the night my balls shot out of my mouth

If I hadn't stayed up all night to watch four episodes of Rome and three of Heroes, we wouldn't be speeding along the highway like crazy, my father getting irritated as I egged him on to drive faster so I'd get to the office without another tardiness record. His normal driving speed is slightly faster than a hearse at a funeral procession. This was way above his personal speed limit.

I did want to sleep early last night. But the damn DVD player kept on playing and I couldn't stop it. I was helpless. Worthless piece of crap. Sleep, at that time, wouldn't have been restful anyway as my mind was swelling with thoughts of superhero exploits, wily political maneuverings of would-be Roman emperors, and bloody campaigns of ambitious generals. My sleep would be haunted by blood anyway. I might as well let the damn player do its thing and continue watching. I didn't want another nightmare like the one I had last Saturday morning, in which, I found myself in a crumbling church at midday. The priest was standing by the altar, motionless. A handful of people were also standing in between the pews, when, suddenly, the light of the sun was blotted out, completely plunging the ancient place into darkness. I instinctively ducked to take cover, I'm not sure from what exactly. When the light came back, I instructed the sacristan to check on the nails of the rickety, wooden stairs of the choir loft. The devil was there, I said. It had loosened one of the nails while the light was out, to weaken the foundations of this church (it doesn't make sense, I know, but dreams won't be dreams if they weren't absurd).

So the sacristan made his way toward the choir loft. But before he could even go near the wooden structure, a huge, black arm rose out of the pews and held him by the face. Its hand was so big it almost covered half his face. Seeing that he had been blocked thus, I hesitatingly advanced, my balls jiggling up my mouth, to check the stairs myself. To my great horror (by this time, my balls shot out of my mouth to hide somewhere else), I saw a fifteen-foot woman ducking in between two pews. Her long Sadako-inspired hair was covering her face and her massive arms were resting on the pews. For a complete minute, my heart stopped beating, undecided as to what exactly I should do, stay there and await my doom or run from this oversize woman who was having a bad hair day.
I woke up right after that. I stared at the ceiling, scared and breathless, wondering where the hell my balls went. As if on cue, my mobile phone rang. I almost smashed the freaking thing with my fist. God, I was so scared my intestines almost squeezed out of my rectum like that of a cat's after having been run over by a fire truck.

It was Michelle trying to wake me up for our lunch at Velasquez Park in Makati City. Lu, who is on summer break from her studies in Paris, would be there, and so would the rest of the gang. I scratched my balls to see if they were still in place, took off my clothes, and hit the shower, hoping I won't see a 20-foot transvestite wielding a knife there.