Salamangka: 12SS 2020

Slayer of All, Lover of None

I started the week perfectly content to let my Stigmata bleed me to death. I would rather die than pray to a God that forces me to bear the Wounds of Christ so I can destroy all evil. I'd already been happy killing people for money before all this Stigmata bullshit happened. "ATHEIST" and "WITHOUT CONSCIENCE" were already part of the gun-for-hire job description! So, nope — no prayers from me! Not even if prayer meant stopping the bleeding and saving my life for another 24 hours.

But then my phone rang — it was my police contact, Major Tom. If he was calling, that meant he'll be paying me to kill some monster somewhere. The prospect of earning at least 15,000 pesos made me want to live again! Whoring out my monster-slaying Stigmata was the least I could do to get back at God. So I begrudgingly prayed The Lord's Prayer; the bleeding stopped, I washed up, got dressed, and went out — Roy Diaz, slayer of all evil, at your service.

I earned a ton of money this week from three jobs. The kicker was the third – which made me want to die all over again.

First job, last Monday, was over at Makati Medical Center in Ayala. It was a love triangle between a nurse, Rica; a philandering douchebag doctor, Edward; and his wife Amy, also a doctor. Victim was the wife, Amy. She'd discovered her husband's sexts to nurse Rica. She confronted the nurse at 2am, and physically attacked nurse Rica. Unfortunately, Rica turned out to be a manananggal, a monster whose body splits in two at the waist, with the upper body growing enormous bat wings, claws for hands, a mouthful of fangs, and stretchable needle-tipped, straw-like, hollow tongue that it uses to suck out fetuses from mothers' wombs. Nurse Rica defended herself and ended up killing doc Amy, draining her of all her blood through that stretchy straw-like tongue.

So yeah, I got called to the crime scene. Ironically, it was nurse Rica who had called the cops. The police were convinced she was innocent, because she was stationed at the hospital nursery, and all the babies were unharmed, so she couldn't be the monster, right? But I could literally smell doc Amy's blood on her; I grilled Rica, prodding, taunting, saying I know what she really was, until she broke down, finally admitting what had happened. Realizing I'd have to kill her, she transformed, lunged at me, and we had a scuffle that knocked my gun away. The two-timing husband, Edward arrived, and saw Rica hovering half-bodied with giant bat wings. She called out his name, and he recognized her voice. Shocked, Edward called her a goddamned monster, and he ran to his dead wife. Can't blame him for freaking out, though. Manananggal are butt-ugly mofos. Rica, now broken-hearted, wanted to die then. I picked up my gun and shot her in the head.

Cha-ching! That's 15,000 pesos for me!

Second job came on Wednesday. Police raid on an illegal Chinese brothel in Manila gone wrong — the prostitutes were mainland Chinese vampires, and they slaughtered the cops. The Philippine government's stupid pro-China stance allowed illegal activities like this brothel to slip through. More job security for me, though!

For this job, I packed my usual Glock 20, and a CMMG Banshee 300 Mk10 pistol caliber carbine for more firepower, which in my Stigmata-perforated hands, become monster-slaying Holy Relics.

I John-Wick'd 50 vampires in total – at 10,000 per head, that's a cool 500,000 pesos!

I may have dropped some thermite grenades too, accidentally burning down the brothel and several other buildings around it. Because coronavirus. You're welcome.

The third job was absolute shit. Erin called me last Thursday, asked me out for coffee. Remember Erin? Cute blue-robed mage from last month.

I thought we were going out on a date. Erin arrived 5pm at Starbucks Glorietta in a sexy little black dress with a plunging neckline and a micro-miniskirt. And she brought a friend, Tammy — a hot chick in a skin-tight off-shoulder red dress. Images of threesome debauchery filled my tiny brain and stirred my loins.

Instead, Erin wanted me to kill some demon. Turns out, "Erin" was originally a man named "Eric". Five years ago he'd fallen in love with a lesbian, Tammy. He'd been so in love with Tammy that he'd sold his soul to a demon named Ma'Azek, so the demon would turn Eric into a real girl, Erin the cutie, so she in turn could be with Tammy the hot chick lez.

WTF?!

Now they wanted me to kill the demon Ma'Azek so Erin's contract with the demon would be broken and she'd go back to being Eric, so he and Tammy could make babies and raise a legit biological family.

I wanted to say FUCK NO! But then they said they'd pay me 250,000 pesos to kill the demon.

FUCK YES!

While Erin/Eric was an Elementalist, a specialist in elemental magic, Tammy on the other hand was a goetic mage, or what I like to call, in video game parlance, a Summoner. The plan was, Tammy would summon the demon and I would shoot him.

We went to this abandoned warehouse in Pasig to get all set up. Come 12 midnight, Friday, Tammy magicked a flaming circle around us and a flaming triangle in front and outside the circle. She said her mumbo-jumbo gibberish and the goat-headed demon Ma'Azek appeared in the triangle.

I shot Ma'Azek between the eyes. He burst into flame and crumbled into a pile of ash. Erin, still wearing her little black dress, became Eric. Tammy and Eric made out before paying me 250,000 pesos.

I earned 765,000 pesos in only five days. I'm goddamned rich. But I just saw my biggest crush turn into a man.

Fuck this shit. I'm never gonna pray again. God can go ahead and bleed me to death. When I die and go to Hell, I'll just murder everyone there too.