spine-chilling morning

my friends are off to puerto galera for the long weekend. they met at cubao at around five this morning. i really wanted to go with them, but now i'm quite thankful i decided not to...else i would've witnessed a really creepy sight...

this morning, when i woke up at around 10 am, i set myself out for another usual, boring saturday at home. after breakfast, i finished disc three of LOST (which i slept on last night...) after constant battle with my bed i finally decided to get up and got myself ready to work out. lifted some weights while watching the catch-up marathon of the amazing race. then i had lunch (a late one because i had to rest for a couple of hours) my om sent me lechon from my uncle's birthday. then i just played with mc-mc and talked on the phone...nothing spine-chilling so far, i know...

then my mom arrived, surprisingly early. apparently they sent the workers early because it was my uncle's birthday. so as my mom entered our door our conversation kinda went like this:

me: oh ma, aga niyo ah..
mom: birthday kasi ni tommy.
me: ah ok...
mom: alam mo ba, nagbigti yung kapit-bahay natin sa harap. (in a nothing's-the-matter tone...)
me: ano?!!!

yes, one of our neighbors hung himself. well, it shocked me. what was creepier was that he hung himself right in their garage...which is directly visible from our front windows...great. my other uncle who lives in the front house witnessed everything from their window! we're not sure what time he hung himself, but my mom said the dogs were going crazy last night at around 3 am. the body was discovered at around 5am (it was dangling off a rope beside their punching bag). rumors say that they found the body still warm, but he was d.o.a. at the hospital, his tongue already stiff...(sorry i had to go into detail) when he was discovered, the neighborhood went ballistic, the relatives screaming, knocking on neighbors' gates, ringing to dr. marasigan's doorbell who was a few houses away, my uncle accounts it was like a scene from a movie, something he though he'd never see in real life...the story goes that this guy was depressed because of his girlfriend. our neighbor told us that she was being paired up with a foreigner, thus the depressed boyfriend...jeesh, you'll never really know what'll happen next in that household. their sister got knocked up by her boyfriend just last year...and now this. their life story really is mmk-worth.

i still wanna be over there at puerto galera right now, but in some way it's a good thing that i weren't coz if i was i would've woken early this morning just in time to see everything. i'm happy that i don't have his dead image on my mind, unlike my uncle who saw it as soon as he woke up (what a good morning greeting...) i guess it would've been less spine-chilling if it happened in a house further away, a very distant neighbor...and if we didn't know the dead guy. but the fact is, we'll always be haunted by the sight of our neighbor's garage, imagining what his body might've looked like, or reliving the minutes before his death. i didn't know him personally but my cousin and uncle do, me i only see him and greet him whenever i do.

just when i thought i was out for a normal saturday.......