Jessica closes the door behind us. She manages to sit me down on the bench just as the siren ends. Unlike the gradual lightening of the room before, the darkness swallows up the world in a heart-stopping instant. A breath snuffs out a candle. A hand snuffs out a star.

A question calls out from somewhere to my left. "Beer?"

"Don't you have anything harder?" I answer.

For a moment, no one answers. And then: "I didn't know you drank that kind of thing."

"There are a lot of things you don't know about me."

"Frank! Izzy!" Jessica calls out in the dark. The volume of her voice makes me jump. "Get down here! I'm opening the vodka!"

I hear feet fly down the stairs. In the total silence, their steps remind me of an avalanche. Their voices carry in the silence, and I can hear them whispering to each other in the dark. They speak in the vernacular, which is a fluid mixture of Tagalog and English. It's easy enough to understand but is something that I haven't used to communicate with in a long time. I've relied on the English language for most of my life, being raised in the city and going to a private school and all.

A soft, male voice: "Why do you think Ate Jess is opening the vodka now, of all times?" He sounds like he's more used to speaking in English. I could hear the same inflections in his Tagalog that I would make whenever I would use the language. The fact that he used the honorific "ate" makes me question how close the four of us have grown over the course of our time together.

A sharp, female voice: "For Kuya Miguel, obviously! Most likely, they'd just come back from seeing his family. I'd say this deserves something a lot stronger than beer." Here, she sounds much more used to speaking Tagalog than in English. The vowels in her English are exaggerated at times, and her consonants sharper than necessary. She reminds me of Nena.

Nena. Nena.

The thing in the closet. It had a tattoo. If I'd looked at it at just the right angle, I would've been able to see the way the black line joined other loops and curls, forming a stylized flower. It was supposed to be a henna tattoo. We'd gotten when we went to the beach last summer—

How many summers ago? How long has the darkness been here? How long has it been since I've seen Nena? I miss her. I miss Mom. I want to go home.

I realize that I had curled up on myself, pulling my knees to my chest and burying my head. Tears have begun to fall, and I've started crying ugly sobs into my arms.

A soft, clammy hand touches my back. I suck in a harsh breath. The hand awkwardly trails down to my arm, searching for my hand. I offer it up, and the soft, clammy hand closes itself around it.

"Oh, Kuya Miguel," a soft, sad, male voice says.

I realize that I've been hiccupping. "Are you—are you Frank?"

"Opo," he answers. What did I do to deserve such respect from them? Who am I to them?

"Don't cry. Please." The sharp female voice has grown soft. She must be Isabella. Her hand smacks against my forehead awkwardly. I laugh a broken laugh as she apologizes, and she gropes for my shoulder. I give her my free hand. Her palm is dry and callused. I let down my knees and I cross my legs on the bench. I grip their hands as I sob in the dark.

Through my sobs, I hear glass clinking on wood. It takes a long time for me to gain the strength to let go of Isabella and Frank's hands to take the small glass Jessica offers me.

The alcohol burns my throat. And more than once, I end up spluttering through a shot. But after four successful, consecutive swallows, I can feel the burn in my stomach slowly begin to spread to my limbs, to my eyes, to my brain. It soothes the acid in my chest to something manageable.

"Isabella?" I ask the noise in the dark, for while I've been drinking silently, Frank and Isabella have kept the silence at bay by talking about themselves—their backgrounds, their lives from before the darkness. It seemed like only yesterday that the world wasn't so fucked up.

"Yeah?" she says. Frank falls quiet. I'm yet to hear Jessica speak.

"Take my glass away from me before I end up breaking it," I laugh. When she finds my hand and takes the glass from me, I ask her and Frank: "Can you tell me the story of how we met?"

Before this nightmare, the dark has always been a place for stories. I tell them as such. In reply, they tell me the story of how we met. It plays out in my mind, the writer in me coming alive to paint the world from their words:

Isabella lived in a house near Riverbanks Center. It's this cute mall by the Marikina River where I got a really nice secondhand plaid jacket from Esprit for half its original price. I tell them as such—well, slur would be a more accurate verb. Isabella laughs. She tells me that that was the same thing I told her the first time we met.

I wonder where that jacket has gone. Probably back at my mom's house.

Frank lived in a subdivision quite near my own house here in Marikina, much to my surprise. They were both high school students. Frank's parents had hired Isabella's older sister as the weekly cleaning lady, who would come in every Saturday for a general cleanup of their house. When the darkness fell, Frank's parents had been away on a business trip. Frank had been alone in his house with Isabella's sister, who had taken him with her when they made their way back to her house.

