TRASH

by Dean Francis Alfar

  They prayed.

  ×××

  Michael was the first to join this latest venture. Next was Edwin. Dodong was the hardest to convince. He didn’t plan to be a criminal. He said, “I’d rather be poor than a criminal. Don’t include me. Go look for someone else.”

  But Jhunel was stubborn, he could only do something if the Kruxial Boize were there, complete. He had staked too much on the group to turn his back on them, and he’d fucked up human lives in the process. He still didn’t believe in God, but at least he wanted to do right by his friends.

  The Kruxial Boize had failed. They reached the second round of auditions at Cebu but they were beaten by Primal Objectz. Dondie gave Jhunel a withering mocking smirk. Furious, Jhunel stomped toward the homo, wanting to rip his head off his neck, only to be restrained by the rest of the Boize. The judges would have none of his antics and promptly blacklisted them from Showtime, in perpetuity.

  “No matter how you shuffle your members,” they said, “no matter how often you change your names, you won’t be allowed to join any more Showtime contests.”

  The guards dragged them out of the audition area. Dondie gave Jhunel and his crew another smirk – and even blew them a kiss as they were leaving. Their only response was to yell “Faggot!” which now had no effect.

  Even if they’d beaten up Dondie and his group, they still wouldn’t have won.

  Jhunel only realized this when he and Dodong were hiding in the bank vault. There was nothing he could have done. The judges voted them in, not us. Maybe they’d known about us, about what I did to that faggot Dondie. But complaining wouldn’t have done them any good. They’d just have labeled the Kruxial Boize childish and sore losers. And he shouldn’t have threatened Dondie’s life. He laughed at this now, inside the vault, and then he felt sorry for Dodong who ended up in there with him – he would have preferred to be alone, he was the one who started everything, he was the one who failed his friends, so by rights he should face up to his sins alone. But he wasn’t, Dodong was here, Jhunel’s most benign friend. He didn’t even want a gun until last night. Too afraid of actually using the thing – he’d much rather use it on himself than aim it at something. Yet Jhunel had seen anger slowly consume his friend.

  But laughter was the only thing left. He could only laugh at himself, at the fate of the Kruxial Boize, at Dondie and his group. He laughed remembering how he kicked that faggot’s ass. His face at the police station was priceless. The color of mangosteen, it had bumps and bruises, bleeding at the mouth’s edges, the blood trickling down his chin. He’d relish that image for the rest of his life. And then Jhunel laughed at the success of Primal Objectz, who’d gone on to appear on Showtime and then reached the last monthly finals, where they were beaten by the XS Boyz, a group from somewhere in Mindanao Jhunel couldn’t remember. The XS Boyz won the whole damn thing, too.

  It was Dodong who helped Jhunel secure their equipment. They bought their .38s from a fat retired policeman the Chinaman also supplied. The Chinaman asked them if they were moving into another line of work, and Jhunel answered him yes. At this the fat man smiled at them and bade them good luck. “You going to need it,” he said.

  The very next day another kilo of shabu arrived for Jhunel.

  Jhunel saw that Dodong wanted get-back from their failure at Showtime in some form or other. Dodong ached for it, couldn’t sleep at night because of it, but he didn’t know whether he could really go against his nature and become a cold-blooded criminal. Michael seemed gung-ho. Edwin, too. Junmar and Jhon Mark were too muddled now to do anything else. But Dodong still seemed an iffy addition. And so Jhunel decided to test him.

  There was a regular customer who’d been neglecting to pay Jhunel for the past month. He was a college kid, Sillimanian, rich, but you could tell he had been found out and so was being frozen out by the folks, in the hopes that he’d wean himself off the shit. Evidently he hadn’t, and the only things he’d paid Jhunel with were addled promises and IOUs. The leader of the Kruxial Boize went to his dealer friends for advice and was told to either get paid or get one less customer. “Don’t feed addicts, man,” they said. “They bleed you dry only. They don’t have cash, cut them loose.”

  When the kid called him one night, Jhunel had decided.

