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4. INT. FONTANILLA RESIDENCE – BASEMENT – LATER

The high, sweet stench of putrefaction collides violently with the odors of incense and aromatherapy candles, giving rise to an acrid pungency which puts EDSA at the height of rush hour traffic on a sweltering summer's day to head-hanging shame.

Neither of the room's occupants seem to notice.

Ruben, drenched in blood, lays the skinned corpse of a young woman on the altar carved out of narra wood in the middle of the large, underground room, while, lurking to the side, like a furtive hippopotamus in a bed sheet (a very large bed sheet), Asistio stands in a flowing black robe.

Asistio, suddenly feeling very Nazgul-like, quickly flips the robe's hood over his head.

“You didn't kill her, did you?”

“Sis, naman,” Ruben replies, trying unsuccessfully to wipe the blood off his hands on his jeans.

He flashes back to that long, lone stretch of Antipolo road, flanked by empty lots grown wild with talahib. Salvage central. Passing through here was like strolling through the frozen meats section at the grocery, except the sides and slabs of beef here weren't chilled to offset decay.[1]

“`Di ako serial killer, `no,” Ruben all but whines, the pout evident in his tone. (He hopes that this ritual won't take too long, as he has to catch his latest Asianovela fix, My Name Is Kokuryu.)[2]

“Mmm,” Asistio responds distractedly, flipping through a dog-eared paperback edition (limited and unabridged) of the Al Azif.[3]

“And the plastic bag I told you to get from the rest house?”

Ruben wrinkles his nose in shuddered remembrance, of peeking into the United Supermarket bag and being assaulted by the stench of unwashed laundry; towels and handkerchiefs in all colors and styles. He'd driven to the nearest dry cleaners and had the load sterilized.

“Here,” Ruben sing-songs, making the single syllable sound like three. He picks up the bag from the foot of the stairs. “What is it for, ba? Kasama ba siya sa material components ng spell?”

“Of course,” Asistio replies. “Those pieces of cloth hold history in them.”

Asistio raises his head to the light, just so, imagining Peter Jackson giving him his close-up, knowing at this angle, the fluorescents gleam in his eye rather wickedly. “We could make a small fortune on eBay from those,” he notes.

“The tears from Ate Guy as she proclaimed, `Walang himala!' The water off Ate Shawi's face from the final take of the ‘copycat' scene of Bituing Walang Ning-ning. The sweat of Ate Vi from the final rally scene in Sister Stella L. And so many other moments of power, of potency, scenes that would later resonate, become instances of the elusive, ephemeral union of image and audience.

“Power is trapped in the fabric of these pieces of cloth, preserved, which is why they never dried up after all these long years. Power for us to tap into, to use to clothe our new star in the raiments of glamour and artifice.

“She will be the ultimate liar, who shall derive truth from fiction, find honesty in deceit, move us all to tears and laughter, and run away with every single award from the Famas to the Urian.

“Now,” Asistio says imperially, wishing he could magickally modulate his voice for some mood-enhancing reverb, “give me the bag.”

Asistio whirls to face Ruben, making sure the robe ripples and flutters aesthetically, and sees his beloved Roo frozen, like a DVD paused for a bathroom break.

Ruben actually froze quite a while back, at the utterance of the word “ephemeral,” not merely because he had no idea what it meant, but because he thought, rather accurately, that he had just screwed up the material components for Asistio's spell.

“Rooo…” Asistio girly-whines (very un-Nazgul-like behavior he knows, but is just too annoyed to care at the moment), stamping the floor with his slippered foot, his hand demanding, held out, fingers splayed.

Ruben shakes his head, praying to Shoggoth and an entire cacophony of lesser demons from a pan-cultural standpoint, that Asistio will not smell the freshly-laundered pieces of cloth.

Apparently, Ruben's infernal United Colors of Benetton are looking down favorably from the celestial billboard upon which they reside, and have granted him his fevered wish: Asistio merely flings the plastic bag's contents (including the receipt from the dry cleaner's) into the blazing brazier beside the altar.

Ruben heaves a vast sigh of relief, pledging to sacrifice a chicken or two (he still can't bring himself to graduate to kittens) to his dark benefactors, as Asistio reads aloud from his limited and unabridged paperback edition of the Al Azif.

And slowly, oh so very slowly, the skin begins to grow on the corpse's form, the body itself begins to warm, and soon, very soon, Asistio Fontanilla's star is born.

-----*0*-----

1 This was a frequent destination for Ruben, whenever Asistio was planning one of his occasional huge parties where hundreds of guests were expected.

Asistio's hors d'ouvres were always highly praised. [back]

2 A Channel 8 top-rater, My Name Is Kokuryu is the hi-jinx-filled tale of a low-level gangster who must pretend to be a hair dresser/drag queen in order to evade the attentions of a fellow rival in the criminal fraternity. As the series unfolds, it turns out that the mobster may be gay after all.

From Thailand, the same country who gave us Iron Ladies and Beautiful Boxer, My Name Is Kokuryu has been dubbed a “baklusherye” by industry insiders. [back]

3 The older edition bound in human skin-- and autographed by Abdul Alhazred, complete with dedication

To Kuya Sis,

Hugs.

and displays what appears to be the arcane glyph for the Black Spell Of Evil Which Must Never Be Cast, but is actually a turbaned smiley face-- is kept upstairs in the locked scritorio in the library.

That one just creeps Asistio out. Human skin. Over. [back]

FADE TO BLACK.

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