Guilt

Iron maiden: an old instrument of torture, consisting of a narrow upright sealed box in which a prisoner was made to stand hours on end. As the inside walls of the box was lined with sharp iron spikes, the prisoner was forced to remain as motionless as possible to avoid the spikes. The eventual exhaustion of the prisoner inside would lead to his collaspse against the walls and thus being punctured and lacerated by the iron spikes.


Eric no longer was the person the TOSStados knew.

He moved to a cramped apartment far from the city, deciding to live alone. He lived by routine: wake up in the morning feeling dead, lie still on his pallet for fifteen minutes summoning the motivation to get up and get a move on, clean up and dress up for work, plug away at his desk for ten hours or so, go home, have a couple of beers, then go to bed at around eleven. Day in, day out – it was the same. He had become an automaton.

Worse yet, if in the rare event he felt alive in the course of the day, he who was once an optimist was now a brooding misanthrope.

Eric, it seemed, had decided to stop living.

***

Apartment. Alone. Brooding.

“Death is not the greatest of ills; it is worse to want to die, and not be able to.”

Sophocles did know his shit, didn’t he?

Stuck in a dead-end job, stuck with a salary that barely pays the bills and does little else, stuck in a country with less employment opportunities than the feathers on a fish, stuck in a life that offers nothing more than more tunnel.

The thing is: dying is a messy business. Settling debts, preparing for the funeral… the list goes on. Jeez, it’s such a hassle to leave this existence that it’s still better to go on existing until the final curtain falls, at someone else’s say-so.

What a goddamned life this is.

***

“Hey, Eric.”

“ ‘S up, man.” Eric stood and shook Ramil’s hand. “Daphne?”

Ramil shrugged. “Working.”

An eyebrow shot up at this answer. “Something wrong?”

“Nah, not really, pare. Just different.”

“What’s different?”

“Going out seriously again, man. It’s kinda weird – but it’s all good. Should’ve realized early on that I’ve missed a lot in life before we met.” Ramil grinned, then his expression changed. “Eric, Chase asked me to talk to you.”

“I’ll bet.”

“Pare, we’re not going to ask you to tell us what’s going on, but c’mon, man, tell us if there’s any way we can help.” Ramil paused. The condensation on the beer bottles was forming small puddles on the glass table. Eric irritably wiped them away with a table napkin.

“Look, Ramil, nothing’s going on, okay?”

“Okay, man, you say so.”They drank in silence, choosing to use the loud alternative music on stage to mask their thoughts, pausing only to wave for their next rounds.

***

pretty_talaga_ako_no: haller!
pretty_talaga_ako_no: :)
i_am_eric: hi
pretty_talaga_ako_no: bkit ang tipid mong sumagot
i_am_eric: busy
pretty_talaga_ako_no: ows
pretty_talaga_ako_no: talaga
pretty_talaga_ako_no BUZZ!!!
i_am_eric: yes
pretty_talaga_ako_no: gwapo k daw, sbi ng fren ko
pretty_talaga_ako_no: kelan tayo mag-e-EB?
i_am_eric: whatever
pretty_talaga_ako_noBUZZ!!!
pretty_talaga_ako_no: isnabero
pretty_talaga_ako_no: inis na ako sa yo ha
pretty_talaga_ako_no: :(
pretty_talaga_ako_no BUZZ!!!
i_am_eric: whatever
pretty_talaga_ako_no: ay galit na sya
pretty_talaga_ako_no: sige mamaya na kta kukulitin ulit
pretty_talaga_ako_no: byeee!
pretty_talaga_ako_no: MWAH!
pretty_talaga_ako_no: :-*

i_am_eric is now offline

***

“Kuya Ramil, anlabo naman kasi ni Laren e,” Sarah grumbled. James, Ramil, and Daphne chuckled.

“Hanggang ngayon ba naman, ‘friends’ pa rin kayo?”

Ramil nodded. “Okay, okay, I’ll talk to him.”

Sarah smiled. “ ‘Wag na, kaya ko ‘to. I can manage,” she said airily, tossing her hair behind her shoulder. “Ate Dee, girl power, right?”

Daphne laughed. “You go, girl!”

“Haaay… The problem is kasi,” Sarah sighed, “is that Laren is afraid of getting into something that will end anyway. Eh, sabi ko, it won’t naman if we work at it. Tama naman ako, di ba?”

James grinned. “You won’t give him a choice, that I can tell.”

Sarah grinned back. “Siyempre.”

“If you want your relationship to last, expect it to fail.” Eric finally broke his brooding silence. “One thing at a time, you will find you’ll find out things that you won’t like, and the time will come that one of these things will cause the breakup. Secrets, skeletons in the closet, and what –not.”

The group fell silent. Ramil then said, “Give the girl some slack, pare.”

Eric shrugged and took a long pull from his bottle. Daphne said, “Eric, are you saying that Laren has something to hide?”

“Everyone has something to hide, Daphne,” was the bitter reply. “Even you.”

“Manong, you have to forgive yourself if you are to move on. If you’re talking about –“

“Enough, James. Shut up.”


Remorse is the poison of life.
- Charlotte Bronte, Jane Eyre