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gabriel-gabdiel · 2 years ago

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Fantasy of Evolution Chapter 5: Press Ctrl-Z to Undo

If only it were as easy as pressing Ctrl + Z in order to undo the mistakes you’ve done in your life.

At any rate, Florante is about to deal with his personal Judas Iscariot. His former best friend, Isaiah.

You can also find more chapters of my original fiction here. Please enjoy.

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Back in Fatima High, after Florante Galang dreamed another one of his strange dreams…

In his latest dream, Florante "stalked" his classmate's apartment then they fought as a pair against a shadow monster at Makati's Guadalupe Church.

In the end, although he wasn't hero material even in his daydreams (or night dreams), he still managed to find a way to do something that he could be proud of.

He stopped Mammon's Minion and undid that reality where multiple innocents died, thus saving their lives all at once.

Or maybe he didn't and it was all in his imagination.

Florante Galang shut his eyes and exhaled. Whoopty-doo. He did something heroic in his dreams. The thought made him cringe.

Still, even if it was a dream, the feelings he felt for the dream version of Jenny still made his knees weak. It all felt so real.

If only reality could evolve and match his fantasy. Alas, reality killed such whimsical notions faster than it helped him defeat the immortal crawling chaos.

But it wasn't real. It was all just a dream. It didn't really happen.

Had he really been traumatized by his bullies to the point where he used his fantasies and daydreams to cope with his daily reality of social suicide? Yeah, probably.

If only his dreams were real, then he would've asked Jenny out for a date by now. No, no. He meant he would've asked her more about Mammon.

What was that American(?) white man foreigner's deal anyway? Why'd he sic his Minion at them?

Oh, right. Jenny.

He pressed his fingers on his forehead, remembering that imagined kiss from the bespectacled beauty that was Jennifer Tolentino. The girl next door.

He let out another deep sigh. He really did have it bad for her now, didn't he?

However, he had to remind himself of the obvious. The dream version of Jenny was nothing like the real-life version of her. They hadn't interacted that way at all.

No more stalking of her. Get rid of that photocopy of her number in the yellow pages and that girl that had the same name as her from that yearbook from the 1960s or whatever.

The Mammon from his dream was right about one thing, though. Florante did act like a creep by tracking down Jenny's phone number and address from the phonebook instead of asking her about it like a normal person.

What was he thinking?

Still, once he could write and draw these ideas into an actual novel or comic book though, then that could make his strange dreams worth his while. They were compiled inside his dream journal already. So maybe.

Regardless, he woke up from the… third(?) strange dream/nightmare he'd had as of late. 'I think.'

Once again, the reset button had been pushed. Or the shortcut to "Undo" your last change on the document, "Ctrl + Z" (pushing the "Control" key and the "Z" key on the keyboard at the same time).

So everything went back to normal. No harm, no foul, right?

Still, he should really grow up by now. Abandon his idle, childish thoughts and turn his life around for real.

Soon, it'd be his fifteenth birthday.

He had no girlfriend on sight, no social life to speak of, barely any friends, but life went on, right? Right.

***

Fantasy of Evolution

An Urban Fantasy Story by Abdiel

When you press Ctrl + Z on your Windows machine, you could undo the last action you've done.

Disclaimer: This work may reference copyrighted material, the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. It is believed that this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in Section 107 of the US Copyright Law. All copyrighted material referred to in this work belongs to their respective owners. All rights reserved.

***

Chapter 5: Press Ctrl-Z to Undo

***

It was around dismissal time again, and Florante had time to kill before his school jeepney service came around to pick him up.

He spotted his acquaintances, the Dead Kids, from a distance walking the opposite way as him.

Florante couldn't tell because they usually wore the same uniforms, but whenever it was Casual Fridays at Fatima (when the students were allowed to wear casualwear instead of their daily uniforms), the Dead Kids wore clothes that subtly hinted of designer origins.

By the way, the Fatima High uniform for boys was brown khaki pants, a button-down white collared dress shirt with short sleeves, ankle-high socks, and black leather shoes.

For girls, it was a white blouse with a collar, sash, tie, and pleated knee-high skirt bearing the same checkerboard black-and-white pattern as well as ankle-high socks and black dress shoes.

Not that the "fashion senseless" Florante was any authority on the subject or anything. Sometimes, even on Fridays, he kept wearing his school uniform composed of the button-down polo shirt and long khaki pants with black leather shoes over black socks.

He also had a backpack full of his school books, notebooks, pencils, and ballpoint pens. Like the nerd that he was. However, even he with his bad taste in clothes could tell the Dead Kids were dressed to the nines that matched their remarkably good looks.

Then again, their mesmerizing faces looked so dashing they could've worn dishrags and pulled it off. Nevertheless, it seemed rather appropriate they'd have both money and looks.

The fact that they were unable to mix with the rest of the student body like Florante did somewhat boggled his mind, though. Many of their "haters" called them pompous pretenders at best or braggadocious snobs at worst.

They were mostly called weirdoes, to be honest.

On one hand, their richness didn't afford them any acceptance in Fatima High. Like celebrities being bullied in college by their jealous classmates because they exuded an aura of superiority that rubbed them all the wrong way.

On the other hand, Florante didn't fully believe that the lack of acceptance was circumstantial. The way their group acted indicated that they desired isolation. He just couldn't imagine how any door could remain closed by their halo of beauty.

Meanwhile, although the group of Alonzo Estanislao, Kalantiaw and Dalisay Hidalgo, Jacob Benjamin, and Francisco Celestino did wave back at himwhen they spotted him (though it was mostly Lonzo and Dalisay who did the waving), he himself opted to go alone to the nearby walking-distance mall.

Nirvana Plaza wasn't far from Fatima High. Just walk from one of the rear exits of the school towards the rear entrance near the local Nationwide Bookstore branch and you're good to go.

He felt relaxed going there even though he barely had any money himself to buy anything there, whether it was comic books or food.

He had no allowance to speak of and he had packed lunches more often than not inside recycled ice cream containers turned into makeshift lunchboxes.

He wasn't poor or anything, it was just that he wasn't rich either and private school tuition was expensive.

It was fine. He loved window shopping on an empty stomach. Well, not really, but the mall did serve as his safe haven from his droll and friendless school existence.

He remembered when he first ventured alone into the mall instead of going straight home from his school service. Trips to the mall for his family used to be special events. They had to go to all the way from Pasig to Cubao to eat out, get groceries, or watch a movie.

Now, he could hang out in places like arcades or peek at a few pages of comic books at bookstores to his heart's content instead of staring blankly at a wall, waiting for the school service to pick him up and take him home. Daydreaming of adventures with the Ninja Turtles or the X-Men.

If he could get extra money from his parents, like spare change from buying art supplies or home economics requirements, he could give himself the occasional mall treat.

An ice cream cone here. A doughnut there. Maybe even some supermarket turon (caramelized fried banana rapped in spring roll wrapper).

Or maybe a few rounds of the latest iteration of Street Fighter, with him usually succumbing to the third character during a one-player game. He sucked at versus mode since he couldn't practice at the arcades for too long.

This was what a friendless dork like him had to look forward to, honestly.

Maybe one day, once he had a job and his own money, he'd have a fun-filled day buying comic books, playing games at the arcade, or going to the movies in his lonesome. However, as a student with barely any allowance, this setup wasn't bad at all.

It sounded depressing, but only if he had to share his experiences with anyone else. He actually loved going to Nirvana Shopping Plaza in his lonesome.

However, today, he couldn't shake the feeling that someone kept an eye over him, which made him feel paranoid.

Did his bullies spot him again, like the last time? That one asshole with his girlfriend clinging unto him once smugly asked him if he was on a date after spotting him walking alone near the food court. What a bastard.

He couldn't spot any of his usual tormentors right now though, who had opted nowadays to go with the more passive-aggressive approach to bullying him.

After a few more minutes of being a listless mallrat, he went back to the parking lot and spotted his ride back home, which was his designated school service jeepney.

***

On the eastern border of Metro Manila, the highly urbanized city of Pasig City existed under the cover of smog clouds and the infamously polluted Pasig River, which it shared its name with.

To its south, it was bordered by the cosmopolitan center of Makati. To its north was Marikina. To its west was Mandaluyong and Quezon City (where Fatima High was). To its east were the municipalities of Taytay and Cainta in the Rizal Province.

Pasig was also known for its raging floods during typhoon season, by which it could've gotten its name from. The city had floods that were "Mapagsik" or "Mabagsik" (in English, it meant "Raging", "Fierce", or "Aggressive") which eventually evolved into "Pagsik" or "Pasig".

Usually, the private jeepney service fetched Florante and a couple of others from their private school so they could go home safe and sound on behalf of all their parents, who paid them a monthly fee for the convenience.

However, the jeepney's open-air windows also gave them to get a good whiff of Metro Manila pollution for good measure.

Florante covered his mouth with a handkerchief. No point in getting sick and triggering his asthma again.

The sky remained hazy, its blueness sporting an ashen tinge to it as though muted by the city smog. The wind in his face thankfully disappeared as they went to a standstill.

The classic late afternoon traffic jam in the metro. Only the Bangkok Jam could rival its ubiquitousness in Metro Manila.

His new school was about 4 miles or about an hour away from his home in Pasig City. His former school, which only offered classes up until Grade 6, was instead 13 minutes away or about a mile away.

Thusly, it felt like it took the jeep forever to get him home.

As they sluggish traffic wore on, Florante's mind started wandering.

His mother was the typical strict Filipina mother. Domineering, almost. He could never talk to her about anything. Their relationship was complicated. She wasn't the hugging or healing type of mother. She kind of scared him most of the time, actually.

Sure, she perhaps had her own things to worry about, like how he kept on hearing about her own domineering mother-in-law—his grandmother from his father's side—but he dreaded her wrath as much as she detested his grandma.

His mother also for the most part looked like her sisters or his aunts... of course... while Florante himself looked like one of his cousins or uncles when they were younger. They all shared the same almond skin, black hair, and sharp, dark brown eyes.

She was in stark contrast of his father, her husband, who looked somewhat like he was of Chinese or Japanese (East Asian) descent but was actually a Filipino himself. As strict and boisterous as she was, his father was the exact opposite.

A relaxed and chill engineer who tinkered a lot around the house, doing quick fixes from their pipes to their ceiling to save them thousands of pesos from having plumbers and electricians do their work for them.

By the time the jeepney school service arrived at his home, there was a drizzle of rain. It soon became a downpour when he got inside the house. Just in time.

It was already June, after all. Rainy season. Also, the month of Florante's birthday.

He'd have another birthday spent with his family. He had no friends to invite over the house for dinner. No parties with his compatriots drinking beer either. He never even tried beer.

He had heard that taking in too much alcohol could compromise his breathing as an asthmatic. Not that he'd ever tried.

Besides, he was a minor. Even though he had heard of several of his classmates drinking a bit of the bubbly themselves.

He was used to having a simple feast of spaghetti and a liter of Coca-Cola as his only birthday splurge. Tuition for his private school was expensive and in the Philippines, the school year started in June.

So his birthday had to be as simple as possible during tuition month, which was also his birthday month.

***

After Florante got home to the Galang Residence in Pasig, he went straight to the television set to catch the tail-end of whichever anime was airing in the afternoon.

He hated how as a kid, when "Thundercats" was a big deal, he always ended up seeing the end credits whenever he tried catching it on TV.

Ditto with "Rainbow Brite".

When he finished with that attempt at entertaining himself, he took his bag and went to his room.

Before doing his homework, he changed into a shirt and baggy shorts as popularized by the G.O.A.T. (Greatest of All Time) of 1990s basketball, Michael Jordan. He also read a bit of "Paradise Lost" by 17th Century English poet John Milton for good measure.

And when that gave him a headache, what with his short attention span and the hard-to-read long-form poetry, he had the Cliffnotes version help him summarize and analyze each passage.

At the back of his mind, he chided himself to do as much effort on his math homework as he did with his "extracurricular reading" of this book for the sake of creating his own comic book story.

Nevertheless, while he was wandering around the mall earlier, alone in his thoughts, he thought about Mammon's intentions in his dreams.

As a demon, he obviously tried to tempt him to go all out and transform into an Ophanim, perhaps to the point of becoming a fallen angel and turning into a Minion.

However, for what purpose? To add him to their demon horde? Their "Pandemonium"? What were they trying to achieve, awakening Ophanims and corrupting them to become Minions?

The thought kind of excited him a little bit. He'd been struggling to come up with a plot for his comic book or original story, only for his strange dreams full of his male power fantasies and coping mechanisms to hand him such a plot on a silver platter.

He should really make more detailed accounts of his dreams in his dream journal from now on.

While also making sure never to allow his classmates, especially his mostly male bullies, to know he was keeping a dream journal like a 6-year-old girl still having tea parties with her dollies.

The rest of the afternoon and evening became a blur.

His Dad got home after fetching his two elder sisters from college at the University of Sto. Tomas. Then it was dinnertime. They ate his Mom's specialty of pork adobo (meat simmered in a mixture of garlic, soy sauce, and vinegar).

He couldn't bring up the fact that he was getting bullied at school to his parents, which apparently was typical of bullied kids.

No one wanted to be a victim of bullying or admit to being one.

What would they do to help fix it anyway? Knowing his Mom, she might even blame him for the bullying, bringing up that he was a disrespectful child.

His Mom, bless her heart, was such as stereotypical strict Asian parent. He was also petrified of her more often than not—more than his bullies—particularly when he came home with bad grades.

He didn't get beat up for them or anything, but he did get an earful of lectures from her. The beatings came when he answered back or "disrespected" her somehow, as she put it.

She had quite the fiery temper. Her arsenal of weapons included tsinelas (flip-flops), the nearest wooden spoon, a walis tingting (broom made from the thin midribs of palm leaves), or a walis tambo (broom made from the flower stalks of Tiger grass).

Had he mentioned that he had a complicated relationship with his mother? Because he did. Confessing to her that he was being bullied was the last thing on his mind.

She might somehow make it about him disrespecting her or something. No way did he want to trigger that ass-whupping if he could help it.

In contrast, Dad was more of a congenial fellow. The good cop to his Mom's bad cop. He never hit him and Florante couldn't remember the last time his father became angry or lashed out at him.

He could have heart-to-heart talks with him. It was much easier with him than with his contentious Mom that reminded him more of Cinderella's Stepmother whenever she got into one of her "moods".

However, he also couldn't outright confess to him about the bullying. It was too embarrassing. Shameful. Like he was too old to still not have friends or to still get teased by the boys in his class.

He did mention to him about having to deal with the jerks in class though. So he subtly told him about the bullying without telling him he was being bullied. If that made sense.

***

After dinner at the Galang Residence…

Once everyone in the family settled down and went their separate ways, with his parents going to their room, one sister going to the TV, and another sister going to the phone, Florante planned his approach to his father carefully.

After chancing upon Dad going to the kitchen to fetch a container of cold water to drink, Florante asked his question.

No, not about bullying. It was about the Dead Kids.

"Dad, do you know anyone named Celestino in Pasig? Or Hidalgo…?"

His father blinked at that. "Can't say that I have. I don't even have coworkers named like that. Hidalgo is the national artist, right?"

By the way, Florante's father was a mechanical engineer who worked at a factory for a multinational company. And he meant "Felix Hidalgo" by national Filipino artist and painter.

"How about Benjamin? Estanislao?" Florante pressed. "Back in Makati, did we know of any Tolentinos?"

"Whoa, whoa. Settle down there, kid."

Dad scratched his the freshly shaved stubble that would've formed into a beard.

"I might've had a classmate named Benjamin, but that's his first name. I've heard of Father Estanislao who marched with Jose Rizal during his final walk before his execution. There are too many Tolentinos around to say that I know the same Tolentinos you know."

Florante sighed then smiled. "Thanks, Dad." His father always obliged or humored even the silliest of his questions. He answered them the best he could. 'He really is the best.'

"Why are you asking me this? Are they the names of your friends or something?"

The son awkwardly laughed. "Yeah, something like that."

Dad ruffled Florante's head. "That's good. Make more friends in school, son."

The heartwarming exchange made Florante divulge something he normally wouldn't. "They… the kids… they're a little different. They don't seem to fit in at school." Unsaid, he added, 'Like I do.'

His Dad pulled a seat and sat with him, setting aside the cold water bottle he fetched from the refrigerator for now.

"Did I ever tell you about how your cousin punched a kid who was messing with him at Fatima? He got suspended and the school faculty even called your uncle to the principal's office. But the kid never messed with him ever again."

'If only I had the guts to do that,' Florante thought. He said, "I don't think they'll ever fight back or anything, but it's messed up that they don't fit in. They did nothing wrong. Who cares if they're a little weird?"

Dad nodded. "When it comes to bullies, it's best that you show them who's boss from the start. The more you let them get to you the more they'll mess with you."

Florante then realized his father was subtly giving advice for his own bullying after bringing up his friends.

However, he was so pathetic he could only dream of blasting his bullies to kingdom come, which was even more messed up. Now that he had considered the consequences of such actions, he'd rather just embarrass them a little bit. Like his cousin did to his bully.

Punch them once to have them leave you alone for good. Or even pull a prank. No need to kill them or anything!

Good thing it was all just a dream. Once it ended, he faced no consequences for his actions. Or so he kept telling himself.

Like he'd just hit the reset button on his game console to go back to the main menu or the first level. Or hit the Ctrl + Z shortcut on the family's personal computer, undoing his mistakes on the MS Word document or MS Paint bitmap.

If only he could hit "Undo" all the way to the first day of his freshman year at Fatima, then that would be peachy. Alas, reality didn't work that way.

Backpedaling a bit while also denying he was being bullied, Florante said, "Those guys seemed nice enough to me. I just noticed they kept to themselves more often than not. Some of them are my classmates in the Art Club, even."

"So they act just like you, huh?" said Florante's father. "You also keep to yourself a lot. Which is perfectly fine, son. It's a good thing you've found friends who match your personality, Florante."

"Yeah, I guess, Dad. Birds of a feather, am I right?" he said, now wishing to change the subject.

They lapsed into silence before Dad got up, grabbed his water bottle, and said to him, "Good night, son."

He in turn said, "Good night, Dad."

After a little while, Florante himself got up from his seat and went to the TV to watch whatever it was his sister was watching.

He was already sleepy by the time he started on his math homework, which he considered finishing while traveling to school on his school service jeepney.

***

The rest of the week proved uneventful. No new fucked-up dreams about him murdering classmates or battling eldritch abominations with his newest crush, Jenny Tolentino.

No Mammon. No Minions. No Ophanims. Just… vibes. These alien concepts all started fading in his subconscious like dreams and nightmares were supposed to.

He got used to the routine of his classes and being at least civil around classmates that tolerated him at best while whispering devilish rumors about him behind his back.

Oh well. He did promise the Jenny from his dreams to forget all about the angel and demon nonsense to live out his normal life.

However, try as he might, he couldn't forget those fever dreams where he moved as swiftly as the wind and destroyed everything in his path like a U.S. missile strike.

In reality, during P.E. (Physical Education) class, the classmates he got paired up with learned not to pass him the basketball and to step quickly in front of him if the other team attempted to exploit his unathletic asthmatic self as their weakest link.

Florante did his best to get out of their way or serve as an extra body to clog passing lanes when he wasn't being benched for other, more skilful basketball players.

However, he noticed something was amiss.

Jennifer Tolentino hadn't come back to school since the last time he got into contact with her.

It had been a week since he last talked to Jenny. On the phone in real life and at Guadalupe Church in his dreams. Or did both things happen in his dreams?

Every day, he watched anxiously for any sign of her. The hawk-sized butterflies at the pit of his stomach made him wonder if she wasn't able to revive from her untimely demise in his last dream.

Only for him to mentally slap himself and chide that his daydreams or nighttime dreams had no effect on reality. Jenny was probably absent for some other reason.

He'd been hanging out with the Dead Kids again lately, acting as their gopher. Nevertheless, he couldn't get Jenny out of his mind. How could he? She was gone!

It'd be much easier for him to follow her advice and forget about this Ophanim business had she continued going to Fatima High and acting normal herself.

Then he could at least pretend that his psychotic massacre of his classmates and failed attempts at heroism against fallen angels or demons hadn't really happened.

In English class—as headed by the no-nonsense Mr. Benigno "Noy" Borabo—Florante took his accustomed seat at the back of the class, near the windows overlooking the streets outside.

They got a pop quiz on English grammar involving Subject, Predicate, Object of the Preposition, and so forth, which only made him wish they'd do more required reading.

He'd at least watched the film/TV/animated versions of "Tom Sawyer", "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn", "The Odyssey", "To Kill a Mockingbird", "The Great Gatsby", "Lord of the Flies", "Animal Farm", or "Of Mice and Men".

Or read the CliffsNotes versions of such and many other classics. Reviewing grammar rules was as boring as reading the phone book.

Regardless, he felt more comfortable with school lately than ever before.

He had reached some sort of closure or homeostasis (thanks, Ms. Del Mundo's Biology Class) with his nightmares involving classmate murder and choosing between becoming an angel or a demon.

Ha. Closure. He sounded like the family of a missing person that finally found out the grisly fate of their beloved.

In regards to his real-life bullying situation, he had instead reached ennui (thanks, Webster's Dictionary). A feeling of listlessness and dissatisfaction arising from a lack of occupation or excitement.

Maybe it was this lack of catharsis and boredom—from the impasse he and his bullies had reached since he decided to bite the bullet and snitch on them—that led him to dream such horrid dreams.

By Friday, he wondered about whether or not he should give Jenny a call. He had her number for real, after all.

For all he knew, she had already dropped out of school.

He tried not thinking about the nerdy girl, but he couldn't completely suppress his anxiousness that he'd been somehow responsible for her absence, as absurd of a thought as that was.

Florante Galang slept a dreamless sleep over the weekend due to the soft June rain and even softer thoughts of the bespectacled Jenny.

He might've finished his weekend homework by then but he neglected to read up on Social Studies, leading him to cram at the last minute for the upcoming quiz while riding his jeepney service to school that fateful Monday.

It felt a bit nippy outside so early in the morning at 7:30 AM or so, before the school assembly started.

He got cursory acknowledgements of his existence from several classmates by Monday morning, after getting off his school service ride and making a beeline towards his classroom.

He also dealt with small talk on whether or not he was able to finish the homework before they proceeded to talk to their own actual friends and ignore him in his lonesome.

The morning was cold but at least it wasn't raining. The school assembly proved uneventful. Still no sign of Jennifer though. Was she absent again?

The different classes then headed to back to their respective classrooms in order to proceed with the first subject of the day.

***

Another day, another boring class.

Florante had Araling Panlipunan (Social Studies) for today, as covered by Mr. Neil Nepumoceno. Neil was the jokey type of teacher with a strange goofy charisma to him whose signature outburst was "Aye Caramba!"

Yeah, like Bart Simpson's catchphrase from The Simpsons. Quite the character. Mr. Nepumoceno encouraged debate and rapport with his students during every topic he covered, from the Philippine Revolution against Spain to World War II.

Florante's blood ran cold as he remembered something.

Neil was the teacher that got in his way during his dream massacre of his classmates from First Year St. Francis.

Oh yeah. Galang had turned Mr. Nepumoceno into a splatter on the wall. Like something out of a horror B-movie. Or a Mortal Kombat "Fatality".

He pushed such dark thoughts deep into his subconscious mind. He promised the dream version of Jenny that he'd forget about that dream. Or all his dreams since then. So he would.

With that said, a certain someone—a classmate of his—still didn't give him the time of day. Not that any of them did, but this particular one hurt him the most when it happened.

Galang still felt awkward being around Laura Reyes, but that was to be expected.

His first high school crush remained upset about that "nude drawing" incident when he didn't actually draw her nude! He was using a rough sketch and shapes to construct her body before adding details and clothes, dammit!

He had hoped he wasn't as subconsciously psychotic as he suspected he was, what with him dreaming about killing Laura (albeit in a moment of duress) just because she didn't return his affection and all.

For weeks since the incident, they avoided each other like the plague even though they were classmates. It even got to the point where Florante could've sworn Laura got bothered by him avoiding her before she could avoid him.

Yes, it was ridiculous, not to mention egotistical, to think that he could affect anyone that strongly. It was impossible, even. And yet he couldn't stop worrying that it was true. At the time, anyway.

That little twinge of annoyance from her gave him a small spark of hope that he still occupied Laura's mind somehow, even in the form of a pest.

Better that than be ignored altogether.

However, now Laura was but an afterthought compared to the glasses-wearing girl in Florante's literal dreams.

Florante held his breath at the door, peering here and there of any sign of Jennifer Tolentino, but it seemed she wasn't around. He exhaled and went to his seat.

Jenny then followed him from behind, talking about yearbooks and phone calls or something.

Wait a minute.

"Jenny?" he blurted out.