  He called Dodong and asked him to meet. The deal was at a vacant lot somewhere in Banilad, near the city limits of Bacong. It was a weird deal, Jhunel knew, and if the kid was still in his right mind he’d realize things were fishy – transactions were normally conducted at another dealer’s safehouse in Tinago. (Police raids were concentrated on Looc, where marijuana was the product of choice.) Dodong got to the spot and saw Jhunel sitting smoking on his motorcycle. He asked him what was up. Jhunel asked him if he was packing. Dodong said he was. “You told me to bring heat.”

  “Good,” Jhunel said.

  No more questions.

  Soon the kid arrived, all fidgety and shaking. He kept wringing his hands and sniffling. Jhunel wasn’t sure whether he was thinking something was fishy or the shabu had melted his mind. But at least he was alone. He didn’t ask about Dodong. He only wanted his kicks. Good, Jhunel thought. This scene was something he’d seen often in the movies, so he followed script. He asked for the kid’s money first. The kid hedged, hedged, and then hedged some more just to get out of paying. Jhunel feigned anger. He cursed at the kid and told him he hadn’t paid him for a month, and he was hurting business.

  “I have other customers,” Jhunel told the kid, “I’d rather sell only to them.”

  The kid fell to his knees and cried. He crawled to Jhunel’s feet and hugged his knees, begging for just one more hit, “Just one more, one more and I won’t buy from you anymore, I’ll pay you back for everything!”

  Jhunel was stone-faced. Dodong stared at them. He must have been remembering what happened to Junmar and Jhon Mark. His hands were shaking, creeping toward the piece tucked in his waistband. Meanwhile the kid kept groveling.

  Minutes of this went by before Dodong got fed up. He yelled “Enough!” marched toward the kneeling kid and put a bullet in his dome. Jhunel had planned to give the instruction himself, but what the fuck, his mouth was flapping in the night breeze as he looked at Dodong, now transformed into a killer. Both men were breathless.

  ×××

  Jhunel sensed it was time. He dropped his sacks. They had spent too long in the vault for the SWAT team not to have figured out where they were. He told Dodong to stand up, drop the sacks, and get ready. They were coming. The last members of Kruxial Boize felt their knees shaking, their hands sweating cold. They had pissed every drop inside them. Whatever anger was in their hearts was replaced by surging fear.

  The leader of the Kruxial Boize asked Dodong if he had any regrets.

  He said he didn’t.

  Dodong bounced the question back to Jhunel.

  “No,” he said.

  And it was time.

  ×××

  The SWAT team reached the vault. They called for the two men to open the door. Surrender peacefully and they wouldn’t come to harm.

  “Don’t be stupid and follow your friends,” a voice yelled. “You don’t want to die yet, do you?”

  The Kruxial Boize didn’t answer. Millions of thoughts sprayed across their minds. They couldn’t have answered even if they wanted to. The SWAT team began sweet-talking them. Promises were made, offering them safe passage wherever they wanted to go, with a getaway vehicle of their choice. They’d even let them keep their money. Jhunel had seen this scene many times before. This only happened when everything was going to shit. He snickered. He’d thought everything had gone to shit hours earlier. Maybe it was even earlier than that.

  Dodong looked at him.

  He said nothing.

  More yelling from the SWAT leader now: he ordered the two robbers to surrender immediately if they didn’t want to get hurt. His harsh tone was back. He hollered that they were preparing a C4 charge to blast through the vault doors, “So this i
s your last chance. You will die if this explodes. There will be absolutely nothing left of you. Your parents will bury nothing but dust. Do you have wives? Girlfriends? Kids? Do you want them to see you get blown to bits?”

  Both Jhunel and Dodong said nothing.

  They raised their guns and aimed them at the door.

  “Fuck you then!” the SWAT leader shouted. All Jhunel and Dodong could hear was a shattering boom, all they could see was a flash – as bright as the light on the other side. They got blown to the vault’s walls, dropping their guns, tasting blood in their mouths and feeling a swelling in their heads. The SWAT team stormed the vault with their SMGs raised and ready to kill. His movie-worthy last stand foiled, Jhunel lay down and closed his eyes. He hurt too much to move. He couldn’t even see Dodong. Only his distant moans could be heard. The cops slowly approached. Jhunel could hear someone radioing for an ambulance. He couldn’t hear Dodong’s groans anymore. He feared the worst.

