Don't Blink!

Unforgotten

"Grandma, why does Grandpa always have a knife with him?" I asked as she knitted her ball of yarns.

"Well," she said, "why don't you go ahead and ask him?"

Grandpa was in another room, perpetually peering through the windows. Outside the sky was a seamless blue, trees swayed, and cicadas chirruped. In many ways, Grandpa scares me. The way I never see his eaten-by-cataract-eyes blink. The way he sits on his rocking chair as if he's guarding something and that knife that's always resting on his lap.

"Grandpa," I hesitated, "why do you always have that?" I pointed at the knife.

He looked my way without moving his head and spoke, "This," he picked up the knife, "This is for the people I have wronged, a long, long time ago." His voice has a dry tone but I could recognize his effort to sound friendly and childish. "For the girl who had a thing for me, her mother, her brother, and perhaps her dog."

I grabbed a chair and sat beside him as he said, "Rumor has it that they're involved with witchcraft. I tried to avoid them, especially the girl who offered her heart to me but her mother and brother kept pushing her toward me.

One not-just-any-day, my birthday, the girl gifted me a newborn puppy because their dog gave birth. But I rejected the dog that still had blood and slime on it. When she kept insisting, I pushed her strong enough to bump her bum on the ground.

It started there. The way her eyes blazed with revenge. Couple of times, we caught her sneaking into our house to get something that belonged to me. My mother would confiscate them and eventually burn them. She said the girl was stealing my things so she could curse me. But I knew she was finding something that had traces of my smell. For what? So she could train her dog to attack me!"

Suddenly, Grandpa's fingers got all fidgety and he audibly panted," The next year, on my birthday again, I was alone inside the house because my parents were preparing for the party outside. Then my sister, out of nowhere, approached me and sang me a Happy Birthday. She was carrying a cake but on her side was a long and big needle. At once, I knew it was the girl disguised as my sister! I snatched a knife in the kitchen to defend myself. I thought if she has a needle, I have a knife like playing rock-paper-scissors." Grandpa threw a fit of cackles and tears.

"Now I ran to the kitchen and opened the back door. But then a bulky dog showed up, growling and barking at me. Although it might just be an apparition because I was able to run past it. Then I couldn't see anything beyond that. It was foggy like I was wearing a very blurry spectacle.

I heard footsteps coming toward me, voices all around me, screaming in torment perhaps to scare me. And it did.

I knew they were out to get me, the mother, the son, the daughter, the dog. I swung my knife away, in front of me, at my back! Slashing and waving until my vision crystalized. Only to find myself in the middle of our yard with all the kids who came to my party, backing away, terrorized. My mother ran to me to make me calm but even so, I didn't let go of the knife in my hand.

For the next coming years, when I peeked behind the blinds of this window, I would see someone watching me. A silhouette of someone holding a needle. Sometimes I'd hear a bark of a dog and I would crumple on the floor holding my knife as though a child to his teddy."

I was backed into the corner of my seat while Grandpa ended his story with a sigh, "But those were a long time ago and best be forgotten. I just keep this knife beside me to calm myself," he said.

Just then, I heard someone walking towards us but Grandpa already continued his watch on the window. It was Grandma who entered the room, with a tray of tea in her hands, and her hair in a usual bun with a big needle.