"Flor!" she said in return. "Oops, you told me to not call you that! Sorry!"

"No, it's all right. I don't mind," he reassured. "What was that about phone books?"

"Oh, I was just askin' why you called me from my house last time," she said with the sweetest smile as she brushed a single lock of hair from her face.

He gulped and explained himself, saying he found it interesting that he found another Jennifer Tolentino in an older Fatima High yearbook, stuttering all the while.

At the back of his mind, he told himself to calm down. This wasn't unusual. Jennifer had talked to him before. She didn't cut all communication from him like Laura did. She'd always been friendly to everyone.

She wasn't friendly beyond logic like the dream version of her that invited him into her apartment after finding out he essentially stalked her though.

Still, he couldn't remember one person where she had beef or drama with in their class.

She lingered by his desk till the bell rang, which left his heart aflutter. She then went to sit by her actual seat while Mr. Nepumoceno finally arrived to start the class.

He considered hanging out with Jenny some more but thought the better of it.

This wasn't the Manic Pixie Dream Girl Jenny. Even a nice girl like the real Jenny might lack tact to let him down gently if ever he became one of those overly friendly boys that hung around the girls a bit too much.

However, as class began, Florante realized he had another problem in his hands.

He couldn't stop staring at Jenny. He tried to be slick about it too, but he knew she knew he was watching her. This made him overcompensate and avoid gazing at her ever for fear for him creeping her out.

What was wrong with him? Dammit. He pulled the same thing the first time Laura rejected him over that misunderstanding with the drawing. With him not staring at her and all. Or ignoring her beyond reason.

Susmaryosep. He wouldn't be surprised if Jenny started avoiding him too.

Anyway, he should pay more attention to class. They were covering the Martial Law years or something. He hoped he crammed about the right topic for the quiz later.

The good news was that Jenny, the real Jenny, had begun talking to him more, like she used to before his unfortunate falling out with her group due to Laura thinking he was a creep.

The bad news, if it could be considered bad news, was that he kind of missed having memorable dreams and fighting against nightmarish monsters beyond human comprehension.

He could deal with those dreams better than his awkward reality of teenage infatuation.

***

Much later, during lunchtime…

As Florante walked out of class along with the rest of his classmates as the lunch bell rang, the air glistened with a light rain. The cold wind bit at his nose. His cheeks.

A light sprinkle fell from hesitantly overcast skies that still shone of daylight. Silvery slivers of water reflected bits of rainbow sunshine as a result.

Dammit. He should've brought an umbrella with him but he forgot again.

Meanwhile, his head got lost in those clouds, wondering how to best approach Jennifer while a part of him screamed at himself to stop making a fool of himself over his newest crush.

Sometimes, discretion was the better part of valor. Sometimes, the only way to win the game was not to play.

"I'll see you at lunch, okay?" Florante heard someone from behind him say, which he soon realized was Alonzo Estanislao. Huh.

Florante smiled and began to nod, but he then hesitated and said, "We'll see. I might skip lunch."

Lonzo kept walking as he spoke. "Sure. No prob. Still waiting for your girlfriend to get back?" he teased.

"Shut up. She's not my girlfriend. Stop being weird," Florante hissed at Lonzo, looking around him for any sign of his classmates. They might overhear and spread rumors again about his crush, just like with Laura.

"Okay, okay. I'm just kidding," reassured Alonzo. "So did anything good happen? You're smiling more."

Gah. Was he that obvious?

"She's back already," Galang murmured it so softly it sounded like an afterthought, hoping Lonzo would miss what he'd say, only for him to cringe when he heard, "Congrats, man."

The drizzle became a squall, and Florante's mood became as soggy as a wet sock The more it rained the soggier it got and the worse his unease grew.

He considered locking himself in the library again on an empty stomach instead of eating with the so-called Dead Kids like the social outcast that they were.

He checked his wallet. He had enough spare change for a soda, at least. And maybe a bag of chips.

He entered the cafeteria, which was on a basement level of a building separate from their high school building. The grade school and high school buildings shared the same cafeteria.

The sun flooded daylight inside the cafeteria basement through a series of chain-link fences that served as the wall that separated the area from the nearby park and the grassy soccer field.

The soft squall made the grass glisten in the sun. During downpours, whole islands were formed on the field amidst the flood of puddles, mud, and sludge. Like a miniature archipelago.

Florante scanned for the Dead Kids' table in the corner of the cafeteria out of habit. Then he froze where he stood.

There were six people at the table now. Excluding Florante, because he hadn't reached there yet.

Huh. Six people.

The usual five were there: Alonzo "Lonzo" Estanislao, Kalantiaw "Kal" Hidalgo and his sister Dalisay, Jacob "Benjo" Benjamin, and Francisco "Kiko" Celestino.

The sixth one was a familiar face, though. It was Jennifer "Jenny" Tolentino.

Florante took out his asthma inhaler and took a puff as soon as he started making those familiar wheezing sounds.

***

Alonzo Estanislao called after Florante Galang after spotting him.

"Yo, Flor!" Lonzo said, which made "Flor" wince. "What are you standing around for? Come over here!"

As Florante did just that, he wondered what was Jenny doing over there.

She'd finally got to school after a week of being absent, but what was she doing with the Dead Kids' table?

Galang looked down and away from the table as soon as Jenny stared at his direction. His ears felt hot. He told himself he had no reason to feel self-conscious. It wasn't as if he did anything wrong, after all.

"What's with Florante?" Florante heard Dalisay ask, which made him finally pick up his pace towards the table before he embarrassed himself any further in front of the one group in the school that hung out with him.

The dainty Dalisay asked once he got there, "You okay, Florante? Do you need to go to the clinic or something?"

Benjo sniggered and needled, "Maybe he's constipated. He needs to take a massive dump!" which prompted Lonzo to smack him upside the head while in the background, Kal harrumphed and called them both idiots.

"You're so gross, Benjo," admonished Dalisay.

He felt his body jolt when he heard Jenny ask, "It's not your asthma acting up, is it?"

Galang reassured her that it wasn't the case, revealing his handy inhaler in his pocket. "Not asthma." He shook his head vigorously. "I'm fine," he reassured, scratching the back of his head. His wheezy breathing belying his reassurances.

Once his eyes met with Jennifer, he muttered, "H-Hey. Fancy meeting you here."

Jenny smiled and brushed her hair back from her face. "Likewise, Flor. I'm back, I guess?"

Florante smiled in spite of himself. Laughing nervously, he changed the suhject. "I think I'll get a soda today. Any of you need anything?"

"Just soda?" asked Jenny. "It's lunch, not recess. Eat something."

"Aren't you hungry, Florante?" chimed in Dalisay.

"Actually, maybe I do feel a little sick," Florante said, looking at the floor and his dirty shoes. "Um. I mean, I don't have an appetite right now."

Lonzo, who now looked scuffed up from his roughhousing with Benjo, grabbed Florante by the shoulders and sat him down the bench of the lunch table. "Then sit this one out. I'll fetch everyone their lunch and buy your soda."

Florante gulped and nodded his thanks while handing the money to Lonzo, who elected to be the group's gopher for today.

Jacob and Kalantiaw also volunteered to come with him to help out holding the lunch trays.

***

Florante waited for the trio to get their food along with the usually studious Kiko, the wallflower Goth Queen Dalisay, and, well, his classmate Jenny, whom he ended up sitting beside with thanks to Lonzo's prompting.

Damn that Lonzo.

He had nowhere to look and he somehow didn't feel like talking at length to Jenny right now.

Also, when he looked up across the table, he ended up staring at a stern-looking Celestino who looked more like a teacher or a college student than someone from high school.

The studious Kiko barely talked at all, even though he was viewed by the rest of the school campus as the leader of the Dead Kids.

His batch's likeliest Valedictorian or even Salutatorian was this socially awkward nerd. Who knew?

Francisco hadn't even gone to college yet and Florante could already swear he'd become the Summa Cum Laude, if not at least the Magna Cum Laude of his year of college graduates with ease. He just exuded that kind of academically superior aura.

"What is it?" asked Kiko, his eyes meeting with Florante's as he looked up from what he was reading (Advanced Calculus).

"HUH? Oh, nothing!" said Florante. The last thing he wanted was small talk with Mr. Battle of the Brains himself. "Sorry for staring."

For a student supposedly only 3 years older than him, Celestino gave Galang the vibes of a someone much older. Like a college professor. Or a CEO. Or a high-priced attorney. Any full-grown adult with loads of money, power, worldly experience, or influence.

With a raised eyebrow, Celestino returned to his book and commented, "Take the hint, kid."

'Take the hint…?' Florante thought, only for him to realize that Alonzo probably already talked to Francisco to about him and Jenny.

Dammit, you guys. It wasn't that serious! He didn't even remember telling any of them about his feelings for Jenny either! How'd they figure things out?

Minutes later, he got his soda, which he sipped slowly. Or maybe he should sip it faster so that he could excuse himself and leave.

He could even play his asthma up and escape to the clinic for the next hour.

However, he told himself to get a hold of, well, himself. Why should he run away?

To make way for their lunch trays and lunches, Florante took the opportunity to move away and give room to the rest of the Dead Kids, with him sitting on a separate table with his soda.

Eventually, he decided to permit himself to glance beside him. If Jenny glared at him for staring, he'd have the resolve to go to the nurse's office and skip class for the rest of the afternoon.

Or complain about the upset stomach he was literally feeling right now. Like the coward he was.He wouldn't be lying either. He had butterflies in his stomach the size of eagles, it felt like.

He looked up in time to see Dalisay and Jenny laughing at Benjo's antics with Lonzo.

This reminded him of how the Dead Kids charmed him into their group in the first place, actually. They were social outcasts like him, but they chose to be so. They showed him it was okay to be different.

They liked keeping to themselves and didn't care how they looked to others, which Florante respected a lot.

The most abuse Florante got from them was them using him as their gopher or getting his name wrong. Even Benjo, their one member that reminded Galang of his classmate bulies, never went the extra mile when teasing him.

He never felt like any of them dehumanized or degraded him. Or treated him like the "other".

They didn't treat him particularly well or superbly, but even their mere tolerance of him was leagues better than the treatment he got from his own classmates as the resident weirdo of the class.

Florante heaved a relieved sigh at Jenny getting along with the rest of his so-called friends. Or even acquaintances.

His heart twinged with jealousy at the sight too. Made him wish he was closer with both the Dead Kids and Jennifer.

What was he even worried about again?

That he'd ruin another friendship because he caught feelings with Jenny like he did with Laura, so he'd start acting all awkward and creepy around her?

Nah. He had no need to fear. He simply just had to deny his silly crush with Jennifer so they wouldn't end up cold and distant like him and Laura Reyes did.

Even if this was good as it got, he'd be fine with it.

This was his path of least regrets.

If there was an event he wouldn't "Undo" with a magical "Ctrl + Z" command, then it would be him meeting his friendships/acquaintances, the Dead Kids.

***

Aside from the playfulness and banter, something seemed different between the Dead Kids and Jenny Tolentino from the rest of Florante's classmates that he couldn't quite put his finger on.

Their infectious positivity seemed like something out of a commercial for menthol cigarettes or saltine crackers, thought the bemused Florante.

No wait. Mentos. They acted like they were in a Mentos commercial!

Something about them seemed almost surreal. Or unreal. Like a performance.

He examined Jenny the most. Not because he was enamored by her, of course. Well, maybe because of that too.

Jenny's glasses glinted in the daylight of the open cafeteria. Her skin was pale, but it looked practically tanned when near the porcelain or marble statue skin of Dalisay, who truly lived up to her name. In Tagalog, "Dalisay" meant "Pure".

Hell, compared to her, Florante's skin was practically wood-colored.

Florante averted his eyes from Kal's sister by reflex, knowing full-well of how extreme Dalisay's overprotective brother behaved around people who stared at her or even tried to talk to her (like Lonzo, who was supposed to be their friend).

Meanwhile, Jenny's pink lips pursed into a cute pout as she and Dalisay teased each other over… something. Her hazel eyes sparkled with her flushed, blushing face.

What was about her that seemed strange to him? Was it his imagination? He pondered, staring at Jenny, trying to isolate any changes in her expression.

At the back of his mind, he idly wondered if this Jenny had the same memories as the Jenny in his dreams. The one that saved his life twice. The literal girl of his dreams. Did reality match his fantasy?

"What are you staring at, Flor?" asked Lonzo with a snicker, and Florante knew that the cheeky bastard already knew the answer to his own damn question.

At that moment, Jenny's eyes flashed to meet Florante's.

Instead of merely looking curious, she gave him a harsh stare. Like a warning of some sort. Her sharp eyes belying the smile on her face.

Florante dropped his head, letting his curtain of hair bangs cover his face. During the instant that their eyes met, he could've sworn.

"Flor…?" Lonzo beckoned again.

Florante could've sworn that she recognized him. No, wait. That didn't make any sense. Of course she'd recognize him. He was her classmate, Florante.

No, no. What he meant was that her eyes glowed the same way it did in his dreams.

Her look of recognition wasn't because she recognized him as Florante. It was because she recognized him as Archangel Gabriel.

He had promised in his last dream that he'd forget about everything, but here he was breaking that promise once more. Even though honestly, he couldn't help it.

How Florante surmised all that from a simple glare, he couldn't tell you.

Or maybe he was just in denial. His constant staring must've finally got on Jenny's nerves, leading to her glaring at him.

Lonzo whispered, "Is your girlfriend staring back at you too?"

Florante palmed his face. His cheeks felt hot to the touch. "She doesn't look angry or anything, does she?"

"I don't know," came Estanislao's unhelpful answer. "Maybe stop being a weirdo and talk to her like a normal person?"

"Stop calling her my girlfriend then," Florante begged. "She's probably the only friend I got in class. You'll just weird her out."

"Sure thing, buddy. I'm just teasing," relented Alonzo.

"…So she's not angry?"

"Ask her yourself, dumbass!" Lonzo put Florante in a headlock and rubbed his knuckles over the top of his noggin. "Jeez, no wonder you're bullied so much! Grow a spine!"

***

Mustering up the courage to talk to Jenny, Florante sat beside her and talked. Like the good ol' days when he, her, and Laura first met.

He asked Jenny without looking at her, "Where have you been?"

She thought for a minute. "Oh, around."

The coy answer made him second-guess himself. If he referenced his dreams about her in any way, would she confirm them as real?

No, that was stupid. "Were you sick?" he asked.

"Maybe a little. Like you. I'm fine now, thank you for asking," she answered.

"Oh. That's good to hear. I'm glad," he said.

"It's been cold lately, hasn't it?" she said. "No wonder everyone is getting sick nowadays."

"Yeah. But sunny other times. Like the weather's bipolar or something," he said.

"I know, right? Like it couldn't make up its mind," she said.

"Did you get contacts?" he then blurted out unthinkingly.

Puzzled by his unexpected question, she answered, "No. I'm wearing glasses."

"Oh yeah," he mumbled, wishing the earth would part and swallow him whole. "I thought there was something different about your eyes."

She shrugged with a confused smile. "It's the same eyes I've always had."

Man, what was this conversation even about? Talk about awkward.

After a slight pause, Jenny asked, "…Sooo were the rumors true? Did you or didn't you draw Laura Reyes nude?" while adjusting her large, bug-like spectacles in a way that honestly only she could pull off.

"What? NO! I didn't…" Florante raised his voice, but he then trailed off lamely. His voice sounded sad, even to him.

He soldiered on though, pleading his innocence. "I-I was doing a rough sketch! Can you tell her that it wasn't a nude sketch but a rough sketch? The guys who told her it was nude were just messing with me!"

"Really? Show me," she said before taking out a pencil and notebook from out of her purse.

"What? You mean right now?" he asked.

"Why not?" she countered.

Why not indeed. So Florante recalled the anatomy lessons of Art Class and did rough sketches of what initially looked like a naked woman. He then added details like a blouse, skirt, glasses, and shoes to the full-body sketch.

"See? It was all a big misunderstanding!" he said, only for his jaw to go slack as a blushing Jennifer beside him told him, "I didn't realize you were going to use me as an example!"

He looked down and sure enough, he ended up drawing Jenny. "I-I can explain…!"

"I'm just glad you didn't turn it into a nude portrait! My boobs aren't that big!"

"OF COURSE NOT! To do that is sexual harassment!" he yelped, which made Jenny laugh.

He felt his heart twinge at the sight for sore eyes. Her giggles sounded soft and enchanting. Like wind chimes on a gentle summer breeze.

"I was joking, Flor!" She looked at his sketch of her. "Wow. Not bad."

"Eh, it looks a bit cartoony," he said, criticizing his own sketch. "Like an anime sketch. I could've done better."

"Just accept the compliment, you dork!" she chided.

Florante chuckled at that. "You know what? You're an okay gal, Jenny."

This made the both of them go silent. That line was what he said to Jenny before he proceeded to massacre the rest of his classmates.

"You're an okay gal, Jenny. Don't go to school today. For your own good."

A flood of memories—well, false memories that didn't happen anywhere else but his dream—almost overwhelmed Florante.

Him becoming a roaring typhoon of vengeance against his bullies before facing off against an angelic Laura. His tandem fight with Jenny against a spaghetti monster, where he discovered she was also an angel.

His visit to her apartment. Their confrontation with Mammon. Him managing to defeat the crawling chaos. None of that happened yet Florante remembered them all as if they did.

***

The group went their separate ways. Florante was about to head off to the library himself, killing time like always until the late afternoon bell rung for their next class.

However, what Jenny told him before he went off gave him pause.

She looked him in the eye and said, "You promised."

…What?

Before he could speak, she invaded his personal space and said, "Don't break your promise."

She then turned around and left, as though she didn't just say something cryptic and disturbing to him.

"Jenny…!"

"Hmmm? What is it, Flor?"

He hesitated answering. Did he just imagine her say, "Don't break your promise"? Was she gaslighting him? He then said, "I'm okay with it."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm okay with you calling me Flor."

Jenny tilted her head to the side and smiled. "Okay."

His mind spun from confusion. Had he made up the whole exchange before just now? She acted perfectly polite. Like the conversation they had about promises and breaking them never happened.

Or maybe she meant some other promise he couldn't remember breaking?

He had half the mind to believe that the entire exchange was from his own imagination. It was his subconscious mind taking the form of Jenny, warning him not to pursue the madness that was his questionable dreams.

Because the minute he started believing that everything he'd dreamed up until that point was real, that was when Jennifer would give him the same disgusted stare Laura gave him when she had rejected him.

Maybe he really was going out of his mind, dreaming up scenarios where Jenny was his Damsel in Distress and he served as her super-powered Knight in Shining Armor, rescuing her from eldritch abominations and whatnot.

Just like Mammon said. Maybe Mammon was no demon. Instead, Mammon was his common sense. What was left of his sanity.

On one hand, he should be glad all this murder, mayhem, and destruction using fantastical or cosmic powers happened merely in his dreams instead of irreversible reality.

They served as his own Ctrl + Z or Magic Slate that undid what could've been permanent mistakes.

On the other hand, he also wished he'd have dreamed up being a social pariah and the butt of everyone's jokes in Fatima High. He wanted to redo that part of his life as well.

Then maybe once he woke up every morning, he'd instead be greeted with friends and cheers as well as belong in a social circle not rejected by the rest of the school campus.

Undoing the destruction of a shadow monster or sentient Italian dish wasn't a problem Florante could relate to. His inability to form healthy relationships with his peers was.

Hell, if only he could Ctrl + Z his entire childhood. Now that was an even cooler superpower than the Light Array.

"…Galang? Florante Galang?" someone called out to him in the middle of his introspection, thus interrupting his inner monologue.

Who was it? Who dared interrupt the great and powerful avatar of Archangel Gabriel?

Oh. It was him. One of his bullies. Not one of his worst bullies, mind you, but one of his bullies nonetheless.

His bully that used to be his friend before he went with the flow of the rest of the class.

His personal Judas Iscariot. The Brutus to his Julius Caesar: Isaiah Pascual.

The guy whose head Florante blew apart in the murderous fever dream, to be exact.

***

The two former friends kept talking and walking as they went to their late afternoon class.

"Florante," said a sweaty Isaiah, who rubbed his hands together.

"Pascual," said Florante, who wrinkled his nose.

"Hey, buddy. Been a while since we've talked, right?" said Pascual with a hesitant, crooked smile.

"Yeah, I guess." Galang shrugged, eyeing the door to the classroom. "What do you want?"

On the asthmatic's part, he probably smiled the same disingenuous smile as well to keep up appearances of politeness. What did this snake in the grass want anyway?

Florante vaguely remembered Isaiah as one of his few classmates that stood by him when he was being teased by his bullies.

Up until it Isaiah started getting teased himself, so he threw Florante under the bus to save himself.

Galang's first impression of Pascual when they were still cool with each other was that he had the vibes of a Golden Retriever. Or maybe even a sea otter, with that big nose of his.

Once inside the classroom, Florante went straight to his table, with half the mind to ignore Isaiah altogether. He merely half-listened to him at any rate.

"…Look, maybe we can continue this later. Okay, bro?"

"Sure. Whatever."

Grimacing, Galang remembered the swift kick to the testicles that Pascual gave him in his dream, thus "forcing" him to blow his head apart with his dream powers.

Should Florante condemn the guy for something he did in a dream though? No, he condemned Isaiah more for his betrayal of him in real life.

Regardless, the students settled down for Biology class for their section's Science subject that afternoon.

His Science teacher was a chirpy twenty-something named Ms. Isabelle "Belle" Del Mundo. The tall, slim teacher had a signature faint, singsong voice that was hard to miss. She sounded like a character straight from "Sesame Street". Or "Batibot".

Ms. Del Mundo walked around the room, took attendance, and then had them move single file to the laboratory room at the second floor.

From there, Pascual kept following Florante.

"Gerry and the others finally let up on you, huh?" was the topic he chose to break the ice with. Goodness gracious.

Florante grunted. "More or less."

"Glad to hear it, bro."

'Uh-huh. I bet,' Florante thought, resisting the urge to roll his eyes.

Galang ended up with the reputation of being a snitch in exchange for his bullies to leave him alone, but at least now their bullying wasn't as bad as it could've been. He didn't appreciate the passive-aggressive digs though.

He also didn't want to have this talk with Isaiah. He instead wished he could've paired up with Jenny as lab partners. To talk to her more.

To ensure to her that he wasn't going to break his promise. No wait, the real Jenny didn't care about that. It was the Jenny in his insane mind that told him to lay off the daydreams and fever dreams once and for all.

When they got to the lab, Ms. Del Mundo had them separate themselves in pairs.

This was usually Florante's worst nightmare since nobody in class wanted to pair up with him, the social pariah. However, he hoped after his interactions with the real Jenny that they'd pair up this time.

However, instead, he got stuck with Isaiah, who insisted on being his lab partner for the day. What was up with him today?

Their Biology teacher then proceeded to distribute a microscope and a box of slides on each table. The room buzzed with conversation as they prepared the materials.

As Florante and Isaiah worked as lab partners like the good ol' days, when they were still buddies, the latter continued his small talk.

For his part, Galang kept his eyes away from the lab doors, doodling all sorts of sketches on the back of his Science notebook. Like a short comic of Freeza and Goku battling it out at Planet Namek.

"Wow. You just sketched all that out without thinking, huh?" said Isaiah.

"Yep. Just like before," said Florante without looking up from his notebook.

"You never change," said Pascual, which almost offended Galang.

Florante groaned. Instead of hearing the musical voice of Jenny, he instead got stuck with his former best friend's nasally whine. Stuck with the backstabber who saved himself from a social suicide pact and got himself new friends.

Well, maybe his new friends could help him out with whatever problem he was having!

In the corner of his eye, he saw that Jenny and Laura had actually paired up as lab partners instead, with them seated to the desk right in front of the teacher's table.

Laura looked stunning as usual—a showstopper for sure—but Jenny stole the show as far as being the apple of Florante's eye was concerned.

Her side profile remained friendly and open even when looked at from behind, her mouth open with a slight smile on her flawless lips.

Her glasses framed her dazzling features beautifully, like there'd be something missing without them.

She had a pretty nice figure from Florante's vantage point too. Both she and Laura had shapely hips, thin waists, and uh, wide hips that couldn't be hidden even by the folds of their checkered skirts.

He palmed his red face at having such lewd thoughts about his classmates.

"Ah, so you've moved on from Laura Reyes to Jenny Tolentino, huh?" asked Pascual, which got on Galang's nerves.

"Shut up," he murmured, which made Isaiah laugh.

"Bingo! I was right, wasn't I?"

Florante sighed. "…Is it that obvious?"

"Bro, you couldn't stop staring at her empty desk when she was absent last week and now you couldn't stop staring at her when she finally got back."

Jeez. Florante should be more careful and not wear his heart on his sleeve.

