Bawal Umihi Dito - Do Not Urinate Here - A Rey Qurino Story

[Shroom Man 777]

Bawal Umihi Dito – Do Not Urinate Here – A Rey Quirino Story



“Para sa akin!” For me! Rey Quirino sang to the undulating crowds that had gathered in the northern wing of massive mall, SM Cebu. Men, women, children, transvestites, nuns, foreigners, Americans and Koreans, nursing students, police officers, septic tank workers – all had come to witness his presence. “For me! For meeeeeee! FOR MEEEEE!!!!”

He finished his song and the applause was simply deafening. The nuns were squealing and the police officers looked like they were going to pull out their guns and shoot at the air. The rich and the affluent were hollering together with the shabby-clothed poor people. The people of the Philippines had come together and that was good. The people of the Philippines had come together to adore him, and that was even better!

He sighed as he got off the stage and made his way through the oppressed mass that was dying to touch their dead-sexy deity, to caress the velvet of his superhero costume that was in the stylized likeness of the Philippine Flag worn as a jacket. Some even copped a feel at his tight pants, which were festooned with the advertisements of fast food companies, beer corporations, tobacco producers, clothes and cosmetics companies – and every other facet of the materialistic modernity that made him feel so goddamn proud of his country.

He beamed as the flash of digital cameras reflected off his sunglass-goggles.

Then, in a gesture that stunned everyone, he removed his cap and threw it into the crowd – who earnestly began fighting tooth and nail to obtain an idol of their idol.

Now flanking him were Luiz – that populist brown-noser type of jock douche who stayed with him through thick and thin (perhaps he was a faggot, Rey considered, not that he really minded) – and a couple of hot teenage chicks. The chicks, Justine and Flores, were the models for those massive Penshoppe billboards that had fallen and crushed a bunch of poor people to death during the typhoon.

Together with his retinue of beautiful people, Rey Quirino left the building.

“Where are we going next?” Rey asked as they entered the SUV. The airconditioning shielded them from the shitty humidity. The bulletproof bodywork shielded them from the thousands of people populating the parking lot, who made parking really inconvenient for the people who wanted to park their cars there.

“The Capitol building,” Luiz replied.

“Who are we going to meet there?”

“Just some losers named Gwen and Tomas.”

“Eh, who cares. Let’s go.”

As their steel chariot departed, the gathered onlookers and journos parted way like the Red Sea upon the passing of Moses and God’s Chosen Person – Rey Quirino, Hero of the Philippines.

“Hey Moses, step on it, will you?” Rey snapped to their driver.



The convoy eventually made its way to Cebu City’s Capitol, a big white building that had a domed top. In front of it was a steel pole that stood tall and erect, and upon its top was the fluttering flag of the Philippines.

The shabbily trimmed gardens by the Capitol building had monuments upon them. Most prominent amongst these was the bronze-muscled statue of man who decapitated the ailing Spanish explorer Magellan in honorable combat, Lapu-Lapu – the first-ever Hero of the Philippines.

Beside the not-so-immaculate Capitol were rickety houses owned by bloody poor people, and Rey Quirino paid them no heed as he exited his vehicle.

“Me first,” he said as he prevented Luiz from getting out of the car.



The commotion which greeted the emergence of Rey Quirino was both sudden and surprising, and it suddenly surprised Taxi Driver Berto, who was busy publicly urinating on a telephone pole. In surprise, he turned around to look at what the sudden commotion was all about.

There was Rey Quirino, Hero of the Philippines! What was he doing in Cebu City? Berto didn’t bother figuring that out as, forgetting to zip his pants, he got a pen and a paper and rushed to the crowd that was gathering around Rey Quirino. Berto knew his daughter would love to get an autograph of that amazing man.



Rey Quirino, Hero of the Philippines, wasn’t the only big thing in the Philippines, though. In fact, he wasn’t the biggest thing in Cebu, even. Other people had better things to do.

Father Brian Bethany was a Catholic priest who was manning a quaint little chapel in the mountains of Cebu. The rural parts of the province wasn’t that far away from the urbanized parts, so his parish wasn’t really cut off from the main diocese. But he enjoyed it here, life was simple and despite his tiny chapel, he wasn’t confined to it and actually preferred it over the larger cathedrals and churches.

