Twenty Innocent’s Days had passed since the first time I lit a candle in the Basilica of San Pedro Calungsod. They say that time heals all wounds but I can’t seem to get the meaning of that because every year is a suffering, every year is a curse. I tried to run but I failed for I cannot run from my own feet. This guilt and shame, I feel inside me like a knife, every time I remember their faces the last night I saw them alive. Yes, I killed my family! I killed the people who loved me. I killed them all!
I first attacked my frail and sensitive Lola Corazon. I disjointed her shaky knee bones after making her realize that her life is already meaningless because she’s old. I twisted her thin arms after I played nasty jokes and cursed her when I was annoyed. And I purposely broke her spinal cord when I made her realize that she was just causing us pain and problems and that her only consolation was to die. She did not have the chance to scream or cry for help, because I did it as secretly as possible that my mother would never know. She was my first victim!
Then I saw my mother confidently sleeping. I stab her chest three times, and every stab got closer to her heart until I at last killed her with the last blow. She felt the first stab when I called her a “harlot”, after I found out that she had an affair with her boss who secretly provides for our needs and uses paper works as alibis for him to come to our house. The second one, which is deeper than the first, was when I told her she is not good enough to be a mother and that my father was lucky to die early. Blood gushed out after I pulled the knife from her heart. She immediately turned white after the second stab. She was helpless and she was catching for breath, but I was not yet satisfied, I gave the last lashing thrust when I conceived a child without a father while I was still studying in my fourth year in college. That she did not bear anymore, she breathed her last, closed her eyes and left the real world.
Then, with the same knife that killed my mother, I stabbed my best friend’s back. I seduced and made love with her fiancé the week before her birthday and engagement. He was handsome and she asked me to help her plan a secret party for her birthday, the night was cold and we were both hot so we did what we had done. She died because of that stab in the back, making her my third victim.
Then here came my son, whom I battered to death. I first bumped his head on the wall while calling him names such as, loser, duffer, stupid and peanut brained. I smashed his face when I cursed him loudly in front of his crush and his classmates. I maltreated him until he left me when he died at last.
Lastly, I killed myself.
Although I am physically free today, my soul is in prison. Trapped inside the prison of my guilt, haunted by the people I killed. I have done a heinous crime that can never be paid by my solitude and sufferings or even my death; for I did not kill men but killed souls.
With my sharp words my grandmother is now dead and my mom now is in the mental hospital. With my piercing actions my best friend is now living a miserable life inside the jail for killing her man and my child is now hiding from the police for using and pushing drugs. And for everything I have done and said, I am now a walking dead; disgusting, disintegrating and devoured by the worms of my sins. Yes, it was me who killed them all! It was me who killed their souls!
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Jet is an English teacher at Kong Hua School, Cagayan de Oro City.