If his other bullies caught wind of this, he'd never hear the end of it. Or maybe they already knew and were biding their time to use this info against him. Dammit.

Thankfully, the soft-spoken Ms. Del Mundo began class at that very moment.

Florante tried to focus on her words as she explained to the class what they'd be doing today in the lab.

The slides inside the box were out of order. The lab partners had to separate the slides of onion root tip cells into the different mitosis phases they represented then label them one by one.

They couldn't use their Biology books. In 20 minutes, she'll be coming around to check who got everything right.

Galang already studied (crammed on) this topic and Pascual, if memory served him correctly, had the lower grades and lazier study ethic (work ethic for studying) between the two of them.

So by his calculations, he'd be doing most of the work while his partner did most of the talking.

"Prophase," said Florante after studying one of the slides he magnified to 40X via the microscope briefly.

"Say, Florante…"

"What? Just down 'Prophase' for the first slide, Pascual," he ordered as he slid another slide under the microscope.

Isaiah did what he was told, letting Galang do most of the work. He didn't even bother double-checking.

"How much do you remember about that stormy night?"

"Anaphase," Florante murmured. "What stormy night? I don't remember any storms."

"How to you spell that?" Pascual asked, and Florante obliged him.

"A-N-A-P-H-A-S-E. Anaphase."

"Okay, thanks."

"No problem."

After a brief pause, Pascual's voice went even quieter than before when he continued speaking. "The storm you caused. The one where you ran amok. You don't remember any of it?"

Florante blinked at that. Did he hear him right? No, he must not have. "Third slide please."

Pascual handed Florante the third slide and sighed. "So you don't remember, huh? I should've figured as much."

"What are you talking about?" asked Florante, feigning ignorance while his heart beat began rising in his chest. He then said, "Interphase," after glancing for a few seconds at the microscope.

"Enterphase?" asked Isaiah.

"No, 'Interphase' with a Letter 'I'. Still spelled with a 'phase'. P-H-A-S-E," clarified Florante, before probing, "…Well?"

Pascual wrote down the label and said, "It doesn't really matter if you don't remember." He chuckled. "Would you believe you blasted my face off with light bullets a few days ago? Like something out of a Sci-Fi or martial arts movie, man!"

Florante took his eye off of the microscope and snapped his head in attention towards Isaiah. He felt lightheaded after doing so.

The two were about done with the activity. At the corner of Florante's eye, he could see both Laura and Jenny were already finished with their own slides minutes ago.

The color from Pascual's own face drained the same way it did when facing off against an angrier Florante in his fever dream.

"Oh shit. You do remember, don't you?"

'No. No way. There's no way my dreams are real. There's no way I literally killed my bullies in my dreams, only to press 'Ctrl + Z' and 'Undo' what I did!'

"Susmaryosep," Florante Galang murmured under his breath, wishing he could "Ctrl + Z" this exchange just now.

***

To Be Continued…

Everyone wants to be able to just press Ctrl + Z on their proverbial keyboards in order to undo any careless mistake they've made, whether it's an errant brush stroke on MS Paint or a typographical error on MS Word.

However, reality doesn't work like that. You can't take back what a careless thing you've said a few seconds ago that may or may not end friendships or break bonds. You can unbreak a dropped mug. You can't unspill spilled milk, no matter how hard you cry.

Farewell, Abdiel

#fantasy of evolution #isaiah pascual #florante galang #jenny tolentino #ophanim #angel #gabriel #raphael #philippines #ctrl z #undo #fictionpress.com #original fiction #urban fantasy #saito yakumo #shinrei tantei yakumo

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asoiafnerd · 7 years ago

Text

Prologue of my fanfic

Bowen Marsh, first steward of Castle Black closed his eyes as the black brothers swept over him.

He could hear the giant roaring. Wick Wittlestick was cursing as their brothers disarmed him. He felt his sword being taken away. The sword his father had made for him when he came to the wall! The sword that had saved him on the Bridge of Skulls, but otherwise had not seen much use! The sword he would not use on his own lord commander!

As his legs were swept from under him by a kick, he remembered the words of his vows. Night gathers, and now my watch begins. It shall not end until my death. I shall take no wife, hold no lands, father no children. People were shouting all about him, trampling him. But he never opened his eyes. I shall wear no crowns and win no glory. I shall live and die at my post. His death was close now, he could hear it in the voices of his brothers. I am the sword in the darkness. I am the watcher on the walls. I am the fire that burns against the cold, the light that brings the dawn, the horn that wakes the sleepers, the shield that guards the realms of men. Someone was trying to help him up, but there was a shout, and the hand was wretched away. I pledge my life and honor to the Night’s Watch, for this night and all the nights to come. And then he remembered hearing them from the mouth of young Jon Snow. The boy was going against his vows, Bowen thought as some held him up. He had promised to take no hand in the matters of the seven kingdoms. Had sworn to set aside his past loyalties when he took the black. Had sworn to protect the realms of men from the horrors from beyond the wall. Bowen began to weep, for deep down somewhere, he knew that all this had not pushed him over the edge, but it had been the fear that the boy was going to bring the ire of the house Bolton on the Night’s Watch. He did not even care about the steel that was tearing at his chest.

When he came to, he was being roughly shaken by a mailed hand. He opened his eyes, slowly getting his bearings together. Ser Axell Florent was bearing down on him, fury etched in every line of his face, ordering him to get up, telling him that he was in the presence of the queen. When Bowen got to his feet, he found himself in the king’s tower, surrounded by the queens knights, no not the queen, he thought, the widow!

The queen was there, with her daughter Shireen, the red priestess Melisandre, the fool Patchface, and now that got a good look around, it seemed that all of the prominent queen’s men and even some black cloaks were here.

Ser Axell still had a grip on him, and was shaking him as he spoke to the queen “We should offer this traitor to the black brothers” he was saying, “That should show them that we stand by their side, and not Tormund Giantsbane’s.”

“And what side would that be uncle?” the queen’s voice was a whiplash, the result of fury and fear at her husband’s death, “The black brothers do not take any sides, and you just saw what happens to those of them who try, I think the Night’s Watch has made it clear that it will not take up steel against the Boltons Ser.”

Weakly, Bowen made himself speak, “what do you mean, offer me to my brothers?”

Ser Axell looked at him angrily, “they are gathered outside the tower demanding that we leave their hospitality, such as it was.”

A Black Brother Spoke to the queen, “your king has lost his war Your Grace”, on squinting at him, Bowen recognized him as Leathers. His head was still spinning from the wound in his ribs, “That accursed letter spoke of Boltons coming down on Castle Black if we do not hand you over to them. The least you could do is leave on your own accord.”

“Do we know this for certain?” Selyse turned to Melisandre, “my lady, please tell me, is Stannis…?” she trailed off, clearly not wanting to say the word.

Melisandre had been looking at Bowen till now, “The lord has not blessed me with the answer to that question your grace, every time I look for Stannis, I see only snow. But I have seen the wildlings amassing under our banners. Tormund is where you shall find an ally Your Grace, not the black brothers.”

“King Stannis left the wildlings here; he knew that they could not fight for shit. You saw that at the battle beneath the wall.” Ser Axell replied, “We should make our peace with the black brothers, and persuade…”

“I will make peace with the black brothers, no more. You heard Lady Melisandre uncle...”

“Yes I heard her” Ser Axell exploded, “Yes I heard her. Just like I heard her telling of stone dragons and heroes long dead. And now your husband has joined them!” He took a knee before Selyse “I no longer know whether Stannis is Azor Ahai or not, but I know that I will not let my niece and her daughter go the same way. I am not proposing to ask the Night’s Watch to take up arms against the Boltons, I just want a promise of safe passage to the Eastwatch and then a ship to Braavos.”

Shocked silence followed that ouburst. Bowen himself was shocked. He knew Axell Florant to be the leader of the queen’s men, the foremost of the men worshipping the red priestess. And now he saw the same uncertainty on his fellow comrades, all save the queen herself!

Selyse’s face was stone, “Flee?” she spat the word. “Flee? Is that your counsel uncle?”

“Think of your daughter!” There were tears in the stout man’s eyes.

“You think of her, Ser” Melisandre stepped forward, “If Stannis is indeed dead, she, as his heir, is the queen of the realm. By rights, it is your duty to see her seated on the iron throne.”

“If Stannis is dead, then according to you, the world will be consumed by darkness” Ser Axell snarled at her, probably for the first time in his life. “Then what does it matter who sits the iron throne.”

“It matters, for even if King Stannis is dead, we are not. I took you for a brave man Ser Axell, a brave man fights to the last breath.”

“Aye, for a cause he believes in, for something achievable. Stannis may have had a chance to take the throne, and I stood up for him, but Shireen is not Stannis, and this is not a war we can win anymore.”

“And what of our true enemy, or have you lost hope there as well?”

“That is a battle for the Night’s Watch, or are you suggesting that we all take the black now?”

“No, but I will have you help the Night’s Watch, as King Stannis did. Tormund Giantsbane has taken his people and fled, probably to Oakenshield. The Boltons will not trouble them there, as that letter said, but the Black Brothers will not be so indifferent. They will want them gone, and the only source of food for Tormund is Castle Black, surely you see that fighting is eminent Ser”

“So what are you saying, if we ask Tormund to take up sword against Roose Bolton instead of the Night’s Watch, he will comply?”

“Yes”

Ser Axell could only stare at her.

“I do not know why, but I know he will.” Melisandre said and took a deep breath. She moved to the centre of the hall. “The red god has shown me this. I know that your faith is wavering good sers. There is no shame in that. Even the bravest and the truest may falter in a storm. All such men need is a sign, and I shall give it to you. Come, we must light the nightfire.” And she left the hall, leaving them no choice but to follow.

When they came out, the fresh air was a relief to Bowen. But he could smell the tensions here as well. Melisandre was ahead, talking to the men of the Night’s Watch, to the men that had been his brothers mere hours ago. To the men that were averting their eyes from his or looking at him with accusation.

By the time the stakes were planted, Bowen Marsh knew he was going to be burned.

Fear rose up his gullet along with vomit. He fell to his knees. Hands grabbed him, as if they were afraid he might run. But he wouldn’t. He may not be able to contain his vomit, but he was not such a coward that he would run.

When they were strapping him to the stake, he noticed the body of Jon Snow being brought in front of the stake. Melisandre and her queen’s men were chanting but Bowen had eyes only for the young lord commander he had killed. Murdered. Then he felt the flames licking at his feet.

He started screaming when his breeches began to burn.

The fire had not come above his knees yet, and still it felt to Bowen that there was no other pain greater in the world. He could feel his flesh cooking, sloughing off. The smell of burning hair was heavy in his nostrils.

But even as he screamed in agony, Melisandre brought a torch near him and held it there until it caught fire. Bowen felt as if his whole body was burning. He struggled to keep his eyes open. Through a haze of smoke and tears, he saw the black brothers gathered in front of him. I shall live and die at my post. He hoped against hope that one of his brothers will put an end to this, at least the way Jon Snow had put an end to Mance Rayder's burning. But no one was moving. The fire that brings the dawn. They were all watching the red women as she put the newly burning torch to her lips and sucked all the flames in her mouth.

He did not know if he was hallucinating or not. With all the rest of the Night's Watch looking on, the red women knelt over the dead body of Jon Snow and kissed it on the lips. Bowen's beard had caught fire now, but still he struggled to look, and as his eyes burst in their sockets from the heat, the last sight Bowen Marsh ever saw was the corpse in front of him coming alive, shuddering, and then start moving.

To know what happens next, go to my fic at

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/12382028/1/The-Winds-of-Winter

http://archiveofourown.org/works/12521064/chapters/28510508

#gotfic #jon snow #melisandre #asoiaf #fanfic #fanfiction

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gabriel-gabdiel · 2 years ago

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【Draft】 Fantasy of Evolution Chapter 5: Press Ctrl-Z to Undo

We’re finally getting some momentum back with this original work of mine, even if it is in draft form. Chapter 5 came out much faster than Chapter 4, that’s for sure!

You can also find more chapters of my original fiction here. Please enjoy.

Back in Fatima High, after Florante Galang dreamed another one of his strange dreams…

In his latest dream, he "stalked" his classmate's apartment then they fought as a pair against a shadow monster at Guadalupe Church.

In the end, even though he wasn't hero material even in his daydreams or night dreams, he still managed to find a way to do something that he could be proud of.

He stopped Mammon's Minion and undid that reality where multiple innocents died, thus saving their lives all at once.

Florante Galang shut his eyes and sighed. Whoopty-doo. He did something heroic in his dreams. The thought made him cringe.

Still, even if it was a dream, the feelings he felt for the dream version of Jenny still made his knees weak. It all felt so real.

If only reality could match his fantasy. Alas, reality killed such whimsical notions faster than it helped hin defeat the immortal crawling chaos.

But it wasn't real. It was all just a fantasy. It didn't really happen.

Had he really been pushed by his bullies to the point where he used his fantasies and daydreams to cope with his daily reality of social suicide? Yeah, probably.

If only his dreams were real, then he would've asked Jenny by now about Mammon. What was that American(?) white man foreigner's deal anyway? Why'd he sic his Minion at them?

Oh, right. Jenny.

He pressed his fingers on his forehead, remembering that imagined kiss from the bespectacled beauty that was Jennifer Tolentino.

He let out another deep sigh. He really got it bad for her now.

However, he had to remind himself the obvious. The dream version of Jenny was nothing like the real-life version of her.

No more stalking of her. Get rid of that photocopy of her number and that girl that had the same name as her from that yearbook from the 1960s or whatever.

The Mammon from his dream was right about one thing. He acted totally like a creep by tracking down her phone number and address from the phonebook instead of asking her about it.

What was he thinking?

Still, once he could write and draw these ideas into an actual book or comic book though then that would make his strange dreams worth his while. Or maybe even put it on a dream journal…? Maybe.

Regardless, he woke up from the… third(?) strange dream/nightmare he'd had as of late?

Once again, the reset button had been pushed. Or the shortcut to "Undo" your last change on the document, "Ctrl + Z" (pushing the "Control" key and the "Z" key on the keyboard at the same time).

No harm, no foul, right?

Still, he should really grow up by now. Abandon his idle thoughts and turn his life around for real.

Soon, it'd be his fifteenth birthday.

He had no girlfriend on sight, no social life to speak of, barely any friends, but life went on, right?

***

Fantasy of Evolution

An Urban Fantasy Story by Abdiel

When you press Ctrl + Z on your Windows machine, you could undo the last action you've done.

***

Chapter 5: Press Ctrl-Z to Undo

***

It was around dismissal time again, and Florante had time to kill before his school jeepney service came around to pick him up.

Florante couldn't tell because they all wore the same uniforms—brown khakis and a button-down polo shirt for boys then a simple white blouse with a collar, sash, and tie with the same checkerboard pattern as the pleated knee-high skirt for the girls.

However, whenever it was Casual Fridays at Fatima (where the students could wear casualwear instead of their daily uniform), the Dead Kids wore clothes that subtly hinted of designer origins.

Not that the "fashion senseless" Florante was any authority on the subject or anything, but even him with his bad taste in clothes could tell they were dressed to the nines that matched their remarkably good looks.

Then again, their mesmerizing faces looked so dashing they could've worn dishrags and pulled it off. Nevertheless, it seemed rather appropriate they'd have both money and looks.

The fact that they were unable to mix with the rest of the student body like Florante somewhat boggled his mind, though. Many of their "haters" called them pompous pretenders at best or braggadocious snobs at worst.

Their richness didn't afford them any acceptance in Fatima High. Like celebrities being bullied in college by their jealous classmates because they exuded an aura of superiority that rubbed them all wrong.

Meanwhile, although the group of Alonzo Estanislao, Kalantiaw and Dalisay Hidalgo, Jacob Benjamin, and Francisco Celestino did wave back at himwhen they spotted him (though it was mostly Lonzo and Dalisay who did the waving), he opted to go alone to the nearby walking-distance mall.

Nirvana wasn't far from Fatima. Just walk from one of the rear exits of the school towards the entrance near the local Nationwide Bookstore and you're good to go.

He felt relaxed going there even though he barely had any money himself. He had no allowance to speak of, and he had packed lunches more often than not inside recycled ice cream containers turned into makeshift lunchboxes.

It was fine. He loved window shopping on an empty stomach. Well, not really, but the mall did serve as his safe haven from his droll school existence.

He remembered when he first ventured alone to the mall instead of going straight home from his school service. Trips to the mall for his family used to be special events. They had to go to all the way from Pasig to Cubao to eat out, get groceries, or watch a movie.

If he could get extra money from his parents, like spare change from buying art supplies or science or home economics requirements, he could give himself the occasional mall treat.

An ice cream cone here. A doughnut there. Maybe even some supermarket turon (caramelized fried banana rapped in spring roll wrapper).

Or maybe a few rounds of the latest iteration of Street Fighter, with him usually succumbing to the third character in a one-player game.

This was what a friendless dork like him had to look forward to.

One day, once he had his own money, he'd have a fun-filled day buying comic books, playing at the arcade, or going to the movies in his lonesome. However, as a student with barely any allowance, this wasn't bad at all.

It sounded depressing, but only if he had to share his experiences with anyone else. He actually loved going to Nirvana Shopping Mall in his lonesome.

However, today, he couldn't shake the feeling that someone was watching over him, which made him feel paranoid.

Did his bullies spot him again, like the last time? That one asshole with his girlfriend clinging to him smugly asked him if he was on a date. Bastard.

He couldn't spot any of his usual tormentors though, who had opted nowadays to go with the more passive-aggressive approach to bullying.

***

On the eastern border of Metro Manila, the highly urbanized city of Pasig City existed under the cover of smog clouds and the infamously polluted Pasig River, which it shared its name with.

To its south, it was bordered by the cosmopolitan center of Makati. To its north was Marikina. To its west was Mandaluyong and Quezon City. To its east were the municipalities of Taytay and Cainta in the Rizal Province.

Pasig was also known for its raging floods during typhoon season, by which it could've been named from. The city had floods that were "Mapagsik" or "Mabagsik" (in English, it meant "Raging", "Fierce", or "Aggressive") which eventually became "Pagsik" or "Pasig".

Usually, the private jeepney "service" fetched Florante and others from their private school so they could go home safe and sound on behalf of all their parents, who paid them a monthly fee for the convenience.

However, the jeepney's open-air windows also gave them to get a good whiff of Metro Manila pollution for good measure.

He covered his mouth with a handkerchief. No point in getting sick and triggering his asthma again.

The sky remained hazy, its blueness sporting an ashen tinge as it was muted by the smog. The wind in his face thankfully disappeared as they went to a standstill.

The classic late afternoon traffic jam in the metro. Only the Bangkok jam could rival its ubiquitousness in Metro Manila.

He wore his school uniform composed of a button-down collared white dress shirt with short sleeves and long khaki brown pants with black leather shoes over black socks. He also had a backpack full of his school books, notebooks, pencils, and ballpoint pens.

His mother was the typical strict Filipina mother. Domineering, almost. He could never talk to her about anything. Their relationship was complicated. She wasn't the hugging type of mother. She kind of scared him most of the time.

Sure, she perhaps had her own things to deal with, like how he kept on hearing about her own domineering mother-in-law, his grandmother, but he dreaded her wrath as much as she detested his grandma.

She was in stark contrast of his father, her husband, who looked somewhat like he was of Chinese or Japanese descent but was actually a Filipino himself. As strict and boisterous as she was, his father was the exact opposite.

His new school was about 4 miles or about an hour away from his home in Pasig City. His former school, which only offered classes up until Grade 6, was instead 13 minutes away or about a mile away.

He had reminisced about his old grade school and the embarrassing life he had back then, cringing. He had hoped to turn a new leaf once he stepped unto high school. Hopefully.

His hope was for naught though.

When he arrived at school that fateful morning, there was a drizzle of rain. It soon became a downpour.

It was already June, after all. Rainy season. Also, the month of Florante's birthday.

He'd have another birthday with family. He had no friends to invite over the house for dinner. No parties with his compatriots drinking beer either. He never tried beer and he was asthmatic.

He had heard that taking in too much alcohol could compromise his breathing. Not that he'd ever tried.

Besides, he was a minor. Even though he had heard of several of his classmates drinking a bit of the bubbly themselves.

He was used to having a simple feast of spaghetti and a liter of Coca-Cola as his only birthday splurge. Tuition for his private school was expensive, after all, and in the Philippines the school year started in June.

***

Once Florante got home to the Galang Residence in Pasig, he went straight to the television set to catch the tail-end of whichever anime was airing in the afternoon.

He hated how when Thundercats was a big deal, he always ended up seeing the end credits when he tried catching it on TV. Ditto with Rainbow Brite.

When he finished with that, he took his bag and went to his room.

Before doing his homework, he changed into a shirt and baggy shorts as popularized by the G.O.A.T. (Greatest of All Time) of basketball, Michael Jordan, and read a bit of "Paradise Lost" by 17th Century English poet John Milton.

And when that gave him a headache, what with his short attention span and the long-form poetry, he had the Cliffnotes version help him summarize and analyze each passage.

At the back of his mind, he chided him to do as much effort on his math homework as he did with his "extracurricular reading" of this book for the sake of creating his own comic book story.

Nevertheless, while he was wandering around the mall, alone in his thoughts, he thought about Mammon's intentions. As a demon, he obviously tried to tempt him to go all out and transform into an Ophanim, perhaps to the point of becoming a fallen angel and turning into a Minion.

However, for what purpose? To add him to their demon horde? Their "Pandemonium"? What were they trying to achieve, awakening Ophanims and corrupting them to become Minions?

The thought kind of excited him a little bit. He'd been struggling to come up with a plot for his comic book, only for his strange dreams full of male power fantasy and cope to hand him such a plot on a silver platter.

He should really make more detailed accounts of his dreams in his dream journal from now on.

While also making sure never to allow his classmates, especially his mostly male bullies, to know he was keeping a dream journal like a 6-year-old girl still having tea parties with her dolls.

The rest of the afternoon and evening became a blur.

His Dad got home with his two elder sisters from college at the University of Sto. Tomas. Then it was dinnertime. They had his Mom's specialty of pork adobo (meat simmered in a mixture of garlic, soy sauce, and vinegar).

He couldn't bring up the fact that he was getting bullied at school to his parents. What would they do? Knowing his Mom, she might even blame him for the bullying, bringing up that he was a disrespectful child.

His Mom, bless her heart, was the typical strict Filipina or Asian parent. He was also petrified of her more often than not, particularly when he came home with bad grades.

He didn't get beat up for that or anything, but he did get an earful of lectures from her. The beatings came when he answered back or disrespected her somehow.

She had quite the fiery temper. Her arsenal of weapons included flipflops, the nearest wooden spoon, a walis tingting (broom made from the thin midribs of palm leaves), or a walis tambo (broom made from the flower stalks of Tiger grass).

He had a complicated relationship with his mother. Confessing to her that he was being bullied was the last thing on his mind.

She might somehow make it about him disrespecting her or something. No way did he want to trigger that ass-whupping.

In contrast, Dad was more of congenial fellow. He never hit him and Florante couldn't remember the last time his father was angry.

He could have heart-to-heart talks with him. It was much easier with him than with his contentious Mom that reminded him more of Cinderella's Stepmother when she gets into one of her moods.

However, he also couldn't outright confess to him about the bullying. It was too embarassing. Shameful. Like he was too old to still not have friends or to still get teased by the boys in his class.

He did mention them being jerks though. So he subtly told him about the bullying without telling him he was being bullied. No one wanted to be a victim of bullying or admit to being one.

***

Once everyone in the family settled down and went their separate ways, with his parents going to their room, his sister going to the TV, and other sister going to the phone, Florante planned his approach to his father carefully.

After chancing upon Dad going to the kitchen to fetch a container of cold water to drink, Florante asked his question.

"Dad, do you know anyone named Celestino in Pasig? Or Hidalgo…?"

His father blinked at that. "Can't say that I have. I don't even have coworkers named like that. Hidalgo is a national artist, right?"

By the way, Florante's father was a mechanical engineer who worked at a factory for a multinational company.

"How about Benjamin? Estanislao?" Florante pressed. "Back in Makati, did we know of any Tolentinos?"

"Whoa, whoa. Settle down there, kid." Dad scratched his the freshly shaved stubble that would've formed into a beard.

Florante sighed then smiled. "Thanks, Dad." His father always obliged or humored even the silliest of his questions. He answered them the best he could. 'He's the best.'

"Why are you asking me this? Are they the names of your friends or something?"

The son awkwardly laughed. "Yeah, something like that."

Dad ruffled Florante's head. "That's good. Make more friends in school, son."

The heartwarming exchange made Florante divulge something he normally wouldn't. "They… the kids… they're a little different. They don't seem to fit in at school." Unsaid, he added, 'Like I do.'