The close-knit nature of the barrio meant that he had gotten along well with the locals, something his colleagues found hard to do. In fact, he had gotten along so well that he was allowed to judge the annual beauty pageant.

“Please welcome our Final Contestant!” the announcer announced over the microphones. “The Lovely Mario Maria!”

Father Bethany laughed out loud as the man paraded onto the stage, wearing a golden bikini and a tiara, with his face smeared in makeup and lipstick, his hair all bleached wild red, he had a bouquet of flowers in hand. He did his ramp-walk, swaying his hips as he strode on his high heels, and the crowd went wild – wild with laughter!

Nonetheless, The Lovely Mario Maria had forgotten to shave his legs and so Father Bethany had to deduct some points – giving him an average 8 instead of a 10. Not a bad effort, though.

Half an hour later, The Lovely Mario Maria was in tears – begriefed at how he had snatched defeat from the jaws of victory.

“Padre!” she wailed. “Why did I lose? I was so… beautiful!”

“I’m sorry,” Father Bethany apologized. “But you forgot to shave your legs, and that was part of the criteria of judgement…”

“But Padre, I didn’t have a razor!”

The pageant’s winner, Fabulous Freddy, approached her and laughed at her, saying: “Then you should have used wax or duct tape, loser!”

“I’m not a loser!” Mario Maria cried out.

“You are!” Fabulous Freddy snapped. “You’re nothing but a second rate, trying-hard copycat!”

The Fabulous Freddy then made his exit. The joys of victory made him want to urinate, so he went to a nearby tree and got ready to –

“Hoy bayot!” Hey faggot! Someone cried, using the local lingo’s slur for gays.

Freddy turned to face the interloper. He was an old ragged man with a stick… he looked like Moses, and not the one played by Charlton Heston.

“What, you old geezer!” Freddy snapped back.

“Don’t forget to say the magic words and ask permission!” the old man replied as he turned back to his own tree. “Tabi-tabi po,” he chanted, asking permission from the tree, and then he began urinating.

“Or else what?” Freddy asked. Stupid old-folks with their superstitions.

“Or else what indeed…” the old man said enigmatically as he zipped his zipper and hobbled away with his walking stick.

“Shut up,” the Fabulous Freddy muttered as he pulled down his panties and began to pee. Golden liquid began to stream, pooling down the roots of the tree…



These trees were large and dark, with gnarled bark and roots that dug deep into the earth, thick trunks that rose up as branches reached for the sky and the sun…

Living in these branches were ancient things. Things that came from when the heathen gods of the pagans reigned. Before the Spaniards came, names like Bathala were uttered with reverence, and with him were the Diwatas and Anitos – the forest spirits.

But aside from them, there were also the Duwendes. Mischievous little forest midget spirits who lived in the trees. For so many years, for such a long time, they hid. Hiding now that it was no longer their time…

People respected them still. They asked permission and said the words when they pissed on them, to avoid pissing them off. But now, the new young had forgotten the old ways and were disrespectful. They did not ask permission or say the words when they pissed on them.

And now the Duwendes were pissed off.

With a vengeance.


The after-pageant feast was centered upon the lechon baboy – a pig that was impaled upon a wooden stick and roasted over an open fire. Its skin was crispy, crispier than chips, yet its meats were soft and succulent and fatty.

The after-pageant feast was interrupted by a bloodcurdling scream of pure undiluted horror.

The Fabulous Freddy, with his victory queen crown, came rushing. Makeup was all running down his face, and blood was all running down his legs as between his legs was a horrific mess where… what used to be between his legs… used to be.

He was weeping and bleeding and blubbering and crying and screaming and running and shrieking and shouting and bleeding – all at once.

Behind him was a horde of one thousand piranha-toothed pygmy things.

“Jesus Christ!” Father Bethany cried. “What the hell are those?!”

“Duwendes!” screamed the Lovely Mario Maria, though he had no way of knowing what they were. He grabbed the Padre with one hand, adjusted his red-dyed hair with the other, and got the fuck out of there – ditching his stiletto heels in the process.

The partygoers fled as the Duwendes descended upon them. Some, like Fabulous Freddy, were too slow and had their faces bitten off as the Duwendes reduced them to skeletons. The Duwendes didn’t stop there though, as they chased after the runaway party people and the pageant contestants – hungry for the taste of blood and human flesh. They craved to slake that lust. By eating everyone.