"My sister was superstitious," Isabella says in the vernacular. "She listened to the prophets when they announced the coming darkness, and she prepared herself."

"She sounds wonderful—smart—amazing—fabulous—fantastic—fantabulous—!" I slur out. Isabella laughs, but it sounds sadder.

"She didn't make it." After a few more floods of darkness, Jessica and I eventually stumbled on their doorstep, being chased by creatures and shades alike. Isabella's sister was a hero, sacrificing herself to draw the creatures away from Jessica and me—long enough so that we could enter the safety of their home.

I could see everything. Isabella's sister would look just like her, maybe taller. More beautiful--angles more defined. Her dark skin would gleam in the firelight. Isabella's hair reaches her shoulders. Maybe her sister's hair was longer and could be tied up into an intricate braid. Or maybe it was shorter, pixie-cut style. That would be more practical.

My mind paints her battle with the darkness as something legendary, bathing her with light and fire. She could be holding a flaming sword.

But in this darkness, reality works much faster in dismantling that particular fantasy. Her sacrifice would have been heart-rendering. Isabella would have hated Jessica and me for taking her ate away from her. Especially then, when her family had been out of the house when the darkness had fallen that time. It looked like we had taken everything from her. I tell her as such. Her voice grows quiet in reply:

"For a while, it looked like you did." Her words tremble in the air. "But then you became my new family. It's just that—" And here, her breath catches. "It took you dying for me to see that."

When she breaks down in tears, I find her shoulder in the dark. After coaxing her shot glass out of her, I pull her into my arms. I'm still sweating from my run from my house, and I'm sure Isabella is currently wrinkling her nose against the soiled fabric of my shirt, but she doesn't pull away. She loops her arms around my waist and sobs—wails into my chest.

What did I do to deserve such grief? I don't remember being anyone special from before the darkness. What did I do that someone like Isabella would mourn someone like me?

But these are thoughts that I manage to keep to myself. Quietly, I ask the dark:

"How about you, Frank? How are you?"

"Still here, Kuya." Silence, and then I hear glass clinking against the wood. "I've missed you."

"I don't know what I did for someone like the two of you—the three of you to miss me so much. But it must have been amazing. I'm sorry I don't remember it." I grope for Frank's shoulder in the dark. When I find it, I give him a gentle squeeze. "Can I hug you?"

He makes his way to my other side. I have never felt more loved ever since I woke up in this nightmare.

"Jessica?" I ask the dark. "Where are you?"

I hear someone taking loud gulps. It couldn't be Jessica drinking from the bottle, could it?

"I'm going to get water," is what I hear her say. I hear glass clunk on the table, and then footsteps to my left. They sound remarkably sober. After a while, Frank and Isabella get up to accept glasses from Jessica with murmured thanks. Jessica passes me a glass too, and I sip from it gratefully.

She takes our glasses away. How can she see so well in the dark? One by one, she guides us to the bathroom to pee. When it's my turn, her grip and gait are still firm and sure, as if the darkness doesn't exist to her.

"How can you see?" I ask her through the door while I'm on the toilet. I grope around for the toilet paper. After washing up, I grope drunkenly for the door. When I find it, I manage to stumble out with a painfully loud giggle. Jessica props me against the wall and tells me to wait for her while she uses the toilet.

When she finishes, she leads me up the stairs and to a bed. There are two others on it. I can barely squeeze in between them, but they make room for me. I can still feel Isabella crying against my shoulder. Frank is trembling on my other side. I clumsily wrap my arms around them both.

"Everything will be okay," I tell them. Sleep pulls at my eyes. "We still have the morning."

Beside me, I hear Jessica whispering "Good night" to Isabella, and then to Frank. And then there's silence.

I thought she had left already, but I feel her brush her lips against my forehead.

"This is all just a bad dream," she murmurs.

I don't know what she meant. But before I can ask her, she's gone. The darkness behind my eyelids pulls me under.

* * *

Terms and Definitions:

Ate/Kuya (Tagalog) – honorifics in Filipino culture, referring to "older sister" and "older brother", respectively

Opo (Tagalog) – a respectful way of saying "yes", especially when answering to someone older than you/someone belonging to a higher position/status than you

Riverbanks Center – a mall located beside the Marikina River noted for having the most number of outlet stores, where named brands were priced much lower than in regular mall stores