His Dad pullled a seat and sat with him, setting aside the cold water bottle he fetched from the refrigerator for now.

"Did I ever tell you about how your cousin punched a kid who was messing with him? The school even called your uncle to the principal's office. But the kid never messed with him ever again."

'If only I had the guts to do that,' Florante thought. He said, "I don't think they'll fight back or anything, but it's messed up that they don't fit in. They did nothing wrong. Who cares if they're a little weird?"

Dad nodded. "When it comes to bullies, it's best that you show them who's boss from the start. The more you let them get to you the more they'll mess with you."

Florante then realized his father was subtly giving advice for his bullying after bringing up his friends, the Dead Kids.

However, he was so pathetic he could only dream of blasting his bullies to kingdom come, which was messed up. Now that he'd considered the consequences of such actions, he'd rather just embarrass them a bit. Like his cousin did to his bully.

Punch them once to have them leave you alone for good. Or even pull a prank. No need to kill them or anything!

Good thing it was all just a dream. Once it ended, he faced no consequences for his actions.

Like he'd just hit the reset button on his game console, in order to play a new game. Or hit the Ctrl + Z shortcut on the family PC, undoing his mistakes on the MS Word document or MS Paint bitmap.

If only he could hit "Undo" all the way to the first day of his freshman year, then that would be peachy. Alas, reality didn't work that way.

Backpedaling a bit while also denying he was being bullied, Florante said, "They seemed nice enough to me. I just noticed they kept to themselves more often than not. Some of them are my classmates in the Art Club, even."

"So they act just like you, huh?" said Florante's father. "You also keep to yourself a lot. Which is perfectly fine. It's a good thing you've found friends who match your personality, Florante."

"Yeah, I guess, Dad. Birds of a feather, am I right?" he said, wishing to change the subject.

They lapsed into silence before Dad got up, grabbed his water bottle, and said to him, "Good night, son."

He in turn said, "Good night, Dad."

After a little while, Florante himself got up from his seat and went to the TV to watch whatever it was his sister was watching.

He was already sleepy by the time he started on his math homework, which he considered finishing while traveling to school on his school service jeepney.

***

The rest of the week proved uneventful. No new fucked up dreams about him murdering classmates or battling eldritch abominations with his newest crush, Jenny Tolentino.

No Mammon. No Minions. No Ophanims. Just… vibes. They all started fading in his subconscious like dreams and nightmares were supposed to.

He got used to the routine of his classes and being at least civil around classmates that tolerated him at best while whispering devilish rumors about him behind his back.

Oh well. He did promise the Jenny from his dreams to forget all about the angel and demon nonsense to live out his normal life.

However, try as he might, he couldn't forget those fever dreams where he moved as swiftly as the wind and destroyed everything in his path like a U.S. missile strike.

In reality, during P.E., the classmates he got paired up with learned not to pass him the basketball and to step quickly in front of him if the other team attempted to exploit the unathletic asthmatic as the weakest link.

Florante did his best to get out of their way or serve as an extra body to clog passing lanes when he wasn't being benched for other players.

However, he noticed something was amiss.

Jennifer Tolentino hadn't come back to school since the last time he got in contact with her.

It had been a week since he last talked to Jenny. On the phone in real life and at Guadalupe Church in his dreams.

Every day, he watched anxiously for any sign of her. The hawk-sized butterflies at the pit of his stomach made him wonder if she wasn't able to revive from her untimely demise in his last dream.

Only for him to mentally slap himself and chide that his daydreams or nighttime dreams had no effect on reality. Jenny was probably absent for some other reason.

He'd been hanging out with the Dead Kids again, acting as their gopher. Nevertheless, he couldn't get Jenny out of his mind.

How could he? She was gone! It'd be much easier for him to follow her advice and forget about this Ophanim business had she continued going to Fatima High.

Then he could at least pretend that his psychotic massacre of his classmates and failed attempts at heroism against fallen angels or demons hadn't really happened.

In English class—as headed by the no-nonsense Mr. Benigno "Noy" Borabo—Florante took his accustomed seat at the back of the class, near the windows overlooking the streets outside.

They got a pop quiz on English grammar involving Subject, Predicate, Object of the Preposition, and so forth, which only made him wish they'd do more required reading.

He'd at least watched the film/TV/animated versions or read the CliffNotes versions of Tom Sawyer, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Odyssey, To Kill a Mockingbird, The Great Gatsby, Lord of the Flies, Animal Farm, or Of Mice and Men.

Regardless, he felt more comfortable now than ever before. He had reached some sort of closure with his nightmares involving classmate murder and choosing between becoming an angel or a demon.

Ha. Closure. He sounded like the family of a missing person that finally found out the grisly fate of their beloved.

In regards to his real-life bullying situation, he had instead reached ennui. A feeling of listlessness and dissatisfaction arising from a lack of occupation or excitement.

Maybe it was this lack of catharsis and boredom from the impasse he and his bullies had reached since he decided to bite the bullet and snitch on them that led him to dream such horrid dreams.

By Friday, he wondered about whethe or not he should give Jenny a call. He had her number for real, after all.

For all he knew, she had already dropped out of school. He tried not thinking about the nerdy girl, but he couldn't completely suppress his anxiousness that he'd been somehow responsible for her absence, as absurd of a thought that was.

Florante Galang slept a dreamless sleep over the weekend due to the soft June rain. He might've finished his homework but he neglected to read up on Social Studies.

***

It felt a bit nippy outside so early in the morning at 7:30 AM or so, before the school assembly started.

He got cursory acknowledgement from classmates by Monday morning, after getting off his school service and making a beeline towards his classroom.

He also dealt with small talk on whether or not he was able to finish the homework before they proceded to talk to their friends and ignore him in his lonesome.

The morning was cold but it wasn't raining.

Another day, another boring class.

He has Araling Panlipunan (Social Studies) for today, as covered by Mr. Neil Nepumoceno. He was the jokey type of teacher with a strange goofy charisma to him whose signature outburst was "Aye Caramba!"

Quite the character. He encouraged debate and rapport with his students during every topic he covered.

Florante's blood ran cold as he remembered something.

Mr. Nepumoceno was the teacher that got in his way during his dream massacre of his classmates in First Year St. Francis.

Oh yeah. He had turned him into a splatter on the wall. Like something out of the movies. Or a Mortal Kombat "Fatality".

He pushed such dark thoughts from his mind. He promised the dream version of Jenny that he'd forget about that dream. That he'd live a normal life from now on.

With that said, a certain someone—a classmate of his—still didn't give him the time of day. Not that any of them did, but this particular one hurt the most when it happened.

Galang still felt awkward being around Laura Reyes, but that was to be expected.

His first crush in high school remained upset about that "nude drawing" thing when he didn't actually draw her nude, he using a rough sketch and shapes to construct her body before adding details and clothes, dammit!

For weeks, they avoided each other even though they were classmates. It even got to the point where Florante could've sworn Laura got bugged by him avoiding her before she avoided him.

That little twinge of annoyance gave him a small spark of hope that he still occupied Laura's mind somehow, even in the form of a pest.

Better that than be ignored altogether.

However, now Laura was but an afterthought compared to the girl in Florante's literal dreams.

Florante held his breath at the door, peering here and there of any sign of Jennifer Tolentino, but it seemed she wasn't around. He exhaled and went to his seat.

Jenny followed him from behind, talking about yearbooks and phone calls or something.

Wait a minute.

"Jenny?" he blurted out.

"Flor!" she said in return. "Oops, you told me to not call you that! Sorry!"

"No, it's all right. I don't mind," he reassured. "What was it about phone books?"

"Oh, I was just askin' why you called me from my house last time," she said with a smile as she brushed a single lock of hair from her face.

He gulped and explained himself, saying he found it interesting that he found another Jennifer Tolentino in an older Fatima High yearbook.

She wasn't friendly beyond logic like the dream version of her that invited him into her apartment after finding out he essentially stalked her.

Still, he couldn't remember one person where she had beef or drama with in their class.

She lingered by his desk till the bell rang, which left his heart aflutter. She then went to sit by a girl with braces and ponytails.

He considered hanging out with Jenny some more but thought the better of it. This wasn't the dream girl Jenny. Even a nice girl like the real Jenny might lack tact to let him down gently if ever he became one of those overly friendly boys around the girls.

However, as class began, Florante realized he had another problem in his hands.

He couldn't stop staring at Jenny. He tried to be slick about it too, but he knew she knew he was watching her.

What was wrong with him? Dammit. He pulled the same thing the first time Laura rejected him over that misunderstanding with the drawing.

With him not staring at her and all. Or ignoring her beyond reason.

Susmaryosep. He wouldn't be surprised if Jenny started avoiding him too.

He should pay more attention to class. They were covering the Martial Law years or something.

The good news was that Jenny had begun talking to him more, like she used to before his unfortunate falling out with her group due to Laura thinking he was a creep.

The bad news, if it could be considered bad news, was that he kind of missed having memorable dreams and fighting against nightmarish monsters beyond human comprehension.

***

As Florante walked out of class along with the rest of his classmates as the lunch bell rang, the air glistened with a light drizzle.

The wind bit at his nose. His cheeks.

A light sprinkle of rain over hesistantly overcast skies that still shone of daylight. Silvery slivers of water reflecting bits of sunshine.

Dammit. He should've brought an umbrella with him but he forgot again.

Meanwhile, he left his head lost in the clouds, wondering how to best approach Jennifer while a part of him screamed at himself to not make a fool of himself over his newest crush.

Sometimes, discretion was the better part of valor. Sometimes, the only way to win the game was not to play.

"I'll see at lunch, okay?" Florante heard someone from behind him say, which he soon realized was Alonzo Estanislao.

Florante smiled and began to nod, but he then hesitated and said, "We'll see. I might skip lunch."

Lonzo kept walking as he spoke. "Sure. No prob. Still waiting for your girlfriend to get back?" he teased.

"Shut up. She's not my girlfriend. Stop being weird," he hissed at Lonzo, looking around him for any sign of his classmates. They might overhear and spread rumors again, like with Laura.

"She's back already," Florante murmured it so softly it sounded like an afterthought, hoping Lonzo would miss what he'd say, only for him to cringe when he heard, "Congrats, man."

The drizzle became a squall, and Florante's mood became as soggy as a wet sock The more it rained the soggier it got and the worse his unease became.

He considered locking himself in the library again on an empty stomach or eating with the so-called Dead Kids like the social outcast that they were.

Or he was, since even they barely tolerated his presence. Like he was the pariah of pariahs.

He checked his wallet. He had enough spare change for a soda, at least. And maybe a bag of chips.

He entered the cafeteria, which was on a basement level of a building sepearate from their high school building.

The sun flooded daylight inside through a series of chainlink fence sthat served as the wall that separated the area from the nearby park and the grassy soccer field.

The light squall made the grass glisten in the sun. During downpours, whole islands were formed on the field amidst the flood puddles, mud, and sludge. Like a miniature archipelago.

He scanned for the Dead Kids' table in the corner out of habit. Then he froze where he stood.

There were six people at the table.

Huh. Six people. Excluding Florante, because he hadn't reached there yet.

The usual five were there: Alonzo "Lonzo" Estanislao, Kalantiaw "Kal" Hidalgo and his sister Dalisay, Jacob "Benjo" Benjamin, and Francisco "Kiko" Celestino.

The sixth one was a familiar face, though. It was Jennifer "Jenny" Tolentino.

She'd finally got to school after all those days she was absent, but what was she doing with the Dead Kids?

Lonzo called after Florante. "Yo, Flor!" he said, which made him wince. "What are you standing around for? Come over here!"

"What's with Florante?" he heard Dalisay ask, which made him finally move towards the table before he embarrassed himself any further in front of the one group that accepted him.

The dainty Dalisay asked once he got there, "You okay, Florante? Do you need to go to the clinic or something?"

"You're so gross, Benjo," admonished Dalisay.

He felt his body jolt when he heard Jenny ask, "It's not your asthma acting up, is it?"

Florante reassured it wasn't, revealing his handy inhaler in his pocket. "Not asthma." He shook his head vigorously. "I'm fine," he reassured, scratching the back of his head.

Once his eyes met with Jennifer, he muttered, "H-Hey. Long time, no see."

Jenny smiled and brushed her hair back from her face. "Likewise, Flor. I'm back, I guess?"

Florante smiled in spite of himself. Laughing nervously, he changed the suhject. "I'll get a soda today. Any of you need anything?"

"Just soda?" asked Jenny. "It's lunch, not recess. Eat something."

"Aren't you hungry, Florante?" chimed in Dalisay.

"Actually, maybe I do feel a little sick," Florante said, looking at the floor and his dirty shoes. "Um. I mean, I don't have an appetite right now."

Lonzo, who was a little scuffed up from his roughhousing with Benjo, grabbed Florante by the shoulders and sat him down the bench of the lunchtable. "Then sit this one out. I'll fetch everyone lunch and buy your soda."

Florante gulped and nodded his thanks while handing the money to Lonzo, who elected to be the group's gopher for today. Jacob and Kalantiaw elected to come with him to help out with grabbing the lunch trays.

***

He waited for them to get their food along with the usually studious Kiko, the wallflower Goth Dalisay, and, well, his classmate Jenny, whom he ended up seating beside with thanks to Lonzo's prompting.

Damn that Lonzo.

He had nowhere to look and he somehow didn't feel like talking to Jenny right now. Also, when he looked up across the table, he ended up staring at a stern-looking Celestino who looked more like a teacher or a college student than someone from high school.

He barely talked at all, even though he was viewed as the leader of the Dead Kids. His batch's likeliest Valedictorian or even Salutatorian.

He hadn't even gone to college yet and Florante could already swear he'd become the Summa Cum Laude, if not at least the Magna Cum Laude of his year of college graduates. He just exuded that kind of aura.

"What is it?" asked Kiko, his eyes meeting with Florante's as he looked up from what he was reading (Advanced Calculus).

"HUH? Oh, nothing!" said Florante. The last thing he wanted was small talk with Mr. Battle of the Brains there. "Sorry for staring."

For a student supposedly only 3 years older than him, Celestino gave Galang the vibes of a teacher. Or a CEO. Or a high-priced lawyer. Any full-grown adult with loads of money, power, or influence.

With a raised eyebrow, Celestino returned to his book and commented, "Take the hint, kid."

'Take the hint…?' he thought, only for him to realize that Lonzo probably already talked to Kiko to about him and Jenny.

Dammit, you guys. It wasn't that serious. He didn't even remember telling any of them about his feelings for Jenny either! How'd they figure things out?

Minutes later, he got his soda, which he sipped slowly. Or maybe he should sip it faster so that he could excuse himself and leave.

He could even play his asthma up and escape to the clinic for the next hour.

However, he told himself to get a hold of himself. Why should he run away?

To make way for their lunch trays and lunches, Florante took the opportunity to move away and give room to the rest of the Dead Kids, with him sitting on a separate table with his soda.

Eventually, he decided to permit himself to glance beside him. If she glared at him, he'd just go to the nurse's office and skip class for the rest of the afternoon.

Complain about the upset stomach he was literally feeling right now. Like the coward he was.

He wouldn't be lying either. He had butterflies in his stomach the size of eagles, it felt like.

He looked up in time to see Dalisay and Jenny laughing at Benjo's antics with Lonzo.

This reminded him of how the Dead Kids charmed him into their group in the first place, actually. They were social outcasts like him, but chose to be so.

They liked keeping to themselves and didn't care how they looked to others, which Florante respected a lot.

The most abuse Florante got from them was acting as their gopher or them getting his name wrong. Even Benjo, their one member that reminded Galang of his bulies, never went the extra mile when teasing him.

He never felt like any of them dehumanized or degraded him. Or treated him like the "other".

They didn't treat him particularly well or superbly, but even their mere tolerance of him was leagues better than the treatment he got from his own classmates as the resident weirdo.

Florante heaved a relieved sigh at Jenny getting along with the rest of his so-called friends. Or even acquaintances.

His heart twinged with jealousy at the sight too. Made him wish he were closer with both the Dead Kids. Or Jennifer.

What was he even worried about again? That he'd ruin another friendship because he caught feelings with Jenny like he did with Laura, so he'd start acting all awkward and weird around her?

Nah. He had no need to fear. He simply just had to deny his silly crush with Jennifer so they wouldn't end up cold and distant like him and Laura Reyes.

Even if this was good as it got, he'd be fine with it.

This was his path of least regrets. If there was an event he wouldn't "Undo" with a magical "Ctrl + Z" command, then it would be him meeting his friendships/acquaintainces, the Dead Kids.

***

Aside from the playfulness and laughter, something seemed different between the Dead Kids and Jenny Tolentino from Florante's classmates that he couldn't quite put his finger on.

Their banter and positivity seemed like something out of a commercial for menthol cigarettes or saltene crackers, thought the bemused Florante.No wait. Menthos. They acted like they were in a menthos commercial!

Something about them seemed almost surreal. Or unreal.

He examined Jenny the most. Not because he was enamored by her, of course. Well, maybe because of that too.

Her skin was pale, but it looked practically tanned when near the porcelain or marble statue skin of Dalisay, who truly lived up to her name. In Tagalog, "Dalisay" meant "Pure".

Hell, compared to her, Florante's skin was practically wood-colored.

Florante averted his eyes from Kal's sister by reflex, knowing full-well of how weird Dalisay's overprotective brother behaved around people who stared at her or even tried to talk to her (like Lonzo, who was supposed to be their friend).

Jenny's glasses glinted in the daylight of the open cafeteria.

Her pink lips pursed into a pout as she and Dalisay giggled over something. Her hazel eyes sparkled with her flushed, blushing face. What was about her that was strange? Was it his imagination?

He pondered, staring at Jenny, trying to isolate any changes in her.

"What are you staring at, Flor?" asked Lonzo with a snicker, and Florante knew that the cheeky bastard already knew the answer to his own damn question.

At that moment, Jenny's eyes flashed to meet Florante's.

Instead of merely looking curious, she gave him a harsh stare. Like a warning of some sort. Her sharp eyes belying the smile on her face.

Florante dropped his head, letting his curtain of hair bangs cover his face. During the instant that their eyes met, he could've sworn.

"Flor…?" Lonzo beckoned again.

Florante could've sworn that she recognized him. No, wait. That didn't make sense. Of course, she'd recognize him. He was her classmate, Florante.

No, no. What he meant was that her eyes glowed the same way it did in his dreams. Her look of recognition wasn't because she recognized him as Florante. It was because she recognized him as Archangel Gabriel.

He had promised in his last dream that he'd forget about his dreams, but here he was breaking that promise once more. Even though honestly, he couldn't help it.

How Florante surmised all that from a simple glare, he couldn't tell you.

Lonzo whispered, "Is your girlfriend staring back at you too?"

Florante palmed his face. His cheeks felt hot to the touch. "She doesn't look angry or anything, is she?"

"I don't know," came Estanislao's unhelpful answer. "Maybe stop being a weirdo and talk to her like a normal person?"

"Stop calling her my girlfriend," Florante begged. "She's probably the only friend I got in class. You'll weird her out."

"Sure thing, buddy. I'm just teasing," relented Alonzo.

"…So she's not angry?"

"Ask her yourself, dumbass!" Lonzo put Florante in a headlock and rubbed his knuckles over the top of his noggin. "Jeez, no wonder you're bullied so much!"

***

Mustering up the courage to talk to Jenny, Florante sat beside her and talked. Like the good ol' days when he, her, and Laura first met.

He then asked Jenny without looking at her, "Where have you been?"

She thought for a minute. "Oh, around."

The coy answer made him second-guess himself. If he referenced his dreams about her in any way, would she confirm them real? No, that was stupid.

"Were you sick?" he asked.

"Maybe a little. Like you. I'm fine now, thank you for asking," she answered.

"Oh. That's good to hear. I'm glad," he said.

"It's been cold lately, hasn't it?" she said. "No woonder everyone is getting sick."

"Yeah. But sunny other times. Like the weather's bipolar or something," he said.

"I know, right? Like it couldn't make up its mind," she said.

"Did you get contacts?" he then blurted out unthinkingly.

Puzzled by his unexpected question, she answered, "No. I'm wearing glasses."

"Oh yeah," he mumbled, wishing the earth would part and swallow him whole. "I thought there was something different about your eyes."

She shrugged with a confused smile. "It's the same eyes I've always had."

Man, what was this conversation even about? Talk about awkward.

"What? NO! I didn't…" Florante raised his voice, but he then trailed off lamely. His voice sounded sad, even to him.

"Really? Show me," she said before taking out a pencil and notebook from out of her purse.

"What? You mean right now?" he asked.

"Why not?" she countered.

Why not indeed. So Florante recalled the lessons of Art Class and did rough sketches of a pose of what looked like a naked woman. He then added details like the blouse, skirt, glasses, and shoes to the full-body sketch.

"See? It was all a big misunderstanding!" he said, only for his jaw to go slack as a blushing Jennifer beside him told him, "I didn't realize you were going to use me as an example!"

He looked down and sure enough, he ended up drawing Jenny. "I-I can explain…!"

"I'm just glad you didn't turn it into a nude portrait! My boobs aren't that big!"

"OF COURSE NOT! That's sexual harassment!" he yelped, which made Jenny laugh.

His heart twinged at the sight for sore eyes. She her giggles were soft and enchanting. Like wind chimes on a gentle summer breeze.

"I was joking, Flor!" She looked at his sketch of her. "Wow. That's pretty good, actually."

"Eh, it looks cartoony," he said. "Like an anime sketch. I could've done better."

"Just accept the compliment, you dork!" she chided.

Florante chuckled at that. "You know what? You're an okay gal, Jenny."

This made the both of them go silent. That line was what he said to Jenny before he proceeded to massacre the rest of his classmates.

"You're an okay gal, Jenny. Don't go to school today. For your own good."

A flood of memories—well, false memories that didn't happen in anywhere else but his dream—almost overwhelmed Florante.

Him becoming a roaring typhoon of vengeance against his bullies before facing off against an angelic Laura. His tandem fight with the spaghetti monster, where he discovered Jenny was also an angel.

His visit to her apartment. Their confrontation with Mammon. Him managing to defeat the crawling chaos. None of that happened yet Florante remembered them all as if they did.

***

The group went their separate ways. Florante was about to head off to the library himself, killing time like always until the late afternoon bell rung for their next class.

However, what Jenny told him before he went off gave him pause.

She looked him in the eye and said, "You promised."

…What?

Before he could speak, she invaded his personal space and said, "Don't break your promise."

She then turned around and left, as though she didn't just say something cryptic and disturbing to him.

"Jenny…!"

"Hmmm? What is it, Flor?"

He hesitated answering. Did he just imagine her say "Don't break your promise"? Was she gaslighting him? He then said, "I'm okay with it."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm okay with you calling me Flor."

Jenny tilted her head to the side and giggled. "Okay."

His mind spun from confusion. Had he made up the whole exchange before this? She acted perfectly polite now. Like the conversation they had about promises and breaking them never happened.

He had half the mind to believe that the entire exchange was from his own imagination. It was his mind taking the form of Jenny, warning him not to pursue the madness that was his dreams.

Because the minute he started believing that everything he'd dreamed up until that point was real, that was when Jennifer would give him the same disgusted stare Laura gave him when she rejected him.

Just like Mammon said. Mammon was no demon. Mammon was his common sense. What was left of his sanity.

On one hand, he should be glad all this murder, mayhem, and destruction using fantastical or cosmic powers happened in his dreams. They served as his own Ctrl + Z that undid what could've been irreversible mistakes.

On the other hand, he also wished he'd have dreamed up his being a social pariah and the butt of everyone's jokes in his class.

Then maybe once he woke up every morning, he'd instead be greeted with friends and cheers as well as belong in a social circle not rejected by the rest of the school campus.

Undoing the destruction of a shadow monster or sentient Italian dish wasn't a problem Florante could relate to. His inability to form healthy relationships with his peers was.

If only he could Ctrl + Z his entire childhood. Now that was an even cooler superpower than the Light Array.

"…Galang? Florante Galang?" someone called out to him in the middle of his introspection, thus interrupting his inner monolgue.

Who was it? Who dared interrupt the great and powerful avatar of Archangel Gabriel (in his dreams)?

Oh. It was him. One of his bullies. Not one of his worst bullies, but one of his bullies nonetheless. His bully that used to be his friend before he went with the flow of the rest of the class.

His personal Judas Iscariot. The Brutus to his Julius Caesar: Isaiah Pascual.

The guy whose head Florante blew apart in the fever dream, to be exact.

***

The two kept talking and walking as they went to their late afternoon class.

"Florante," said a sweaty Isaiah, who rubbed his hands together.

"Pascual," said Florante, who wrinkled his nose.

"Hey, buddy. Been a while since we've talked, right?" said Pascual with a hesitant, crooked smile.

