Speculative Fiction

It is the time of the year when my mom would look for volunteers to help finish her school requirement.

The midterm exams have just ended. To make both ends meet, she would accept as many substitute classes as she could (roughly 40 students in each class) and teach them any Humanities subject available. The problem lies with checking the test papers. Her prime age would not let her do repetitive tasks unless she is courting a major headache. The maid was always there to help her. All she would do was give the answer key and the job is finished in less than a week. I do not know what happened this time. Word is, it was the half-brother who took the load of checking the test papers since he had nothing to do but bum around and spend the rest of the day in his room.

So it wasn't really a big surprise to find my half brother in the living room with all the test papers sprawled over the coffee table. What piqued my interest was to find another gentleman seated beside him and checking the papers as well. The guy, about his age, was as lean and dark-skinned as my halfling. They were like two halves of an oxidized apple. One look and you know they're identical.

It would have been easy to ignore the boys if I didn't ask the maid who the other guy was.

"Sino yung kasama ni Red?"

"Friend daw niya."

Friend. The same modifier people use whenever I introduce a new guy at home. The ex was known as such and so were the other guys who came after him. The half brother was not really the type you would think twice as one of us. But on the other hand, a guy who never plays basketball, never had a girlfriend and preoccupies himself with geeky pursuits is a candidate for...

Nevermind.

And so there I was seated in a monoblock chair placed at the intermediate landing between two flights of stairs, trying my best not to paint a juicy picture of two young men who were innocently doing their task to earn some keep that I myself could not be relied on. Perhaps, they were just best of friends who enjoy hanging out and talking about their passions and sometimes even sleeping over when someone gets left behind in his apartment.

or even shack... I should stop.

I guess this is the way with non-straights. We would pin our hopes and imaginations on someone believing he shares the same values and preference as we do. We do this just to cover the distance made by our ever looming loneliness and our eternal desire to somehow connect with another.






"Funny how we find ways to tell a story." I told myself while taking a stolen shot of the gentlemen still busy checking the test papers.

"But who knows, maybe they're secret lovers after all."