Corpse As Body, Corpse As Meal

18

LATEST magazine used to be Philippines’ biggest company in its field. They released new issues monthly and signed a lot of big celebrities to pose for their covers and for interviews. But years before the pandemic, their glory days were over. Digital reads and free stories platforms took over, a bandwagon which the magazine could not ride on.

Financially speaking, the company metaphorically dangling on a cliff, clutching on its sharp edges for their dear life. The only reason they still existed was because people were too depressed and anxious by the epidemic situation. They needed something entertaining to tone down those emotions, hence Latest magazine’s chance to shine. Their office was fortunate to be situated within Citadel, making them completely monopolize the publishing industry once the city was enclosed in a giant glass dome. Yet, people have weak purchasing power, so the magazine publisher had to settle with very little earnings.

To make do with the poor income, they had to let go of some of their employees and assets. All that’s left for them were laptops and outdated editing softwares for designing. To save on printing and paper, they showed the pages of their magazines at select establishments through large PowerPoint presentations, but mostly, at the huge LED billboard at the center of the city where the public could see. Before an issue was publicized, an assigned government official had to approve the content of the visual magazine that was shown with voice overs that read its articles.

Cjay’s group took big strides along the white, narrow hallway of the building that Latest was renting along with various other companies. Latest was located at the 5th floor. The hallway felt more tight and crowded, thanks to Cjay’s security that fenced him in with his assistant, Natalia, and his driver, Kuya Quintin. His guards may not be in the armored van with him, but they followed in cars that formed his usual convoy.

Taking the lead in their little procession was Miss Arena, one of Latest magazine’s staff. She was a tall woman with slender figure, wearing a black suit with a black neck tie. Her sleek black hair was tied in a low ponytail, the tips only reaching the middle of her shoulder blades. Her eyes looked sharp due to her winged eyeliner.

Natalia followed Miss Arena, then Cjay, who was surrounded by white-uniformed guards.

They walked past the open door of a small photoshoot studio. From the door, they saw the busy staff of Latest in the middle of setting up everything from the lighting to the reflectors. By looking around, it could be seen that the walls were only painted white on the area where the photos were taken. The rest of the studios’ walls were still bare—gray and smooth.

There was no ceiling too, making the crisscross of metals and wood visible overhead the photoshoot area, followed by hollow darkness on top of it all.

Cjay’s group walked past the studio because they would be heading to the dressing room first.

Since they walked the hallway up to this point, Natalia kept on talking to Miss Arena. The staff was trying to sound nice but Cjay could notice her growing inpatience because Natalia came with so many questions. She obviously didn’t have an inkling about how photoshoots were done, hence, the curiousity but the staff seemed to take it differently. For Cjay, maybe the staff thought that Natalia was doubting their professionalism and nitpicking on everything.

Miss Arena stopped walking, she gestured a hand toward the open door to let them inside first. The dressing room was big and pleasant. Maybe the size of the room gave an illusion of width due to the clean white walls and lack of furniture. There was only a line of three vanity tables with mirrors circled by lightbulbs.

“Do you have a makeup artist?” Natalia faced Miss Arena as soon as she got inside the dressing room. She also stepped aside so that Cjay and his guards could get in.