Tia's First and Last Fly

Tia is now a certified teenager. She could now compete with Aira. Her mother would now permit her to become a transporter.

Aira flies every night to Manila to deliver a passenger for one thousand pesos, cheaper compared to the Philippine Airlines fare. Every month she takes home thirty thousand pesos.

“Tonight is my first fly to Manila.” Tia is smiling smugly.

“You’ll get cramped when you get home. But you’ll become used to it just like me,” says Aira.

Aira has been encouraging Tia since she started flying passengers to Cebu and Manila. Now she’s glad she would no longer have the effort to tell her each time they meet.

One thing a transporter must not do is to hunt for prey after she has delivered her passenger. A temptation that was hard to resist and only a few aswangs could stand.

At midnight they take off. Tia’s passenger is complaining about why they are behind Aira. As time blows by, Aira’s distance becomes harder to reach. Tia couldn’t ask Aira to slow down. She needs to preserve her pride. It’s also difficult for Aira to decrease her speed. Aira has been used to the normal degree of flapping her wings.

Tia gets lost.

“Where we now?” worries her passenger.

Tia doesn’t speak. She widens her bat-wings and flies around like a hawk does when searching for chicks. Lowering spirally, she surveys the glimmering city beneath.

“What are you doing?” says her passenger uncomfortably.

Tia doesn’t want her first passenger to learn it’s her first time. She just goes to touch down on the rooftop of a building.

“Hey,” her passenger taps her. “This not yet Manila.” She feels like she’s going to stab Tia’s back because she doesn’t tell her what’s going on.

Tia thrusts her onto the rooftop.

“What’s going on?” she yells in a whispering tone.

“We’re lost,” Tia responds at last, in a tone that seems it’s not her fault.

“What now?” the passenger asks. “Or, reimburse my fare. I’ll just look for a bus down the road.”

Tia broods. Aira has left her. There’s no way she could trace her track up in the sky in a night like that. If she’ll deliver her passenger, they’ll likely end up in the wrong direction. She draws out the bills from the purse sling around her hairy body and hands them to the passenger. Then she takes off.

Tia flies up higher than she could. She must view the entire archipelago from the sky to see a clear picture of which way is to her home, an island that doesn’t exist on the Philippine map. The cold and strong wind churns her stomach. She quits moving up as soon as she’s able to spot the coasts of Samar Island. She plummets.

When almost near the top of the highest tree, she feels hungry. She thinks she might hunt for a chicken or a pig. But she smells none. She sniffs hard and catches a whiff of the most delicious food of her kind. Human fetus. She follows the fragrance and ends up on the roof that houses the pregnant. She peeps through a tiny hole. The pregnant wife is asleep inside the mosquito net. The smell makes Tia’s eyes dilate, and she forgets self-control. She licks her snake-tongue. It forms into something like a guitar string. It gets through the hole and stretches down onto the belly of the pregnant wife.

The greed burning inside Tia has taken away her ability to sense that someone is clambering onto the roof on the other side of the house. It has engrossed her in shooting her tongue through the mosquito nets.

The husband, with a bolo in his hand, warily crawls on top of the roof towards Tia. She is about to slash the belly of his pregnant wife. But, her monstrous eyes stick out when her left bat-wing slouches because of a heavy and sharp blow. Pulling her tongue back in like a frog, she feels warm liquid spurts and trickles on her shoulder. She rolls like a sack of rice on the roof and falls hard to the ground. Rattled and scared, Tia creeps desperately with no idea where to head to.

The husband leaps down from the roof. He is like an owl around his house. He finds her limping towards the barbwire fence. He runs after her. Tia hurries through the fence. Her copper wire hair twisted with the barbwire. The husband caught her. He is about to strike the bolo, but Tia has transformed into a tamed girl who is begging for life.

“You regret you come here. I’m no innocent about you,” said the husband, stiffening his cheek.

“Please have mercy. Please let me go and I will never come back.”

The husband lifts the bolo. Tia shuts her eyes. But, he just cuts her tangled hair.

Tia drags herself up. Her left shoulder is loosely hanging. She runs away, full of regrets. I wouldn’t have been like this if I didn’t fly tonight, she said to herself. I should’ve stayed on the island.

Tia jumps to reach the branch of a tree. The only way she could try to head home is to leap from tree to tree. But, when she arrives at the nearest seashore, she gets into serious trouble. She could no longer fly.