🏆 LONGLIST - OPEN NOVELLA CONTEST 2022 🏆
Vincent Pareja longs for the day when his family won't worry about money and his siblings can go to school without skipping a meal. With his choices limited and with the wage, however small, promises to hel...
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I wiped my hands against my jeans, my eyes tracing the dark swatch made against it through the dim light spreading from the tinted windows and into the inside of the van. Jessa always complained I have sweaty palms but it was never to this degree. It seemed as the line of trees multiplied with each and every mile we went, the pit in my gut deepened.
Where were we going? Melchor really didn't answer me when I asked him just before we departed from the camp and as he stepped out of this white, nondescript vehicle. Why did he tell me to not wear my uniform when he was wearing his khaki polo and dark mahogany straight-cut pants from the Constabulary get up. Beside him, propped against the van's front seat, sat a M16 shadowed by black bags and other equipment used by the army. There was even a thick stick of wood slotted beside the rifle.
I knitted my eyebrows. What was Melchor going to do with those? For all I knew, we were going to a prison and not a war field.
It was quiet in the back of the van as it was just us two inside and Melchor had gotten tired of yapping since we left camp two hours ago. Perhaps he needed to focus considering the road did become more treacherous judging from the bumps compounded with ups and downs juggling me from the back.
Jessa told me to keep watch and be alert when I called her to say I might get some answers about the arrested people. Her tone from the other line was a mixture of threatening and fearful. What would she be afraid for?
I narrowed my eyes and tried peering past the muted colors brought about by the windows' tint. Except for the trees swaying with the strong, mountain wind, there was nothing along the side of the road. The last house we passed by looked like a dilapidated shanty. Children didn't run on the streets screaming at their friends about the game they're playing. There were no vendors or other peddlers showcasing their goods. No cars. Heck, even the birds were absent from their usual course in the sky.
My palms were wet from being pushed against each other for a while and I peeled them away to wipe them against my pants once more. Despite the air-conditioning at full blast in Melchor's van, they wouldn't keep still. Up front, Melchor swung and pulled at the steering wheel, grunting every now and then whenever he encountered a hard bend. I lost sense of how long ago we left asphalt and paved roads in favor of the muddy terrain.
I didn't bother asking Melchor any more than I already did. If his answer was going to be, "It's better when you see it for yourself!" then, I might just bite down hard against my lower lip and shut up. I wouldn't be able to speak anyway considering the small wave of nausea slowly washing over my stomach and at the back of my head. The sharp smell of stale air-freshener contributed to that as much as its source jingling against the rearview mirror, its green paint and flayed edges seemingly waving at me.
I was never one to be motion-sick but the silence and the deadness of the outside world combined with the bumpy ride was enough to make me.
Finally, after another hour of holding back my vomit by breathing in and out, Melchor steered the van towards a small, concrete building in the middle of nowhere. He pulled the handbrake with a sickening crunch before turning to me with a wide grin. "You don't look so fine back there, pare," he said. "O, get off. We're here."