"Yeah, I guess." Galang shrugged, eyeing the door to the classroom. "What do you want?"

On the asthmatic's part, he probably smiled the same disingenuous smile as well to keep up appearances of politeness. What did this snake in the grass want?

Florante vaguely remembered Isaiah as one of the few classmates he had that stood by him when he was being teased by bullies, up until it he started getting teased himself, so he threw him under the bus.

His first impression of Pascual when they were still cool with each other was that he had the vibes of a Golden Retriever. Or maybe even a sea otter, with that nose of his.

Once inside the classroom, Florante went straight to his table, with half the mind to ignore Isaiah altogether. He merely half-listened to him at any case.

"…Look, maybe we can continue this later. Okay, bro?"

"Sure. Whatever."

Grimacing, Galang remembered the swift kick to the testicles that Pascual gave him in his dream, thus "forcing" him to blow his head apart with his dream powers.

Should he condemn the guy for something he did in a dream though? No, Florante condemned Isaiah more for what the betrayal he did in real life.

Florante Galang walked right into Biology class for their section's Science subject that afternoon.

His Science teacher was a chirpy twenty-something named Ms. Isabelle "Belle" Del Mundo. The tall, slim teacher had a signature faint, singsong voice. Hard to miss.

Ms. Del Mundo walked around the room, took attendance, and had them move to the laboratory room in the second floor.

From there, Pascual kept following Florante.

"Gerry and the others finally let up on you, huh?" was the topic he chose to break the ice with. Oh joy.

Florante grunted. "More or less."

"Glad to hear it, bro."

'Uh-huh. I bet,' Florante thought, resisting the urge to roll his eyes.

He had to get a reputation of being a snitch in exchange for them to leave him alone, but at least now their bullying wasn't as bad as it could've been. He didn't appreciate the passive-aggressive digs though.

He didn't want to have this talk with Isaiah. He instead wished he could pair up with Jenny. To talk to her more.

To ensure her that he wasn't going to break his promise. No wait, the real Jenny didn't care about it. It was the Jenny in his insane mind that told him to lay off the daydreams and fever dreams.

When they got to the lab, Ms. Del Mundo had them separate themselves in pairs.

This was usually Florante's worst nightmare since nobody in class wanted to pair up with him. However, he hoped after his interactions with the real Jenny that they'd pair up this time.

However, instead, he got stuck with Isaiah, who insisted on being his lab partner for the day.

Their Biology teacher then proceeded to distribute a microscope and a box of slides on each table. The room buzzed with conversation as they prepared the materials.

As Florante and Isaiah worked as lab partners like the good ol' days, when they were still buddies, the latter continued the small talk.

For his part, Galang kept his eyes away from the lab doors, doodling all sorts of sketches on the back of his notebook. Like a short comic of Freeza and Goku battling out in Namek.

"Wow. You just sketched all that out without thinking, huh?" said Isaiah.

"Yep. Just like before," said Florante without looking up from his notebook.

"You never change," said Pascual, which almost offended Galang.

Galang groaned. Instead of hearing the musical voice of Jenny, he instead got stuck with his former best friend. The backstabber who saved himself from a social suicide pact and got himself new friends.

Well, maybe his new friends could help him out with whatever problem he was having!

In the corner of his eye, he saw that Jenny and Laura had actually paired up as lab partners instead, setting to the desk right in front of the teacher's table.

Laura looked stunning as usual, a showstopper for sure, but Jenny stole the show as far as being the apple of Florante's eye was concerned.

Her face remained friendly and open even when looked at from behind, her mouth open with a slight smile on her flawless lips. Her glasses framed her dazzling face beautifully, like there'd be something missing without them.

She had a pretty nice figure from his vantage point too. Both her and Laura had shapely hips, thin waists, and perky posteriors that couldn't be hidden even by the folds of their checkered skirts, come to think of it.

He palmed his red face at having such lewd thoughts about his classmates.

"Ah, so you've moved on from Laura Reyes to Jenny Tolentino, huh?" asked Pascual, which got on Galang's nerves.

"Shut up," he murmured, which made Isaiah laugh.

"Bingo! I was right, wasn't I?"

Florante sighed. "…Is it that obvious?"

"Bro, you couldn't stop staring at her empty desk when she was absent and you couldn't stop staring at her now that she finally came back."

Jeez. Florante should be more careful and not wear his heart on his sleeve.

If his other bullies caught wind of this, he'd never hear the end of it. Or maybe they already knew and were biding their time to use this info against him. Dammit.

Thankfully, the soft-spoken Ms. Del Mundo began class at that moment. Florante tried to focus on her words as she explained to the class what they'd be doing today in the lab.

The slides inside the box were out of order. The lab partners had to separate the slides of onion root tip cells into the different mitosis phases they represented then label them.

They couldn't use their Biology books. In 20 minutes, she'll be coming around to check who got everything right.

Galang already studied this and Pascual, if memory served him correctly, had the lower grades and study ethic (work ethic for studying) between the two of them, so he did most of the work while his partner did most of the talking.

"Prophase," said Florante after studying one of the slides he magnified to 40X via microscope briefly.

"Say, Florante…"

"What? Put in 'Prophase' for that slide, Pascual," he ordered as he slid another slide under the microscope.

He did what he was told, letting Galang do most of the work. He didn't even bother double-checking.

"How much do you remember about that stormy night?"

"Anaphase," Florante murmured. "What stormy night? I don't remember any storms."

"How to you spell that," Pascual asked, and Florante obliged him.

His voice even quieter than before, he then continued. "The storm you caused. The one where you ran amok. You don't remember any of it?"

Florante blinked at that. Did he hear him right? No, he must not have. "Third slide please."

Pascual handed Florante the third slide and sighed. "So you don't remember, huh? I should've figured as much."

"What are you talking about?" asked Florante, feigning ignorance while his heart beat began rising in his chest. To Pascual, he said, "Interphase."

"Enterphase?" asked Isaiah.

"No, 'Interphase' with an 'I'. Still spelled with a 'phase'. P-H-A-S-E," clarified Florante, before probing, "…Well?"

Pascual wrote down the label and said, "It doesn't really matter if you don't remember." He chuckled. "Would you believe you blasted my face off with light bullets? Like something out of a Sci-Fi movie, man!"

Florante took his eye off of the microscope and snapped his head in attention towards Isaiah. He felt lightheaded after doing so.

The two were about done with the activity. At the corner of Florante's eye, he could see both Laura and Jenny were already finished with their own slides minutes ago.

The color from Pascual's own face drained the same way it did when facing off against an angrier Florante in his fever dream. "Oh shit. You do remember, huh?"

'No. No way. There's no way my dreams are real. There's no way I literally killed my bullies in my dreams, only to press 'Ctrl + Z' and 'Undo' what I did!'

"Susmaryosep," Florante Galang murmured under his breath, wishing he could "Ctrl + Z" this exchange just now.

***

To Be Continued…

Farewell, Abdiel

#fantasy of evolution #angels #demons #ctrl z #undo #shortcut #gabriel #raphael #philippines #fictionpress.com #original fiction #urban fantasy

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gabriel-gabdiel · 4 years ago

Text

Fantasy of Evolution Chapter 2: Self-Insert Power Fantasy

The outcast Florante awakens unusual special powers while dreaming. He then unleashes his pent-up frustrations against all his classmates who bullied him... in the dream.

Surely releasing all his stress in a dream is a healthy way of dealing with it, right? A victimless crime. But what if it wasn’t a dream...?

My original fiction. You can also find it here. Please enjoy.

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Florante walked outside the gates of Fatima School, his head in the clouds. Dark, nimbus clouds with scattered rain showers and thunderstorms followed him.

He must've blacked out earlier. What had just happened?

Everything was quiet. The whole school was a wreck. Did he get caught in the middle of a Signal No. 4 typhoon and only came to just now to realize it, when everyone else had already evacuated?

His gut felt like it was on fire. His head, or perhaps his brain itself, throbbed like a second palpitating heart that pulsated in conjunction with his actual heart.

He hadn't the foggiest idea what was going on.

He looked at his hands. They were stained with blood.

Shit. What happened?! Was it his blood that...?

He then heard a voice say, "I found you. You naughty little devil."

The apparition of a beautiful girl with long, flowing hair and transparent watery wings emerged from the rain and mist.

He asked her, "Who are you?!"

As the strange female being stared at Florante with an unreadable expression, she whispered, "Archangel Raphael."

This made him remember the comic books he drew about the four most famous archangels: Gabriel. Raphael. Uriel/Azrael. Michael.

Who was she? Why was her face so familiar? She was stunningly gorgeous. In fact, she kind of reminded him of his high school crush.

"This is the end of the line for you. I won't let you hurt anyone else, Flor."

Wait. She knew him?

Wait. Laura. She looked like Laura! The same Laura that he had just... had just...!

Damn it.

"Prepare to die," the angelic version of Laura said before becoming a blur of fluid glassy wings, a downpour of pressurized water, and certain death.

It then all came back to him in an instant.

***

Fantasy of Evolution

An Urban Fantasy Story by Abdiel

When dreams become nightmares.

***

Chapter 2: Self-Insert Power Fantasy

***

During the summer before his first day at Fatima High School...

Florante Galang actually read through the book, "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie in order to avoid becoming a pariah in his new school like he was back in his old school.

For all the good it did him later on.

He inwardly swore his high school days were going to be much different from his lonely grade school days, when no one his age would talk to him and only people a year or two younger than him tolerated his presence. Or even looked up to him.

It was supposed to be his high school debut. His chance to turn a new leaf.

The night before the first day of freshman classes, he tried remembering the advice given to him by that very book that included tips such as "Don't criticize, condemn or complain," "Give honest and sincere appreciation," and "Arouse in the other person an eager want."

He even tried the book's advice in winning over people on his own family, particularly his strict smothering mother, but he must've missed a chapter or two. It didn't work.

Or rather, his attempts at "Get the other person saying 'yes, yes' immediately," and "Ask questions instead of direct orders," led to yet another misunderstanding that got him punished for "disrespecting his elders". Again.

He got a flying piece of footwear—a slipper or flip-flop—hit him right on the head soon afterwards, to be exact.

She also said something about him talking back to his parents and being insolent.

Perhaps he should reconsider the self-help book's advice as less of a surefire way to manipulate his mother into saying yes to her increasing his allowance and more of a set of helpful tips to make himself more appealing to people.

If used correctly, of course.

He did his rote memorization of the self-help book in his bedroom located on the east portion of their abode, with the facade and front yard of their bungalow facing north and his parents' bedroom at the southwest portion.

He used to share his room with his two older sisters but they soon moved out to their own rooms as they saved enough money to expand their home.

It was a familiar room that belonged to him exclusively around Grade 5 to 7. He couldn't remember exactly when.

The linoleum floor, the cream walls, the gray ceiling with discolored tiled patterns on it where the beams supporting them were supposed to be, and the red curtains were all part of his childhood.

The Galangs' humble abode originally had two bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen, and (barely) a garden plus a plot of undeveloped land with pebbles and other smooth stones over it. Half of a bungalow in Pasig.

This below sea level part of their property was then slowly filled up with land over the years so that the whole house would rise above the street. From there came the construction of a second part of the home with two more bedrooms and an extra bathroom as well as a garage for the family car.

With the money his mother earned from their short-lived stint with selling goods through a sari-sari (variety) store and the rest she got from her parents (his grandparents) on top of the ones she saved from his father's engineer work, they were able to turn their half of a house and turn it into a full house, so to speak.

The most notable changes on the bedroom was how it once had two beds but now it only had one. The mirror still had the "Santo Niño (Baby Jesus)" statue there, which he never looked at directly because it gave him the creeps. However, he would never admit such a thing to his prayerful Roman Catholic family.

Regardless, he attempted memorizing and taking to heart many of the lessons the book imparted, but like any other teenaged boy, his short attention span ended up becoming his downfall.

He skipped, scanned, and skimmed through many of the pages of anecdotes and stories in order to find something he could use. He only really wanted the book to help him with his social anxiety so as to turn a new leaf.

All of that "effort" was for naught, of course. His nightmarish bullying in grade school only got worse in high school.

***

Back to the relative present...

One morning in Fatima High, chaos ensued. All hell broke loose.

His head in the clouds, Florante Galang "sleepwalked" into the school, his every step practically gliding through the road, swift as the gale wind, his fingertips emanating sparks and crackles of electrical might.

It was like something out of a movie or a Sci-Fi TV series.

He maneuvered through the heavy traffic jam of the road like a motorcycle delivery man in a hurry, weaving through every nook and cranny with the grace of a swan and the aggressiveness of a duck. Unnoticed by the cars, vans, jeepneys, and trucks around him.

For whatever reason, he ended up with superpowers right off of a superhero comic.

Ah, who cared? It was just a dream, after all.

'That's right. I'm dreaming, aren't I?'

In a dream, anything was possible, including gaining supernatural powers like those of angels, demons, and gods, thus allowing him to wreak havoc on his most hated high school in a relatively harmless way.

This was his stress reliever, he rationalized. A way to blow off steam from all the resentment boiling up inside him as the outcast of his class and this god-forsaken school.

Instead of stopping crime or saving people, he did the exact opposite upon his discovery of his unnatural abilities. He instead committed crime and damned everyone in his path.

Maybe it was because he'd never do any of this in real life. It was his opportunity to have his revenge against those who wronged him.

This was how a normal person would react to getting superpowers, he rationalized. The same way someone would more often than not end up on a spending spree after winning the lottery despite claims to the contrary prior to getting the cash prize.

It was just human nature in action.

He idly wondered why in western comics and manga, the hero with superpowers almost always ended up becoming vigilantes or supernatural policemen.

It was more realistic for them to do what he was doing now, as though he'd just won the lottery and he was about to splurge on the nearest sports car, game console, or mansion.

His list of bullies remained fresh in his mind. His nightmare scenario had become their nightmare scenario. The resident timid freak, "quiet kid", and communal punching bag could now punch back.

One thing came to his mind as he approached Fatima High.

'I have been abused all my life to the point where I don't trust anyone.'

Unbeknownst to the people inside the school, he'd been testing his powers elsewhere, with him appearing like some sort of cyclone or tornado as he blasted through rivers and old buildings with his newfound abilities.

It was so much fun having so much power after being powerless for so long.

He couldn't wait to test them out on actual humans. Fragile, squishy humans.

Yikes. Why did he sound so bloodthirsty all of a sudden?

He then braced himself while also reassuring himself that this was all a dream. A harmless dream.

Because of how unbelievable the situation was, he presumed it was all a dream. A blurry fantasy borne out of his frustration from being rejected by his classmates and seemingly the entire school campus.

He stopped mid-stride. Before him was a familiar face. A girl from school. His classmate.

It was the face of Jennifer "Jenny" Tolentino. She was a petite, intelligent, talkative, and capable do-getter nerdy girl who was one of the first (and few) students to befriend Florante in Fatima High.

The only girl who was kind to him.

"'Sup, Flor. You're here early. What'cha up to?" the bespectacled Jenny asked with an inquisitive head tilt. "You look like you're in a hurry."

Florante smiled and chuckled. Although he still hated that girly nickname his classmates gave him, he ignored it and told her, "You're an okay gal, Jenny. Don't go to school today. For your own good."

"W-What do you mean by tha...? HEY!" she asked, but in the blink of an eye he was gone.

His power fantasy was about to begin.

***

He saw her again. The girl of his dreams. She had locks of black hair, cascading like a starless night. Her face as gorgeous as the sun setting over the ocean. He had yearned to be with her.

However, today was not the day for him to make her his, whether by words or by action. He lost that chance forever due to their misunderstanding and perhaps his owwn overzealousness.

Pity. She would've looked mesmerizing in their wedding.

This was the drop-dead gorgeous girl who rejected him over a misunderstanding regarding him drawing her in the nude. The class beauty. The pretty young woman who helped put a stop to his social life in Fatima High.

Her perfectly symmetrical face had a gentle look to it. Or it did until she saw him.

There she was. Laura Reyes. His first crush in high school.

She was a healthy girl with sturdy legs, demure eyes, and a wide, unabashed smile as she talked to several of their friends in class. Her hourglass figure created the perfect feminine silhouette as she turned towards him.

He intended to spare her from his power fantasy rampage of revenge like he did Jenny since he really did like her a lot. Before their friendship crumbled to dust with his accidental social suicide, they got along just fine.

They weren't close friends or anything but they could talk to each other.

Just as he was about to move past her though, she flinched at him and gave her a look of contempt.

"Stay away from me, you creep."

Florante snapped then and there, his body surging with electrical might that coursed through his crush's veins, electrocuting her to death.

He didn't go so far as to fry her to toast because it'd be a shame to see such a cute girl turn to ash or dust, but his angry outburst of power did rob her of her life.

What a sick dream he was having.

He hesitated after seeing the girl with fair skin and an angelic body wilt like a flower and fall like velvet unto the grassy ground of the soccer field, unmoving.

Beautiful in death as she was in life.

She fell with the same grace as Evelyn Francis McHale did. The depressed woman who jumped from the Empire State Building on May 1, 1947, landing on a car roof. Songs were written about the picture of Evelyn's corpse that made it look like she was just a Sleeping Beauty rather than dead altogether.

Both appeared like they were resting or napping instead of dead, stuck in an idle daydream.

The boy beside her, a friend of hers from another section whose name eluded Florante, screamed bloody murder and attacked him on instinct.

Galang reacted thusly, shooting his attacker with twice the amount of electricity that he shot Laura, intending to fry him to ash.

The kid crumpled into a ball after Florante moved forward and punched him on the stomach, breaking his ribs. Perhaps also his spine. He soon lay motionless on the grass beside Laura.

Amazing. The asthmatic, unathletic him doing all this.

Before he could finish him off, he heard gasps, screams, and murmurs from everyone around him who witnessed his crime.

He asked himself: What was he doing? Should he be doing this? Wasn't this wrong of him to do this? Should he stop? Turn himself in?

He gulped, exhaled, and heard a whistle as he drew his next breath. His asthma acted up again due to all this stress. How ironic for an asthmatic like him to suddenly have weather-based powers.

He reassured himself that it was all just a dream. Perhaps a lucid dream, but still just a dream. An illusion or perhaps delusion. A fantasy of him evolving and maturing despite his inherent weakness.

It was his power fantasy.

His felt his body feel grow warmer and warmer, reaching a fever pitch as a cyclone or tornado formed around his body. The clouds darkened above, the winds sucking in nimbus clouds and reshaping the sky, turning morning to seeming midnight.

A boy suddenly gaining superpowers from out of the blue to take revenge on his bullies? Surely this was the dream of an idle mind, regardless of whether he made it up during his nighttime slumber or while daydreaming in his boring math class.

With that in mind, he indulged himself, laughing as he experimented upon the nearest of the students with his crackling lighting bolts and energy projectiles.

He found out earlier through morbidly amusing trial and error that by taking control of the energy flowing though him, he could make his electrical powers shock the nervous systems of the surrounding students to the point of making them jump back like frightened cats or spooked frogs.

He kept on moving forward, recalling his list of bullies in his mind. He didn't even need to list them down. He had it memorized by heart.

He'd already crossed his Rubicon anyway.

Starting with the kids Laura was hanging out with. The popular kids.

Like Danny Ilagan. Florante chanced upon him walking down the stairs to where the first floor classrooms were.

Galang remembered Ilagan as the classmate who first teased him about his obvious crush with Laura right in front of her in the lunchroom, which led to her to talk to him less, thinking their every encounter had a hidden agenda on his part.

He was also the guy who suggested Florante draw Laura then lied to her about him drawing her in the nude. He was sketching her body with shapes first before putting on her clothes, dammit!

Florante wasn't as careful with using his powers on Danny as he was with Laura.

He shot him full force with his energy bolt full of presumably millions of volts of electricity, turning him into a shadow on the pavement while the rest of the projectile exploded right through one of the nearby pillars like a bomb.

He was like one of the victims of the atomic bombs dropped on Japan, in fact.

Galang kept walking towards the inside of the building while various students ran away from him, not understanding how he was doing what he was doing. They just ran on instinct, thinking he was packing heat or throwing explosives.

In the hallway, as he walked with murderous intent, he then saw Mr. Neil Nepomuceno. Their social studies teacher who humiliated him in front of the class.

The teacher shouted, "What are you doing? WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!"

What was he doing? He wanted to hurt them as much as they had hurt him. And this was all a dream anyway so it was the perfect opportunity to do so. It was his way of venting.

The teacher then hollered out his catchphrase of, "Caramba!" and turned into a grotesque splatter of guts, gore, and giblets on the wall care of a careless yet supernaturally strong backhand.

Damn. Florante didn't know his own strength. He couldn't even look at the mess that used to be Mr. Nepomuceno.

The school was in a panic now.

They had kids under the table. Screaming teachers. Security guards with guns shooting at Florante, but he blew them (literally) away without a second thought.

It was frighteningly easy to kill people his dream. He had to hold back a little bit. Savor the moment.

'Susmaryosep, I sure am screwed up.'

He went up the stairs, sparing several of his classmates he recognized but had no quarrel over. Forgiving them for laughing at the jokes of his bullies and targeting his bullies instead.

Was he not a Merciful God? An Angel of Mercy and Divine Retribution?

He then caught up with Kyle Hernandez inside the computer room, who sat on a chair across a long table. The same guy who had been tag-teaming with Geronimo "Gerry" Jacinto to jeer and humiliate him at every turn.

This culminated to Hernandez playing a practical joke on Florante during the flag ceremony. The sections were lined up by height in front of the Philippine flag every Monday.

One Monday, during the flag ceremony where the class was supposed to form two lines, Kyle and many of Florante's classmates all huddled in one line, leaving the line where Galang was much shorter and only about 5-6 people long.

Galang was traumatized ever since.

"Hey, Flor. What's going on outside? Is there a storm? Are classes canceled?" Kyle asked Florante, who didn't respond as he approached him with malice burning through his electrified fingers.

Bristling in remembrance of that humiliating prank, Florante turned a lightning bolt into a laser sword and cut Kyle in half by the chest down, with one half of him shorter than the other like the lines his classmates made that day.

He moved further down the second floor hallway right into the middle stairs. He heard more screams and the stampede of a dozen leather shoes. He silenced them by firing more bolts of energy across the open yard right on the balcony of the second floor hallway.

He then fired off missiles of light from all ten of his fingertips into the classrooms to his left, resulting in debris, pieces of plaster, concrete, and flaming wooden shards to shower all over him.

As the smoke cleared, he made a beeline to the final flight of stairs to get to the third floor library.

He practically flew through the steps, remembering how one of his bullies actually fell back and hit him with his buttocks to the face while the rest of his posse yucked it up.

Those bastards. Make a fool of him, would they? He'd show them. He'd show them all!

He burst through the library's double doors so hard they flew right off of their hinges.

He targeted more of his freshmen classmates, specifically the ones who teased and bullied him while he mostly electrocuted and flung like rag dolls anyone else that got in his way.

Many of the students were wise enough to stay back, hide, or run away from him.

Alas, the more his power grew the more he couldn't control it. There was bound to be some collateral damage here and there. He honestly didn't know his own strength. Not at this point.

Then there they were. The people who regularly appeared on his "snitch list" to teachers so that they'd stop bothering him but found ways to mess with him regardless.

Steven Catimbang. Sheila Bernal. Isaiah Cuevas. Matthew Lim. Regina Mariano.

Florante spotted them before they went and hid in the computer section of the library or tried to blend in with the rest of the fleeing crowd of students.

Steven was the one who pulled the butt-to-the-face prank on him.

He found Steven at the computer table as he was about to hide under it.

Galang shot Catimbang in time with a bolt to the posterior, destroying the lower half of his body and leaving the upper half crawling in the floor, crying bloody tears and begging for his life (even though it was too late for him).

This was getting seriously fucked up. Goddamn. What was with this dream?

As for Sheila, he found her under another table of the library.

She was the girl from another section who, as he and his boy classmates finished up from their swimming class for P.E. (gender separated), jeered at him and his lack of a bulge on his swimming trunks.

He was jeered relentlessly by his classmates for months after that remark regarding his manhood.

He asked Bernal if she remembered the swimming pool incident, and she just stared blankly at him.

"W-Who are you...? Pl-Please, don't kill me! I'll do anything...!"

She didn't even remember him.

Seeing how big of mouth she had, he decided to suck the air from out of her, vacuuming it right out of her lungs with his powers until she suffocated. He instantly regretted it after seeing the horrified face she made and the blue tinge of her face and whole body.

He moved on, his head throbbing and his finger twitching with static and sparks.

As for Isaiah Pascual, he tried scampering towards the window, but Galang caught him by the collar. "I don't know how you're doing all this, bro, but we're friends, right? I always talked to you! Spare me, man!"

Florante replied, "You abandoned me when I needed you the most. I tried to fit in with you and your group, but you were always so distant."

