Getting Psychic

"I find Elisa in my parents’ bedroom, embraced in our mother’s arms. With their faces relaxed like that, they look so much alike. Same high cheekbones and prominent foreheads, almost identical full lips, their hair long and straight, all over the pillows.

On my way back to bed, I pause in front of the mirror hanging in the hallway to the bathroom. It is a simple square on a wooden frame. I don’t really like what I see in there: me, my father’s child, short and round, with hair so curly it is unmanageable if it isn’t cut very short like a boy’s.

I keep looking only because there is something else. There are reflections of our bedrooms, the Rose and the Lavender, my sister’s and mine. Maybe, if I just look long enough, manage to catch the right angle, I can also finally get a glimpse of my mother and sister’s secret world."

So goes part of my short story "Psychic Family," published in the magazine The Digest of Philippine Genre Stories. For several weeks now, it's been for sale in certain Philippine bookstores, like the Comic Quests in SM Megamall and SM City. For updates, go to publisher Kenneth Yu's blog here.

I love the cover of this issue, done by comic-book artist Lan Medina; and am thrilled to be published alongside Vin Simbulan, Yvette Tan, Dean Francis Alfar, and Mia Tijam. (Tijam's wild and wacky The Ascension of Lady Boy in the Philippine Speculative Fiction 3 was one of my favorites in that anthology.)

If you love me, you'll get yourself a copy!