As the party place was abandoned, the lechon baboy lay there on the table – its crispy brown-roasted skin unbroken and uneaten. All around it was a scenery of desecrated viscera and skeletonized people.



“Run!” Father Bethany screamed to his flock. “Get to the nipa hut!”

“Why?!” Mario Maria half-asked and half-screamed in half-horror.

“We have to warn Juan,” Bethany answered. “Juan Pedro.”

They got away from the main crowd of running men, women and children, and thus avoided the main crowd of chasing Duwendes out to eat the running men, women and children. They took a detour, a small dirt path, and ran to the nearby nipa hut.

But there was a fatal flaw in their plan.

The Duwendes came out of the trees.

“The Duwendes are coming out of the trees!” Father Bethany screamed. “They’re coming out of the goddamn trees!

The trees around them shook and swayed and convulsed unnaturally as things clawed their way out of the ground beneath the roots. As the shaking and the swaying and the convulsions got worse, the tree barks began to blister as unnatural forms writhed beneath the wooden flesh, as if reaching out through planty placentas.

“It’s game over, man!” Maria wept. “Game over!”

One of the blisters popped and a Duwende, in all its hideous glory, came flying out at them. As it flew and shrieked and flailed its arms, they could see in morbid fascination its true form – wild cat-like eyes, a mouth filled with thousands of needle-like teeth, and a horrific visage that was of bark wrinkled like that of a geriatric geezer yet pimpled with grotesque blisters, and a goatee. Its arms and legs did not have hands, but were nonetheless clawed with hook-like serrated talons.

The thing hissed.

The thing exploded.

There, standing by the doorway of the humble nipa hut was a mountain of a man. Tanned leathery skin, long unkempt black hair, shirtless and shoeless, wearing only denim trousers. In one hand was a shotgun, on the other a machete – a bolo.

Juan Pedro.

Bolo.

“Get down!” he shouted as he twirled the shotgun, working its lever-action to eject a round and chamber a new one in. Father Bethany threw himself and Mario Maria on the ground as a pair of conjoined Duwendes leapt for their backsides. The Duwendes overshot them and instead of tasting man-meat, they tasted shotgun slug.

“Ew!” Mario Maria said as he wiped some Duwende dew off his hair.

“Padre,” Bolo approached them and helped Father Bethany up. “What’s going on?”

“Duwendes,” was all the priest could say and the big man with the machete merely nodded at his answer.

“What do we do?” Mario Maria asked as the trees began spawning more monstrosities.

“We get out of here,” Bolo said tersely as he left them to enter his nipa hut. He emerged again, this time with a belt full of guns. “Now.”

Father Bethany nodded as he picked up a revolver and checked its cylinder.

“I can dig this,” Mario Maria agreed as she picked up two Colt .45 pistols.

They went to Juan Pedro’s barn and rode on his carabao.



“And for all he has done for the community, for the Filipino People, we give him the Key to Cebu City!” Mayor Tomas announced as he gave Rey Quirino a large golden key that really wasn’t made out of gold.

Beside him was Governor Gwen, who was slightly flushed over the fact that all she had to do there was stand around, without even getting the highlights by giving the Hero of the Philippines an oversized golden key that really wasn’t made out of gold. She didn’t like Mayor Tomas.

Mayor Tomas grinned at her.

Rey Quirino held the golden Key to the City up with one hand, letting it rise slowly, as if holding up a holy artifact. He surveyed it with reverence and amazement, expressions his makeup-covered face clearly conveyed.

“Thank you, all of you. Cebu is a great little city,” Rey began. But before he could say how Cebu wasn’t quite as good as Manila, he was rudely interrupted by an inhuman noise as monsters came out of the trees in the garden and began attacking the crowds of people and journos gathered there to watch him.

No one rudely interrupts Rey Quirino.

“REY AWAY!” he shouted as he leapt into the air and landed into the fray. There were these horrible little midget things, he didn’t really care what the hell they were, but they were eating the people who were admiring him.

No one eats the people admiring Rey Quirino.

“They’re on me! They’re on me! Get it off!”