Pascual kicked Galang by the groin and attempted to run away, jeering, "Yeah, right! Like I'd ever be friends with...!" only to be cut off with his head exploding from one of Florante's light bullets.

"...Yeah. Why'd I ever delude myself into thinking you were my friend?" Florante felt something warm drip on his face. It was Pascual's blood.

He resisted the urge to hurl, looking away at the mess he made of his traitor of a former friend.

Florante wanted to spare Pascual but Pascual made fun of him.

Meanwhile, Matthew Lim cried out, "Leave me alone! I never did anything to you, Flor!" before Florante reminded him, "You made fun of my accent when speaking English. You told people about how when I talked to them, I couldn't stare them in the eye."

"Th-That's it? Dude, we barely even talk or interact! It was Jacinto! Gerry's the one who's always messing with you, dude...!"

He turned Lim into a mangled mess by shooting the ceiling and letting debris fall on him. He turned away as soon as he saw the blood pool from underneath the rubble, before the smoke from the wreckage even cleared.

Then there was Regina Mariano. She once compared him to a baby with fetal alcohol syndrome found on their pamphlet about the side effects of drugs and alcohol.

He hated the teasing she caused back then. But he could barely look her in the eyes now, and it wasn't because of his social anxiety.

No. Right now, she looked up at him with tears in her eyes, saying over and over, "I'm sorry. Please don't hurt me."

He then asked, "Do you believe in God?"

What he said made her cry harder, not knowing what to say except, "I'm so sorry!" over and over again.

He decided to give her a quicker, painless death than the rest, ramping up his gathered chi energy or whatever and releasing a beam of light that turned her to ash in a millisecond. The entire building shuddered from the impact of his forceful will.

...At least it was all a dream. Right? God, he hoped it was a dream.

A fantasy he could use to vent in a harmless way, with him not actually hurting anyone.

Not recognizing the rest of the faces hiding under the tables, smoke, and rubble, he walked out of the library (or what was left of it) in a daze.

He stared back at his cracked reflection on the glass divider of the computer section of the library. All he could see was a shadowy silhouette of a man with shining blue eyes, like a cornered animal at dusk.

Was that everyone? Had he punished all his bullies? No, wait. He still had a few more people to scratch off of his list.

He walked across the soccer field straight to the gym where they had their P.E. classes.

From the roar of the winds, he could idly hear what he surmised as Mrs. Mancenido, crying out for him to stop. Recognizing who he was. Afraid of what he had become.

'Sorry, ma'am,' he apologized to her in his mind. It was too late for him.

Good thing this was all a dream though.

He jumped and crashed right into the third floor basketball court that doubled as a volleyball court.

The gym was mostly empty. The students probably caught wind of what he was doing, even though it was hard to believe or imagine him having the otherworldly powers necessary for this school massacre to take place.

As the winds parted and the smoke cleared, he was greeted by a metal pipe to the back of his skull from out of nowhere.

He turned to see John Sarmiento put up his dukes at him, pipe in hand. "You son of a bitch. Did you kill her, Flor?"

"...Who?" he dared ask even though he knew who he was talking about.

"Laura, you asshole! Why'd you kill her?! How the hell did you turn into... this?"

Florante caught the pipe and used it to conduct millions of volts of electricity at John before answering the convulsing student's question with, "Because she was a bitch to me."

Ah. Sarmiento. He remembered him. They were being ferried around by the same school service. They were bus mates (actually, jeepney mates), in a sense.

Instead of spending gas money driving the kids to school, their parents opted to save money by paying someone with a jeepney to fetch them and other kids around their village from house to house in order to drive them straight to Fatima School.

They weren't neighbors but they lived in the same suburb.

He remembered Sarmiento pranking him, putting cockroaches in his bag like an asshole then denying ever doing it. He was also one of the guys who encouraged him to draw Laura "in the nude" from his imagination when he was just making a sketch of her.

The nerve of him, acting the hero now when he was nothing but a villain to him all this time.

"That is for pranking me with those cockroaches."

Sarmiento spat blood all over Florante's face despite his body writhing in agony. "Really? You're going kill me just for that, you psycho? Like you killed Laura? God damn, you're a petty son of a...!"

Galang then slammed John to the ground with a sickening crunch. Squashed like a bug. A cockroach, even.

How appropriate.

He looked at his wristwatch, amazed that it still functioned after all his effort as well as his use of thunderbolts and electrical shocks.

This really was a dream, then, or else his watch would've ended up busted long ago.

Regardless, he'd been at it with his raging rampage of revenge for almost 40 to 45 minutes. The whole school was in bedlam thanks to the walking pacific storm that was him.

Someone soft and sweet-smelling yet hard-bodied grabbed Florante from behind in a Full-Nelson hold, arms interlocked from under his armpits and hands clasped behind his neck.

"I always knew you were a little psycho," said someone from behind him. Someone... female.

Her words were full of venom but her melodic voice was music to his ears.

Shamed as he was to admit it, this was the closest to female contact he ever had in his life. Probably to no one's surprise in Fatima, given his bad reputation as a friendless weirdo.

Wait, he recognized that voice.

It was Laura's other best friend aside from Jenny. Kelly Mendoza. A promising freshman volleyball player rising in the ranks of their team. One of Laura's best friends.

He then felt something sharp pierce through his uniform. For the first time all throughout his dream, he felt pain. Searing, gnawing pain.

He doubled over in time to realize who had stabbed him with a pocket knife.

It was Mark Zuniga. Gerry Jacinto's second-in-command. Or best friend. Whichever.

The other tough guy of First Year St. Francis of Assisi charged at Florante while he was distracted by Kelly grabbing hold of him so tightly, her breasts pressed close to his back.

Regardless, Florante winced and wheezed from the damage that Zuniga had wrought, gnashing his teeth in agony and indignation.

Another villain wanted to play the hero. Just like a bully who'd mess with you until you hit him back, so now suddenly he was the victim and you were the one who was in the wrong.

This guy. The audacity of this asshole. He remembered him.

Every time they had an oral exam, class recitation, or had to go in front of the board to solve math problems or whatever, he'd be there with Gerry to jeer and mock Florante about his crush with Laura until she herself stopped associating with him.

His body shivered and folded in on itself in hatred, fear, and anger as Mendoza let go of him, his blood pooling on the floor.

"Why are you snarling? You're actually angry? You li'l bitch!" screamed Kelly at Florante's ear as she kicked him where Mark had stabbed him.

"How dare you. You killed Laura! Danny! Mr. Nepomuceno! John! Who knows how many others in the library and classrooms! You're a monster! You have no right to be this angry, asshole! Don't play the victim now!"

Ha. He was the one playing the victim?

Mark stabbed him again, this time sticking his knife at Florante's back.

"As far as I'm concerned, he deserves all of his bullying," said Zuniga. "Not only is he a snitch. He's also a psycho. We were protecting Laura from weirdo creeps like him. No wonder he has no friends."

Galang also remembered that one time, when he was alone in the mall, Zuniga chanced upon him with his own girlfriend, saying, "Aw, still no GF, Flor?"

He then overheard them make fun of him behind his back as an awkward virgin who was fated to be forever alone.

Come to think of it, the girl he was with probably was the same one holding him back with a wrestling move.

"You should've killed yourself instead, since no one would care if you died!" said Zuniga.

That was the last straw.

This fucking bastard. This bitch. This wasn't the first time Zuniga told him to kill himself. Even before Florante went on a murder spree, he already told him the same words.

It was amazing what monsters people ended up becoming when treating those they believe were monsters themselves.

First, he blew the volleyball varsity player away into the roof and the sky with a blast of spiraling air, with her shrieking like a banshee all the while. She ended up pretty high up before she came crashing back down.

With a sickening thud.

Florante averted his eyes from the harsh and inevitable crash from the screaming Kelly.

Instead, he focused his attention on Zuniga. His bully who stood a good few inches above him and several inches thicker in musculature than him seemed smaller somehow as he floated in the air with static and sparks.

Galang didn't know what sort of face he made, but it elicited a gape-mouthed, wide-eyed look of what he presumed was awe on the part of one of his worst bullies in school.

It felt so good seeing the tables turned on him for once. Even though it was a dream.

Yet it also felt anti-climatic shooting him to oblivion with five bolts of energy from one hand when usually one or two was enough to blast entire classrooms into smithereens.

"FLORANTE!"

Florante heard his name echo across the wrecked basketball court from a familiar booming voice. A voice he'd heard countless times, mocking him. Haunting him like a resentful ghost. The voice of his biggest, most savage of bullies and critics.

Geronimo "Gerry" Jacinto.

Each and every one of his fingertips then grew hot with growing power and energy. Instead of five shots, he wanted to shoot his whole payload of ten pure light bullets unto the bastard who made his time in Fatima a Living Hell.

Gerry wasn't seething with anger like Mark was. For someone who just saw the murder of his best friend (and best friend's girlfriend), he had a pretty smug smirk on his face.

Florante breathed out a sigh of relief. This definitely was a dream or else the real Gerry would've reacted more severely to what he had wrought.

He faced off with the huge and lanky bully who'd normally push him around with ease. Finally, he could push back. At last, he could fight back and then some.

Galang fired off all ten bullets of light energy and plasma straight at Gerry, expecting them to turn him into ash or a shadow on the floor, if not turn the entire gym into a smoking pile of rubble.

There was no kill like overkill, after all.

However, to Galang's surprise, Jacinto shrugged off the miniature comets like specks of water or rain, the bolts of power exploding behind him and giving his bullish rush an extra boost care of the resulting simultaneous shockwaves from ten blockbuster-tier explosions.

The tall basketball player charged and tackled the nerdy asthmatic, who could only stand there, jaw metaphorically unhinged in shock, before a meaty punch on the same jaw literally unhinged it from its socket.

"SHUSHMARYOSHEP!" Florante called out, wincing as he snapped his jaw back into place with palm. It looked so easy to do in the movies, but when you did it yourself, they never tell you about the toothache-like pain of attempting such a move afterwards.

Meanwhile, the sneering Gerry mimicked and repeated his "catchphrase" to his face, mocking him. "'Susmaryosep'? What are you, an old lady attending mass at Quiapo Church?" He laughed his heart out.

Ooof. Even in his dreams, his nightmare of a bully still had the upper hand?!

Grinding his teeth in frustration, Galang willed lighting strikes to appear and hit Jacinto over and over while at the same time charging compressed pinpoint spheres of energy above each and every finger.

Was this hitting two birds with one stone? No, it was hitting one bird with all the stones he could get his hands on.

His metaphor ultimately didn't work in the end after he missed Jacinto by a mile then got hit himself by his bully's shuddering sledgehammer punches, unable to retaliate or shoot any of his bullets that leveled most of the high school building earlier on.

"You really are a virgin with rage, aren't you? Mr. Sensitive. Mr. 'The whole world is against me. Oh woe is me.'"

Florante ended up curled into a ball, remembering his mother hitting him with his father's belt whenever he misbehaved as a child.

Still, for some reason, he was still more afraid of his mom than this tall, beefy alpha male who turned him into a punching bag.

"You're blaming us for you having no friends? Let me guess, you think it's us and not you that have mental problems. Everybody else is the asshole. You're the saint here! You psycho war-freak!"

Florante grit his teeth, afraid his jaw would get dislocated or altogether broken by Jacinto's hammer fists. Vaguely, he remembered hearing how his bully also trained in boxing as a hobby.

Throughout the haze of pain and what seemed like endless fists raining down upon him, he realized something.

Somehow, someway, Gerry gained the same special superpowers as he did, allowing him to keep up with him. Or even surpass him.

Jacinto beat and ground him to a pulp, breaking his right hand, cracking several of his ribs, punching his face until one of his eyes swelled shut, bending his leg at an awkward angle, and triggering his asthma to the point that the mere act of breathing felt like torture.

Once again, the popular kid at the center of everything was beating up the little guy that no one liked. As usual. This was natural selection in action.

"Make the effort to change or face the consequences of your own bad behavior, moron! If everyone in society is laughing and condemning you, is it really society's fault? Or is there a chance you're the one who's being the insecure jerk?"

Gerry slammed Florante's face and body into the devastated basketball court, making the entire third floor of the building shudder from the impact. "Apologize now, and maybe I'll consider sparing your life."

'Apologize...?' Florante thought while on the brink of unconsciousness, the darkness seeping through the sides of his blurring vision.

He then wondered if going unconscious in a dream meant waking up in real life.

Even in his dreams, Jacinto got the better of him. The charming bully you never saw in TV shows and movies who made you think you deserved being bullied by him.

Galang couldn't humiliate Gerry with a joke that made the whole class laugh or embarrass him in front of Laura the way they did to him. Not in real life and not in his fantasy.

This was what he learned all throughout his stay at Fatima High.

People would torture you. People would turn you into an outcast. And if you were to retaliate, they'd declare you the bad guy.

Florante once remembered punching the head of one of his bullies for messing with him for so long, only for him to get in trouble and end up in the principal's office because his bully dared claim to be the victim instead.

It was a good thing a teacher from his last school caught his bullies bullying him red-handed, allowing him to write down the names of those who teased him so that they'd cut it out.

However, this only ended up giving him the reputation of being a snitch back in his former alma mater.

He could never win. Damned if he told on his bullies and damned if he kept silent about the bullying. It wasn't fair.

Well then, screw being fair. He had enough.

In reality, he couldn't take his revenge on Jacinto in a fair, reciprocal manner. Instead, Florante could only vent his frustrations at him or the "him" that existed in his mind this way. Through a nightmarish power fantasy about revenge.

His coping mechanism was having violent dreams. Either that, or punching the wall again and getting scolded by his mother for breaking either the wall or his fist.

As Jacinto prepared to knock him out or worse, Florante saw his opening.

With his remaining healthy left hand flowing with pinpoint spheres of energy at each fingertip, Galang thrust his clawed hand and every single finger into Jacinto's broad chest, drawing blood.

"...Apologize? Yeah, sure. I'm sorry I ever met you. Go to Hell."

His hot fingers dug deeper and deeper into Jacinto's chest even as the bully kept punching his already broken face and body into ground beef. He just wouldn't let go.

"LET GO, FLOR! LET GO! I ain't joking! FUCK!" the punches became more rapid. Stronger. Harder. Faster. Panicked. There was actual fear in Gerry's eyes for once.

It felt so satisfying to see him like this.

Galang could feel Jacinto's heart pound at the same time as his own excited pulse. He gripped the heart tightly then pulled.

From inside Gerry's chest, Galang shot his five energy bullets simultaneously, which fried the jock's insides and made the entire top half of his body explode into electric fire, guts, muscles, tendons, blood, and giblets.

The hint of ozone permeated the air along with the smell of burnt human flesh.

As what was left of Jacinto's lifeless corpse fell to the ground with a wet thud, Florante heaved a relieved sigh, the pelting rain falling from the large gaping hole in the ceiling (practically a skylight) washing the blood, sweat, and tears from his beat-up body and face away.

It was all just a dream. A fantasy. A way for him to vent from all the stress of his real-life bullying.

Everything he had done so far were victimless crimes against, well, imaginary straw-men (and straw-women).

...Right?

***

As Florante strode through the pure devastation of what was once Fatima High that he left behind in his wake, he felt unsatisfied somehow. Empty. Hollow.

Was that it? He got his revenge against the people who wronged him. What now?

He looked at the consequences of his actions and cringed. That feeling was familiar.

Like the aftermath of a storm. Or a temper tantrum when he was about 6 or 7 years old.

It felt cathartic to release all that pent-up anger and frustration he couldn't verbalize or express at any of his classmates normally, but now he felt a huge amount of guilt weigh him down.

Was any of this called for? What was he thinking?

Instead of relief, he felt like he did whenever he lost his temper when he was a toddler, only to end up hurting those around him or humiliating himself.

He went too far. He overdid it.

This wasn't "Even-Steven". This wasn't fair. Well, for him, some of them were, like how it felt satisfying to grind Zuniga into the ground like that.

No, no. What was he thinking? They bullied him and he killed them in return. That was an overreaction. He made things worse instead of better.

This wasn't him. He was a nice guy. Dealt a bad hand by fate. Born a social outcast with social anxiety and awkwardness around people.

He didn't really want to hurt anyone, but his temper always got the better of him, leading him to do things he wouldn't otherwise do.

Florante walked outside the entrance gates of Our Lady of Fatima School of Mandaluyong, his head in a daze. He could hear the wheeze and whistle of his asthma from under his breath after every exhale.

Everything was quiet. The whole school was a wreck. It felt like his throbbing brain was slamming itself right into his skull, demanding release.

He might've been in shock. For a minute or two, he didn't know where he was or what had happened.

He then heard a voice say, "I found you. You naughty little devil."

The apparition of a beautiful girl with long, flowing hair and wings-shaped water cascading behind her like a cape emerged from the rain and mist.

He asked her, "Who are you?!"

As she stared at Florante with an unreadable expression, she whispered, "Archangel Raphael," which made him remember the comic books he drew about the four archangels.

Who was she? Why was her face familiar? She was so gorgeous.

"This is the end of the line for you. I won't let you hurt anyone else."

She reminded him of Laura Reyes.

Wait. Laura? As in the girl he met on the first day of school that he had a crush on? The same Laura that he had just... murdered?

Like a bolt out of the blue, he remembered everything he'd done an hour ago.

Laura had awakened to supernatural powers like Florante had and transformed into the Archangel Raphael to avenge the deaths of all the people he just killed, including her.

She was there to take him away. Probably to kill him. Give him karmic justice for all that had transpired.

He felt the corners of his mouth quirk. This was all probably for the best. Let his crush finish him off and pay for his crimes. Let her become his Angel of Death.

Wait, so why was she Raphael instead of Azrael?

Faster than he could even fathom or wonder why she was named after the Angel of Healing instead of the Angel of Death, Raphael flew towards him with watery tendrils.

Everything became a blur from that point on when he and Archangel Raphael finally faced off.

His life then flashed before his eyes.

And then he finally woke up.

Thank God.

***

What a weird, horrible dream.

Yet another dream in a series of dreams. Perhaps nightmares, even.

Not night terrors, though. You didn't remember night terrors after waking up.

He rubbed the rheum from his crusty eyes, got hold of a pen and paper (notebook), and wrote down what had happened in his latest dream on his dream journal.

That one was a doozy.

What was wrong with him, dreaming up such scenarios? He told himself that he'd never do such a thing in real life. Not only because he didn't want to but because he couldn't.

No one developed superpowers like this except in fiction. Fan fiction. Self-insert fan fiction. This was obviously a dream. A dream a psycho would come up with but a dream nonetheless.

A dream about how the crush who rejected him just killed him after he killed her first.

His dream was indeed just a manifestation of his longing to belong.

Apparently, it was all a "fever dream" of Florante's. He ended up not going to school that day because of how high of a fever he had, which was also compounded by his asthma.

The feverish asthmatic called in absent for three days until he recovered.

Ugh. At least he'd have a break from all his bullying at Fatima High.

***

Three days after his fever dream, he went back to school. His prison.

For an introvert like him, home was freedom and the outside was maximum penitentiary.

It was in Fatima High School in Mandaluyong where he now found himself exiled. He was left in a prison city. Heaven for others and hell for him.

As usual, it rained hard. It was the rainy season during June in the tropical Philippines, after all.

On the plus side, because it was raining, he didn't have to deal with the weekly morning flag ceremony every Monday, with everyone gathered around the concrete stadium under the hot sun. He had his morning classes instead.

He didn't view the rain as an omen of things to come. Just something unavoidable and inconvenient given the season. He'd already said his goodbyes to the sun back in summer.

The only people he could hang out with were the Dead Kids, and even then he could only do so during lunchtime and through the Art Club. Most of the time, he was left to his own devices with the classmates he loathed.

He detested Fatima High School. He loved Pasig. For the most part, anyway.

He was not a big fan of the river of mud and vegetation known as the Pasig River. When it flooded, it had waters with the consistency of chocolate milk. The chocolate milk river. 'Don't drink from it, though,' he mused.

Regardless, he remained the new guy in town. In a new school. A freak. No student there was anyone he grew up with. He had to make friends quick or else he'd end up a pariah like in his last school.

However, for whatever reason, his classmates were somehow more distant to him now than before. Usually, they took the time to mess with him.

Now? They seemed to go out of their way to ignore him.

Did something happen again? Like the time after P.E. class, all the boys in the changing room noticed his undershirt was threadbare to the point of being see-through, so they teased him and called him a male stripper?

He briefly considered the chance of them having the same nightmare as him massacring students left and right before waving the thought off.

'As if that'd ever happen.'

On one hand, this was just par for the course with all the bullying he went through so far in high school. On the other hand, it seemed somehow different. They were actually leaving him alone for once, which was kind of a refreshing change.

He was still the social pariah, but at least they weren't calling him names or making him the butt of their jokes as usual.

That was on the plus side. On the "minus" side of things, he still ate alone at lunch. None of the Dead Kids were available and he didn't have Art Club that day.

Where did they go? Did something happen? He had hoped he wasn't kicked out of the group or anything, like what had happened to him and the gang of Laura and Gerry after the "nude" drawing incident.

Maybe if he were better looking, he'd have more confidence and friends? Like a sporty, tall kind of guy instead of a normal guy who was just... there? However, no matter how good he appeared, being a crybaby beyond the age of 4 years old was never a good look anyway.

If only he were manlier then perhaps girls would look his way without eyes of disdain, pity, or disinterest. Maybe. He didn't want to think about it. It made him cringe in embarrassment.

Instead, he ended up being a tan-skinned, brown-eyed, and stringy-haired kid with an almost bowl-cut hair parted in the middle. A total geek, in short.

***

That Thursday, school sucked as usual. You'd think Florante's impromptu three-day sabbatical would improve things, but they didn't.

On second thought, maybe it did.

Many of his classmates had thankfully gotten sick and tired of messing with him, with all those tough guy jocks and bullies focusing their attention on his other classmates and their... imperfections.

Florante felt the pain of his fellow bullying victims as they were made fun of because of things like being too quiet, having eyes that were unusually big, or alleging one of them had... mental issues.

No, the First Year St. Francis of Assisi bullies weren't exactly politically correct with their insults.

With that said, perhaps rather than a premonition, he should've been more worried about what had already happened. Like his fever dream he somehow couldn't forget.

Well, he kind of couldn't forget. As the day wore on, the details of the dream became hazy like with any other dream, but the summary of it remained fresh in his mind.

In order to vent, he gained supervillain-level powers in his dreams and killed his most of classmates, many of whom were his staunchest of bullies.

A disturbing fantasy but a fantasy nonetheless. A victimless crime that was all in his mind.

If only something unusual like that were to happen.

Not necessarily him doing a mass murder of the scope of The Peoples Temple in Jonestown. Sure, that was a different kind of massacre he read from one of the library books during recess, but a massacre nonetheless.

Something more like an exciting new adventure. New horizons for him. Now that he'd released all his pent-up rage in his dreams, perhaps he could delve into something more positive for once.

Like doing some oil painting (too expensive, though). Or finishing his unfinished comic book series, maybe by basing it on his dream journal (if only he had the time and motivation to make it).

'Note to self: Never tell anyone from my class that I keep a dream journal,' Florante thought. He was bullied enough already. No need to add that cherry on top of his shit sundae of a life.

Or maybe he could do something more fantastic, like him piloting a giant robot. Or him ending up with a harem of girls. Or him saving the world from the threat of annihilation by monsters.

Or something.

The dismissal bell then rung.

As his classmates started milling towards the exit, he willed himself to ignore the stares he felt at his back. It was the familiar feeling of being watched for the tiniest clumsy mistake, weird behavior, or angry outburst.

He heard idle chatter from the different cliques and groups formed within their class across the months they'd been together in one classroom, talking about where they wanted to eat or wished to go.

The malls of Mandaluyong were walking distance from their school, after all.

Unlike college in the Philippines or high school in the U.S., the Fatima private school had all the subjects taught in one classroom instead of students moving from one classroom to another. It was the teachers who moved from section to section or room to room.

They were more like schools in Japan, where one class full of students stayed in one classroom for the whole year. They didn't switch out and mingled with other sections in the same year except during club meetings, where students from different years and sections could join.

Nothing significant happened today. Nothing really changed. It was business as usual, even though his bullies at least let him off the hook for today.

As he was about to go to his school service at the school parking lot, the "something" he wished would happen finally happened.

He should've been careful what he wished for, to be honest.

As an aside, it was like déjà vu all over again.

A huge boulder that looked like a piece of the Fatima Grade School building fell right on the jeepney that served as his school service, crushing it in its weight.

"Wha...?" he said, his face draining of color as he remembered the school service driver there who once treated him to taho (Philippine snack food made of fresh soft/silken tofu, arnibal sweetener and flavoring, and black gelatinous sago pearls).

