Seek Ye Whore and Other Stories

By Yvette Tan

Yvette Tan, one of the Philippines' most celebrated horror writers, returns with her second short story collection. Two friends adapt in a zombie-infested Angeles City. At Luneta Park, a girl and a young tikbalang begin their journey to save the last moon. A brothel in Poblacion offers an expecting father pleasures he cannot resist. And in the titular story, an American unwittingly purchases a mail-order bride from the mystical island of Siquijor. From stories of youthful charm with supernatural twists, to provocative tales of unassuming humans willingly falling prey to creatures with manicured talons, Seek Ye Whore and Other Stories forms a panoramic view of the Filipino experience—sometimes humorous and touching, oftentimes dark and forbidding.   
                        

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anvil Publishing, Inc.
• Release date: Jan 21, 2023
• ISBN: 9789712737527

Book preview

Acknowledgments

It’s been twelve years in between Waking the Dead and Seek Ye Whore. So many people have made those years significant. Not everyone on this list is in my life anymore, but I would like to thank them for being part of it.

Erwin Romulo, for everything, and also for being the reason "Seek Ye Whore" is out in the world.

Gerry Alanguilan. Alexandra Alzate. Ramon Antonio. Darryl Apostol. Arnold and Cynthia Arre. Jeremy Baer. Julius Barcelona. Gabriel Barredo. Big Sky Mind. Charlene Bobis. Nik Bundoc. Jason Caballa. Carlos Celdran. Jordan Clark. Julia Clarete. Chris and Sian Costello. Barbie Cruz. John Lloyd Cruz. Jonty Cruz. Miren Cueto. Raffy Dacones. Joel, Marla, and Selah Darwin. Kat Velayo Greenberg. Quark Henares. Miguel de Leon. Karl de Mesa. Ruel de Vera. Devi de Veyra. Lourd de Veyra. Ramon de Veyra. Mayra del Rosario. Ronnie Dizon. Philbert Dy. Lem and Espie Garcellano. Rache Go. Carlo and Nina Herman. Margarita Holmes. Rey Ilagan. Marie Jamora. Mark Lavin. The Last Home. William and Annie Lee. Sam Lee. Jeff Lim. Ria Limjap. Adi Lopez. Malek Lopez. Sev Lopez. Andrea Ocier. Ernie Ordonez. Alia Vargas Ortega. Erik Matti. Armi Millare. Tim Muñoz. Miguel Nacianceno. Monchito Nocon. Xandra Ramos. Ana Reyes. Oli Reyes. Laura Rhoades. Natalia Roxas. Jordan Santos. Gina Sales. Rhea and Lucas Salvador. Sharon See. Bert Sulat. Carlo Sumaoang. Budjette Tan. Ian Tan. Jason Tan. Jordan Tan. Gabbie Talan. Jessica Taylor. Sharwin Tee. Nina Tesoro. Raffy Tesoro. Monica Tiosejo. Kate Torralba. Grace Velasco. Arianne Velasquez. Dan Villegas. Carlo Vergara. Emil Yap. Nichol Yap. Kitten Zapata.

Demon Summoning Made Easy: Introduction

You are listening to the Demon Summoning Made Easy audio guide. We recommend that you listen to this in full, and carefully read the accompanying literature, before you attempt to summon anything from the netherworld.

We would also like to remind you of the waiver you signed upon purchasing this audio guide that absolves us of any liability should anything go wrong with the summoning. Souls lost to the fires of hell will not be forfeit.

There are many reasons people choose to summon demons. Some use demons to take revenge on their enemies. Others use them to acquire wealth and power in the mortal realm, while others use them for more mundane tasks, such as gardening. Whatever your reasons, we salute you and wish you well.

Before you begin, choose the demon you want to entice onto this plane. Our beginner’s manual offers a wide variety of infernal hosts that, if called forth correctly, can be easily convinced to do your bidding. Make sure that you have all your materials and ingredients within reach. Some of these may be hard to find, and it would not do to be scrambling for eye of newt in the middle of a summoning. Our online store carries most of the items needed. If you purchased this guide as part of our Demon Summoning Made Easy Starter Pack, you will find everything you need to summon a minor demonic entity.