“Much obliged, citizen!” Rey shouted, thinking that’s what those American heroes said, before punching the monsters that were biting the man’s face off. Of course, by punching the monsters, he also uppercutted the man and sent him flying into the air. Didn’t matter.

A weeping pregnant lady with a grotesquetitude trying to gnaw its way into her baby passed by Rey. With a flying kick, he destroyed the monster, and her ovaries.

“Huttah!” Rey shouted as he then spun around to deliver a superkick to another thing that was between a man’s legs. For some reason, they really liked going between the legs, but Rey didn’t really care about that. He didn’t really care about collateral damage either.

One of the things managed to crawl between his legs, but he simply closed his legs and that really gave the monster a tight squeeze and sent its head coming off with a pop.

“Rey! Rey!” cried a member of his retinue, Flores, as a monster tried to make her breasts bleed.

“Don’t worry baby, I got it!” Rey was more careful this time as he punched the creature into pulp and merely flattened Flores’ tits.

“Thank you, Rey!”

“Don’t mention it.”

The monsters were coming out of the trees, Rey noticed, as the police came in to reassert some order into this mess. They began shooting at the monsters and, consequently, at the people.

“We can’t stay here!” Rey said to his guys. Then, he turned around to an officer who was locked in mortal combat with five of the freaky little pygmy things. “I see you have the situation under control, officer! Good job!”

Then he and Luiz and Justine and Flores got into their SUV.

“Moses,” Rey said calmly. “It’s time for our people to go!”

And so they did.



As they drove by, they saw many sights and sceneries. The monsters were coming out of the trees, sprouting out like freaky fruits with arms and teeth and ugly faces. They were going around killing everyone – eating their faces and gnawing on their genitals. Why? Who knows?

“Aren’t we supposed to help them?” Justine asked as she cradled Flores, who was massaging her flattened booby.

“Eh,” Rey shrugged. “They look like they can handle themselves.”

Indeed, just outside was a bank being besieged by a hundred of the Duwendes – though Rey didn’t know that’s what they were. The security guards of the banks were fending them off, blasting at them with M4 carbines. One of the guards even had an automatic shotgun, a USAS-12. Hundreds upon hundreds of the little blasphorities were getting blown to pieces.

And their pieces were coming back together to form even bigger monsters.

“Moses…” Luiz asked their driver. “Why is the car not moving?”

“They’re gnawing our tires,” the driver answered calmly.

“Rey!” Justine said with distress now. “Don’t you think that if you help these people, you can be an even bigger hero?”

“Stop the car!” Rey yelled. “Very good, Moses. Didn’t even feel you pull the brak-”

The grotesque head of a Duwende with a mouth full of metal ripped through the flooring of their car, growling and snarling and foaming. Rey stepped on it and smashed its skull.

Rey opened the door and stepped out.

“Have no fear!” he shouted to the security guards who were now being chewed on by the beasts – which were no longer tiny, but were now in fact people-sized. “Rey Quirino is -”

The first one snarled and leapt at him, and Rey punched it in the face – so hard that his hand went through the mouth and out the back of his head. As he tried to dislodge his stuck arm, the rest of them descended upon him and began clawing at him.

“Augh!” he screamed. “Not in the face! Not in the face! My hair! Argh!”

“KARATE KICK!” he roared in frustration has he drove his foot through another one, proceeding to get it stuck again. Now he was standing on one foot, and fending off the remaining Duwendes with his remaining free arm and leg. “Goddamn it!”

“Rey Quirino is in trouble!” yelled one of the security guards, the one with the shotgun. “Let’s help him, men!”

“Wait -” Rey tried to get them to stop, but it was too late. The guards began shooting at the monsters and in the process they were riddling him with bullets. A full-automatic fusillade tore the bloody beasts to pieces as he tried to dodge the incoming rounds while standing on one foot and using the monsters stuck to his arm and leg as meatshields, but he wasn’t quick enough. Thank goodness his suit was bulletproof.

“Ugh,” he uttered as he staggered, bruised from the rounds that did hit him, and covered in monster slime. “Goddamn.”

“Rey Quirino!” one of the guards exclaimed. “Can I have an autograph?”

“Even better,” Rey muttered as he wiped his hand, the one he used to punch through the monster’s face, on the guard’s shirt.

