Mabini's Lot

I died once. Or at least, that’s how it felt.

When I was six years old, we briefly returned to my grandparents’ old neighborhood. We used to live near the area, so we briefly visited there too and finally to play at the playground nearby. I was walking over to the slides after playing on the seesaw with my brother when I froze. Mid-walk, I just froze—I couldn’t move. I imagine that’s how a deer caught in headlights feel; too stunned to react until the inevitable crash happens. The kid on the swing was going high and fast, and I got caught right in the middle. I was paralyzed, staring blankly as a child on the swing hurtled toward me. I don't blame him, though; I never did. I kept saying it was just his slipper that hit me. “I’m fine,” I insisted.

But I wasn’t fine. There was a gaping hole in my forehead. I needed stitches and had to be checked for a concussion, but that wasn’t the worst part.

It was the 9th of December—the day I died.

And then I came back.

Wrong.

I woke up on Dr. Nueve’s operating table, mid-suture, telling everyone they were all jerks for lying about the injection not hurting.

That was when it all began. It wasn’t the past that haunted me—it was the future. I began to dread growing older, clinging to the idea that if I could somehow stop time, I wouldn’t have to face the inevitable. That creeping fear followed me, year after year, and I stayed stuck, unwilling to grow up. Every year, I dreaded growing up, hated the idea of moving up a grade in school. I wanted to stay a child, so I wouldn’t have to face the existential dread that’s been with me for as long as I can remember.

I think it’s coming back to the old neighborhood that caused my accident. Between the ages of one and three, my parents rented a house on Mabini Street. It was a small, starter place—two bedrooms, maybe two bathrooms. They ran a small eatery for students from the nearby Catholic school. The house was made of cement, as many are in that town. The floors were smooth cement, painted a garish brick-red. On top of that, cheap linoleum had been laid down, but it didn’t sit right. It would bubble and warp at the edges, making it feel as if the floor itself was somehow soft and sticky underfoot. It left me with the constant sensation that my feet were coated in grime, even when they were clean. The sticky, slightly warm feel of the linoleum seemed to trap all the heat and moisture from the humid air. I always felt like the floor was sweating.

But the bathroom? That was something else. The floor was smooth cement but it felt icky. And the drain? That’s what I hated the most. Instead of a proper metal grate, there was a large, gaping hole in the ground, covered by a flimsy lid. At night, things crawled out of it. Cockroaches. I could hear them skittering around the bathroom floor. Even though the drain was covered, they’d somehow push their way through, creeping out when the lights were off.

The air in that house always felt damp and heavy, like it was trapping all the grime of the day. It made my skin crawl just being there.

There were whispers about the place being a mass grave from the Japanese occupation—Americans, Filipinos, Spaniards buried beneath the ground. The other kids loved to scare me with stories, but I didn’t need their ghost tales to hate the place.

In retrospect, it probably wasn’t that bad. The eatery attracted students and family friends, and I even celebrated my second birthday there. However, it paled in comparison to my seventh birthday—the one I survived with only an asterisk-shaped scar on my forehead from the swing accident. Other kids might have gotten sick with something like Kawasaki, but I made it through six and reached seven with just that scar.

It was after visiting my maternal grandmothers at their house and having a sleepover there, I gained insight into where I would want the rest of my childhood to be.

So one night, while my mother was bathing me, I told her what I’d been seeing. Red eyes. Sharp teeth. Black fur. "It looks like a terrifying horse," I said, watching the blood drain from her face. She was rattled. Raised Catholic, but still clinging to the superstitions of our small town, she believed me. And I kept talking—to something unseen, something only I could sense. I was never alone.

Eventually, we moved back to my great-grandmother’s house—the matriarch’s domain. She had once seen the future too, but she stopped after warning three people, all of whom died despite her prophecies. Still, she read palms and performed egg cleanses at New Year's, telling us just enough to keep the old ways alive.

We were happy in the matriarchal home—a grand house where we grew up. I still see glimpses of the future sometimes, but it was never true that I saw the devil, the thing that prompted our move.

It was always me. I fucking hated that old, ugly dump. I hated that house so much that I filled it with nightmares.

When we returned for a brief visit years later, I felt it—the same dread, the same sense of something crawling under my skin. The memories of that old, ugly dump flooded back, and my mind drifted to the bathroom with its gaping hole, the sticky linoleum that felt like it was pulling me back into the past.

As I walked toward the slides, the air thick with humidity, I was too distracted by those memories to pay attention to the world around me. I didn’t see the kid on the swing coming at me fast. The crash was inevitable. And I died.

Author's Note: This story was written for Kenny Penn's October Writing Challenge. You can check it out here: