On Yvette Tan's Work of Fiction

I don't remember the last time I read something so freakishly scary since I'm not big on horror stories. I have been, however, in a situation of being dragged to a movie house to watch a horror flick. It happened a lot of times. The number of times it incurred series of nightmares would've been enough to put me off another horror film. But there is just something about these films that, despite the obvious "damage" it caused me (I am not kidding, there were nightmares that seem to appear as a sequel to a horror film that I just saw that I nearly wet my bed and there was an incident where I lost a toenail after kicking the wall out of fright from watching Phobia 2) that had me biting on them like a nasty bait. Perhaps it had something to prove about me being a masochist. But hey, I digress.

I came across Yvette Tan's "Waking the Dead and Other Horror Stories" more than once in the Philippine Literature section of National Bookstore yet I have never been tempted to even pore over it's content, even if it screams "from the terrifying imagination of award-winning fictionist Yvette Tan". It's blurb was fetching, but nada. I've never heard of Yvette Tan before. So why bother? It was only when a friend of mine, a huge reader if I may add, made a mention of her and her book. The thing about me is that  it wouldn't take you too much whipping to egg me on, especially when it comes to books and movies. He agreed to lend me his copy and I was of course ready to isolate myself and read even just one story.

"They say that a person knows that she's reached Quiapo by the way it smells. My grandmother-- my Lola -- described the scent as tentative, as if the air itself is constantly waiting for something to happen. The scent of it underlies everything in this city, be it the rich, barbeque odor of isaw cooking in the dingiest of areas, to the clean, sweet scent of Pasig river -- the Ilog Pasig --itself."-- Yvette Tan, The Child Abandoned  

So starts the first out of 10 entries. I breezed through each dark tale that has its own horrific thread to unfurl. Her stories are unpredictable, gripping, it had me at the edge of my seat, yet there is, of course, an aspect of truly Filipino in them as each story features hellish characters that peopled ghoulish stories that spread by word of mouth. Yes, these characters are marked in the Filipino psyche the same way the legends or the alamats do. The cast from hell: tianaks, kapres, duendes, nuno sa punso, encantadas, tikbalangs, I am no stranger to these supernatural beings as I have had endless nights of trying to fend off the idea of them breathing on my neck or hiding underneath my bed, or right outside my bedroom window, waiting till I drift to sleep before taking me for a light meal. Miss Tan weaves her own version of scare that promises cold sweat, no matter how old you are. Aside from well known cthonic cast there were also thought provoking stories that tell about human sufferings; insecurities and insatiable wants, the alcoholics and devotees of faith and drugs to complete what is already a mephistophilean broth.

Never will one look at the dark same way again.