“To Love An Aswang”

“To Love an Aswang”

The bells were ringing too the day I met her. The first time I met her, it was a cloudy day and I had just come from mass, passing by some carts that sold food outside the old church. She was sitting behind the cart that sold fried potatoes on a skewer, and she eyed each person that passed by with interest, her silky voice calling out, “Ale, ale, bili kayo oh.” I stopped in front of her cart and bought two of the food she was selling. While we waited for the potatoes to fry, I casually made small talk with her.

“Ate, do you always sell here?” I asked.

She smile a tiny smile before answering, “Not always. Every other day and only before the sun goes down. At night, I head home.”

“Do you live near here?”

“Yes, I do.”

Once the potatoes were done, she put them in a brown paper bag and I gave her twenty pesos. Before I went on my way, I ventured on another question, not thinking much of it as I asked it. “Do you do this for a living or is this just a side job?”

She answered, “It’s more of a side job. After all, I have other means of getting my food. This just covers some of my other expenses.”

I gave a non-committal answer and proceeded to walk away when she said it.

“I’m an aswang.”

I didn’t think much of it, and I just thought it was the silly rambling of a creative woman with a quirky sense of humour.

I had started going to church in the mornings before I work at the nearest bank, and just as she said, the woman was there every other day, but never outside the church at night once I began my walk home after a long day at work. Every time I saw her, I bought some of her potatoes and talked with her, slowly beginning an odd friendship.

We chatted about anything and everything, except for each other’s personal lives. I regaled her with tales of my co-workers, occasionally complaining about them on a particularly harrowing day, and I shared with her my musings about life in general. She never asks about church, and I don’t say anything about it either. On the other hand, she tells me of silly adventures she has while selling the potatoes and of customers that particularly caught her eye. She once told me about this pregnant lady who reeked of perfume, that it hurt her nose and probably did the opposite of beckoning others to her. She told the story with a laugh, saying that perfume was meant to enhance and not to soak. We talked about anything and everything, Anna and I.

She said it again one day. “You know, I’m an aswang.”

I laughed at that and said, “Sure. You’re an aswang and you fly around at night looking for babies to devour.” I kept laughing.

She answered quite seriously, “Exactly.”

That was when I felt an odd chill run down my spine. I tried to cover up the following awkward silence with a cough and a shaky question. “If you really are one, why would you tell me?”

She shrugged at that and said, “You deserve to know, You’re not like other humans. Here you go.” She then handed me my usual brown bag of fried potatoes and I hesitantly began my walk to work, all the while turning over in my head what she said.

The next time I saw her, we spent a good deal of time discussing about trivial things, as if the past conversation never happened. It felt normal. Just two friends chatting about anything and everything. But then I worked up the courage to bring it up. “So you really are an aswang?”

I told myself I didn’t believe her, that I was just playing along to hear more of what she has to say. She was eccentric, that’s for sure.

“Mhm,” she chirped, turning over the skewers to let the other side of the potatoes fry. “I do eat babies, but only the unborn ones. I don’t like them outside their mother’s bellies. Too big to eat and less tasty. Not to mention that it makes more of a mess than when they’re inside waiting to be sucked out.”

I shuddered at her nonchalance and the graphic details of her supposed eating habits. “So you’re evil then?”

She gave an irritated click of her tongue at that. “Evil, you say? What exactly is evil? I am an aswang and you are a human. We are different. So I eat unborn babies. Is that evil? You eat unborn duck embryo, is that evil? It simply is the way it is. I may not know much but even I know about the food chain.”

“But you take the babies from their mothers. Who could do such a thing?”

She smiled meanly at that. “Careful, my dear. You’re about to venture into a question I don’t think you’re prepared to hear the answer to.”

I stopped at that, and for a few moments the only sounds were the chattering of other people outside the church and the sizzling of the frying oil. “I guess you’re right,” I said.

“But tell me,” I continued, “do you hate humans?”

She gave another annoyed grunt, rolling her eyes at the same time. “Hating humans would imply I have any sort of feeling toward them. Humans to me are nothing but a source of my food and my income.” She nodded toward a couple who stopped by in front of the cart next to me to buy Anna’s goods. They left, and Anna continued, “It’s like if I asked you, do you hate ducks because you eat balut? I have a certain apathy toward humanity, if that’s what you mean.”

Her answers were as eccentric as she was; as absurd as the notion that she was an aswang as she said. Still, I let the concept settle into my mind, no matter how uneasy it made me. “Well, what about me?”

“What about you?” she asked.

I didn’t know what came over me, but as I looked into Anna’s eyes, I felt a sort of calm and peace, even though she kept claiming she was this dangerous powerful creature that I didn’t believe in. I asked her quietly, “Do you feel nothing toward me?”

That’s when she stopped turning over the potato skewers to really look at me. Her eyes shone under the shade of the umbrella on her cart, and her shoulders sagged in a strange resignation before answering, “I guess not. You are my friend, after all.”

Friend. Her answer surprised me very much. Did this woman, who claimed she was an aswang, really consider me as a friend? A human and an aswang as friends was almost as laughable as me believing in the idea itself. But still, something in me was touched. If this beautiful woman was really an aswang, a more powerful creature than me, her choosing to befriend me was a feat in itself that touched me in no other way that my normal friendships did. I remembered all the conversations we’ve ever had here, about anything and everything, about life and its adventures… She made me rethink everything I knew before. Before I met her.

“You still don’t believe me, do you?” she asked once again.

