Further on, I like how the writer delineates the characters and brings the places and scenes into concrete details that enable readers to plunge into the entire story.

LAST NIGHT SATAN WAS SCREAMING

    I don’t suffer from insomnia or any ” nocturnal illness” but last night I could not sleep. One of my neighbors turned on his antique radio with big speakers and played his favorite rock music until twelve o’clock. I love images of those annoying bands because I love art but I really hate what they called “music”. My ears hate stupid tunes and lyrics. Last night, it seemed Satan was screaming in hell. And my room really tuned into a place of burned silence.

A white picket fence about three feet high surrounded the lawn covered with newly trimmed bermuda grasses. Ana was walking idly through a flagstone walk leading up to white door of her lola’s house. She was cradling a doll in her arms and her hair fell untidily over her face.

Exercise 2

She sighed. There was a sinister atmosphere in the bar. The images and music seemed to haunt her thoughts. She turned her head and looked at the letter the man was holding.

“ I heard the news last night.” she said coldly. She leaned back on her chair then brought the glass near her lips.

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                     SIPPING A CUP OF BLOOD IN MY ROOM

Seeing vampires sucking a man’s neck in movies reminds me of my lola’s house. The house did not look like one of those haunted houses I have seen in films such as “Bahay ni Lola” or those antique mansions in “BloodRayne.” It was a small house just made up of cheap cement and it was not even painted with the cheapest paint. The rooms were only divided with woods and they looked like matchboxes when sketch on paper. The dining room was at the left near the two bed rooms. Nothing surprising or exotic in their structure. And the space left was the sala and nothing in it but a small stereo, a sofa and a table filled with family pictures and souvenirs. But it is always like I had its photo in my head. I guess its memory goes on like this because when I was in sophomore in high school I used to watch horror movies in one of its three bedrooms. The room was mine and I used it whenever I wanted to. It was near the kitchen and the bathroom, isolated from the rest of the rooms.

I was not one of those blood-sucking monsters who was so obsessed with bloody scenes, but when I was thirteen this kind of picture thrilled me. I used to tack posters of anime and rock bands on my walls such as Recca with his dragon, photos of Korn wearing horrifying masks and all that gothic stuff. The room even turned colder and darker when I hanged dark blue curtains on the windows. It was like I was living in hell, without that burning fire . If I turned off the light it looked like a cheap movie house with cockroaches creeping on the cracks of the wall. My mother did not bother me because she has a lot of works to do. She often prepared a cup of coffee and a plate of soft pandesal for my breakfast. I drank my coffee but sometimes I forgot to pinch the salty bread because instead of feeding my stomach I fed my VCD with pirated discs that contain horror films. These films intensified the the dark aura of my room. It was even made worse when I was alone in my room. Watching these movies, sometimes made me feel I was like the female version of dracula sipping a cup of blood instead of a cup of coffee. I’ve been doing these for almost a month, and no one dared to change this gloomy style because they told me my head was as hard as the rock. There were nights when I could not sleep. Images of vampires kept on occurring in my brain. And I even had nightmares. But I did not stop because changing these things was like changing my fashion and myself.

It has been a year when my lola died. My father sold the house because we need to move to another place for his job. At first, it was hard for me to understand. I was unable to leave my room. It kept on hanging in my head. The room was not mine at all anymore. It made me feel like everything was gone.

Banging my Head on Silence

Zipping my mouth and writing nothing is like banging my head on silence. I really felt bad whenever I sleep without talking to someone for a dish of people’s lives or whenever I wake up early without noting down my nightmares in my old notepad. I don’t care if what I talk or write about are what they called ” products of a poor mind.” I think it’s not important as long as I please myself. I do not consider myself a writer and I really hate to be considered as one of those “chismosas” strolling everywhere just to feast on the fresh flesh of the stories of other people’s experiences. I bet, it’s just because I really hate silence. Silence? it is like a hard wall.