Jun’s scream echoed all the way to the edge of the barangay,
to the place where even the Wi-Fi signal doesn’t reach anymore.
Then came the special effects: crash, crash—
plates, pots, everything flying like Christmas, poor version.
Maribel and I dropped our food faster than when the tanod show up
and rushed outside to watch the free show.
There was Jun, red as a chili, teeth grinding,
swinging metal pipes like he was training for the Barangay Olympics.
But Lani wasn’t playing victim either—
she grabbed two plastic chairs and went straight for his face,
like she was smashing human piñatas.
Neighbors came out one by one, arms crossed,
faces saying, “these pndj*s again.”
No one was surprised anymore.
The only one truly excited was Nanay Ester, Lani’s mother.
She lifted her skirt, unleashed anger stored since the ’90s, and yelled:
“Hit him harder! Kll hm!
That pnch shabu addict isn’t even good for scaring flies!”
In this barangay, Lani and her husband beating the sh*t out of each other
was as normal as no water coming out of the tap
or the power going out without warning.
Jun, the husband, was a certified shabu addict,
with a PhD in doing absolutely nothing.
Lani, poor thing, was already 22 and still unmarried.
In the barangay, that’s almost a mortal sin.
The neighbors looked at her like expired milk.
One day she went gossiping at a lugaw stall and saw him there:
Jun sprawled on the sidewalk, unconscious, drooling,
smelling like thinner, sweat, and bad decisions.
Lani, with a Red Cross heart, listened to his story:
that he was the son of a rich landowner in the province,
that his father kicked him out for being rebellious
and for refusing to marry a woman he didn’t even know.
Lani heard nothing else.
The moment she heard “rich family,”
her brain shut down like a cheap light bulb.
She took him home, fed him, bathed him,
almost brought him back to life by miracle,
then went to Nanay Ester:
“Nanay… I want to get married.”
Nanay Ester almost had a heart attack.
“Marry WHAT, you d*mn girl?
That guy who eats for free and sleeps like a corpse?”
But Jun started the story again:
big land, money, connections, province life.
Nanay Ester smiled.
She laughed.
She even forgot her high blood pressure.
“Well… fine.”
They married at city hall:
cheap rings, warm soda, borrowed chairs.
A wedding worthy of the barangay.
Nanay Ester began bragging:
“My son-in-law is an engineer. He works out of town.”
And honestly, he did leave.
He disappeared for days, like a construction worker—
but in crime.
Until one night the police showed up.
“Are you Nanay Ester?”
“Yes…”
“Come get your son-in-law. We caught him stealing dogs.”
That’s when the show collapsed,
along with her pride and almost her dignity.
The whole barangay found out.
The same people who listened to her brag
now laughed behind her back.
It rained all week,
like even the sky was mocking her.
Nanay Ester spent hours staring at the street, thinking:
“When the hll did I let this bst*rd into my house?”
Several nights I saw her sharpening a knife, whispering:
“Pnch addict… I’ll turn you into adobo…”
I went to warn Jun.
No need.
Shabu addicts have radar.
Every time Nanay Ester showed up with a killer look,
Jun vanished faster than minimum wage.
And with no shame at all,
the bstrd used drugs right in the street,
like he was part of the urban scenery.
From then on, everyone guarded their things.
Like Mang Rodel, who bought a huge dog to protect his house.
Two days later he found out Jun stole dogs.
That same day, he sold the dog.
That’s how intelligence works in the barangay.
Jun didn’t work.
He didn’t earn a single peso.
And to top it off, he was a shabu addict.
So his destiny was to cling to Lani,
living off her like a parasite with a diploma.
The entire household economy depended on Lani’s small stall:
she sold water, single cigarettes…
and sometimes wrote down numbers for the illegal lottery.
Nothing legal, but enough to live decently.
That summer, business went to sh*t.
Every day Lani came home without selling anything,
Jun got his daily round of insults.
One night I even saw her snap,
grab a broom, and beat him out of the house in the rain.
The next morning I woke up early
and there was Jun, curled up at the entrance,
shaking like a soaked puppy hiding from a typhoon.
I felt sorry for him…
but not enough to get involved.
“Hey, bro,” I told him carefully,
“you’d better leave.
At this rate you won’t die from lack of drugs—
you’ll die from being yelled at.”
Jun looked at me, serious.
Thoughtful.
Like he understood something for the first time.
“You’re right,” he said. “I’m leaving.”
And he left.
That time he disappeared for a whole week.
The barangay felt cleaner.
Quieter.
The dogs were happier.
The cats came out into the sun without fear.
It even felt like there were fewer fleas in the air.
But you know how life is…
Mang Rodel came riding his motorcycle with his son,
hugging a curved Samsung 4K TV, still half-wrapped in plastic.
No one managed to dodge.
CRASH.
Total disaster.
And Jun?
Nothing.
Not a scratch.
Not a drop of blood.
Didn’t even mess up his hair.
He stood up, brushed off the dust,
looked at the chaos…
and kept walking.
That’s when we all understood a universal truth of the barangay:
👉 God punishes… but sometimes He miscalculates.
The one who should have died stayed alive.
The innocent ones were destroyed.
And Jun, as always,
untouched.
Because in this life,
some cockroaches
don’t die—
not even at the end of the world.