I gave a shuddering breath, placing a hand on her cart to steady myself. “If I do believe you, that creatures like aswang exist and you are one of them, how can we be friends, Anna?”

“Is being an aswang really that bad?” Anna answered quietly. She resumed cooking her potatoes and serving one or two customers that stopped by.

“I am terrified, Anna. Frankly, I am. You eat unborn babies. You are a creature of the night.”

She did not like what I said. She stood up abruptly, her arms falling to her sides in annoyance. “This again? You have nothing to fear from me! Humanity is a much more terrifying evil than I can ever be! I’m still me, dear. Why would being an aswang change that?”

We didn’t say anything for a while. She scared me that day. I looked at the old looming church while feeling her glare. Her glare held no malice, only annoyance and a flash of pain. Still, she scared me.

“What if I had a baby and you ate it before it even got to live outside the womb? What then, Anna? I don’t think I’d ever be able to bear that. If you were really an aswang, why would you befriend me? Why?”

She sat back down, her beautiful face scrunched up in…pain? She wiped her tears, and she said quietly, “Do you really think I would do that to you? To you? You are different from all other humans. You are different from me, and yet…I have grown to love you despite our short time. I have grown to love you. Tell me, am I really as terrible as you think I am? Am I evil for being different than you?”

“Anna,” I said. “How can you love me? How can I love you?”

She didn’t answer. She never did. I left to go to work, and when I was on my way home that day with the moon already peeking out in the sky, she was gone. She never appeared again. Some days, when I pass by where her cart used to be and hear the ringing of the bells, I remember her silky voice and all the stories we used to tell each other. I would think of our last conversation and ask myself, “What is love? And what is evil?”

I still don’t have an answer.

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"Don't put numbers into your stories." Jeezus.

Guide: Keeping Numbers & Number-Related Details Straight in Your Story

I was midway through my answer when I realized this would be a good opportunity for a quick guide.

About That Post...

Honestly, I think the OP was probably a bit of a tongue-in-cheek, hyperbolic rant from a writer who had a frustrating review or critique. The problem is, a lot of people seem to be taking it as genuine/good advice, and that really concerns me.

Obviously, it's fine to be vague about dates, ages, distances, or anything else if that's what you want to do. But don't leave numbers out because you're not willing to do the work to keep your story's details straight. Doing the work to figure that stuff out and keep it straight is part of your job as a serious writer.

Hey, Buddy! Let's Do Some Research!

Look, I get it... when you're excited about a story idea, you just want to go wild and start writing. But if your story uses real world people, events, locations, items, or other elements--or heavily relies on them as inspiration--you need to sit down and do some research.

This doesn't mean you have to choose exact dates for your story if you don't want to. But if your story is loosely set in the 1880s (or inspired by an 1880s setting,) you'd better have a good idea of what did and did not exist in the 1880s so you can be sure you're not using a 1914 fashion trend or 1700s slang.

And, doing research doesn't mean you have to research every single element of your story before you start writing. You can stop and research as you go. In the middle of my writing session tonight, I spent 15 minutes researching what kind of pine tree would grow near the coast in my WIP's inspiration setting. And even though that location will never be named in my story, I care about my writing enough to take the time to make sure my details are accurate.

WQA’s Guide to Internet Research Researching an Historical Topic Writing About Difficult to Research Topics

Timelines: A Writer's Best Friend

Whether or not you choose to be specific about dates in your story, I strongly advocate the use of a story timeline, even if you're not usually a "planner." Having a detailed story timeline (that includes important back story events) helps ensure that you don't mix up dates, lose track of how much time has passed between events, or create overlapping events.

There are loads of different ways you can create a timeline, and no way is better than any other. You can jot important dates and events down on post-its, use an app, draw out a timeline on a piece of paper, create something in Word... whatever you want to do is great! Here are some different timeline styles I've used. Some of these are timelines from actual WIPs.

Standard Line Timeline

"Don't Put Numbers Into Your Stories." Jeezus.

Calendar Timeline (You can print these out at Time and Date...)

Basic Scene List & Timeline

Complex Scene List & Timeline (This one is based on Save the Cat!)

Color-Coded Timeline

And, if you're like me and you have trouble keeping character ages straight throughout important back story events, I give you...

The Color-Coded Character Age Chart

And, honestly, that's how you keep numbers and number-related details straight in your story. Research and timelines. It's just that simple!

So, don't be afraid to include numbers or number-related details in your story if you want them there. :)

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penguka

4 years ago

12. [orv] joongdok

‘laser tag’

“Yoo Joonghyuk,” says Dokja, warily, “why did you bring me here?"

"Tactical retreat,” Joonghyuk replies. He’s doing that thing that’s in all the substanceless fluff romance novels, with his arm on the wall next to Dokja’s head and caging him in– not that Dokja reads those sorts of novels, of course, it’s obviously just osmosis– and his distressingly good-looking face is equally distressingly close to Dokja’s. This is not at all how Dokja had planned this day to go.

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“I have something more important to do.” Joonghyuk leans in and kisses the corner of his mouth before Dokja can formulate a response. “So? Planning to shoot me?”

The expression on Dokja’s face is probably not very attractive right now, stunned as he is. “I guess not,” he says, faintly.

Joonghyuk kisses him on the lips this time, tilting his head for an angle that lets him slide his tongue deep into Dokja’s mouth. Dokja can’t do much else other than wrap his hands around Joonghyuk’s unnecessarily thick biceps and kiss back, messy and eager.

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