The Unexpected Nightmare

Gone is my dream for a perfect reunion. Gone is my plan to fulfill a mission. All my aspirations are gone to complete destruction. Gone is… Gone is… My dreams are shattered. My promises are broken. I was like holding a handful of water slipping  through the sieves of my fingers. I was struggling. I was in a poignant horror when I heard the news.

March 12, 2011

12:00 pm, Saturday

My phone was ringing. I was in the midst of completing a task at work. I grabbed the phone expecting an emergency call from my relative in Davao, which at that time on a tsunami alert after a huge tsunami hit Japan. I answered the phone despite the company rules and regulations.  I was disgusted that my mother was just telling me petty stuffs about my sister transfer to a new boarding house. What a useless and senseless conversation. I was irritated and told mother to call me after 7:00 pm every after work thinking not to disturb me anymore.

March 13, 2011

8:00 am, Sunday

                                                

My sister and I were exchanging funny jokes and teases through text messages when we got to the point of discussing death. “I am not afraid to die,” she told me. And I replied, “So do I.” Then, we laughed on the unsual joke.

March 13, 2011

10:00 am, Sunday

I was in the bathroom finishing shower when my phone rang. I ignored it knowing mother was calling again. I was tired of attending the phone and hearing mother’s unending discussion relay. Until it rang four times. I had no choice but to pick up the phone. I was really in shocked when mother uttered the first few words of the story. I completely understood what she was trying to say but I kept on asking ignoring the real thing of what was really taking place. My mouth was partly open in awe. My mind stopped functioning. I can hardly breathe. I forced myself to cry but I couldn’t. My head hanged in the mid-air. It was like all of my senses were paralyzed. I can’t think. I didn’t know what to do. “My father is dead.” I can hardly believe it.

A mysterious incident happened while my mother was on the phone and about to tell me the bad news. It was not mother who spoke to me after all. I can hardly recognize the voice. The voice was like an edited voice of the DJ trying to get through the noisy static hiss on the radio. It was a male voice speaking an alien language or some kind of an exotic dialect. I couldn’t understand. Then, a familiar voice of a man came into the background speaking the familiar phrases my father used to tell about me. Children were laughing and playing on the background. All were clear except to the alien voice of a man whom I spoke to . I kept shouting and spoke to the mouthpiece. The conversation stopped. The line was dead. My mother called up again telling me how deaf I was for not hearing what she said. I can’t believe my father was dead. Then I realized he was the man with an alien voice I spoke to through my mother’s phone. He was the one sending the message – that he was dead. #