In The Time Of Nick

“Don’t move.” Whispered the low raspy voice with a heavy Ilocano accent. “Don’t scream for help or this knife plunges into your neck.” Continues the voice, albeit somewhat unconfidently, letting out a series of coughs, and indeed he could feel something sharp and unforgiving grazing the left side of his throat whereupon the owner of the voice wrapped an arm to stall him from movement, forcing him in a captive embrace. The night was short of stars, but the Meralco lampposts lining the road made up for the lack of natural light, and surely, he thought, someone was bound to catch sight of his predicament and would eventually call the police. But he also realized that people have better things to do at two in the morning than hang outside their homes on an ordinary day in the calendar, here in a fairly secluded part of town. The only other person within the vicinity was an ebriosed man maudly swaying to and fro as he walked. He stopped by a lamppost to vomit. Seeing this, he fought the urge to shout for help despite knowing it was an exercise in futility, but he knew he had to do something. So he tried to negotiate with his captor. “Look, you can take my wallet and phone, I’ll be as quiet as possible. Let me have my i.d. and you can have everything else from my wallet, please. I won’t call the police. But don’t kill me, please.” The man was breathing heavily down his neck and his breath reeked of something akin to acetone. It was unbearable. He tried to twist his neck away from the putrid smell but his captor mistook this as an act of resistance and tightened his grip on him. “I said don’t move. I don’t care about your money, do as I tell you and I’ll spare you your life.” The man commanded him, or rather, wheezed to him to continue walking, until they reached the front of his house. Whoever the man is, he must know who I am, for how else could he know which among the houses lining the road belonged to me? That, or, he must have been stalking me for some time before chancing upon the opportunity to hold me hostage. “Open the door. Now.” Strangely, there was no threat laced within the man’s heavily-accented voice, and feeling like he heard that voice somewhere before gave him a feeling of ease that he immediately followed the command without putting up a fight. At the back of his mind he wondered if this was not a form of that Budol-budol modus operandi he’s seen reported in the news multiple times, what with the man being a thaumaturgist performing an audio sleight-of-hand trick with that familiar voice of his, but for some reason he didn’t care. This must be how budol-budol is done. Put your victims’ minds at ease. Can’t wait to be on the news. He added as an afterthought. They were now inside his house, yet the man didn’t release him. He pushed him onwards until they reached his room; how the man knew where his room was, he simply attributed to budol-budol. Then something astonishing happened. With his arm firmly ensconced on his neck, the man led him to a drawer where a box of old photos are kept, and as he rummaged through the pictures, the man, amidst intervals of coughing, narrated his entire life to him. Your name is Nick Rigor. You were born in La Union on May 17, 1989, you dropped out of college due to financial reasons and went abroad as a seaman. You’re not onboard a ship now, but trust me, there’ll be many more to come. It is during one of your vacations that you’ll meet your wife. You’ll have three kids, and a fourth one from a mistress. In the end, they will all abandon you. The man paused and retrieved an old photo from the stack. It was torn around the edges, and was of him as a toddler on his mother’s lap, both smiling at the camera, while his father stood beside them, his gaze elsewhere, right hand on hip, and in his left fingers, suspended mid-air, a half-finished cigarette leaving a trail of smoke from his mouth. You always had a higher opinion of your father than your mother even though he was so distant. You emulated all his ways, including being a seaman and even with acquiring a mistress. But unlike him, who died surrounded by family, you’ll end up alone and with nothing except emphysema. The man paused to let out another long, wheezing cough as if to emphasize his point. But how did he know about all this? Was this still budol-budol? It was hard to tell. Whatever it was, Nick knew he needed to do something. Seeing an opportunity when the man unconsciously loosened his grip on him while telling his story, he stomped on the intruder’s foot and twisted off the arm wrapped around his neck. Finally grabbing the knife and catching his intruder off-guard, he turned around to have a look at the man who knew so much about him. And what he saw revealed a man who was: severely defeated in life, the lines around his face a bleak reminder of the ravages of a time that has been