Remembering Now: The Story

The last deal which made his mind writhed in silent agony over how to make the best of three number pairs had had an overwhelming unbearable weight on his shoulders – considering his bet was what remained of his hundred pesos – that when he got home and upon entering the front door the first urge for him to do was slump on the sofa. Laying his body on it, his back felt strained and fatigued, and wearily stared his eyes at the ceiling.

He had lost before. More in fact. More than a hundred pesos. Though surprisingly, this time had a similar bitter pang of losing several thousands. Or, perhaps, even more.

“There’s still a next time,” he tried to console himself.

He felt the stereo’s remote dig behind his ribs. He groped for it and turned the stereo. All the time exhaling with bass moan, unloading the pressure within him and trying to slow down the adrenalin left in his veins.

“Turn the sounds low, Ignacio,” a female voice commanded from inside a room and added, “You took so long. Just put the milk on the table.”

He turned the volume low. Just enough for the music from the radio station wafted smoothly through the air.

A love song seeped through the speakers. The song made popular years ago by a female artist whom Ignacio could not recall the name. He could not also recall whether he was in his puberty or late in his teens when the song first hit the airwaves. The song was a sad one, but he was clueless why it was so since he was not particular on listening to the lyrics. He just knew the song was a sad one based on the melody.

The volume and the song fit perfectly well. There lingered a grace of ethereal fluid of nostalgia in the air. The soft wisp of cool, music-laden air brought tingling in his skin. He began the pressure within him disappeared. His limbs relaxed. As if he was hypnotized. Though, there stayed deep weariness in him. His eyes squinted sleepily.

He looked at his arm, hand, then the fingers. He softly scanned his prostrate body on the sofa, down further at the couch next to it. Then he moved his eyes toward the barren crass white-painted wall of the house.

He felt an odd nostalgia. It was as if he had been here, in this position, in this same time and place feeling the same experience. It was as if he had already gone to an unspecific time in the future where he was at peace. He was there now as he was now here, on this sofa he was laying on. He was looking back enigmatically at this present time. Like thrown back through time, he was experiencing and feeling a past, a memory: the mood, the atmosphere, the soft touch of air. His present experience seen not from the state of Now but of the future.

Then the feeling snapped like a cut rope. It was gone.

The music stopped.

“Where is the milk?” asked the woman clutching a baby.
“Uh?”
“Where’s the damned milk?”
“Oh, I forgot. I’ll go buy it now, hon,” he said.

Ignacio pulled himself up, dazed, and strode for the door. Once outside, he brushed his hair using his hand, wondering what it was he had remembered a while ago.