VENUSWhen consciousness finally clawed its way back to me, it came in fragments. My eyelids felt like they had been weighed down with lead, my head thick, foggy, heavy as if it no longer belonged to me. I blinked once, twice, and the blurred shapes around me began to sharpen, not into comfort, not into safety, but into something unfamiliar.The first thing I noticed was the smell. Damp wood. Stale air. A faint hint of pine seeping through the cracks of whatever place we were in. The mattress beneath me was thin, lumpy, covered with a scratchy blanket that smelled like dust and old smoke. The walls weren’t painted. Bare wood planks, some splintering, some water-stained. A small window high up on one wall, no curtains, no glass. just wooden boards nailed shut from the outside.The other cottage had been… if not home, then at least an imitation of it. This? This was a hiding place. Temporary. Makeshift. A hole dug into the world for a man on the run.And sitting there, on the edge of th
Huling Na-update : 2025-07-30 Magbasa pa