Marky Stories: Missing Tree

I was excited as the loaded bus traveled to the province where I was born and raised in a town in Bicol. And after more than ten hours of car travel, I reached my destination, a remote barangay in Camarines Norte.

"Thank you and you're home, Gabby", my mother said excitedly and eagerly hugged me.

"I have more than a week off, I will use up my emergency leave", I replied. While my mother Aling Precing cooks my favorite dish dyed native chicken, I stay on the balcony of our house made of bamboo, roof and wood. As I always do when I go on vacation in the province, I admired the sight around our house that even though my father had passed away a long time ago, he was still intact and well.

“Mom, the big headlines are gone. . . ”, I whispered as I looked at the place where the big tree stood.

Mixed joy and regret I felt. I was happy because the big tree that brought me all kinds of horrors from my childhood and into adolescence was gone. Horror I am sure is the work of fairies and malignant living in the big tree which is also feared by people passing by the small road not far from the tree.

"The news collapsed when there was a strong typhoon", my mother said as I announced the dripping-sweaty taste and flavor of the native chicken. "And because Tata Edoy said I could burn the headline, I burned it dry!"

After I ate, because I felt tired from the trip, I immediately fell asleep in my favorite bedroom when I was a child even though it was still dark but at midnight I woke up to the call of nature. After urinating on the plastic bottle that was my favorite to urinate as a child, I placed it on the side of the bamboo wall and lay down again to sleep.

I wish I could sleep soundly again but I heard the noise that often disturbed my sleep as a child, noise that brought me great fear and apprehension. I quickly peeked out the window I had barely opened to see around our house in the direction of the sunken big headline that I always did when I heard the noise when I was a child at night round the moon.

I was very surprised to see, the fairies were playing in the place where the headline was standing and I could see when the big tree was still standing in the place, a kind of tree that is not only feared in our barangay but in all corners of the Philippines. Though feeling fear and apprehension, I continued to observe the event full of mystery and wonder with the help of the round moon hanging in the sky.

"Fairies and malignant really often return to where the headline used to stand because the place of these creatures is a favorite place for toys and toys" explained Tata Edoy, our fellow albularyo who will also be cutting.
And just like we used to meet in the old house where Lola Orang was the last to live with our elderly relatives, we shared the cooked food of Nana Openg, caretaker of the ancestral house. After a hearty meal, we had fun tasting the sling wine in a large bottle vessel called damawana.

"The sling wine is delicious and tasty", said Agnes, another of our cousins.

"The taste and flavor of the sling is really unique because it is made of coconut juice", I explained to my cousins ​​like me, who come from Metro Manila.

After a few rounds of the glass we used to drink the sling wine, we decided to go to bed to catch our breath to carry out our other plans of meeting at the ancestral house. And because, my female cousins ​​were afraid to spend the night in Grandma Orang’s bedroom, I decided to sleep there.

"If Lola Orang were alive, her old clock would definitely still be working," I said looking at the thing belonging to Lola Orang hanging on the wall.

After drinking slingshot alcohol, we slept for a while in the big bed of our elderly relative who owned the old clock. But a strange event occurred in the old clock that woke me up, it gave twelve bellows as a hint that midnight had arrived.

"How did that happen?" I asked while looking at the old clock that because it was no longer checked, the three hands stopped spinning. "Certainly, Lola Orang's soul did the strange event that happened on the old clock."

Because I was not intimidated by paranormal events, the message that Lola Orang wanted to convey to her relatives who were vacationing at the ancestral house flashed through my brain. So I picked up the old clock hanging on the wall that created twelve noises as an indication that midnight had arrived and was tuned to function in the normal event.

The next day, my cousins' hair stood on end as I recounted the strange event that had taken place on Grandma Orang's old clock. But the incident did not cause us to cut the vacation at the ancestral house as we always do during summer vacation.

I have a belief that every writer eventually finds their voice as a writer. We start out in this beautiful moment where everything is possible. As newbies, we’re in it for the stories — not for the complexities of the market. Every good story starts with a spark of inspiration, an idea. What matters to the new writer is not who is going to read that thing, but instead crafting that idea into something people will want to read. Marky stories are not only for children, but adult may want to read this also as if the stories have love, fiction, epic and many more, I'm not only focusing in one theme, because every day, readers want something new, something that is not published before.

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