Tag: mumu

Family means a lot to you, obviously, you wouldn’t be doing this if they weren’t, but that speaks more of obligation than your actual feelings.

When you were younger, you didn’t talk much. You were shy, even with your cousins–loud and boisterous and used to playing and fighting and play-fighting with each other–and preferred to trail after your uncle as he gardened, holding trowels or empty flower pots, and nodding as he explained what each plant was called and how to care for it.

Most of that went in one ear and out the other, your lack of green thumb a characteristic and no longer a disappointment, but they were good memories.

Useful in their own way.

///

When you open your eyes again, heavy but thankfully not desperately dry, you wonder for a moment if you’re seeing things.

On your windshield, delicate and patient, is a black butterfly. Frankly, you are surprised you can see it–if it is real, that is–in the dark even the woods outside are mostly a blur of imagined shapes.

Small and alone, wings flapping in a sedate rhythm, the butterfly flutters away.

You don’t know yet that this is a sign.

///

During one such gardening occasion, you were wearing your shirt inside out.

A small detail, not particularly noteworthy–even now you don’t care for the scratch of tags against the back of your neck, when your appearance is less important than comfort you still do the same–except that your uncle remarked on it:

“That’s good,” he had said, tugging on the tag, “this way you won’t get lost.”

At your look of confusion, he had explained that it was a saying: when a person is lost, they should turn their shirt inside out.

Hours later, you were still baffled. It wasn’t as if your address was on your tag, how could an inside out shirt save you from being lost?

Ingeniously, you remembered that your uncle had been part of the military; sometimes maps would be sewn on the inner lining of jackets. For a while, you considered the mystery solved.

Ingenious does not mean correct: you were missing the necessary context.

///

Up in the mountains where the air is thin and ground unsteady, it’s easy to fall. Short of breath, unsteady footing–sometimes people just don’t come back from a climb.

Sometimes people are disrespectful, loud and polluting. Sometimes mountains fight back.

And if they do, well, whose fault is it if the mountains win?

In this episode we talk about the mountains’ guardians: the tikbalang, a humanoid horse trickster with a bone to pick with trespassers and the ability to back it up.

Are you brave enough to travel into their kingdom and, more importantly, are you clever enough to escape?

This is Heritage Horrors!

~

A/N: Probably won’t be turning this into a script (or at least, not for the event I had thought I might) but I liked the idea too much to just leave it languishing.

There’s a ringing in your ear. Or maybe it’s the sound of rushing blood. Or your brain, futilely hyperaware, trying to pick out sound beyond the inside of your care.

An internal issue tricking you into thinking something is out there.

Someone, maybe.

But that’s impossible.

You’re driving on an empty highway in the middle of the night on a weekday, nothing in your headlights. Your foot’s a little heavy on the gas, but it’s nothing to worry about. Reckless, yes, but not stupid.

Not yet.

It helps keep you awake, along with the podcast playing from your dash. You tried the radio but at this time your favorite station is playing EDM and that just gives you a headache–not that you need another on top of what you already have.

You’re afraid of what happens if it gets too quiet.

///

You blink.

Your eyelids are getting heavier by the second.

Highway hypnosis–there’s no one on the road but you and the dashed, painted lines–no need for you to pay attention, really, all four lanes for you alone.

The trees on either side just dark blurs in your rearview mirror, held off by the short, rusting metal railing.

You blink.

When you were a child, you used to stare out the window, imagining fantastical creatures running on top of the edge, impossibly fast, always hiding behind each post before you could spot them.

Now you’re an adult, the driver, and far too focused to looking through the windshield to notice the views.

You blink.

///

A blaring horn. Lights painting your eyelids red. You gasp awake and turn the steering wheel to the right, just barely getting out of the way of the oncoming car. You swerve too far, desperately aiming for the shoulder, and slam your foot on the brakes. A juddering, head ramming halt.

Your heart beats too fast, adrenaline, and for a few moments you grip the steering wheel so tight in your hands.

Fuck.

FUCK!

You scream your fear, sound absorbed by upholstery and the quick over night bag shoved into the back seat. Belatedly, you put on the hazard lights.

That was too close. Too close.

///

The adrenaline fades. Hands shaking, you text your sister.

No use calling your mom, her guilt-tripping is the reason why you’re driving tonight instead of waiting until the weekend, but you need to rest a little before continuing on.

In the safety of the shoulder and with hazard lights on, a short nap sounds like a good idea. Crack the windows a little, lower your seat, and you’ll only be delayed by fifteen, thirty minutes.

When you wake up, you’re not alone.

There is nothing more frightening–more heartbreaking, more compelling–than the word “almost.”

Even just the sound of it: the open vowel, beginning. The lingering L on your tongue. Then lips together, lips apart. The sibilant S sliding into the sharp, concluding, definitive T.

Almost.

How many stories revolve around that word? How many tales do we tell? Suspense and drama in every rising beat. I almost got caught. I almost got married. I almost died.

The potential of an action; a “could have” that didn’t. Regret and hope; a pinch of danger and a dash of excitement. Within reach but never touching and still somehow we are changed for–

Ah, excuse me, I almost gave away the ending.

///

Tik-Tik. Tik-Tik.

What is that sound in the night?

If you’re lucky, you don’t know what that is. If you’re lucky, it’s only a clock; or the wind blowing tree branches against your window.

If you’re not–well. How well do you know your neighbors?

In this episode we cover the manananggal who, by day, walks among us human beings without any notice. Just one of us.

But by night they feast on the hearts of the young–though they’ll make do with adults if they have to–a dark shape in the sky and in our minds.

So if you hear that noise or spot a pair of legs without a body, standing and waiting, then you better grab some garlic and wait for sunrise: you might be next.

This is Heritage Horrors!

///

It’s been a long day.

Work: more of a disaster than usual. Draining and miserable. A complication in your project which you had to finish before heading home because if you waited until next week it’d be too late and the company you work for always has to be at the forefront of everything. You’d appreciate that ambition and drive–you have it in yourself, after all–but not when it forces you to do overtime hours without the overtime pay.

And you don’t even get to go to your nice, comfy bed afterwards. Nope.

Heading home in this case does not mean going back to your apartment in the city with your queen sized bed and silk sheets. It does not mean going out to your favorite restaurant, or getting drinks from your favorite bar. It doesn’t even mean making yourself some instant ramen and binge-watching a series on Netflix.

Nope. Today heading home means actually going home. To your hometown three hours away by car. To the house you grew up in and long since left behind. To your family.

Your entire family.

Lola is in the hospital.

Sure, the day was long, but it looks like your night’s going to be even longer.

~

A/N: This might be adapted into a script later, for the ghost story event happening with Bayanihan Community/Bindlestiff Studio. I haven’t figured out all the details, yet–of the script and of the story–but I think I have a solid idea of where I’m going with this.