If you purchased our expansion kit, please note that your live black rooster will take three to five working days to ship. Remember that this is a beginner’s course, so the demons in our catalogue might not be suited to the task you have in mind. For demons that specialize in fire and brimstone, family curses, and pruning, we suggest taking a look at our Advanced Demonology Booster Pack.

Here are more things you must consider:

Find a quiet, secure area where you will not be disturbed. Old warehouses work well, as do abandoned apartments. We do not recommend summoning in cemeteries until you are at least an Apprentice Grand Mage, as the Gravedigger’s Union has filed a complaint on amateur demonologists accidentally destroying the landscaping. You will find that it would be a good idea to remain on your local gravedigger’s good side, especially if you plan to advance to necromancy.

It is also important to pick the right time to cast your spell. Our easy-to-read horological chart will help you choose the proper summoning time for your demon. Plus, timing your spells right will make for dramatic photos for your social media.

Wardrobe is also essential. Demons are creatures of habit, and while it generally doesn’t matter what you wear, centuries of summoning have conditioned them to respond to certain symbols and styles of clothing. We recommend a long robe adorned with alchemical and/or astrological signs.

Our online store has a wide range of ceremonial robes of different cuts, designs, and material, all of them befitting the serious demonologist. Should you not have the budget for a robe, as most people using the starter kit to summon demons of wealth usually don’t, drawing stars with a marker on an old shirt will do. Glitter also helps, as many demons are attracted to shiny things.

Now that you have everything on hand, let us begin.

Fresh Fruit for Rotting Corpses

Someone once asked me what I wanted to be doing when the end of the world came.

I said: I want to be cooking.

It was easy to tell that she was fresh, her skin still supple, her lips not yet gray. She looked alive, the open wound in her neck with bits of meat and bone peeking out the only telltale sign that she might be otherwise. She was rummaging through a trash heap when we found her. We assumed for food—those things seem to do nothing but eat. She was alone—a rare thing since the dead, for some reason, like to wander in packs. Like Erwin used to say, people are like sheep. Doesn’t matter if they’re dead or alive.

Erwin subdued her, no problem. The dead may be strong even when they’re by themselves, but Erwin has always been bigger and stronger than the average guy, so it was no trouble to pin her down. I always admired Erwin’s prowess with the butcher’s knife. I’m no slouch at knife work but my skill comes from the training I got in culinary school. Erwin’s is pure talent, coupled with working in his mom’s wet market meat stall since he was thirteen.

He held the dead girl’s head face down with his left hand, his body over hers, his knee pressed against her back, ignoring the slow, almost mechanical flail of her arms while I held her feet to keep her from kicking.

Erwin hacked the girl’s head off with the cleaver and got up, holding the head by long dark hair that shone smooth in the sun. You could tell that she used to take good care of herself. Clothes that fit right, hair that looked like it saw a lot of the inside of a salon. The kind of person that had enough cash to book a room at the Orchid Hotel where I used to work before all this happened. Not that any of that mattered now. Her nice clothes were ruined. Her expensive shoes, scuffed. We didn’t even bother to take her jewelry. None of that has any use. Not for cash, not for barter, not even for ornamentation. When you have a herd of the dead coming after you, you don’t want to be wearing anything that can be pulled. I let go of the woman’s legs. Erwin gave me a look and I nodded. Together, we made our way back to the base.

Our base is really Aling Lucing, a restaurant near the railroad tracks Erwin and I used to frequent up until last year, when all of this started. It is—was—an institution here in Angeles City, the pride of the province of Pampanga. On the outside, it looked the same as all the other restaurants along railroad row, all of them turo-turo, open-air, canteen-style eateries. Aling Lucing’s was named after the proprietor, a hero around these parts, the lady who put Angeles City on the Philippine foodie trail.