  But then gunshots woke him.

  He saw Dodong on his feet, his gun exploding in his hands, and then saw the surprised SWAT team tear him apart with a blizzard of gunfire. Dodong fell and was no more, though he had taken a couple with him. Testosterone and fury pulled Jhunel to his feet and he yelled at the world and let his .38 roar, hitting air, his outburst answered by a crisp brisk volley of SMG fire. He felt every single bullet piercing through his costume, ripping into his flesh, bursting his organs, and then exiting through his back. The pain was unbearable but relieving – he fell, but not alone.

  BLEEDING TRASH

  TILON SAGULU

  “How to get married if I don’t have money? No money bah… really, I’m not kidding,” Dandey smirked, answering the little beggar’s question.

  But he did have money, though only enough to get things he wanted like cigarettes and Orange flavored F&N soda – his favorite. Dandey had just finished high school and was still living with his Chinese stepparents, Mr. and Mrs. Kwan. He was officially adopted when he was seven years old, and started living and working at the Kwans’ restaurant, Lady Kwan’s Bak Kut Teh.

  After finishing high school Dandey was expected to help his stepparents with the restaurant, especially when a tumor was found in his stepfather’s brain, but what he really wanted was to go to college. He aspired to be a scientist, working in a lab, playing with poisonous chemicals and creating new drugs to treat maladies. All of his school friends were pursuing higher education, but he couldn’t. Sometimes he thought of running away to pursue his ambition, to be selfish at least once in his lifetime, like the way his biological mother (a single parent) ditched him at the Gaya Street Tamu – morning market – when he was only five.

  It was still fresh in his memory, as though it happened only yesterday. Whenever he thought about that perplexing moment he would come to the pier and sit on the metal bench where he’d sat for hours waiting for his mother to find him, but she never came. He never stopped asking why she’d left him at the tamu that day, her five-year-old boy who knew nothing about the city. He could’ve become a beggar just like these kids, he thought, if Mrs. Kwan hadn’t taken him home that night.

  “Liar!” yelled Sadiah, the thirteen-year-old girl who’d begged money from him, and then laughed. “I bet you have many children now,” she added. Her front teeth were rotting, spotted with plaque. Her long black hair was disheveled, but beautifully tinted by the sunset's rays. Dandey was in deep reverie, smoking his last cigarette, watching the sun sinking on the horizon, thinking about his life, and dreaming of collecting the golden ripples on the ocean when the three little beggars approached him with their empty shopping trolley. Amisah, a twelve-year-old girl with a long ponytail, pushed the trolley along the pier, while Sadiah and her ten-year-old brother Udin rode inside. They were begging money from tourists. They told Dandey that they had been begging since morning, but he didn’t believe them. Instead of giving them money, Dandey handed them a bag of rambutan he’d bought from one of the lads who wandered about the pier selling fruit. After a moment he handed Sadiah a ten ringgit note.

  “You know, a man your age should have a wife and kids by now,” Amisah said, while chewing the rambutan flesh. She wiped the juice dribbling from her lips with her t-shirt. There were black and brown stains on her clothes. Dandey wondered if it was the only t-shirt Amisah owned.

  “No,” Dandey said, his eyes scrutinizing Amisah’s dirty face, greasy hair, and her oversized stained t-shirt. “That’s not true.”

  “Yes! It’s true.”

  “Why do you say so?”

  “Because I’ve seen many young couples with kids nowadays,” Amisah answered. She sat next to Dandey on the metal bench. He was surprised that she didn’t smell as bad as he’d expected. Sadiah got off the shopping trolley and joined Amisah, sitting so close to Dandey that their thighs touched. Her leg felt warm, but he was a little disgusted thinking of her dirt on his skin. Instead of changing his position, Dandey sat still, afraid of offending her. When Sadiah caught Dandey glancing at a rip on the armpit of her shirt, she quickly hid it with her hand. Dandey blushed, and guilt slowly burned his chest.