He turned around. The school he just exited ended up in ruins, with students running away everywhere screaming as mayhem ensued.

To be more specific, right above the school floated an unfathomable monster with two gigantic eyeballs sitting atop a body made of a mountain of minced meat and long tangled spaghetti pasta that undulated and wrapped themselves around the nearest buildings and hapless people like a dense forest of guts and intestine.

Damn. To think, spaghetti was his favorite food too.

It was like he was losing his mind just looking at that incomprehensible thing, much less try to describe it.

His thoughts zipped a mile a minute, going from the horrible realization that his fellow school service students in Pasig and the jeepney driver had been crushed to death to Fatima School itself getting demolished by a ridiculous-looking giant monster.

Wait, did he fall asleep again? Was he indulging in another one of his secret "edgy" fantasies he'd never dare (nor could) do in real life? Or share with anyone because he might be sent to a mental hospital afterwards?

That must've been what happened. None of this was real.

His fever dream still fresh in his mind, he gingerly moved forward instead of away from the tentacle monster even as students and teachers (as well as other faculty members and staff) of all ages ran away from it.

He felt compelled to do so, feeling the same way as he had in his fantasy. It was too unreal for his mind to wrap around it as actually happening.

The (for lack of a better name) giant spaghetti monster crawled across the parking lot like kudzu grass, moving from one building to the next and crushing them under its weight like saltine or soda crackers.

The creature didn't so much move around as grew so that its fleshy red membrane of a body with bulging giant eyeballs could transfer itself from one position to the next, like a vine or flowering plant would but sped up.

Its pasta tentacles flooded the streets of Shaw Boulevard and St. Francis Street with its endless, root-like tendrils and tentacles of varying sizes, resulting in a heavy traffic jam. It appeared to be headed towards the nearest mall.

Why though?

He stopped running towards the monster after seeing it swallow up several students in its sea of viscera, guts, and intestinal entanglements. Some of them kids from Fatima Grade School who hung out after dismissal for far too long.

A few of them were his fellow students from high school. Most of them were unfamiliar or vaguely familiar faces. One in particular caught his eye.

A bespectacled, short-haired girl climbed and practically swam in the disgusting sea of oily pasta in order to reach the eye balls of the strange eldritch horror.

Brave of her to do so, but her face looked familiar.

Wait a minute.

It was Jenny! Jennifer Tolentino. The girl he spared in his dream before he "massacred" his bullies.

The Italian dish of a monster saw her just in time to wrap a multitude of its tendrils around her neck, arms, and limbs. Like with many other students and teachers in its noodle grasp

The one girl in their class who was nice to him was about to die.

Before he knew it, Florante found himself running towards the monster instead of away from it.

Was it out of morbid curiosity or a death wish? He couldn't tell.

Like in his dream, he shot out bolts of lightning and reverberating shockwaves of thunder at the living spaghetti creature, freeing up many of the students in its suffocating grasp.

He even shot one of the creature's eyes and cut through its tendrils in time to get even Jenny loose, catching her right in his arms after she fell.

"...F-Flor!" she exclaimed as he landed on his feet while holding her in a bridal carry. "Y-You saved me!"

He felt his cheeks grow warm as he gently put her back to the ground on her own two feet. He then faced away from her, at a loss for words.

"Thank you!" he heard her say from behind him, which made him mutter, "Y-You're welcome," under his breath.

This was it.

He didn't really want to kill all his classmates like in his other fever dream where he vented his frustrations over their bullying of him.

He wanted to be accepted. Respected. Validated. Loved. Or at least tolerated and left alone instead of having every single quirk or action he did scrutinized and mocked by his supposed peers.

He wanted his existence acknowledged at school. He wanted to be treated fairly like all the other students. He didn't want to hurt anyone. He just wanted to stop them from hurting him.

Maybe he could get one or two close friends as well. That wouldn't hurt.

His resentment (and imagination) merely got the better of him in that nightmare of his.

His confidence boosted, he then charged at the monster wreaking havoc all over the street like mountains of spilled Italian food, intending to fry it into charcoal.

"Gabriel, watch out...!" Jenny screamed.

"Gabriel...?" he repeated, only to have tentacles shoot out from behind him, stabbing him in the back.

He let out a small exhale, choking at the air he suddenly couldn't breathe.

The monster did a sneak attack on him, he realized too late. It spread its noodle limbs into the nearest drain then shot it up where he couldn't see.

He then saw the world spin all around him, from sky to concrete to car to dirt to van to pillar to post and back again to the sky in an infinite loop.

He got dragged and flung around until he felt the spaghetti monster's tendrils snap like lizard tails, hurling him to the roof of a Toyota Tamaraw FX utility vehicle.

Tears streamed down his eyes as his whole body throbbed except his legs, which horrified him. He suffocated in pain, unable to even groan.

Had the spaghetti monster turned him to roadkill? What sort of nightmare was this? His powers from his previous dream failed him, and now he felt death creep in the edges of his blurry vision.

Hah. Served him right.

That was what he got thinking he could take on that nightmarish, tentacled pseudo-octopus. Shooting helpless students with no superpowers was way different from dealing with a giant incomprehensible mess of a leviathan that could fight back.

He then gasped as a feeling of euphoric relief enveloped him. The soothing warmth pierced through his being and spread across his body like a fever. He then reverted back to heart-rending pain as he finally felt his legs or what was left of them pulsate in pure agony.

He screamed. He cried. He clawed at the ground, gnashing his teeth.

Or maybe they were fine after all, as he soon felt okay enough to move his feet around, from his thighs and knees to his ankles and toes. He dared peer at himself, only to see bloody, torn pants draped over perfectly healthy legs, the frighteningly large laceration over his hamstring closing up like magic.

He then looked up to see Jenny Tolentino kneel over him in seeming prayer, a cool neon mist of light transferring from her body to his.

Wait. Was she... healing him? Was that what was happening? Like a healer from an RPG videogame? Man, this is one crazy-ass dream!

The girl with the glasses then said, "I'd hoped it wouldn't come to this."

"Jenny...?" Florante trailed off.

Jenny took a deep breath and said, "Listen up, Flor. You're an Ophanim."

"P-Pardon?" stuttered a flabbergasted Florante. "I'm a... what?"

"An angel. You're an angel without wings, Flor."

***

To Be Continued...

Fun fact: I actually made a Geocities site for this story once while considering turning it into a webcomic. Or at least I named the Geocities site after the title of this work, which featured a "Gabriel De Angeles" protagonist instead of a "Florante Galang" one at the time.

Farewell, Abdiel

#angel #demon #angels and demons #gabriel #florante galang #fantasy of evolution #self-insert #power fantasy

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gabriel-gabdiel · 4 years ago

Text

【Draft】 Fantasy of Evolution Chapter 2: The Dream Journal of a Wimpy Kid

Second chapter draft of my original work. Having no line breaks suck.

Florante walked outside the gates of Fatima School, his head in the clouds. Dark, nimbus clouds with scattered rain showers and thunderstorms followed him.

He must've blacked out earlier. What had just happened?

Everything was quiet. The whole school was a wreck. Did he get caught in a typhoon and only woke up just now to realize it, when everyone else had already evacuated?

His gut felt like it was on fire. His head, or perhaps his brain, throbbed like a second palpitating heart that beat in conjunction with his actual heart.

He hadn't the foggiest idea.

He looked at his hands. They were stained with blood.

Shit. What happened?! Was it his blood that...?

He then heard a voice say, "I found you. You naughty little devil."

The apparition of a beautiful girl with long, flowing hair and immaculate blue wings emerged from the rain and mist. He asked her, "Who are you?!"

As she stared at Florante with an unreadable expression, she whispered, "Archangel Raphael," which made him remember the comic books he drew about the four archangels.

Who was she? Why was her face familiar? She was so gorgeous.

She reminded him of Laura Reyes.

"This is the end of the line for you. I won't let you hurt anyone else, Flor."

Wait. She knew him?

Also, Laura. She looked like Laura! The same Laura that he had just... had just...!

Damn it.

"Prepare to die," she said.

It all came back to him in an instant.

***

Fantasy of Evolution

An Urban Fantasy Story by Abdiel

When dreams became nightmares.

Disclaimer: This work may reference copyrighted material, the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. It is believed that this constitutes a fair use of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. All copyrighted material referred to in this work belongs to their respective owners. All rights reserved.

***

Chapter 2: The Dream Journal of a Wimpy Kid

***

The summer before his first day at Fatima High School, Florante Galang actually read through the book, "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie after making a pariah of himself back in his old school.

His high school days were going to be much different from his lonely grade school days, when no one his age would talk to him and only people a year or two younger than him tolerated his presence.

The night before, he tried remembering the advice given to him by the book that included tip such as "Don't criticize, condemn or complain," "Give honest and sincere appreciation," and "Arouse in the other person an eager want."

He tried some of the tips on his own family, like his mother, but he must've missed a chapter or two. It didn't work. Or rather, his attempts at "Get the other person saying 'yes, yes' immediately," and "Ask questions instead of direct orders," led to yet another misunderstanding that led to him getting punished. Again.

A flying footwear to the head, to be exact. She also said something about him talking back to his parents and being disrespectful.

Or maybe he should consider the self-help book's advice less as a surefire way to manipulate his mother to say yes to her increasing his allowance and more like helpful tips to make himself more appealing to people.

If used correctly, of course.

He did his memorization and "studying" of the self-help book in his bedroom located on the east portion of their abode, with the facade and front yard of their bungalow facing north and his parents' bedroom at the southwest portion.

He used to share his room with his two older sisters but they soon moved to their own rooms as they got enough money to expand their home.

It was a familiar room that belonged to him exclusively around Grade 5 to 7. He couldn't remember. The linoleum floor, the cream walls, the gray ceiling with discolored tiled patterns on it where the beams supporting them were supposed to be, and the red curtains were all part of his childhood.

The Galangs' humble abode originally had two bedrooms, one bathroom, a kitchen, and barely a garden plus a plot of undeveloped land with pebbles and other smooth stones over it.

This below sea level part of their property was then slowly filled up with land so that the whole house would rise above the street, leading the construction of a second part of the home with two more bedrooms and an extra bathroom as well as a garage for the family car.

With the money his mother earned from their short-lived stint with selling goods through a "sari-sari" store and she got from her parents (his grandparents) on top of the ones she saved from his father's engineer work, they were able to invest in half a house and turn it into a full house, so to speak.

The most notable changes on the bedroom was how it once had two beds but now it only had one bed. The mirror still had the "Santo Niño" statue there, which he never looked at directly because it gave him the creeps. However, he would never admit it to his prayerful family.

Regardless, he attempted memorizing and taking to heart many of the lessons the book could offer him, but like any other 14-year-old boy his short attention span ended up his downfall.

All of that was for naught, of course. His nightmarish bullying in grade school only got worse in high school.

One morning in Fatima High, chaos ensued. All hell broke loose.

It was like something out of a movie.

He maneuvered through the heavy traffic jam of the road like a motorcycle delivery man in a hurry, moving through every nook and cranny with the grace of a swan and the aggressiveness of a duck. Unnoticed by the cars, vans, jeepneys, and trucks around him.

For whatever reason, he ended up with superpowers right off of a superhero comic.

It was just a dream, after all.

In this dream, anything is possible, including gaining powers like those of angels, demons, and gods, thus allowing him to wreak havoc on his most hated high school.

Instead of stopping crime or saving people, he did the exact opposite upon his discovery of his abilities. He instead committed crime and damned everyone in his path.

He idly wondered why in comics and manga, the hero with superpowers almost always ended up becoming vigilantes or supernatural policemen. It was more realistic for them to do what he was doing now, as though he'd just won the lottery and he was about to splurge on the nearest sports car or mansion.

His list of bullies remained fresh in his mind. His nightmare scenario had become their nightmare scenario. The resident timid freak, "quiet kid", and communal punching bag could now punch back.

One thing came to his mind as he approached Fatima High.

'I have been abused all my life to the point where I don't trust humans.'

He couldn't wait to test them out on actual humans. Fragile, squishy humans.

Because of how unbelievable everything was, he presumed it was all a dream. A blurry fantasy borne out of his frustration from being rejected by his classmates and seemingly the entire school campus.

He stopped mid-stride. Before him was a familiar face.

It was the face of Jennifer "Jenny" Tolentino. She was a petite, small-breasted, intelligent, talkative, and capable girl who was one of the first students to befriend Florante.

The only girl who was kind to him.

"'Sup, Flor. You're here early. Whatcha up to?" the bespectacled girl asked with an inquisitive head tilt. "You look like you're in a hurry."

Florante smiled and chuckled. Although he still hated that girly nickname his classmates gave him, he nevertheless told her, "You're an okay gal, Jenny. Don't go to school today. For your own good."

"W-What do you mean by tha...? HEY!" she asked, but in the blink of an eye he was gone.

His power fantasy was about to begin.

Beyond the entrance gates of Fatima School, past the concrete quadrangle and basketball courts of the grade school campus and right into the high school one stood the girl of his dreams who turned his life into a nightmare.

Her hair danced from the gale wind he himself produced, like a proud brunette flag at full mast. Her slim arms showed some muscle definition but not in a bodybuilder type of way.

The beautiful girl who rejected him over a misunderstanding. The gorgeous young woman who ruined his social life in Fatima High.

Her perfectly symmetrical face had a gentle look to it. Or it did until she saw him.

There she was. Laura Reyes.

His first crush in high school. The one who ultimately rejected him.

She was a fit girl with sturdy legs and a wide, unabashed smile as she talked to several of their classmates. Her hourglass figure created the perfect feminine silhouette as she turned towards him.

He intended to spare her from his power fantasy rampage since he really did like her a lot. Before their friendship crumbled to dust with his accidental social suicide, they got along fine.

They weren't close friends but they could talk to each other.

Just as he was about to move past her though, she flinched at him and gave her a look of contempt.

"Stay away from me, you creep."

Florante snapped then and there, his body surging with electrical might that coursed through his crush's veins, electrocuting her to death.

He didn't go so far as to fry her to toast because it'd be a shame to see such a cute girl turn to ash or dust, but his angry outburst of power did kill her.

He hesitated after seeing the girl with fair skin and an angelic body wilt like a flower and fall like velvet unto the grassy ground of the soccer field, unmoving.

Beautiful in death as she was in life. She fell with the same grace as Evelyn Francis McHale did. The depressed woman who jumped from the Empire State Building on May 1, 1947, landing on a car roof.

Both appeared like they were resting or napping instead of dead, stuck in an idle daydream.

The boy beside her, a friend of hers from another section whose name eluded Florante, screamed and attacked him on instinct, even though he himself had trouble recognizing what had just happened.

Galang reacted thusly, shooting his attacker with twice the amount of electricity than he shot Laura, intending to fry him to ash.

The kid crumpled into a ball after Florante moved forward and punched him on the side, breaking his ribs. Perhaps also his spine. He soon lay motionless on the grass beside Laura.

Before he could finish him off, he heard gasps, screams, and murmurs from everyone who witnessed his crime.

What was he doing? Should he be doing this? Wasn't this wrong of him to do this? Should he stop? Turn himself in?

He gulped, exhaled, and heard a whistle from his breath. His asthma was acting up again. How ironic for an asthmatic like him to suddenly have wind powers.

He reassured himself that it was just a dream. Perhaps a lucid dream, but still just a dream. An illusion or perhaps delusion. A fantasy of him evolving and maturing.

His power fantasy.

His felt his body feel grow warmer and warmer, reaching a fever pitch as a cyclone or tornado formed around him. The clouds darkened above, the winds blowing seemingly from around him reshaping the sky, turning morning to seeming midnight.

A boy suddenly gaining superpowers from out of the blue to take revenge on his bullies? Surely this was the dream of an idle mind, regardless of whether he made it up during nighttime slumber or while daydreaming in his boring math class.

With that in mind, he indulged, laughing as he experimented upon the nearest of the students with his crackling lighting bolts and energy projectiles.

When he took control of the energy flowing though him, he could make his electrical powers shock the nervous systems of the surrounding students to the point of making them jump back like frightened cats or spooked frogs.

It was amusing in a darkly humorous sort of way.

He kept on moving forward, recalling his list of bullies in his mind.

Starting with the kids Laura was hanging out with. The popular kids.

Like Danny Malicdem. Florante chanced upon him walking down the stairs to where the first floor classrooms were.

Galang remembered Malicdem as his classmate who first teased him about his obvious crush with Laura right in front of her in the lunchroom, which led to her to talk to him less, thinking their every encounter had a hidden agenda on his part.

He was also the guy who suggested Florante draw Laura then lied to her about him drawing her in the nude. He was drawing her body first before putting on her clothes, dammit!

Florante wasn't as careful with using his powers on Danny as he was with Laura. He shot him full force with his energy bolt full of presumably millions of volts of electricity, turning him into a shadow on the pavement while the rest of the projectile exploded right through one of the nearby pillars like a bomb.

Like one of the victims of the Atomic Bomb, in fact.

Galang kept walking towards the inside of the building while various students ran away from him, not understanding how he was doing what he was doing.

In the hallway, as he walked with murderous intent, he then saw Mr. Neil Nepomuceno. Their social studies teacher who humiliated him in front of the class, shouting, "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!"

The teacher cried out pretty much the same thing before hollering out his catchphrase of, "Caramba!" and turning into a grotesque splatter of guts, gore, and giblets on the wall care of a careless yet supernaturally strong backhand.

Damn. He didn't know his own strength.

Galang couldn't even look at the mess that used to be Mr. Nepomuceno.

The school was in a panic. They had kids under the table. Screaming teachers. Security guards with guns shooting at Florante, but he blew them (literally) away without a second thought.

It was frighteningly easy to kill people his dream. He had to hold back a little bit. Savor the moment.

'Susmaryosep, I sure am screwed up.'

He went up the stairs, sparing several of his classmates he recognized but had no quarrel over. Forgiving them for laughing at the jokes of his bullies and targeting his bullies instead.

Was he not a Merciful God? An Angel of Mercy and Divine Retribution?

This culminated to him playing a practical joke on Florante during the flag ceremony. The sections were lined up by height in front of the Philippine flag every Monday.

One Monday, Hernandez and many of Florante's classmates lined up from only one line, leaving the line where Galang was much shorter and only about 5-6 people long.

"Hey, Flor. What's going on outside? Is there a storm? Are classes canceled?" Kyle asked Florante, who didn't respond as he approached him with malice.

He moved further down the second floor hallway right into the middle stairs. He heard more screams and the stampede of leather shoes. He silenced them by firing more bolts of energy across the open yard right on the balcony of the second floor hallway.

He then fired off missiles of light from all ten of his fingertips into the classrooms to his left, resulting in debris, pieces of plaster and concrete, and flaming wooden shards to shower all over him.

As the smoke cleared, he made a beeline to the final flight of stairs to get to the third floor library.

He practically flew through the steps, remembering how one of his bullies actually fell back and hit him with his buttocks to the face while the rest of his posse yucked it up.

Those bastards. Make a fool of him, would they? He'd show them. He'd show them all!

He burst through the library's double doors so hard they flew right off of their hinges.

He targeted more of his freshmen classmates, specifically the ones who teased and bullied him while he mostly shocked and flung like rag dolls anyone else that got in his way.

Many of the students were wise enough to stay back, hide, or run away from him.

Alas, the more his power grew the more he couldn't control it. There was bound to be some collateral damage here and there. He honestly didn't know his own strength. Not at this point.

There they were. The people who regularly appeared on his "snitch list" to teachers so that they'd stop bothering him but they found ways to mess with him regardless.

Steven Catimbang. Sheila Bernal. Isaiah Cuevas. Matthew Lim. Regina Mariano.

Florante spotted them before they went and hid in the computer section of the library or tried to blend in with the rest of the fleeing crowd of students.

Steven was the one who pulled the butt-to-the-face prank on him.

He found Steven at the computer table as he was about to hide under it. Galang shot Catimbang in time with a bolt to the posterior, destroying the lower half of his body and leaving the upper half crawling in the floor, crying blood and begging for his life (even though it was too late for him).

This was seriously fucked up. Goddamn.

As for Sheila, he found her under another table of the library. She was the girl from another section who, as his section of boys packed up from their swimming class for P.E. (gender separated), jeered at him and his lack of a bulge on his swimming trunks.

He was jeered relentlessly by his classmates for months after that remark regarding his manhood.

He asked Bernal if she remembered the swimming pool incident, and she just stared blankly at him. "W-Who are you...? Pl-Please, don't kill me! I'll do anything...!"

She didn't even remember him.

Seeing how big of mouth she had, he decided to suck the air from out of her, vacuuming it right out of her mouth until she suffocated. He instantly regretted it after seeing the horrified face she made and the purple tinge of her whole body.

He moved on, his head throbbing and his finger twitching with static and sparks.

As for Isaiah Pascual, he tried scampering towards the window, but Galang caught him by the collar. "I don't know how you're doing this, bro, but we're friends, right? I always talked to you!"

Florante replied, "You abandoned me when I needed you the most. I tried to fit in with you and your group, but you were always so distant."

"...Yeah. Why'd I ever delude myself into thinking you were my friend?" Florante felt something warm drip on his face. It was Pascual's blood.

He resisted the urge to hurl, looking away at the mess he made of his traitor of a friend.

Matthew Lim even cried out, "Leave me alone! I never did anything to you, Flor!" before Florante reminded him, "You made fun of my accent when speaking English. You told people about how when I talked to them, I couldn't stare them in the eye."

"Th-That's it? Dude, we barely even talk or interact! It was Jacinto! Gerry's the one who's always messing with you, man...!"

He turned Lim into a mangled mess by shooting the ceiling and letting debris fall on him. He turned away before the smoke from the wreckage cleared as soon as he the blood pool from underneath the rubble.

Then there was Regina Mariano. She once compared him to a boy with fetal alcohol syndrome found on their pamphlet about how drugs and alcohol could affect people's lives.

He hated the teasing she caused then. But he could barely look her in the eyes now, and it wasn't because of his social anxiety.

No. Right now, she looked up at him with tears in her eyes, saying over and over, "I'm sorry. Please don't hurt me."

He then asked, "Do you believe in God?"

This made her cry harder, not knowing what to say except, "I'm so sorry!" over and over.

He decided to give her a quicker, painless death than the rest, ramping up his gathered chi energy or whatever and releasing a beam of light that turned her to ash. The entire building shuddered from the impact of his forceful will.

...At least it was all a dream. Right?

A fantasy he could use to vent in a harmless way, with him not actually hurting anyone.

Not recognizing the rest of the faces hiding under the tables and the rubble, he walked out of the library (or what was left of it) in a daze.

Was that everyone? No, wait. He still had a few more people to scratch off of his list of bullies.

He walked across the soccer field straight to the gym where they had their P.E. classes.

From the roar of the winds, he could idly hear what he surmised as Mrs. Mancenido, crying out for him to stop. Recognizing who he was.

'Sorry, ma'am,' he apologized to her in his mind. It was too late for him.

Good thing this was all a dream though.

He jumped and crashed right into the third floor basketball court that doubled as a volleyball court.

It was mostly empty. The students probably caught wind of what he was doing, even though it was hard to believe or imagine him having the otherworldly powers necessary for this massacre to take place.

As the winds parted and the smoke cleared, he was greeted by a metal pipe to the back of his skull from out of nowhere.

He turned to see John Uson put up his dukes at him. "You son of a bitch. Did you kill her, Flor?"

"...Who?" he dared ask even though he knew who he was talking about.

"Laura, you asshole! Why'd you kill her?! How the hell did you turn into... this?"

Florante caught the pipe and used it to conduct millions of volts of electricity at John before answering the convulsing student's question with, "Because she was a bitch to me."

Ah. John Uson. He remembered him. They were being ferried around by the same school service.

Instead of spending gas money driving the kids to school, their parents opted to save money by paying a jeepney driver to fetch them and other kids around their village from house to house in order to drive them straight to Fatima.

They weren't neighbors but they lived in the same suburb.

He remembered Uson pranking him, putting cockroaches in his bag like an asshole. He was also one of the guys who encouraged him to draw Laura in the nude when he was just making a sketch.

The nerve of him, acting the hero now when he was nothing but a villain to him all this time.

"This is pranking me with those cockroaches."

Uson spat blood all over Florante's face despite his body writhing in agony. "Really? You're going kill me just for that, you psycho? Like you killed Laura? God damn, you're a petty son of a...!"

Galang then slammed John to the ground with a sickening crunch. Squashed like a bug.

How appropriate.

He looked at his wristwatch, amazed that it still functioned after all his effort and use of thunderbolts and electrical shocks.

This really was a dream, then, or else his watch would've ended up busted long ago.

Regardless, he'd been at it with his rampage for almost 40 to 45 minutes. The whole school was in bedlam thanks to the pacific storm that was him.

