Sunday, July 29, 2007
Ever had a feeling of premonition just right before something bad happened? Well, guess what, it happened to me just this evening. 10 minutes before I was about to go out I had this certain “thing” tugging in the back of my mind that I have to leave behind my wallet and my cash at home. Now I understand the reason behind that peculiar moment.
I went home tonight riding a jeep from Quiapo. Feeling impatient of waiting for an FX or a bus to come along I took the first jeep that stopped before me. Luckily my favorite spot, which was the passenger seat beside the driver, was free of one person and I sat there and grabbed hold of the bar beside the side view mirror as the driver rolled off zig zagging along the highway with a speed that’s definitely inhuman.
I was thinking it was smooth sailing going home tonight. Too bad I was wrong on that account.
Just after we passed through Banawe st. along Espana road we stopped in front of the Chow King restaurant to wait for a passenger to come in. There was this one guy who just hangs onto the entrance of the jeep as if waiting for something to happen. He was a small lean guy with a face that still looks like a student and wearing an orange shirt and brown slacks that’s a bit too tight for him. He was carrying a backpack behind him which he was holding with his left hand. A frown was painted flatly on his face.
I never really noticed him that much after entering the jeep as I had thought he was just the typical average guy along with the rest of us. Never would I think he was capable of doing something malicious with that face of his (the frown I suspect was from stress of a day’s honest work or something along that line).
And then it happened.
Actually I was listening intently on the savage beating of the drums of Slip Knot’s “Before I Forget” at that moment. You’d think you would have time to prepare for such things but then again these kinds of circumstances can never be predicted at all.
The guy whipped out from behind his back pack a .38 caliber pistol and aimed it at a girl who was using her cellular phone to sent text messages. “Walang kikilos” he said “Holdup up eto. Akin na iyong mga cell phone!”
A holdup. Aw great… Just my luck.
I looked at the mirror in front of me to see the reflection of what’s going on behind the jeep. The guy was still hanging from the entrance while aiming his gun at the girl with the phone. The poor girl was too terrified to react let alone give her cell phone to him. Once again he shouted profanities to give him all our cell phones and aimed the gun at the head of the girl.
The guy beside me was starting to get paranoid. He was shouting hysterically that it was a holdup and he was willing to give up his cell phone just as long he gets to keep his sim card (He was bigger than me, mind you, and you’d think he’d react in a different sort of way). Frantically he opened his cell phone’s casing and took away his sim card then dropping his phone afterwards on the jeep’s passenger compartment.
The jeepney driver now pulled over along the side of the road since he was too witless to carry on his destination onwards with a thug holding a gun behind his back. The other passengers were all quiet now except for the guy at my side who was screaming at me to let him pass through the door so he can jump out of the jeep. Lucky for him the guy with the gun was also shouting and screaming at the lady with the cell phone to even notice what my fellow passenger was planning to do. Me, I was still looking at the guy’s reflection at the mirror wondering if he would fire that gun or not. I barely even noticed the guy pushing me away from my seat let alone his screams.
Looking at the gun gives me the shivers. It was as if Death’s tool of destruction, which was right in front of me, would explode at any minute.
Miraculously, the man with the gun stopped waving around his piece when he took the girls cell phone away from her. He then ordered the driver to start the engines and move forward telling us never to look back. I don’t know whether it’s because he is afraid like the rest of us (must be his first time) or he was just happy he already took one cell phone away from the group. He never even asked us to take out our wallets nor our jewelries (not that I have any haha!).
As we sped away I looked in the mirror and saw the man cross the other side of the street probably finding another jeepney to victimize on the opposite route. He was probably doing it all night long unless somebody would have stopped him.
In the movies situations like this lasts a lifetime with your life hanging in the balance. In reality this all happened in just a span of 5 minutes tops and you’d still think it was a lifetime. You never would have the ample time to think everything through with all that pressure.
After the man disappeared everyone began talking in single unison, each telling his own account and other past experiences like this that happened to them before. The driver confesses that this was the umpteenth time his vehicle was robbed.
The guy beside me told me, that once, the jeep he was riding was held up by three men with knives, he also jumped out of the running vehicle.
Force of habit I guess.
Oh well.