“I…” the guard tried to speak, but he had some difficulty. Maybe he ought to see a speech therapist. “I’ll never wash this shirt again.”

“It’s not over yet,” Rey growled as he wiped his slime-stained hair. Damn, he wished he kept his cap instead of throwing it away to those goddamn poor people.

Between the road’s lanes was a concrete island, on it were trees, and on those trees were grotesque bulbs that signaled the birth of more of those monstrosities.

They hatched, and countless more monstrosities came. Pygmies. And as they crawled over their fallen members, they absorbed the spilt bodily fluids and masticated meats and grew bigger… into midgets. They absorbed more and more than now they were man-sized.

Rey Quirino ripped off a traffic stoplight and waved it around with one hand, and then he stopped. Then, with his free hand, he beckoned them.

“Go ahead, make my day.”

They were on him. The first one flew into outerspace and landed on the nearby Jollibee as Rey hit it like a baseball with a bat, the signal lights of his makeshift staff exploding in a shower of sparks.

Then he screamed insanely and began waving it around, hitting anything and everything in front of him until there was nothing left to hit. Then he waved it around some more and began hitting even more things in front of him until there was nothing left to hit. He did it a couple of times until the streets were stained with squished creatures, and then he let out a mightful manly scream.

They weren’t even able to get close to him.

“This shit just got real,” Rey exhaled as he dropped the traffic light and walked over to his huddling retinue, who were with the security guards. “Hey, why don’t I treat you all to Jollibee?”

“But they’re not our sponsors!” Luiz said.

“Whatever.”



Jollibee was a local fastfood franchise with more branches in the country than McDonalds. Its mascot was just a giant bee, as opposed to a clown. Because they weren’t mascoted by It, that’s why they were big in the Philippines, Rey reasoned. Jollibee was one of the first franchises to beat McD in its own country, whereas other places that weren’t the Philippines got swamped in McDs and its Its.

A man in a Jollibee costume walked over to Rey and asked for his autograph.

Rey asked for a Champ burger, a bunch of fries, some coke-floats, a maize conelo, some Jolly Chicken Wings (spicy), a couple of sundaes, some spaghetti, lots of coke (because despite sponsoring Pepsi, Rey really liked Coca Cola), and whatever else they had in stock.

Being superhuman meant he had a superhuman metabolism. Which was why he was able to keep his figure.

He spilled the fries on the table and smeared them in ketchup and began grabbing fistfuls of them and shoving it in his mouth with one hand as, with the other, he squeezed that meaty Champ burger and began gobbling the half-pound burger patty plus tomatoes and lettuce and cheese and burger breads simultaneously as he fed on the fries. He was also superfast. He also drank the coke at the same time.

Rey burped.

“I can’t wait to get back to Manila,” Flores sobbed as he clutched her flattened breast. It wasn’t really flattened, but Rey’s punch caused the implant to explode and now it was all saggy and weird.

Rey burped again.

“At least you saved all those people, Rey,” Justine consoled him.

“Our sponsors back in McDonalds aren’t gonna like this, Rey,” Luiz cautioned him.

“Shut up, Boo-Boo.” Rey said as he began slurping the spaghetti. He finished the spaghetti in one slurp, as if the whole thing was just one giant super-long strand, and then he began licking the sauce off the Styrofoam container.

“Rey…”

“I’m Rey Quirino, Hero of the Philippines. Screw table manners.” Rey said as he belched once more.

“Rey…”

“What?!”

He dropped the Styrofoam container that looked as though he was about to eat it and turned to face –

“Aw hell no.”

The desecrated viscera of the Duwendes (Rey didn’t know they were called that though) had fused and transmogrified – all of their slain body mass combinating into one huge and horrific form. It wasn’t a pygmy, nor a midget, nor was it man-sized. It was as big as a building. It was giant-sized, Rey guessed. It’s specific size, he didn’t know since he was famous didn’t need to finish school, so he couldn’t really tell specifically what kind of giant-size it was. But he knew. It was giant-sized.

It was a hundred times larger than the man-sized monstrosities and a hundred times uglier. It was a deformagrotesquetitude.

