How to Tame Your Tibalang

Tala jolted awake to AC/DC's

Back in Black

blaring from her smartphone. She'd lain passed out and naked atop the covers of her bed, her skin sheened with sweat even the little half-horsepower air-conditioner in her bedroom could not alleviate.

Crap. I need to speed through my shower and remove this come from between my legs,

was her harried first thought of the day as sunlight began to peep through her windows.

Shift changes after pulling a double are a pain in the ass

. Breakfast would have to be something at the café across her office.

She went to the watercloset to do her business and that's when she saw dried white streaks of... was that seminal fluid?

Whatever that dried gunk was, it coated the insides of her thighs clear down to her knees and she traced it all the way to her asshole and over the lower half of her buttocks, which felt strange, like they had been stretched.

Her anus felt like someone had shoved something inside it—not a very big thing, but definitely something solid. When she peed, she felt the sting of friction burn at the head of her clit.

That, Tala knew from past experience, was the pain caused by getting repeatedly, consecutively fucked in what her college friends used to call the

"walang hugutan"

school of sex, where the male doesn't withdraw his penis, rather gets hard all over again from an encore of foreplay while still inside the female and resumes his thrusting when he gets hard enough to do so.

I will not freak out. I will not freak the fuck out. I will goddamn not, absocrappinglutely not, lose it.

Tala chanted the words in her head like a mantra as she took deep, calming breaths gathered her wits, scraping at some of the dried substance on her legs and bringing it up to her nose. It smelled slighly like bleach and a lot like raw musk. Yep, semen. This was her first seriously "oh shit" moment of what was promising to be a long day.

Passing the full-length mirror between the shower and toilet, Tala paused when she saw handprints on her body. Large ones. As in 'grip a basketball single-handedly' large. Spanning the full rise of her buttocks from inguinal seam to flank. She had hickeys on her neck and—were those teeth-marks?

Dropping her face into shaky hands, Tala mentally went over her arrival home the previous night. She'd locked the front door, dead-bolted it and the windows had been firmly latched. She'd only been on her balcony once and she secured and locked the sliding doors as she came in. Force of habit demanded that she lock herself in securely.

"Dammit, I'm not on birth control," she yelled at no one in particular (well, maybe God) as she stepped into the shower and turned the water on full blast to wash away the angry, confused tears streaking down her face.

She went through her ablutions on auto-pilot, her mind returning to her self-pleauring, to that fantasy that had felt so real, from the sensations to the smells and, yes, the flavors of salt and sweet, musky skin that lingered on her tongue. To the repeated (and vigorous, very vigorous) fucking she'd gotten from the Buhawi of Her Dreams in la-la land.

Or was it real?

I can't work out how I got fucked. And I cannot deny I truly got FUCKED, all caps

, Tala thought, shaking her head as she let her the conditioner seep into her hair.

I'm not even going to try today. Maybe the Bestiario will have an answer, but I've got work to do first. Pregnant is gonna happen if it's gonna happen. Strange is gonna happen. Sweet Mary and Jesus I hate having no control over shit like this.

The last time she had an "oh, shit" moment coming even close to this magnitude had been six years ago, when Tala was a college senior hanging out with her best friend at the dorm on Morayta St., at the university belt's "buckle" in the City by the Bay.

That best friend had turned into an erstwhile boyfriend when they'd played truth or dare with his fraternity brothers and they'd kissed because she chose the dare.

Tala and her best friend wound up in a seedy little motel with a creaky bed for a three-hour "short time" sex session and they'd forgotten to use protection of any kind.

Oh, yes, she'd been a virgin, but the sacrifice of hymens on the altar of young love was an everyday occurrence along the U-belt. So was the anxiety that followed.

He'd sworn to do the right thing by her and she'd chewed her nails for three weeks after their fevered bout of motel-room acrobatics until her period came.

That was the end of that sad tale, with her bestie returning to his fratboy ways, fraying Tala's patience, and she shied away from the "relationship" slowly but inevitably.

They were still friends, albeit no longer BFFs, and they sometimes chatted or met for coffee. It was all so amicable, this lack of recrimination between them. It had taught her to keep her silly notions of romance to herself and her heart uninvolved with her body's processes.

The illusion of young love was well and truly shattered for Tala, but her qualms about having sex with someone who shared her attraction were removed as well.

