JessicaRulestheUniverse.com

Have you ever thought that if you were locked up in your house with nothing to do, you would write all the stories you’ve been kicking around your head?

In 2020 I was locked up in my house with “nothing” to do (but endless chores and disinfecting), so I wrote the stories I’ve been kicking around my head. Before the pandemic, my plan was to write a short story every month. I ended up finishing one every other month, which was not bad even without the constant anxiety of living through a very strange year with the air trying to kill you. I had also planned to make zines, and I did—seven in total, including a story I wrote in November 2019. Apart from the writing I really enjoyed making the little magazines: printing, folding, sewing (and I loathed sewing in grade school). Later, Bianca who designed my book cover gave me a template so now I even do the layouts myself. This is what kept me sane in a year that defined Bonkers.

1. The Adventuress. Based on true stories I heard from my friend who’s lived in Paris since the 80s. A beautiful, feckless girl, raised to find a rich husband, thinks she’s finally hit the jackpot when she marries a Frenchman. She finds herself in Paris with a husband but no money, no language, no one to rely on but herself. And then she discovers that she has a mind. A love story between a woman and herself.

2. Genius and Garbage. They say you shouldn’t meet your idols. What happens when a cinephile seeks out a reclusive filmmaker living in the ruins of his once-beautiful house? This is based on the time Noel and I went to Siniloan, Laguna to interview the great director Celso Ad Castillo. It took us four hours of inching through traffic, but it was an unforgettable encounter. Castillo died a few months later.

3. Rumpelstiltzkin. Gemma’s eccentric literature professor represented the cultured world she dreamed of, where people discussed art, opera, cinema, and casually tossed off bons mots while sipping martinis in posh drawing rooms. But just how fine are “the finer things” Named for that very bad-tempered creature in the fairy tale who helps the beleaguered heroine spin straw into gold.

4. The Dream of Reason Produces Monsters, vol. I no. 1. It’s 1886 and Jose Rizal, Juan and Antonio Luna, and the Ilustrados are young men living it up in Paris, the most exciting city in the world. Drunken shenanigans! Romance! Duels! The secret lives of national heroes, as told by one very modern woman who witnessed it all.

5. The Ordinary Nurses of Halloween. In the 1990s Malate is the epicenter of Manila social life, and on Halloween night everyone gets ready for the wildest party of the year. Two fabulous gay men, Benjy and Matty, embark on a surreal comic adventure.

6. The Dream of Reason Produces Monsters, vol. I no. 2. In between attending classes, subsisting on frugal meals, moving from one cheap boarding house to another, and hanging out with his friends, Pepe Rizal writes a novel. The national uber-nerd gets an unexpected review.

7. Phantoms in the Spring. “I have never seen a ghost, a fact that has not stopped me from expecting one to materialize before me. I assume they will be translucent, floating several inches off the ground, and making weird moaning noises. Ridiculous, I know, but for this reason I avoid watching horror movies—they interfere with my sleep. When I’m about to lose consciousness I imagine a figure standing at the foot of my bed, and my eyes fly open…” Every place is haunted by history, from Galicia in the Civil War to Manila in the midst of a pandemic.

The zines are available on Shopee.