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by: Cas Garcia
(Author's Note* This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and
incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously,
and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or places is
entirely coincidental.
She had twilight in her hair
And eyes,
Like night's own dawn,
And fair red lips
That glowed
Like heaven's morning.
She was one of nature's random creation, that one-in-a-trillion alignment of
genes and chromosomes, proof that even from chaos can come a being just short
of perfection.
The eyeliner, mascara, rouge, lip gloss, and plucked eyebrows could not, even
in death, mask the fragility, and vulnerability of her innocence.
She was a virgin the day she was murdered that early morning in May. This
finding was entered into the official autopsy report on line 14, page 8.
She had nineteen cuts scattered all over her body, from her head down to her
knees, one for every year of her young life. Some were stab wounds. Others were
incisions made with what seemed like surgical precision, while others were
slashes clearly inflicted during an explosion of rage or anger or perhaps, of
an insurmountable disappointment. Was this a crime of passion or the inevitable
outburst of a drug-induced insanity? Or, was this the final manifest
deterioration of an already deranged mind?
One cut seemed like an indecent attempt to slice off her left breast while
another was penetrating, directed from her pudendum upwards and inwardly to her
womb. Like a twisted expression of love. One thing was obvious to the trained
eye - the nature and direction of the cuts revealed that the killer was right
handed and that the cutting instrument was short, thin, single edged and razor
sharp.
None of the wounds were instantaneously fatal except the one that was directed
towards the pit of her abdomen that sliced her aorta clean through. That may
have been the coup d' grace. There was not much blood around where she was
found.
Her naked body, surrounded by tall grass and short trees, was found in a supine
position, ten feet from the southwestern side of an unpaved gravel road behind
Weegol's Restaurant, Employees' Village Road, that's what they named it, a
short walking distance from the forever almost completed City Hall.
At the corner is a faded peeling sign made with cheap paint-"Welcome to
Doongan."
Nearby is a clump of unhealthy looking banana plants with brown drooping
pock-marked leaves. The nearest house is more than three hundred meters away.
At night the area becomes a cold, dark and desolate place where the flickering
lights from the distant houses seem to be as muted and as unreachable as the
brightest stars twittering for attention in the western sky over Mt. Mayapay
and there, after midnight, one can now almost hear the slow tempo of Albinoni's
Adagio in G minor, an agonizing trio of the foreboding moan of the cello, the
weeping of violin strings, and the gripping, dripping sadness of the piano
keys, like a concerto being played when an angel dies.
Should angels die.
But reality be told, these are just the quivering sounds made by the dry banana
leaves shivering from the cold southwesterly wind blown in from the ocean and
over the mangroves and nipa palms of Lumbokan.
It is a lonely place to die in.
Her left arm was raised, frozen in front of her, as if she were protecting her
face, an ultimate expression of vanity, even in the face of death,
understandably so, because her face was so beautiful, that its final
composition could only have been decided by a Divinity.
She must have pleaded for her life, "Please don't! Please!"
Early rigor mortis had already set in when her body was discovered. That was at
sunrise, on the second day of May, the day after St. Joseph's Fiesta
Celebration in Barangay Obrero.
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