reason why we should be bothered about such a petty disturbance. But that night in the condominium was different. The booming barrage of noises was far worse than any thunderstorms we’ve encountered. Imagine, heavy doors made of hardwood banging constantly from different floors of the building one after another. It felt like a giant percussion in a full-length set. We thought that we were going nuts, it was torture. We work during the day and for us, a good night’s sleep was imperative.  At first, we tried to shrug it off hoping that the winds would tire down soon but it didn’t.  What’s bizarre was, when I went to the door and checked, I was the only one who was out in the hallway. “How can these people sleep, aren’t they bothered?” probably they are all used to it, probably they get a discount on the association dues for the trouble, or perhaps they have a state of the art noise-canceling padding installed on their walls. Either way, I just couldn’t understand how they were able to stand the entire thing. But I realized that maybe we were the only ones who there on our floor that night, maybe our neighbors (which were few) were out.

So I went to work. I could not stand another second of it. One way or another, I wouldn’t allow it to ruin what we had set out to achieve – a home. A little peace and quiet are hard to come by these days. We could talk to the building manager and file a complaint, of course, but that would happen no sooner than the morning after. I wanted to fix the matter up right away by taking things into my own hands. Besides, I’m an impatient man. My wife and I share that character flaw. We’re not proud of it but we get things done because of it. There’s always a way to keep things moving faster, we believe. You can coin it however you like, but it’s a principle that we carry.

I started with the doors on our side of the wing and carried on to the other. I was angry. I wallowed about the incompetence of the building administrators. “How could they miss this?” Since there were no available doorknobs at the vacant units, I tore off a generous portion of the carton box that I found and used that as a shim to keep the doors fixed in place. I closed the windows in the vacant apartments. I threaded carefully since it was dark in most of them. There were only the lights from the neighboring buildings illuminating my path. I tried the security guard on the ground floor, but couldn’t find him for some reason. I didn’t want to waste any more of my time so I went back to our floor to finish the job.

I boarded up the air-conditioning provisions with scrap boards and fragments of concrete blocks I found lying around. I was able to shut all the doors in-place on our floor but regrettably, it didn’t dent the impact of the noise at all.  It was overwhelming, I didn’t think this through I told myself. It felt like I was on the verge of caving in. But something must be done; I desperately mustered all the anger in my chest and turned it into pure will. I must admit, there was regret looming every time I felt tired and ready to give up. But I was not going to quit. Floor by floor, I went up through the elevator, doing the same things I did on ours: Shimmed the doors, closed any open windows, and blocked any significant openings with anything I could find useful. I was getting tired; I didn’t have the time with me, but I think I spent nearly two hours on all those doors. When I was near the top floors, I felt like fainting, I wanted to stop.

Even though I didn’t want to rest, I sat down on the hallway floor as I waited for the elevator to fetch me. I was on 43rd.  I was catching my breath and my throat was dry. By the time I entered the lift and was set to push 44, I realized that the last floor was off-limits it being the penthouse. I was relieved, it meant that the technicality concluded my quest for the night, finally.  But I noticed that there was an extra button just above it. “Another floor? That can’t be right?” I was sure that there wasn’t a 45^th floor but it was there in front of me glowing in its LED light. I still have the condominium brochure and the paperwork, and it only mentioned 44 floors and not 45. I kept on staring at the number to make sure I wasn’t hallucinating. And that strange button was on top of the penthouse which was kind of absurd. At first, I hesitated to proceed any further, but since I was there already, I ought to finish the deed I set out to do in the first place. But more than that, there was that unscratchable itch to know more about that mystery floor. I don’t know, I was just drawn to it, like it was calling me, like a long-lost friend beckoning for a chat. And without thinking too much, I went for it finally. Before long, the elevator doors slid open. That thin chime that nudged me that I was there echoed across the room.

It was dark and there was total silence. I noticed that there wasn’t a hallway, there was no wind at all but it was colder than any of the other floors I’ve been to. It was just a huge spacious dark room that seemed shapeless. Like a deep void or some sort of a vacuum.

I didn’t step out. I mean, why would I? I decided that there wasn’t any door that needed closing anyway. My task is done, I convinced myself. Leave now before you regret staying. I was scared, to tell you the truth. I never felt this alone my whole life. I was brought up in the slums but I never felt this perilous. I couldn’t move and I felt frozen all of a sudden. Everything was still, I couldn’t remember if I’d breathed at all. For all I care, I was a cold corpse. And before I was able to push the close button, the elevator seemed to have telepathically understood my will, as if it had its own consciousness. Then that chime had rung again to announce my departure. I was saved! A small voice in my head had celebrated in silence. But then, when the doors were about to slide back to closing, it struggled. It was like the doors were dragging itself to do it. It was as if someone or something was forcing it not to. But it continued on, slow but it was moving.

It was the longest five seconds of my life. And when the doors were finally about to touch shut, I swear I saw something between that narrow gap. I’ll try to describe what I saw to the best of my ability but I assure you that this description is nothing compared to what I have actually seen. What I saw between that narrowing vertical was a face. There was a glimmer of light, a faint illumination that shimmered in the darkness. It didn’t hurt my eyes, in any way, allowing me to see clearly.  Behind the light emerged a face, the feeling that it left me that night stayed on. The face had a very dark complexion. Its skin had a dry, cracked texture. There were thick scabs, in a quite unusual formation. It looked like one layer was sitting on top of another and another. It was sort of a miniature canyon after a volcanic eruption. I thought that the face was smiling, well it appeared as if it was. I don’t think it had lips on its mouth, just the skin around it. I couldn’t say if it had a body though. Or hair. Or anything else. It was just there facing directly towards me, just a few paces away.

It was gone instantaneously, almost at the same moment I saw it.

Of course, my wife and I went to the admin office as soon as their office had opened. I gave a brief narrative of what happened and expressed our frustrations about the experience.  My wife told me between the conversation as she whispered that I was calmer than she had expected me to be. I don’t know about that, I just felt exhausted after all. I didn’t share with anyone about the 45^th floor, even to my wife. But I asked the official if there was a floor above the penthouse, but the building manager told me that there was none.

That very same day, we were informed that none of the occupants heard about the loud banging noises. Even the security guards who were doing the rounds that night didn’t hear anything at all. “But that was just impossible, that couldn’t be right.” My wife told the manager and his assistant at our door. “We wanted to get to the root of it, we even went asking around but even the other unit owners didn’t seem to have heard the noises. But we’ll check all the doors from now on just to be sure.” We thought it was weird. We were willing to bet that the noises we heard that night reached up to two blocks away.

It’s been four months now since the night of the incident.  And true enough, as the building manager had promised, we didn’t experience any of it anymore. It’s been months since I’ve written anything as well. Not to make any excuses, but I haven’t been in my element since the night of the incident. What’s troubling me was that the 45^th button wasn’t there anymore but there is a dent on the control panel that hinted that a provision for a button was once available. I don’t know, it could be my imagination. I decided to let it go, but as of late, I couldn’t find my sleep for some reason. The wife returned to her routine which was more important. I am writing tonight to journal that night’s strange experience. There’s a storm heading our area. The biggest in years they said. I decided to trace my footsteps as I did that night, hoping to put a stop to all of this madness. I’ll be going floor to floor, simulating as I did then to get to that ominous floor. I’ll write a log soon about any further developments.