Rey’s retinue deserted him, taking their desserts with him, as the Duwende deformagrotesquetitude’s fist smashed through the window and grabbed Rey Qurino, Hero of the Philippines, with its slimy mucous-coated mittens.

It picked him up and regarded him curiously with eyes that were as big as Mini Coopers.

“You’re one ugly motherfucker!” Rey spat.

The monster laughed a bellicose laugh that resonated all over. Then it slammed Rey into the ground.

Then it stepped on him.

There was a hideous crunching sound, like a cockroach getting crushed underfoot.

The monster laughed a bellicose laugh that resonated all -

A roar of anguish shattered its brief reprieve as it lost its footing and fell on its ass, as if slipping on a banana peel.

Rey Quirino was that banana peel, and he was angry.

“I am angry!” Rey roared.

Then the Duwende deformagrotesquetitude slapped its hand on the ground, smashing everything underneath it.

But Rey wasn’t underneath it.

“Missed,” he taunted. Then he ripped off an electric post that had powerlines going all over it, connecting to the transformers on top of it. “Now it’s my turn!”

As the Duwende deformagrotesquetitude tried to rise up to its feet, Rey slammed the post in its face. It roared in fury as an explosion of sparks seared its form, powerlines whipping it with conductive tendrils and the transformers electrocuting it.

“At the end of this day,” Rey Quirino quoted his favorite summer blockbuster of last year. “One shall stand and one shall fall!”

The mega-hideoustrosity rose up like some angered god and it picked up random objects from the ground and began throwing them at Rey.

Rey slammed the objects, the motorcycles and the cars, away with his electric post, using it like an oversized baseball bat.

“Is that the best you can do?!”

The jeepney landed on him like a projectile thrown by a giant monster.

The vehicle’s thin sheet-metal roof caved in, giving way to Rey Quirino’s metahuman mass. Wearily, he lifted the whole heap of junk off him and was caught totally unprepared when the monster picked him up and threw him into the sky like a paper airplane.

Victorious, the monster roared triumphantly and set its sights on the Capitol building. Stepping on tiny humans as it made its way to crush the seat of Cebu City’s government.



Rey Quirino opened his eyes, slowly and painfully. His whole existence was pain – like that time before he got popular, when those jock douches regularly beat the ever-living crap out of him. Goddamn, he hated that.

He got up to his feet, slowly, staggering about as he did so.

“Where am I?” he asked to the onlookers who were onlooking at him.

“You’re in Santo Niño church,” a nun offered. “Are you alright?”

“Not really…” Rey muttered. “My hair’s ruined and… my pants! The adverts are all torn and…”

“It’s him! It’s Rey Quirino!” shouted someone who sounded gay.

Rey groaned. He didn’t really feel like signing autographs when he just got his ass kicked by an ugly giant monster.

The gay in the bikini got pushed aside by a man who was being followed by a carabao – a water buffalo. The man was covered in blood, but it wasn’t his own. He had a machete and a shotgun. Rey guessed that the people were making a last-ditch stand against the monster in the church.

“You weren’t able to stop the monster?” the big man asked.

“Hell no!” Rey spat. “I can’t beat it, no one can. We’re all screwed. I’m going back to Manila.”

“Bayot,” spat the big man.

“What did you say?!” Rey didn’t know what that word meant, goddamn these Cebuanos and their dialect, but he didn’t like the way the man said it.

The man just glared at him.

Around them, nuns and children began weeping – knowing that the Hero of the Philippines had failed to defeat the giant monster.

“Goddamn it,” Rey cried out. “It wasn’t like I didn’t try or anything! I did!”

“Then try again.”

“I can’t stop it!” Rey repeated himself. “If I kill those little things, they just combine into bigger ones and now they’ve all transformed to that big… whatever it is.”

“It is a Duwende,” came another voice, older, American-sounding. It was an old white man in priestly robes.

“Who are you?” Rey raised an eyebrow. If the man was an American, then he was probably smart. He’d know how to solve this thing.

“I’m Father Brian Bethany,” the Padre said. “The Duwendes came from the provinces, but obviously they have cursed the city as well.”

“Do you know how to stop it, Padre?”

Father Bethany nodded.

“How, then?”

“I came to the church to find the answer,” Father Bethany replied.

“Goddamn it,” Rey cursed. “Padre, prayer isn’t gonna stop this Duwende, or whatever the hell it is!”