unkind, the hollow cheeks hollowed by the absence of all hope, and the mien of the entire face one of a decrepit doddering on the edge of annihilation. Staring into the man’s eyes, he realized he was none other than Nick Rigor. A version of his self many years from now if he does not change his ways. He saw the pain in the older man’s eyes as emanating from his own, a pain rooted in his childhood dilemma of deciding whether his dad was a good father figure to him or merely a figure of illusion, appearing only at key times in his life, and vanishing for the rest. Deciding whether it was enough that his father was like a shadow,—the lower the sun in his life, the taller it gets, the more his influence spreads to his system, until the dark of night arrives to swallow him whole, and he’s left with no options but to become a shadow himself. Nick almost asked his older version what went wrong, what happened, but he knew better. It was himself that was the problem. His deep-seated issues with his father, and his lack of resiliency to bounce back from that ordeal of his childhood dilemma and refuse to follow in the footsteps of his father’s mistakes made the older Nick Rigor the man he is, or the man he will be in the future: weak, weary, and washed up. Though left unsaid, Nick knows that the reason he came back from the future was to warn him of impending doom. It was a mercy from God to a dying man to be handed the privilege to show his past self the repercussions of his actions in a last ditch effort to curb what is yet to happen. Suppose Nick decides to repair his ways; he controls his libido and does not cheat on his wife, stops smoking, and becomes a good father to his kids, will that change things? Will fate not find a way to bring about the same results given a different set of circumstances? Will the linear narrative of time give way to the changes he is proposing knowing the adage that time waits for no man? The answer to all these questions is encoded in two words: highly unlikely. It is impossible to change the past given these reasons, and the future is just an extension of the past, and seeing that the older Nick came from a future that has already transpired (i.e. he was already despondent before coming back to the past), it all means that his situation is already part of the past as it is, and ceases to be malleable to any proposed changes even if desperately prayed for. As fas as he knows, there is no alternate universe, and there is only one dimension. We live in the now, with the now extending over time to become what is known as the past, present, and the future. So even if he changes his ways right now, Nick in some form or another, will still be suffering the same consequences as older Nick for older Nick is already a part of a future that has already occurred and is made eventually a part of the past. Again, an exercise in futility. For some reason, Nick was adamant to stick to this kind of reasoning. He saw no loopholes in it and sealed it with finality with a mental bang of the gavel. The cold reality in this kind of argument was like a cold shower he needed to wake up his senses. He decided that he preferred everything to be crisp and pithy even if tenebrous, over the warm and fuzzy and saccharine I’ll-save-the-day-it’s-not-too-late type of thinking. Truths are supposed to be simple, and anything beyond simple is an exaggeration and exaggerating is a form of a lie. And older Nick, seeing the determination and resignation in his eyes, understood. Younger Nick got up and went to the drawer once again—he grabbed a wad of cash from his secret container and handed it to older Nick. Return to where you came from and buy anything you need with this money. This, he says, is the only thing I could do for you. However older Nick didn’t so much as extend a hand to get the money. He let out a series of coughs and wheezes before speaking. I told you, I have no need for your money. Just knowing that you’ve accepted your, my fate, that, that is enough. So this is how the story ends, neither with a bang nor with a whimper, but with more of a long heaving gasp, neither with fire and ice, nor ice and fire, but with all elements coagulating in one solid block to be obliterated to smithereens and forgotten. It is a kind of groaning, the helpless resignation to one’s fate, and a distorted sigh of relief, the decision to accept one’s fate. The two Nicks were once again outside, and the stars finally were out and about, spread across the vast expanse of the sky. They shook hands and parted ways. Younger Nick watched as older Nick faded away from the distance, listening to the drunk man whistling a sentimental tune while slumped low against a lamppost. Embrace what you can’t erase. Nick shrugged. The inebriated man stopped singing as he choked on his own vomit and died. Above them, the stars twinkled, as if winking.