The train tracks aren’t far from where we found the woman, but it took some time getting back to Aling Lucing’s. You have to move slowly, have to always be on the lookout. The dead are smarter than they look, and we don’t know exactly what they’re capable of doing yet. All we know is that they can sense movement, detect strong smells, hear loud noises. That was enough to make us cautious. After they appeared, when we lost our city, we learned to hide in the shadows, to walk without sound. We learned to take heed of the direction the wind was blowing and if we happened to be downwind, to find a buffer. This was easy, as the city was full of trash. The city has always been full of trash, a bane and an eyesore whose stench would later save lives by masking the smell of the living from the dead. We became scavengers, a skill that only a few people had to learn because most Filipinos lived below the poverty line and were used to looking through the garbage for sustenance. We learned to become killers. But how can you kill something that is already dead?

It took us almost an hour to make a trip that would normally take ten minutes. The chairs we had piled against the back door (more to signal us if anyone had entered than to actually keep anyone out) were still there. We gently pulled them away, stacking them neatly before slipping inside.

Trying to stay alive in a world where the dead want to eat you is, like a friend who used to work at the local TV station used to say, a production number. There are numerous things to constantly consider, the smallest nuances to watch out for, the most obscure clues to remember. Life is never easy when you’re prey.

We closed the door, bolted it, secured it with a sturdy metal table. We’d outfitted the inside of the restaurant to the best of our specifications, clearing out space for sleeping and slowly bringing in scavenged items for use. Not that there was much to find. The looting was terrible when things started, store employees either having run out long before or actually leading the way.

Here’s the thing about the looting: when the end of the world finally arrived, when the news anchors warned people to stock up on the necessities—water, canned goods, bullets—we didn’t. When the panic-buying stopped and the looting started, the first items to go were the luxuries. Flat screen TVs, entertainment systems, designer shoes, bags. They say the Hermes store in Makati got cleaned out faster than the nearby restaurants. It took a while for reality to sink in, for people to realize that things weren’t going to go back to what they were; that the world had become a very, very dangerous place.

By that time, the grocery stores, the 7-Elevens and MiniStops, the cafes, restaurants, hotel kitchens, even the neighborhood sari-sari stores that sold everyday sundries such as coffee and vinegar had been emptied out by smarter people, mostly folks who had lived with too little for too long, folks who knew the signs of oncoming famine, and knew that they had to be smart and ruthless to stay alive. Also by this time, the streets were thick with the shambling dead, so that even just stepping outdoors was a threat to your life. People who locked themselves high up in condominiums couldn’t open their windows for the stench of the dead clustered below.

Still, it’s been said that we were luckier than a lot of countries. Being third world meant that we were used to a certain level of discomfort, a lack of things wealthier countries might call necessities. So many of us survived. We learned to kill the already dead, telling ourselves that they were no different from the pigs and cows and chickens we slaughtered in the wet markets, cut up on our chopping blocks. We closed our eyes as we battered, impaled, beheaded people we knew, saw every day in the elevator, worked with in the office, shared a bed with every night. The stronger of us—some would say the more heartless—kept their eyes open as they delivered that final blow. There’s something in the eyes, they say, a final flicker of recognition, of humanity, just before they glazed over and the body dropped for the last time. It was, they say, the soul set free. That’s bull. The ramblings of lost souls trying to make sense of a lost cause. There is no soul in a dead body. You are dead because you were fatally wounded or had a disease or were bitten by the infected. When you rise undead, it’s not because some demon has held your soul captive. You rise because a sickness commands you to. It is a scarred world indeed, where even the dead are sick.

That’s the world we have to live in now, Erwin and I. And we make do any way we can.

I checked and rechecked our fortifications while Erwin got to work with the head, carefully washing it with water that we had collected during the last rainfall. When I was sure that we were safe, I stood beside my friend to watch.

Erwin doesn’t say much these days. Time was we could talk nonstop for hours. He was

Reviews for Seek Ye Whore and Other Stories

[Catherine Mellert · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Magnificent. Really magnificent. I am glad I found this here in Scribd. I have, of course, heard of (and probably have been to) Siquijor. This book is highly recommended. Funny, engaging, mysterious and nicht langweillig.