Dear Distance: Stories

By Luis Joaquin M. Katigbak

Strange skies, lost boys, dreaming girls, childhood robots, and bus rides: Dear Distance is the new story collection by Luis Katigbak, award-winning author of Happy Endings and The King of Nothing to Do.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anvil Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 6, 2017
• ISBN: 9789712733109

Book preview

SUBTERRANIA

Welcome to Subterrania," Kaye says as I step into her room. My eyes take a moment to adjust to the lack of light. I know that outside, a noon sun is in full blaze, that it’s a typical Philippine summer, but in here, there is almost no way of telling what the time or season is. Kaye is sitting cross-legged on the carpeted floor, in front of the television. I drop my backpack and plunk myself down beside her. She glances at me, and then she turns her attention back to the TV.

I look around the room. Sketch pads, dog-eared books, coffee-stained notebooks, comics, and video cassettes are scattered everywhere. There’s a bed on one side, a small refrigerator right next to it. There’s a computer atop a sturdy black desk—its screen saver is active, just three words flowing across a black field: you are here. In a corner, an airconditioner hums tunelessly to itself. What little light there is comes through slivers and cracks: a broken segment of the window blinds, a lampshade hand-painted in dark swirling patterns. I have this strange sense that we’re sitting, not in a room, but inside a sad giant’s clasped hands.

She’s watching a Japanese animated movie on the VCR. It seems to be about a young cyborg girl with the prerequisite oversized eyes beating up a bunch of massive, shark-faced villains. I don’t ask Kaye what it is. She’s so engrossed that she might not answer, and then the question would hang in the air, embarassed by its uselessness, by its very existence.

Minutes pass. This is great, she says, as if suddenly remembering that I’m there. She points at the screen. Watch how she swings around, and then leaps into the air, how she sets up the death blow. The cartoon figures on the screen dance a violent, slo-mo ballet. The cyborg girl rips through her monstrous opponent. That guy reminds me of you, Kaye says, and at first I think she means the dead dismembered monster, and then I realize that she’s talking about another character, a bespectacled, lanky guy in a trenchcoat—who is, as far as I can tell, friends with the cyborg girl. I’m glad. I guess that means he’ll live. We watch the rest of the movie in silence.

As the screen turns blank, Kaye sighs, and then stretches, as if waking up. She looks at me.

Hello there, I say.

She gives me a smile. Hey, she replies. So what brings you here?

Nothing much, I say. How are you?

Good, she says. Pretty good…

I can’t really stay, I tell her. I just brought that CD you were asking for.

Hey, great, she says, brightening up a little. I reach into my backpack, fish around until I can feel the flat square case, and hand her the CD. She thanks me, crawls over to where her stereo is, and pops the disc in. I get up. She presses play, I give her a goodbye salute, and as the room fills with the sound of pulsing keyboards, a skitter-scatter electronic beat, and the plaintive, repetitive croon of a sampled female singer, I make my exit.

,

I remember the first time we talked about Subterannia. We were in Virra Mall, that hobbyist’s haven, walking through the dingy corridors of the video-game parlors on the third floor. Row upon row of grubby schoolboys and grubbier twentynothings, their faces lit by the crazily changing colors shed by the game screens. Life among the morlocks, she said. I laughed, a short laugh that ended as soon as I realized she wasn’t making a joke. We walked past more shops, more gaudy machines, more slack sweaty faces. The machines were screaming, roaring, cursing, making laserbeam-sounds and explosion-sounds.

In a way, there’s something wonderful about this, she said.

What do you mean? I asked.

This, I don’t know, this separation from reality. These people hunched in front of their virtual playgrounds. They know the rules, they know how to win, and they know exactly who’s to blame when they lose. And they don’t have to admit other people into their worlds unless they want to.

I didn’t know how to reply. The blaring sound effects were beginning to make me feel slightly dizzy. I tugged at her arm and we started walking towards the escalator. They should rename this part of the mall. Call it Subterrania, I said. From that day on, we used that word to refer to any area that was cut off, that lacked sufficient light or air, that felt like a dark world unto itself.

,

The next time I visit her, she’s curled up on the bed, reading a comic book. She looks up when I enter, says, Hey, and drags herself up to a sitting position on the bed’s edge.

Hello, I say, pulling up a chair. The dry season is over, you know. No more hot sun. You can come out now.

I went out for a few minutes, last night.

You did?

Yeah. Walked around the neighborhood a bit. Saw a fishball vendor, an old lady, some dogs. There’s not much out there.

Well, there’s a big concert at the Sunken Garden tomorrow night. You wanna go?

She shakes her head. I can see it now. People packed together, lots of sweating and grabbing, lots of pot and cigarette smoke, and a ratio of five lousy bands to every single decent act.

You used to like going to those concerts.

I like this, she says, gesturing around her.

I make a sound that’s not quite a sigh. Okay.

Hey, she says, with a reassuring tone to her voice, Don’t worry about me. I’ve got everything. Food and shelter, reading material and a stereo. I’ve got an Internet connection. Occasional visits from friends like you. Everything important.

Okay, I say again, and then I don’t know what else to say. Half a minute or so of silence passes. Oh, I blurt, remembering something, Here’s that book I was telling you about. I reach into my bag.

Thanks, she says, as she takes the book. I gesture towards the door, and tell her I have to be off. She nods, and I get up, and leave.

She’s beginning to worry me.

,

Kaye and I used to gallivant around the metropolis during our spare time. (We had a lot of spare time then, being college students in courses that we considered fairly easy). We found many small Subterranias. There was the underpass at Lawton, with its graffiti, its snack and cigarette vendors, its distinctive smell. The unfinished top floor of our old high school’s Humanities building—we went up there once, during a reunion—it was a network of bare, unpainted classrooms, with metal rods and concrete blocks on the floor; that was Subterrania too, even though it was five stories up. And Kaye discovered one day, while waiting for a bus, that a crack in a wall, if you stay still and stare at it long enough, if you can somehow imagine yourself, feel yourself inside it, squeeze your mind into that space—that jagged gap can be Subterrania too.

,

Another visit. It’s been weeks and weeks since Kaye breathed the air outside, or saw the sun or moon, except on TV or through her blinds. I ask her why she doesn’t want to leave her room any more. Why her books and CDs and things have become more interesting than the sprawl of the world outside. They always were, she claims, she just hadn’t realized it before. I love these things, she said, these stories, these songs—because even the worst of them, in their own way, are perfect. Better than a life of uncertainty. They have beginnings and endings. I get the world distilled, you know, in its purer form. Even news stories on CNN have lifespans. They don’t cover certain events forever. Everything begins and everything ends, and that’s wonderful. You know what’s going on when you read a book, when you listen to a song or look at a painting. Or even if you don’t know what’s going on, you know that there are underlying reasons for everything. All these things are perfect flawed worlds. This room is my perfect flawed world… Once again: I don’t know what to say to her.

,

There are times these days, when I’m outside, crossing a busy street, or buying groceries, that I think of Kaye and her room and her world, of Subterrania, and I feel something like sadness, something like intense longing. These moments can hit me at almost any time. Sitting in my apartment, watching an inane sitcom on TV. Paying my bills. Arguing with a traffic cop who just wants a bribe. Sometimes, when I’m just waking up from a dream, I get confused; I don’t know which is which, which world is Kaye’s world and which world is my world, the world of traffic and noise and aggravation, and at these times, they seem more different and

Reviews for Dear Distance

[kat castronuevo · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Luis Katigbak takes you to places unknown yet so familiar; his writing creates the perfect ambiance to relish and process the most difficult of human emotions and experiences. This book is the literary equivalent of atmospheric music.