So, all's fair, right?

She shrugged and prepared for her day, tucking the Bestiario into the white canvas tote bag she'd chosen for the day.

Well, six years ago, she had someone she could be angry at.

But how, pray tell, can you be angry at a dream?

+++

Buhawi sat in an unobtrusive corner of the café, sipping his

barako

espresso and eating his bacon and eggs on toasted panini and large Caesar's salad slowly, his eyes on the single entry and exit of the establishment.

Any time now.

The gradual crescendo of a Sugar Hiccup song was interrupted by the chiming of bells over the café's swinging door. The rushed staccato of carnal red, mid-heeled pumps on the polished wood parquet made a jarring counterpoint as the vocalist's crescendo peaked.

Sensible shoes in a fuck-me hard color.

Buhawi noted with a cocked right eyebrow.

Somebody armored up today. I wonder why. Heh.

There was Tala, walking purposefully to the counter, tight white jeans hugging the high, rounded curve of her tight hindquarers and molding around her long, lissome legs like they were painted on. The torso-engulfing linen of Tala's filmy black blouse floated behind her on the café's artificially-cooled air even as it swathed her from neck to hip and all the way down to her wrists.

Her hair was braided tight and wound up in a straitlaced bun just over her nape.

What a deliciously soft nape that is,

Buhawi reminisced with a hard, predatory glint in his eye as he licked his lips and bit into his sandwich.

Tala ordered the largest caramel macchiato the café offered, with a Filipino breakfast of crisp-fried fish (boneless Palawan

danggit

one could eat from tail to head) two poached eggs, fried rice and pickled unripe papaya and carrot shreds on the side.

Any time now.

Buhawi counted off the seconds silently, patiently, as he kept his eyes focused on Tala at the counter.

He took in the way her shoulders seemed to be unnaturally stiff, as if she was barely holding herself upright. She turned slightly to the right and he saw her winding and unwinding her fingers together, as if her hands were restlessly seeking something to grip besides fingers.

She closed her eyes and rotated her head and neck as the barista conveyed her order to the kitchen and prepared Tala's coffee.

My, my, she is tense today, is my little witch.

Buhawi leaned back in his chair and kept his eyes on Tala as he savored both his coffee and Tala's obvious tension.

Very good.

Tala took her order buzzer and turned her back to the counter, scouting for a free table. Her eyes met Buhawi's, the sunlight rendering her pupils amber and giving him a clear view of their irises quick dilation in surprise.

Buhawi let a friendly smile curl up his face and he rose in greeting. "Good morning, Tala. Would you care to sit and have breakfast with me?" He waved at the spare chair to his left with a gracious hand. "I don't like to eat alone. Not when there's a perfectly beautiful woman to share breakfast with."

Tala felt the heat and blood rising up her chest to her face.

Damn this Spanish propensity for blushing

, she thought with a mental "tsk." Of all the things to inherit from Beatriz, I had to get this.

Haynaku. How do you greet someone whose face and hands you jilled off to last night. Where in heaven's name do you get the etiquette for that, Miss Manners?

She was struggling for breath, for composure, for the perfect thing to say in response to real-life Buhawi's friendly overtures—really, she had it on the tip of her tongue, ready for a witty delivery when the buzzer in her hand went off.

"Double-tawl caramel mashiato for Tala! With Filipino vreakpast!" The barista's voice sang cheerfully over the heads of a group of zombies dragging their feet into the café and her heavy Visayan accent and simultaneous attempt at an American one grated on Tala's raw nerves.

Buhawi strode to the counter, taking the buzzer from Tala's suddenly unresponsive fingers and put it on the counter in front of the peppy barista with the obviously straightened hair and flirty dark eyes.

"My friend's order is ready? Good, I'll take it to our table now," he said with a smile guaranteed to drop any red-blooded female's panties as he took the tray off the counter.

"Enjoy your meal, Tala and Vernie," the barista said with glazed eyes as she stared at Buhawi, who masked his sudden and deep irritation with a lowed head and a grin in Tala's direction. in Tala's direction. That barista will pay for that, he swore.

How dare she rename me, and after a female singer whose songs I never liked, too. Ngarrr...

