Lacking Fragments: A Novel (Completed)

Chapter 1: Light in the Midnight Carnival

PART ONE

I. Light in the Midnight Carnival

It happened eighteen years ago— the fall of Maya, during my mid-thirties, at that building where we used to work together.

     Looking back, I can't seem to guess the job she was assigned to perpetrate in her field of capability. At the moment, I only recall mine: for two and a half years, I had been the Quality Control Assistant to the Manager of our branch; but then, after her death, things changed either for better or for worse. I got promoted to Safety Environmental Manager quick for the rest of my career. The corporate officials said I'd do a great job with the given job title; although, they hadn't told me exactly why they allowed me to be promoted instantly. Lone I heard it involved my mental health being. And they might be right with this decision, since I lasted for a decade serving as is, effectively.

     Though after that, that was it— a dead career. What came after a dozen years of working under a corporation is retirement. Nothing but a dead end, I believe.

     As for my current case, if I were asked how things are going besides work, I'd say—after so long—that such circumstances had taken a hefty different shift.

     If one day can give birth to unexpected changes in an individual's life, what changes would it be if eighteen years passed? A lot, you're allowed to announce. My life had completely changed from a faded past to this run-of-the-mil present. However, I believe there isn't any difference in a matter of intervals. In my opinion, what time intervals breed are pretty much the same: things happen and things change, that is, one way or another. In this world we live in, only change is constant and firm.

     Moving on.

     At this point of my life, I could say I belong to a little family now, residing in a Philippine province where I reached my kind of quiet. We are three in number, and of course I love them— I love my wife, I love my daughter. We had indifferences, yes, but we love each other. We got the nature of love that couldn't be easily destroyed by day-to-day problems. We had aspirations, faith, and hope; revolving within us like how planets in the solar system revolve.

     And yet within mine, found in my own ribcage, along with the sound of my heartbeats, sometimes I feel there seems to be something missing. Of which, as of now, I cannot determine.

     But first, I would like to say a few things about my family.

     I'd begin with my wife. The one whom I met two months after the death of my coworker.

     It was summer that time.

     As a tropical country during the warmest season of the year, here in the Philippines the heat of the sun is twice—even thrice—hotter than an average day. Unlike from famous countries like France, Spain, and United States, where one can wear jackets all the time of the day, in here skins can be burnt by the heat. And because of it, so did my cold heart of remorse.

     Up until now, I remember how she looked wearing her green, summer dress that one afternoon. Kind of revealing, the first time I met a woman like her. I saw sweat drops slowly running down her cleavage, then down her legs. As a man, of course I was enticed. It was late afternoon, and along with other tourists, I was having a vacation on a Philippine provincial beach. Right at that time, at that place, I first lay my eyes on my future girlfriend years before she became my wife.

     I was on vacation, as I said—mainly alone—and willing to ease my mind somewhere far from the mainland. By coincidence, there on the white beach I found her beauty, and to me she seemed almost perfect under a falling sun. As if her eyes so sparkly, her breasts so immense, and her thin belly put a killing attraction spell to my mind. It was, perhaps, the magic of nature that allured me to go seek her. It could be the sunlight's praise reflecting on her, then her own body onto me.