  “I guess I’m not like those young people,” Dandey said, looking at the golden horizon, pretending he didn’t see the tear in Sadiah’s shirt. “I don’t want to get married, not because I don’t have money, but I just … I don’t want to, you know.” Dandey paused, thinking about his parents. “It’s not easy to raise a family,” he added as an afterthought, “I don’t have enough money to raise a family anyway.”

  The orange sky brought him back to the day his mother abandoned him. The same hopelessness and fear he’d felt back then spurted in his stomach. He recalled wandering along Gaya Street alone, terrified and bewildered, and then finally ending up sitting on the metal bench, crying. A few minutes after sunset, a Chinese woman came up to him asking why he was crying and where his parents were – it was Mrs. Kwan. That night Mrs. Kwan had brought him to her shop-house, just above her restaurant, where he met Mr. Kwan, a grumpy man, who’d later become a tenderhearted stepfather. It had been years already, but the feeling of being lost, terrified and confused still gnawed his guts every time he sat on the metal bench, watching the twilight as darkness slowly draped the ocean.

  “Bang…give me five ringgit bah,” begged Amisah, “five ringgit only.” Her voice shattered Dandey’s reminiscences. The ten ringgit note he’d given to Sadiah was the last cash he had. Before he handed it to Sadiah he had asked her where her parents were. She told him that her mother was at the fish market, begging for money just like them, and that her father had died when she was young. Her mother didn’t have a birth certificate, or an identification card, so she couldn’t get a real job. They were illegal denizens of Malaysia – human beings that the legal citizens of Sabah called Pilak. They were ostracized, ignored, and discriminated against like the plastic, paper cups, soda cans, and bottles thrown into the sea; abandoned and drifting aimlessly with the current, belonging to no land, unwelcomed and unwanted.

  Why can’t they get citizenship? Dandey wondered. They were born in this land, so technically they’re Malaysians, there’s no point in sending them back to their grandparents’ country because that’s not where they belong. But then, where do they truly belong when this land does not welcome them either?

  They sat in silence for a while. Amisah was enjoying her rambutan alone, Sadiah’s brother Udin was talking to himself, climbing in and out of the shopping trolley, while Sadiah was in deep reverie, thinking as deeply as Dandey. Her soul was older than her body, and one could easily feel it just by looking into her wistful eyes.

  “I didn’t choose to beg for money, you know, but it’s the only thing I know how to do,” Sadiah said. “Of course I’m ashamed of it, but … if you want to dispose of trash, at least put it in the trash can so that it can go where it’s supposed to go. Don’t simply throw it on the sidewalk, because someone has to clean it up for you later.”

  “What?” Dandey frowned, looking at Sadiah, confus
ed. Is she calling herself trash?

  “I’m talking to Amisah,” she said. Dandey noticed the rambutan peels all over the sidewalk.

  “Who cares?” Amisah said, rolling her eyes. “Nobody cares!”

  These little beggars might be lying to me about everything, thought Dandey, but how could he tell? The way they looked – young, dirty, hungry and lost – resonated with him in a subtle way, but he couldn’t figure out how or why. There was a sense of brokenness – a universal brokenness – a common language their souls shared. And at the very least, they were humans having human experiences on Earth.

  “Abang bah…” Amisah started her cry again, “it’s not fair bah you gave her ten ringgit. I only ask for five ringgit…Bang bah…”

  “Eh! I gave you a bag of rambutan already and that cost me five ringgit, you know?” Dandey chuckled. “There goes your five ringgit.”

  “Bang bah…five ringgit only.”

  “I don’t have any more cash, be grateful,” Dandey said, “and clean up your mess. Look at all the kulit rambutan. The trash can is just next to you, you know.”

  “No!” Amisah rolled her tongue. “Once trash always trash, and I’m not going to clean it up … let them rot here. And who cares anyway?”

  “Do you have a girlfriend?” Sadiah asked abruptly before Dandey could respond to Amisah’s statement.