Midnyte Madness: A Tale of Two Terrors

Part One: Merry’s Bitter Half, Chapter 1

Merry’s Mother Dear

A certain kind of madness lurks within each and every one of us. Madness that lays untapped, just waiting for the right moment to sneak out. You don’t believe in this? But you should — nah, you must! — believe in Merry, a child of woe, used and abused, who has more than just a certain kind of madness, a kind of manic rage spawned by Midnyte that then gave rise to her very bitter, ghastly half. And when you do — You’ll never look at a black cat again in the same way you did before!

LEST you think me crazy, let me first tell you why I hacked my husband to pieces, and then danced with glee upon the blood and gore of his remains on the floating floor…

My name is Merry. Yes, Merry. I would have preferred Mary, a common but lovely name, but my mother named me Merry because I was “born in the merry Christmas season”. Yep. That’s what she said.

For that reason, how could I express my disaffection over a name that did not sound merry to me at all?

How could I complain or argue with her that my name had embarrassed me in school? My teachers and classmates all thought that I did not know how to spell.

Oh, I must have been the most bullied in school just because I was named Merry.

But facing up to the bullies was not in my DNA. And arguing or complaining to my mother was unthinkable. I had never done it, nor would I even consider doing it. I loved my mother. Very much.

How could I not? I grew up with her, the only person in this whole wide world who showed me love.

Well, there was my father. He was supposed to love me as well. I heard people talk about how fathers should love and care for their children. I had also read about it, watched on TV and films, that fathers loved their kids especially if they had only one, like me, an only child.

My mother assured me often enough that my father loved me. I believed my mother. I always did. Why would she lie to me?

She confided to me once, twice, that she loved me more than she loved my father. That was supposed to be our secret.

“Never tell him that,” she warned.

I obeyed her, of course.

Two reasons: first, I always do as I was told; second, there was no way for me to tell my father even if I wanted to do just that.

My father flitted in and out of our life as if his feet were on fire. Every time. Every single time! He was always in a hurry, it seemed to me then, to take his leave from us and be off.

Where to? I’ve no idea. No wonder, my memories of him were like a mist enveloped in the thick fog of my mind, especially later in my life.

‘Later’ in my life referred to the time when I was fifteen. I wanted to be an eighteen-year-old then, of legal age, so I could work and help my mother. But I was turned away the first time I tried to apply as food server in a fast-food outlet.

“Come back when you’re eighteen,” the manager said, not unkindly, “we don’t employ twelve-year-olds.” He looked seventeen years old himself.

Annoyed, not so much for the rejection but for mistaking me as a twelve-year-old, I told my mother about it when I got home.

She was, as usual, puffing on a cigarette, a vice she had acquired in her present job. She crushed the butt of her cigarette on a cracked saucer.

Then she eyed me. Curiously.

She stared at me as if seeing me — her only child — for the first time.

Then she asked:

“Do you really want to help me have some money? Money we can use for our future?”

I noticed her use of the word “have” instead of “earn” but I did not question it. I had always looked up to her to know things and words better than I.

What did I know at that time anyway? Even the word “future” did not have a lot of meaning for me.

“Yes, Mother. I’ll help if I could.”

“Do you remember the bald guy, tall one, oldish, with full beard and grey eyes, who kept saying you’re a very pretty girl?”

I shook my head. The men my mother met at work all looked the same to me: be they balding or with a full head of hair, mustachioed, tall, short, wide as a fridge and pot-bellied, grey-eyed, blue-eyed, mildly drunk, very drunk and without exception, ancient.

I could not remember comments about me being pretty. I would be, for certain, quite dazed with exhaustion and sleep when my mother got off work from the girlie bar, a customer in tow to take her and me for a wee after-midnight snack at a nearby 24-hour fast-food joint.

No, I could not remember any Joe. There were a quite few of them, you see, who treated me with burger and fries in vain attempt to lure my mother into their dark lair.

My mother shrugged. “Does not matter, I guess, whether you remember him or not. His name is Barry. He says he wants to…” she hesitated at this point and looked at me again with that curious look.

I wondered why.

Then she reached out for the crushed packet of cigarettes near the saucer — she never got around to buying a proper ashtray since she started smoking — and finding it empty, she rummaged through the butts on the saucer.

She found one that was good enough. That should give her at least two to three puffs. She lighted it with a match, almost burning the tip of her nose.

I squirmed. I did not want to see her hurt herself, much less see her ruin her health by cigarettes. Warnings were aplenty about cigarette smoking as a major cause of cancer.

My mother took a couple of puffs from the butt and then said, eyeing me with a squint through the haze of the sideways-curling smoke, “Barry wants to marry me and bring the two of us to New Zealand. I’m considering the offer.”

I was stunned. It was the exact moment when my father, just a mist from the thick fog of my memory, entered my mind.

“You have a husband! How could you marry another man?”

“Your father and I, well, we’re not married. He promised he’d marry me one day, when the time’s right.”

That was another shock. I was under the impression during all those years that my mother and father were married. But this shock was nothing compared to what was going on in my mind.

I blurted again, “You said you love my father.” There was accusation in my voice.

There was also confusion.

In my heart, in my being, I could not imagine my mother being married to a man who was not my father, married to a strange man from a strange country. I did not even know where New Zealand is on the map.

“I could never love another man, Merry. My heart belongs to your father and your father alone.”

“So why are you even considering marriage to someone else?”

She stubbed the sorry butt on the saucer full of other sorry-looking butts, shook her head, and then heaved a deep sigh that seemed to come from the abyss of her soul.

I was standing by the door of our tiny “studio-type” dwelling; studio-type being the euphemism for a one-room rental flat.

My mother remained seated on the old and tattered couch.

She looked up, searched my face for something, perhaps a trace of maturity in me, and said:

“If I accept Barry’s offer, it is because of the prospect of having some money that I can save. I could get a job in his country. You know I’m good at what I normally do. I expect I will get a good pay in New Zealand.”

“And,” again, that deep sigh, “it is also because I love your father dearly. I will marry Barry knowing that your father and I will be together again, at last, in the near future. Maybe after two or three years.”

“How?” I was mystified.

“Come here, Merry. Sit by my side. I’ll tell you.”

“But why does he want to marry you?” I asked, annoyed with myself. Was I so dumb, I asked myself, that I could not figure out this puzzle that my mother was on about?

“He wants to marry me because that would ease, legally, his bringing us both into his country. He wants us to have a good life there with him. But when you turn eighteen, Barry and I will get a divorce.”

I got more confused.

“I’ll tell you why but this is our secret, okay?”

I just stared at her, speechless.

“By the time we are divorced, I would have legal rights to send for your father. Barry assured me he will support and work on my New Zealand citizenship before he files for divorce.

“When I become a citizen, I will then sponsor your father to settle there. He would join us and I would marry him there.

“Or I could return here, in the Philippines, marry him and then we’ll travel to New Zealand together. Either way, we would be like a normal family.”

I frowned. I could not appreciate what my mother just said. But what did I know at that age really?

“And,” she went on, “when Barry and I are divorced, he would then be free to marry again.”

(to be continued)

If you wish to read the introduction and the other chapters, the links are provided below. Thank you.

Introduction My Madness That Is Midnyte

Part One Chapter 2 Midnyte Madness — Merry Meets Midnyte

Part One Chapter 3 Midnyte Madness — Merry’s Tangerine Thoughts in Angeles City

Part One Chapter 4 Midnyte Madness — Merry + Barry = Happy Together?

This is what inspired me to create Midnyte in this non-fiction piece: Midnyte’s My Madness

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