Someone soft and sweet-smelling yet hard-bodied grabbed Florante from behind in a Full-Nelson hold, arms interlocked from under his armpits and hands clasped behind his neck.

"I always knew you were a little psycho," said someone from behind him. Someone... female. Her words were full of venom but her melodic voice was music to his ears.

Shamed as he was to admit it, this was the closest to female contact he ever had in his life. Probably to no one's surprise in Fatima, given his bad reputation.

Wait, he recognized that voice. It was Laura's other best friend aside from Jenny. Kelly Mendoza. A promising freshman volleyball player rising in the ranks of their team. One of Laura's best friends.

He then felt something sharp pierce through his uniform. For the first time, he felt pain. Searing, gnawing pain.

He doubled over in time to realize who had stabbed him with a pocket knife.

It was Mark Silva. Gerry Jacinto's second-in-command. Or best friend. Whichever.

The other tough guy of First Year St. Francis of Assisi charged at Florante while he was distracted by Kelly grabbing hold of him so tightly, her breasts pressing close to his back.

Regardless, Florante winced and wheezed from what Silva had wrought, gnashing his teeth in agony and indignation.

Another villain wanted to play the hero. Just like a bully who'd mess with you until you hit him back, so now he was the victim and you were the one who was in the wrong.

This guy. The audacity of this asshole. He remembered him.

Every time they had an oral exam or had to go in front of the board, he'd be there with Gerry to jeer and mock Florante about his crush with Laura until she herself stopped associating with him.

His body shivered and folded in on itself in hatred, fear, and anger as Mendoza let go of him, his blood pooling on the floor.

"Why are you snarling? You're actually angry? You li'l bitch!" screamed Kelly at Florante's ear as she kicked him where Mark stabbed him.

Mark stabbed him again, this time sticking his knife at Florante's back.

"As far as I'm concerned, he deserves to be bullied," said Silva. "Not only is he a snitch. He's also a psycho. We were bullying him in self-defense. We were protecting Laura from weirdo creeps like him."

Galang also remembered that one time, when he was alone in the mall, Silva chanced upon him with his own girlfriend, saying, "Aw, still no GF, Flor?" He overheard them make fun of him behind his back as an awkward virgin who was fated to be forever alone.

Come to think of it, the girl he was with probably was the same one holding him back with a wrestling move.

"You should've killed yourself instead, since no one would care if you died!" said Silva.

That was the last straw.

This fucking bastard. This bitch. This wasn't the first time Silva told him to kill himself. Even before Florante went on a murder spree, he already told him the same words.

It was amazing what monsters people ended up becoming when treating those they believe were monsters themselves.

First, he blew the volleyball varsity player away into the roof and the sky, with her shrieking like a banshee all the while. She ended up pretty high up before she came crashing back down.

Florante averted his eyes from the harsh and inevitable crash from the screaming Kelly. He'd seen enough gore for one day.

Instead, he focused his attention on Silva. His bully who stood a good few inches above him and several inches thicker in musculature than him seemed smaller somehow.

Galang didn't know what sort of face he was making, but it elicited a gape-mouthed, wide-eyed look of he presumed was awe on the part of one of his worst bullies in school.

It felt so good seeing the tables turned on him for once.

It felt anti-climatic shooting him with five bolts of energy from one hand when usually one or two was enough to blast entire classrooms into smithereens. It was still overkill nevertheless.

"FLORANTE!"

Florante heard his name echo across the wrecked basketball court with the torn roof from a familiar booming voice. A voice he'd heard countless times, mocking him. Haunting him like a resentful ghost. The voice of his biggest, most savage of bullies and critics.

Geronimo "Gerry" Jacinto.

Each and every one of his fingertips grew hot with building power and energy. Instead of five shots, he wanted to shoot his whole payload of pure light unto the bastard who made his time in Fatima a Living Hell.

Gerry wasn't seething with anger like Mark was. For someone who just saw the murder of his best friend and best friend's girlfriend, he had a pretty smug smirk on his face.

Florante breathed out a sigh of relief. This definitely was a dream, or else the real Gerry would've reacted more severely to what he had wrought.

He faced off with the huge and lanky bully who'd normally push him around with ease. Finally, he could push back. Finally, he could fight back and then some.

Florante fired off all ten bullets of light energy and plasma straight at Gerry, expecting it to turn him into ash or a shadow on the pavement, if not straight off

There was no kill like overkill, after all.

"SHUSHMARYOSHEP!" Florante called out, wincing as he snapped his jaw back into place with hand. It looked so easy to do in the movies, but when you did it yourself, they never tell you about the toothache-like pain of attempting such a movie afterwards.

Meanwhile, the sneering Gerry mimicked and repeated his "catchphrase" to his face, mocking him. "'Susmaryosep'? What are you, an old lady attending mass in Quiapo Church?" He laughed his heart out.

Ooof. Even in his dreams, his nightmare of a bully still had the upper hand?!

Grinding his teeth in frustration, Galang willed lighting strikes to hit Jacinto over and over while at the same thing charging compressed pinpoint spheres of energy above each and every finger.

Hit two birds with one stone.

The problem was that his metaphor didn't work and he missed both birds by a mile when Jacinto did sledgehammer punches all over him, unable to retaliate or shoot any of his bullets that leveled most of the high school building earlier on.

"You really are a virgin with rage, aren't you? Mr. Sensitive. Mr. 'The whole world is against me. Oh woe is me.'"

Florante ended up curled into a ball, remembering his mother hitting him with the belt whenever he misbehaved. Still, for some reason he was still more afraid of his mom than this tall, beefy male turning him into a punching bag.

"You're blaming us for you ending up like an asshole? Let me guess, it's us not you. Everybody else is an asshole. You're the saint here! You psychotic murderer!"

He gritted his teeth as though afraid his jaw would get dislocated or altogether broken from Jacinto's hammer fists. Vaguely, he remembered hearing how his bully also trained in boxing as a hobby.

Throughout the haze of pain and what seemed like endless fists raining down upon him, he realized something.

Somehow, someway, Gerry gained the same special superpowers as he did, allowing him to keep up with him. Or even surpass him.

Once again, the popular kid at the center of everything was beating up the little guy that no one liked. As usual.

'Apologize...?' he thought while on the brink of unconsciousness, the darkness seeping through the sides of his blurring vision.

Even in his dreams, Jacinto got the better of him. The charming bully you never saw in TV shows and movies who made you think you deserved being bullied by him.

He couldn't humiliate him with a joke that made the whole class laugh or embarrass him in front of Laura the way they did to him. Not in real life and not in his fantasy.

This was what he learned all throughout his stay in Fatima High.

People would torture you. People would outcast you. And when you were to retaliate, they'd declare you the bad guy.

He remembered punching the head of one of his bullies for messing with him for so long, only for him to get in trouble and end up in the principal's office because his bully dared claim to be the victim instead.

It was a good thing a teacher caught his bullies bullying him one time, allowing him to write down the names of those who teased him so that they'd cut it out.

This only ended up giving him the reputation of being a snitch.

He could never win. Damned if he did and damned if he didn't. It wasn't fair.

Well then, screw being fair. He had enough.

In reality, he couldn't take his revenge on him in a fair, reciprocal manner. Instead, Florante could only vent his frustrations at him or the "him" that existed in his mind this way.

His coping mechanism was having violent fantasies. Either that, or punching the wall again and getting scolded by his mother for breaking either the wall or his fist.

As Jacinto prepared to knock him out or worse, Florante saw his opening.

With his remaining healthy left hand flowing with pinpoint spheres of energy at each fingertip, Galang thrust his clawed hand and every single finger into Jacinto's broad chest, drawing blood.

"...Apologize? Yeah, sure. I'm sorry I ever met you. Go to Hell."

He dug deeper and deeper even as Jacinto kept punching his already broken face and body. He wouldn't let go.

"LET GO, FLOR! LET GO! I ain't joking! FUCK!" the punches became more rapid. Stronger. Harder. Faster. More panicked. There was actual fear in his eyes for once.

It felt so satisfying to see him like this.

Galang could feel Jacinto's heart pound at the same time as his own excited pulse. He gripped the heart tightly then pulled.

From inside Gerry, Galang shot his five energy bullets simultaneously, which fried his insides and made the entire top half of his body explode into electric fire, guts, muscles, tendons, blood, and giblets, the hint of ozone noticeable in the air along with the smell of burnt human flesh.

As what was left of Jacinto's lifeless corpse fell to the ground with a wet thud, Florante heaved a relieved sigh, the rain from the large gaping hole in the ceiling (practically a skylight) washing the blood, sweat, and tears from his beat-up body and face away.

It was just a dream. A fantasy. A way for him to vent from all the stress of his real-life bullying.

Everything he had done so far were victimless crimes against, well, imaginary straw-men (and straw-women).

Right?

***

As Florante strode through the pure devastation of what was once Fatima that he left behind in his wake, he felt unsatisfied somehow. Empty. Hollow.

Was that it? He got his revenge against the people who wronged him. What now?

He looked at the consequences of his actions and cringed. The feeling was familiar. Like the aftermath of a storm. Or a temper tantrum when he was about 6 or 7 years old.

It felt cathartic to release all that pent-up anger and frustration he couldn't verbalize or express at his classmates normally, but now he felt a huge amount of guilt weigh him down.

Was any of this called for? What was he thinking?

Instead of relief, he felt like he did whenever he had a temper tantrum when he was a toddler, only to end up hurting those around him. He went too far. He overdid it.

This wasn't Even-Stevens. Well, some of them were, like how it felt satisfying to grind Silva into the ground like that. But for the most part, this wasn't fair. He made things worse instead of better.

This wasn't him. He was a good guy. Dealt a bad hand by fate. Born a social outcast with social anxiety and awkwardness around people.

He didn't really want to hurt anyone, but his temper always got the better of him, leading him to do things he wouldn't otherwise do.

Everything was quiet. The whole school was a wreck. It felt like his brain was slamming itself right into his skull, demanding release.

He might've been in shock. For a minute or two, he didn't know where he was or what had happened.

He then heard a voice say, "I found you. You naughty little devil."

The apparition of a beautiful girl with long, flowing hair and immaculate blue wings emerged from the rain and mist. He asked her, "Who are you?!"

As she stared at Florante with an unreadable expression, she whispered, "Archangel Raphael," which made him remember the comic books he drew about the four archangels.

Who was she? Why was her face familiar? She was so gorgeous.

"This is the end of the line for you. I won't let you hurt anyone else."

She reminded him of Laura Reyes.

Wait. Laura? As in the girl he met on the first day of school that he had a crush on?

The same Laura that he had just... murdered?

Like a bolt out of the blue, he remembered everything he'd done an hour ago.

Laura had awakened to supernatural powers like he had and turned or transformed into the Archangel Raphael to avenge the deaths of all the people he just killed, including her.

She was there to take him away. Probably to kill him. Give him karmic justice for all that had transpired.

He felt the corners of his mouth quirk. This was all probably for the best. Let his crush finish him off and pay for his crimes. Let her become his Angel of Death.

Wait, so why was she Raphael instead of Azrael?

Faster than he could even fathom or wonder why she was named after the Angel of Healing instead of the Angel of Death, Raphael flew towards him with watery tendrils.

Everything became a blur from that point on when he and Archangel Raphael finally faced off.

His life then flashed before his eyes.

And then he finally woke up.

Thank God.

***

What a weird, horrible dream.

Yet another dream in a series of dreams. Perhaps nightmares, even.

Not night terrors, though. You didn't remember night terrors after waking up.

He rubbed the rheum from his eyes, took a pen and paper (notebook), and wrote down what had happened in his latest dream on his dream journal.

That one was a doozy.

What was wrong with him, dreaming up such scenarios? He told himself that he'd never do such a thing in real life. Not only because he didn't want to but because he couldn't.

No one developed superpowers like this except in fiction. This was obviously a dream. A dream a psycho would come up with but a dream nonetheless.

His crush who rejected him just killed him after he killed her first.

His dream was indeed just a manifestation of his longing to belong.

Apparently, it was all a fever dream of Florante's. He ended up not going to school that day because of how high of a fever he had, which was also compounded by his asthma.

The feverish asthmatic called in absent for three days until he recovered.

Ugh. At least he'd have a break from his bullying at Fatima High.

Three days after his fever dream, he went back to school. His prison.

For an introvert like him, home was freedom and the outside was maximum penitentiary.

It was in Fatima High School in Mandaluyong where he now found himself exiled. He was left in a prison city. Heaven for others and hell for him.

As usual, it rained hard. It was the rainy season during June in the tropical Philippines, after all.

On the plus side, because it was raining he didn't have to deal with the weekly morning flag ceremony every Monday, with everyone gathered around the concrete stadium under the hot sun.

He had his morning classes instead.

He didn't view the rain as an omen of things to come. Just something unavoidable and inconvenient given the season. He'd already said his goodbyes to the sun back in summer.

He detested Fatima High School. He loved Pasig. For the most part, anyway.

He was not a big fan of the river of mud and vegetation known as the Pasig River. When it flooded, it had waters with the consistency of chocolate milk. The chocolate milk river.

'Don't drink from it, though,' he mused.

He didn't want to open up the can of worms of humiliation that happened to him day after day, in dreary weather at that.

He wished he could forget every day. Erase everything and end up with a clean slate every time.

If only. If only.

Most days were uneventful and boring anyway, if a bit awkward. He mostly had no one to talk to. People laughed behind his back. He felt extra conscious of himself, afraid of embarrassing himself or doing something cringe-worthy.

He'd actually improved from his grade school days because on top of being socially awkward, he was more than a bit of a crybaby to boot when he was younger.

Again, he was a spoiled brat who was a bit of a weirdo.

During nursery and kindergarten, he was particularly terrible. Almost like a toddler. He even embarrassed himself up on stage when he was assigned to memorize and recite a poem about picking up 50 pesos.

He must've been about 7 or 8 years old when it happened. Embarrassingly, he had the emotional maturity of a 2-3 year old at the time.

He didn't only cry back then. He bawled. He had a tantrum.

His tantrums at class got so bad that his mother had to be called in.

He was quick to anger, though. The smallest things could set him off. He wore his heart on his sleeve.

Naturally, his behavior wasn't conducive to getting friends. His only best friend at the time soon abandoned him for being such a crybaby weirdo.

In fairness to Florante, he somewhat improved and emotionally matured as he grew older. Instead of bawling, he'd only cry to himself. Soon, he'd only get misty eyed when his emotions got the better of him.

However, the fact that he was so sensitive made him a prime target for teasing and bullying.

What was worse was that when he was even younger he had no self-awareness, so by the time he got older, he could only scratch his head in puzzlement at why no one would be friends with him, why the girls in his school found him to be gross, or why he was bullied so often.

Hindsight was 20/20. A cringe-inducing 20/20.

He could only cringe in remembrance. He swore once he debuted in high school, he'd never again act like a huge... er... wimp.

Afterwards, from crying a lot to crying a little, he soon graduated to not crying at all but still feeling the blues whenever the popular kids and/or the bullies called him out on his... eccentricities.

This year's batch of Fatima High School freshmen had a total of 200 plus girls and boys occupying about 5 classrooms of about 40 or so students each.

It had its own grade school too, so many of the kids here had grown up together, give or take several students who were "accelerants" or those who moved from Grade 6 to high school without going through Grade 7 because of their good grades.

Regardless, he remained the new guy in town. In a new school. A curiosity. A freak. No one there was anyone he grew up with. He had to make friends quick or else he'd end up a pariah like in his last school.

However, for whatever reason though, his classmates were more distant to him than before. Usually, they took the time to mess with him.

Did something happen again? Like the time all the boys in his class noticed his undershirt was threadbare to the point of being see-through, so they teased him and called him a male stripper?

He briefly considered the chance of them having the same nightmare as him massacring students left and right before waving the thought off.

'As if that'd ever happen.'

On one hand, this was just par for the course with all the bullying he went through in high school. On the other hand, it was all somehow different. They were actually leaving him alone, which was kind of a refreshing change.

He was still the social pariah, but at least they weren't calling him names or making him the butt of the joke as usual.

That was on the plus side. On the "minus" side of things, he ate alone at lunch. None of the Dead Kids were available and he didn't have Art Club that day.

Where did they go? Did something happen? He hoped he wasn't kicked out of the group or anything, like what happened to Laura and Gerry after the nude drawing incident.

Maybe if he was better looking, he'd have more confidence? Like a sporty, tall kind of guy instead of a normal guy who was just there? However, no matter how good he looked, being a crybaby beyond the age of 4 years old was never a good look anyway.

If only he were manlier then perhaps girls would look his way without eyes of disdain, pity, or non-romantic attraction. Maybe. He didn't want to think about it. It made him cringe in embarrassment.

Instead, he was a tan-skinned, brown-eyed, and stringy-haired kid with an almost bowl-cut hair parted in the middle. A total geek.

That Thursday, school sucked as usual. You'd think his impromptu three-day sabbatical would improve things, but they didn't.

On second thought, maybe it did.

He felt their pain as they were made fun of because of things like being too quiet, having eyes that were unusually big, or alleging one of them had... mental issues.

No, the First Year St. Francis of Assisi bullies weren't exactly politically correct with their insults.

With that said, perhaps rather than a premonition, he should've been more worried about what had already happened. Like his fever dream he somehow couldn't forget.

Well, he kind of couldn't forget. As the day wore on, the details of the dream became hazy like in any other dream, but the summary of it remained fresh in his mind.

In order to vent, he gained superpowers in his dreams and killed his most of classmates, many of which were his staunchest of bullies.

A disturbing fantasy but a fantasy nonetheless. A victimless crime.

If only something unusual like that were to happen. Not necessarily him doing a mass murder of the scope of The Peoples Temple in Jonestown. Sure, that was a different kind of massacre he read from one of the library books during recess, but a massacre nonetheless.

Something more like an exciting new adventure. New horizons for him. Now that he'd released all his pent-up rage in his dreams, perhaps he could delve into something more positive.

Like doing some oil painting (too expensive, though). Or finishing his unfinished comic book, maybe by basing it on his dream journal (if only he had the time).

'Note to self: Never tell anyone from my class that I keep a dream journal,' Florante thought. He was bullied enough already. No need to add that cherry on top of his shit sundae of a life.

Or maybe something more fantastic, like him piloting a giant robot. Or him ending up with a harem of girls. Or him saving the world from the threat of annihilation by monsters.

Or something.

The dismissal bell rung.

As his classmates started milling towards the exit, he willed himself to ignore the stares he felt at his back. It was a familiar feeling of someone being watched for the tiniest clumsy mistake, weird behavior, or angry outburst.

He heard idle chatter from the different cliques and groups formed within their class across the months they'd been together in one classroom, talking about where they wanted to eat or wished to go.

The malls of Mandaluyong were walking distance from their school, after all.

Unlike in college or in high schools in the U.S., the Fatima private school had all the subjects taught in one classroom instead of students moving from one classroom to another.

Nothing significant happened today. Nothing really changed. It was business as usual, even with his bullies letting him off the hook for today.

He heard the door slam on the classroom, making him realize he was all alone. His head turned. A savage movement. Like a deer realizing it had been trapped. Or headed on a collision course with a truck, the bright headlights mesmerizing it.

As he was about to go to his school service at the school parking lot, the "something" he wished would happen finally happened.

He should've been careful what he wished for, to be honest.

As an aside, it was like déjà vu all over again.

A huge boulder that looked like a piece of the Fatima Grade School building fell right on the jeepney that served as his school service, crushing it in its weight.

"Wha...?"

He turned around. The school he just exited was in ruins, students were running away screaming, and something supernatural was the cause of all this mayhem.

To be more specific, right above the school floated a monster with two gigantic eyeballs sitting atop a body made of a mountain of minced meat and long tangled tendrils that undulated and wrapped themselves around the buildings and people like a dense forest of guts and intestine.

Damn. To think, spaghetti was his favorite food too.

It was like he was losing his mind just looking at that incomprehensible thing, much less try to describe it.

His mind went a mile a minute, going from the horrible realization that his fellow school service students in Pasig had been crushed to death to Fatima High getting demolished by a giant monster.

Wait, did he fall asleep again? Was he indulging in another one of his secret "edgy" fantasies he'd never dare (nor could) do in real life?

That must've been what happened. None of this was real.

His fever dream still fresh in his mind, he moved forward instead of away from the tentacle monster even as students and teachers (as well as faculty members and staff) of all ages ran away from it.

The giant monster crawled like kudzu grass from one building to the next, crushing them under its weight. It didn't so much move around as grew so that its fleshy red membrane body with eyes could transfer itself from one position to the next, like a vine or flowering plant but sped up.

It flooded the streets of Shaw Boulevard and St. Francis Street with its endless, root-like tendrils and tentacles of varying sizes, resulting in a heavy traffic jam. It looked like it was headed towards the nearest mall. Why though?

He stopped after seeing the monster swallow up several students in its sea of viscera and intestinal entanglements. Some of them kids from the Fatima grade school who hung out after dismissal for too long.

Many of them were his fellow students from high school. Most unfamiliar or vaguely familiar faces. One in particular caught his eye.

A bespectacled, short-haired girl swinging and swimming towards the eye balls. Brave of her to do so, but her face looked familiar...

It was Jenny! Jennifer Tolentino. The girl he spared in his dream before he "massacred" his bullies.

The monster saw her just in time to wrap one of its tendrils around her neck, arms, and limbs.

The one girl in their class who was nice to him was about to die.

Before he knew it, Florante found himself running towards the monster instead of away from it.

Like in his dream, he shot out bolts of lightning and reverberating shockwaves of thunder at the living spaghetti creature, freeing up many of the students in its grasp.

He shot one of the creature's eyes and cut through its tendrils in time to get even Jenny loose, catching her right in his arms.

"...Flor!" she exclaimed as he landed on his feet while holding her in a bridal carry. "Y-You saved me!"

He felt his cheeks grow warm as he gently put her back to the ground on her own two feet. He then faced away from her in embarrassment, not knowing what else to say.

"Thank you!" he heard her say from behind him, which made him mutter, "Y-You're welcome," under his breath.

This was it. He didn't really want to kill all his classmates like in his other dream where he vented his frustration over his social awkwardness and their bullying of him.

He wanted to be accepted. Respected. Validated. Loved. Or at least tolerated and left alone instead of having every single quirk or action he did scrutinized and mocked.

He wanted his existence to be acknowledged at school. He wanted to be treated fairly like other students. He didn't want to hurt anyone, just stop them from hurting him.

Maybe he could get one or two close friends as well. That wouldn't hurt.

He charged at the monster wreaking havoc all over the street like mountains of spilled Italian food, intending to fry it into charcoal.

"Gabriel, watch out...!" Jenny screamed.

"Gabriel...?" he repeated, only to have tentacles shoot out from behind him, stabbing his back.

The monster did a sneak attack on him, he realized too late. It spread its noodle limbs into the nearest drain then shot it up where he couldn't see.

He then saw the world spin all around him, from sky to concrete to car to dirt to van to pillar to post and back again to the sky.

He got dragged and flung around until he felt the tendrils snap like lizard tails, hurling him to the roof of a Toyota Tamaraw FX utility vehicle.

Tears streamed down his eyes, his whole body throbbing except his legs, which horrified him. He suffocated in pain, unable to even groan as tears streamed down his eyes.

Had the spaghetti monster turned him to roadkill? What sort of nightmare was this? His powers from his previous dream failed him, and now he felt death creep in the edges of his blurry vision.

Hah. Served him right.

That was what he got thinking he could take on that nightmarish creature. Shooting helpless students with no superpowers was way different from dealing with a giant incomprehensible mess of a monster that could fight back.

He then gasped as a feeling of euphoric relief enveloped him. Then back to heart-rending pain as he finally felt his legs or what was left of them.

Or maybe they were fine after all, as he soon felt okay enough to move them around, from his thighs and knees to his ankles and toes. He dared peer at himself, only to see bloody, torn pants draped over perfectly healthy legs, a large laceration over his hamstring closing up like magic.

He then looked up to see Jenny Tolentino kneel over him in seeming prayer, a cool neon mist of light transferring from her body to his.

Wait. Was she... healing him? Was that what was happening? Man, this is one crazy dream.

The girl with the glasses said, "I'd hoped it wouldn't come to this."

"Jenny...?" Florante trailed off.

Jenny took a deep breath and said, "Listen up, Flor. You're an Ophanim."

"P-Pardon?" stuttered a flabbergasted Florante. "I'm a... what?"

"An angel. You're an angel without wings, Flor."

***

To Be Continued...

Fun fact: I actually made a Geocities site for this story once while considering turning it into a webcomic. Or at least I named the Geocities site after this work, which featured a Gabriel De Angeles protagonist instead of a Florante Galang at the time.

Farewell, Abdiel

#angels #demons #fantasy of evolution #ophanim #florante galang #laura reyes

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