"Vernie?" Tala said teasingly, nervous giggles escaping and coming out as true laughter as she caught the sliver of burning anger aimed at the barista that slipped through the thick, dark dark fringe of Buhawi's eyelashes.

"I thought you introduced yourself as Buhawi. Naughty Vernie, giving me a false moniker." Tala waggled a forefinger at Buhawi, who smiled tightly back.

Ah, there, I'm more at ease now. But I do think he's pissed.

Tala threw her head back as she sat in the chair he held out for her and flashed Buhawi her most disarming smile, the one that always got her off the hook when she'd been naughty.

That brought Buhawi's blood pressure down somewhat, then kick-started it up again, but this time, his blood was racing from randiness, not anger.

"I am

NOT

named Vernie," Buhawi snorted, peevishness still stubbornly in his tone even as he traced the curve of her breast with lascivious eyes. "She's been calling me that since I first came here for coffee two weeks ago. Not funny."

Buhawi set both hands palms down on the table on either side of his plate.

Contain the temper, Buhawi. This is not the time to get angry.

Tala put a hand over one of Buhawi's, and he seemed to calm some more at her warmth, relaxing just the slightest bit into the comfortable armchair his huge body dwarfed. "Your coffee is getting cold. Can I get you another?" Tala cocked her head to the side as she asked her question.

All I need now is under all that cloth,

Buhawi thought, even as he said "oh, no, I've already had three espressos. Just keep me company while I eat my sandwich and salad, please?"

Tala nodded and he dug into his meal. She attacked her breakfast with equal ferocity, pulling the halved fish apart with dainty fingers and holding a piece into her mouth as she munched it steady as a printing press roller eats paper.

Tala then took up her utensils and scooped egg and rice onto her spoon, lifted it to her mouth and closed her eyes as she consumed her feast.

They ate thus, ravenously and silently, for the few minutes it took to scarf down their meals. But where Tala ate with abandon, Buhawi kept his coffee-dark eyes on her, visually devouring her in much the same way he was scarfing down his sandwich and salad: Like there was no tomorrow and he would not be denied his feast.

Not that Tala noticed. She was the kind of person for whom a meal was a sensual, full body experience in which shame had no part. She sighed as she ate the pickled papaya and carrots, let out a low "mmmm" as she bit into the

danggit

, threw her head back as she enjoyed the sensation of her macchiato sliding down her gullet.

Her legs splayed wide as she ate, her feet resting on the little kitten heels of her not-really-sensible shoes and her toes pointing to the ceiling.

She likes food. A whole helluva lot. Buhawi filed that observation away for future use. I wonder

, he thought idly, his nostrils flaring to the musky floral scent that was uniquely Tala,

if she'll orgasm over chocolate, reallym really good chocolate?

Replete, Tala put her cultery daintily and neatly down on the center of her empty plate, her movements so ladylike it was hard for Buhawi to reconcile her refined movements with the total abandon she'd displayed while eating.

They chatted about the weather for a while, shifted to the peso-dollar exchange rate, agreed that the legislature was a waste of their taxes and jousted over which National Artist for Literature would write the Great Filipino Novel, F. Sionil Jose or Bienvenido Lumbera.

Buhawi was entranced, truly entranced, and his smiles grew more and more spontaneous, natural, as if he hadn't a care in the world.

He forgot himself and was about to ask Tala out to dinner—all part of his plan, of course—or that was his justification for the sudden urge to take her out on a date when he really did not do dates.

Then Tala's phone started blaring the Radioactive Sago Project's

Love ka ni Satan

out of the depths of her tote bag and she practically jumped out of her chair.

"Oh, my, that's my Bundy-in alarm," Tala said, groping in the depths of her bag to silence the handset. "I've got to go. Team leaders can't be late. Thank you for sitting through breakfast with me! Byeee!"

Just like that, the little tempest was out the door and jaywalking through the early morning traffic toward a glittering high-rise of steel and chrome.

+++

Tala took her mid-afternoon break in the contact center's break room, settling down in a huge black beanbag and opening up the

Bestiario

, scanning the entries for anything that would answer the question "what fucked me last night?"

In a far corner, someone was watching the

ANC News

channel and Tala, absorbed as she was in her search, missed the gasps from her some of her team members over the news that a woman had been brutally raped and left for dead on the gravel mound of a construction site.