“I know,” Bethany replied. “But the Roman Catholic Church has detailed files on many of the unholy creatures of the world. It is no different here. Cardinal Vidal has sent word to Manila, and Cardinal Sin will now give us what we need…”

There was a ringing sound and Father Bethany pulled out his cellphone, an old monochrome Nokia.

“What does it say?”

“It says… that these Duwendes are unholy beasts that have lived in the forests and in the trees ever since pagan times. It says that the only weapon that can beat them is a sanctified object of the greatest antiquity,” Father Bethany declared. Rey Quirino looked at him blankly. “We need something old.”

“I think…” Rey Quirino thought for a moment, recalling the tourist brochure he read when coming to Cebu. “Aha! I know!”

“What?”

“Where’s the Magellan’s Cross?” Rey asked.

“It’s not too far from here, why?”

“I’m gonna go get it…”



The Duwende deformagrotesquetitude’s roar shook the earth as it smashed the once-tall and erect flagpole away. With one massive misshapen foot, it kicked the Capitol building and destroyed its entrance. Then, with its arms, it began pounding on the building’s dome until it shattered and caved in.

It laughed. Laughed!

For too long had his kind hid away from the sight of man, for too long have they cowered in fear as the old gods were driven away by foreign beliefs and customs!

For centuries, at least the elders remembered to ask permission, to say the magic words, before pissing on them. Now that even that fundamental law decreed by the forest spirits has eroded, now that the arrogant men chose to disrespect them so blatantly…

They would rue the day…

Now that he and all of his kind were one, they should show them their True Form!

“Stop right there!” came a strangely familiar voice. It reeked of arrogance, of disrespect, as though it represented all of humanity’s hubris in one being.

Like how it represented all of the Duwendes in one being.

Rey Quirino, having lept over tall buildings in a single bound, landed on the ground.

The monster laughed. Then, it spoke:

“Ako ay isang masamang halimaw!”

I am an evil monster.

“Ano ba ka?”

What are you?”

Rey Quirino replied with his soul: “Ako ay si Rey Quirino! BAYANI NG PILIPINAS!”

I am Rey Quirino! Hero of the Philippines!

Then and there, Rey drew forth his weapon. It was a massive wooden thing – not quite as tall as an electrical post, but around the same size as a stoplight. It was ancient and antiquated and holy: the Magellan’s Cross!

Before Spaniard explorer Magellan lost his head to the first-ever Hero of the Philippines, Lapu-Lapu, he had managed to befriend some natives. He bestowed upon them the teachings of Christianity, a sculpture of Baby Jesus carved in brown wood that conveniently matched the pigments of the natives’ skin, and a wooden cross to symbolize the Roman Catholic faith which the newly converted natives really didn’t understand or care about. The natives gladly accepted these, since the foreigners were mysterious and yet so attractive.

“And now…” Rey Quirino said. “I WILL BEAT YOU WITH STICK!”

With a mighty manly mightful warcry, Rey Quirino leapt up to the sky and wielded the holy relic like an arnis stick – he descended upon the monster and began bludgeoning him with it.

The Duwende deformagrotesquetitude roared in pain as its flesh was seared upon contact with that sacred artifact. It retreated, hitting its atrocious ass on the Capitol building, causing further mass devastation as Rey Quirino saved Cebu.

It lashed out, pawing with its overlarge arms, and so did it swat Rey out of the sky.

Rey landed on the squatters of those bloody poor people who lived right beside the city’s opulent Capitol building, and as he recovered, he saw with his two eyes the humungous form of the Duwende deformagrotesquetitude and then he saw its true form.

It was a bulbous mass of inhuman flesh – the corpses of thousands of dead Duwendes fusing together to breathe new life to its blasphemous form. As they did so, so too did they return to life. Rey could see how the Duwende was made up of these thousands of writing half-living bodies, their forms and faces fused together like… living candlewax. Pulsating, clawing out at him, hissing and screeching and licking at the air with their forked tongues as they looked at him with their unblinking eyes from the sockets of their malformed heads.

