“It’s here! I feel it! It has finally come.” I gasped, roused from fitful half sleep by a bare wisp of stinging cold wind suddenly brushing against my feet while I lay in bed one early autumn evening heavy with the still lingering heat of summer. My legs jerked wildly, recoiling instinctively as the touch of the chilled wind became heavier and more persistent. The wind had appeared abruptly and unexpected out of a crisp, clear darkened sky just as my father had predicted it would, nipping and snapping, at first barely perceptible, like a frisky puppy at my bare, unprotected heels, then moving up my leg forcefully like a growling dog. Seized with fear, my muscles from the top of my head to the extreme tips of my toes stiffened, tight and taut. I could not move. I dared not move. The knife-sharp chilly breeze sliced across the soles of my feet in short, sharp strokes before slithering snake-like slowly, undulating up the length of my legs and along the expanse of my shivering body until it reached my neck. Tarrying there for a breath of a second awash in the heavy perspiration oozing from open pores widened from spasms of fear, the breeze then inched up, up, up along my torso like a silky spider’s web enveloping my mind in a tangled parody of Eve enticing Adam. My father had warned me when I was about to enter manhood that it would be useless to resist the wind. He counseled that if a man passes through high peaks and low valleys of life with appropriate balance there would be no need to fear or challenge the adjudicating wind’s minute and detailed assessment. Dismissing his words with my habitual obstinacy, I was able to lift myself over the throes of a long, lingering illness that had sapped almost all my remaining strength and find enough determination to put up a fight, however feeble, to break free of the Aswang wind’s possessive grip.

ILLUSTRATION BY PERRY GIL MALLARI
ILLUSTRATION BY PERRY GIL MALLARI

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