At forty-five minutes past 2 in the morning, Conrad knew as well as any other that walking alone through Burnham Park was a bad idea. However, being two and a half bottles deep into his celebratory birthday gin binge, he couldn’t care less. In fact, he wished there was trouble ahead; perhaps a mugger looking to take his wallet or another drunk armed with the wrong facial expression.
“Maykayon ah!” Conrad screamed as he blundered forward, challenging the darkness. “I will fight you! I will fight all of you!”
The park remained silent, save for a few cricket chirps and the faint echoes of a karaoke song being murdered in a distant bar. Conrad—just as he had been for the better part of the past five years—was all alone.
Had it not been his birthday, the heavens might have opened up and smited him for all of his drunken cursing. He raged and swore at everything. The cold weather. His fair-weather friends. His loneliness. The waitress who wouldn’t give him her number. The band that refused to play his requested birthday song a fourth time. The bouncer who wrestled him out of the bar and dropped him on his back. The moon. The wind. The planet Jupiter. He even went as far as to curse his own birthday for falling in the middle of a week this year. Getting drunk on a Wednesday night sounded far more irresponsible that getting drunk on a weekend.
Bumbling and mumbling profanities along the park’s dimly lit path, he took another swig from the bottle of gin and stood motionless for a few seconds. He closed his eyes and allowed the crisp November breeze to bring him back to the days of his youth: when everyone would yell, “Conrado, shot!”, And a few hours later be shuffling towards the bus terminal bulalohans in drunken yearning. Back then no one cared if it was a Wednesday, or a Monday, or a Tuesday. No one cared that it was three in the morning.
But college had ended. Conrad dropped out long ago. The bulalohan closed due to health code violations, and everyone moved on and away to better things. Everyone… except for Conrad who found himself drunk and alone on his birthday, stumbling alongside the placid Burnham lake, clutching at the flower rails for support.
Again, he took another shot from the depleted bottle and gazed upon the dark waters of the lake. The pale moon’s dancing reflection convulsed upon the surface. A gust of wind blew, rattling the chains of the nearby swan boats. The vessels rocked gently, nudging against the dock as if wanting to come on land and leave this watery muck. Conrad thought the empty swan boats looked even more depressing than when gullible tourists were aboard them.
Gripping his gin bottle tight, he took one last swig before heaving it as far he could toward the lake’s center. The bottle landed with a splash, bobbing and bouncing for a few seconds before sinking underneath the grime. A few ripples later, all was still once more.
“…happy birthday to me,” whispered Conrad halfheartedly as he steadied himself against a nearby rail, fighting off his own stomach’s ripples of upheaval. The revenge of the gin was imminent, but Conrad would not go down without a fight. Tears filled his eyes as his grasp tightened on the metal barrier.
“Tilmon you weakling!” he ordered his throat, “Tilmon!”
And tilmon his throat did. After a few deep breaths to regain his composure, he lurched forward and knelt against the concrete bench. Taking one final glance at the water, Conrad noticed something odd: his bottle had returned to the surface. He rubbed his eyes, believing it to be a trick of the senses, but it was not. The empty bottle of gin had indeed returned to the surface, atop something else… something massive. From the center of the lake, a dark wave-like mass began to form, growing in size until it became clear that it was not a wave—but rather a head of a creature as large as the lake itself.
Conrad sat petrified as the giant monstrosity rose from the depths. Silver scales lined its corpulent dome while squid-like tentacles dangled from what Conrad gathered was its chin. The creature opened its eyes—a pair of bright yellow orbs dotted by numerous black pupils.
“Ouch,” it grumbled in a deep, ancient voice that echoed only within Conrad’s mind. A single, slimy tentacle slithered up its cheek and flicked the tiny bottle that still rested atop its head. The container went flying off into the night, landing with a distant shatter. One of its pupils focused in on the trembling, white-faced young man on the bench, staring him down as it sulked back underneath the lake’s muck.
A nearby sign read: “Please do not throw anything into the water.”
It appears not even depressed birthday boys are spared lessons in proper waste disposal.
Copyright © 2018 Cousin from Baguio