The Duwende deformagrotesquetitude shrieked in horror as it was tangled by the wires that spanned between the many electrical posts – the wires were a tangled mess haphazardly strewn together by incompetent electrical companies, and yet they provided power for thousands upon thousands of homes. That amount of power was now coursing through the giant monster, paralyzing it, electrocuting it, causing the eyeballs of its constituent creatures to melt out of their sockets.

The Duwende deformagrotesquetitude was on the path of destruction, and Rey Quirino made his time. He launched himself into the air like a ZIG and set up the Magellan’s Cross –

The Duwende deformagrotesquetitude shrieked as the cross burned its flesh, burned far worse than countless megavolts of electricity, and it swatted away the cross, shattering its wooden form.

But Rey Quirino had an ace in the hole.

He had Baby Jesus.

Santo Niño, the brown wooden effigy the Spaniards gave to the ancient Cebuanos. The Santo Niño, like many other Catholic deities, combined aspects of an ancient pre-existing pagan god – the god of fertility, in the case of some other Filipino tribes. That was why some of the tiny Baby Jesus idols had raging hard-ons.

Rey shoved the Santo Niño, with its garishly colorful attire of unfashionable tiny clothing, into the Duwende deformagrotesquetitude’s mouth.

The Duwende deformagrotesquetitude’s face contorted into a mask of rage.

Then its head exploderized.

Headless, it fell to the ground spread eagled.

Rey collapsed to his knees and began sucking in huge lungfulls of air.

A crowd had formed around the fallen beast, and around the hero who slew it.

“Is it dead?” a man who sold fishballs from his tricycle-foodstand asked.

“Terminated,” Rey replied.

With that cue, the Duwende deformagrotesquetitude stirred – undulating and shivering and convulsifying as life refused to leave it. Though it was headless, the thousands of tiny Duwende faces that festooned its blasphemous form opened their eyeless eyes and their fork-tongued mouths, uttering forth a high-pitched shriek that was the voice of countless little monstrosities refusing to go to the hell that spawned them out of its loins.

Rey had enough of this shit.

“FILIPINOS!” he roared in Filipino fury. “FOLLOW ME TO FREEDOM!”

Unzipping his zipper, he strode atop the felled blasphority, stepping and crushing a path of tiny skulls as he did so.

Around him, brave men did the same as well – unzipping their pants and preparing themselves to end this ordeal once and for all.

Then the deluge began.

The Duwende deformagrotesquetitude’s wretched remains let out an inhuman noise as, in one voice, all of its mouths screamed out a cry of existential horror:

“NATUTUNAW AKO!”

I’M MELTING!

“NATUTUNAW AKO!”

I’M MELTING!

“NATUTUNAW AKOOOO!!!!”

I’M MELTIIIIINGGGG!!!!!!

Rey Quirino let out a roar of triumph as he emptied his bladder upon the vanquished visages of his sworn enemy. He was at its center, atop it, and as its form began to melt under the barrage of that glorious outpouring, then so too was Rey Quirino soaked in his own victory, the people’s victory!

He was Rey Quirino – Hero of the Philippines!



Rey stood there, beholding the triumph of wills. In becoming one monstrous form, the Duwendes had opened themselves to defeat at the hands of the unity of the Filipino people. Of the Cebuano people. This would be a day he would never forget.

There, the Cebuanos – rich and poor alike – sifted through the rubble of their ruined Capitol.

"Has anyone seen the governor and the mayor?"

"No, but who cares? Rey Quirino killed the monster!"

"Oh my god, Rey Quirino! Can I have your autograph?"

[The Grim Squeaker]

Er, ok...

[Lusankya]

Man, Shroomy. Your stories are packed with testosterone. Is there anything else that you think about?

[Shroom Man 777]

Absolutely nothing else

[Sidewinder]

That was amusing.

I recognize Bolo from the time I started a thread on national superheroes, but not Rey Quirino. Is this the first story you've written about him?

Oh, and are the people speaking Tagalog?

[Shroom Man 777]

Yes on the two!

[Darth Nostril]

“I WILL BEAT YOU WITH STICK!”

Now thats a catchphrase and a half

[Ford Prefect]

Rey Quirino is the absolute worst OZ Comix! superhero (and we have an expy of Batman who is a rampaging murderous lunatic with multiple personalities, all of which are evil and insane). A scathing indictment of the Phillipines!

[Shroom Man 777]

I am an true patriot