I paused again and looked at the mirror that was hanging on the tiled wall of the bathroom. I touched my forehead and tried to sense if I am sick. No, not even a flicker of heat had warm my palm. I looked at the medical cabinet above the mirror and took the bottle of Metformin. I took out one of the tablet and slipped it in my mouth. I had a glucose imbalance, it was a condition I had since I was ten years old. My mind tends to create images that was not really there or not physically appearing. I started becoming a normal human when I was fifteen, but still, the images I'm seeing never left me. They kept on haunting me everytime I was supposed to act normal.
"Patrick, we need to pay the electric bill until tomorrow. I already received a Disconnection Notice." I heard the husky voice of my Mom from the other side of the dining table. I glanced at her and like the usual, she couldn't lay her eyes on me. My heart was swatted by an invisible force that she always shot at me everytime she needed to talk to me. I knew my heart was crying. I looked at my plate and said nothing.
We were always like this every morning. We ate away from each other, as if one of us will bite the other, as if I contained an infectious disease that couldn't be cure and as if she was not even my Mom. I hated it so much. I couldn't show how I hate my Mom for letting me feel extremely different. I didn't know that she would hate me forever, after that foggy night. Oh, I am not supposed to be thinking about that. I have a job to go to and I need to assure my Mom that I'm working for us to eat and live. She cared more about breathing than checking how her son's life goes on.
"I'll give it to you later." I eventually said, impassively. I stood up and left instantly without giving my Mom a second glance to say goodbye or something.
I drove my way to my work in Pasig City using my 3-years old motorcycle I just finished paying five months ago. I was fortunate the traffic was as light as the movement of the thin clouds in the blue sky today. It was actually an odd event.
I am welcomed at the entrance of my working place by the weirdest employee the JW Forbes Publishing Company has ever had. His one-sided hair that looked like it was licked by a cow, his black suit matched with a faded gray jeans and his black bowtie: those were the things that always made me avoids him, he dressed himself in a weird way.
"I didn't eat gummy worms for breakfast. Will you come with me to the grocery?" Ron Angelo Javier said to me in a kind of voice that it almost like a matter of life and death.
I gave him a look of disbelief. I shrugged my head and walked pass him. An awkward breakfast with my Mom, followed by a co-worker who couldn't buy foods alone, was kind of annoying for me.It made me want to escape the reality.
"Patrick, wait, wait wait." I heard Ron yelling which made the head of everyone in the hallway turned to us. I looked back at him after heaving a sigh. "I need to eat something. Corn?"
My jaw twitched. I turned my back from him and quickly took the stairs down to the Janitor's Quarter. I need to start my work before Mr. Forbes came and start yelling how the hallway was becoming a pigpen; and he's paying us to clean his building, so if we don't wanna get clean off the list of his employees, we may start cleaning the floor with just our hands and our own saliva. Sometimes, I wonder if Mr. Forbes was really an educated person for coming up with such disgusting method of cleaning.
"Hey Patrick, start at the second floor, Room G2." Jem Joshua said to me. He was the senior in our group. He was like a manager of a sort. A strict manager, I might add. Everybody knew he was Mr. Forbes' favorite. He was untouchable by anyone from our flock.
I nodded at Jem and as fast as I could, changed to my janitor uniform. It was a loose white polo with red sleeves. I took a tin pail and a mop with a wooden handle from the tool cabinet in the Quarter.