The crime scene was the old location of the stables of the Philippine Racing Circuit racetrack that was now the Circuit shopping mall in Makati City—mere blocks from the Isles Tech office.

"...the woman, identified as Martha Ambel, was last seen leaving the café in Ayala Center where she worked the graveyard to early morning shift," read newscaster Pinky Webb. "Her naked, battered body was found at noon. Ambel's body bore large bite marks that forensics expert Dr. Dinah Malamin said resembled those of a horse, except for the obvious tooth marks of an omnivore. Her liver was also missing and almost all her bones were broken in several places, the forensics expert said."

That segment of the news report made it through Tala's concentration and she turned her eyes to the wise-screen LED TV and drew a shocked hand to her mouth when she saw the Facebook profile picture of the barista who had served her coffee just that morning.

"Ohmygod, Tammy," Tala called out to a woman clad all in orange, "isn't that the barista at the café across the street?" Tammy nodded, tears in her artificially blue eyes as she fretted aloud whether another barista could prepare her soya-mint oolong chai the same way Martha did.

As horrified as Tala was with the murder of that familiar stranger, though, her own problem of an "oh, shittisimo" moment pressed on her heavily, like a ton of kryptonite would on Superman's chest. She resumed her search through the

Bestiario

, flicking back and forth until she found the entry dated 1 Mayo 1898.

"Do not be afraid of the dreams that come to you after the Other Land is revealed to you. It is merely your Baylan's sight opening to the world that lies over ours. You will see the criaturas, and that is normal. Greet them with respect. Never point a finger at them or their homes, for that is the ultimate rudeness.

"Be comfortable with this natural progression. It means you are tapping your magic properly. Soon they will speak to you, call you by your epithet: Baylan. It is respect which you will reap if you follow my dictates. Respect them back, for they, too are powerful. The Manananggal can steal your unborn child with her needle-like tongue. The Sigbinn can kill you with a mere look from between its legs. The Black Pig will not be penned or held and will eat your beating heart from your chest if you even try. I've told you about the Tikbalang..."

And on and on did Beatriz list the

criaturas

of the Other Land, describing them—sometimes in detail, at other times only by name.

Yeah, yeah, lelang, get to the how of getting fucked while alone in a home locked up tight already, Tala snorted her impatience. I'm not afraid. I'm pissed.

On down to 5 Mayo 1898 Tala went, finding something worth a second and third read:

"If, by some ill-fortune the Tikbalang finds you before you find him, especially if he finds you as you begin to own your power, he will be gripped with a deep and driving lust for your body. You must be very careful to check your house if you suddenly feel a strange presence. For all his large size, a Tikbalang will move silently as a cat stalking a sparrow.

"Take heed and check every part of your residence. If you find semen stains on anything made of glass, you will know you have become known to the Tikbalang and he will make himself known to you as well, in the most carnal sense of the word. You can stave this off by setting yerbabuena leaves on your windowsills and any opening in your house covered by glass or capiz. This is to keep the dream-self of the Tikbalang from your physical body—at least until you are ready to know the Tikbalang physically, to mesh with him spirit and skin, flesh to flesh in a meeting of equals. It is imperative that you do not let the Tikbalang gain any advantage on you.

"He will appear as a creature of your fantasies, as the man you imagine when you pleasure yourself to touch your divine spark and stoke it to a roaring fire. Do not be fooled. He is a Tikbalang, a creature of awesome power and one capable of great harm or great good. He will make you scream as he takes your body, make it shake with physical need. Do not think this is mere dream, for though it is a true dream, the intercourse will be real, in the physical world, by means of his innate magic.

"If the dreams have begun and you awaken with seminal fluid dried on your body, then the situation is very unfavorable to you, but not unsalvageable. Do as I say and lay mint leaves on your windowsills and any other openings covered in glass and capiz. This will buy you time until the moon has waned to nothing but the thinnest sliver, then you may begin the ritual of fully owning your place as Baylan and of taming yourself a Tikbalang."

Tala drew in a deep breath, holding in the scream of complete and utter rage that was building in her throat. Well, she'd better get to taming herself a Tikbalang, then, after putting min on her windowsills and glass doors.

Tala felt the power of her temper begin to flow out of every pore of her skin.

Nobody fucks with her and gets away with it, after all. I'm Baylan, bitch. Let me show you whatfor.