It’s National Eat Your Vegetables day…and….
Yes. You’ve heard it all before. A million times.
Perhaps you need to hear it differently. From….
Well. Not every lesson needs repeating. Especially at midnight.
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Mrs Eileen Tan always had both feet on the ground. More so since hanging up her office wear and “washing the Golden Bowl (Chinese symbolism for retiring from official duties).
She had to pinch every penny she could; work was scarce.
So, the Samsung refrigerator that had graced her kitchen tiles for 20 years caught her attention.
It wasn’t behaving like it was supposed to.
You see, every carrot, head of lettuce, and Crown of broccoli she placed in the vegetable compartment had entered fresh and untainted.
It left–just the opposite.
The carrots? Pictures of disappointment.
The cabbage? More crabby than actual crabs.
The fresh cucumber slices she had cut just a few hours before looked as though they had witnessed an alien abduction and lived to tell the tale.
The possible perpetrator? Casper.
But only Mrs Tan believed it.
Her husband eyed her with poorly disguised amusement. Her children dropped the disguise; they were the most flawed actors on stage.
“Mum….don’t be….”
Eileen walked out of the hall.
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The suggestion that “Casper” was involved, as expected, fell flat.
Paul, Eileen’s husband, chortled heartily.
And whistled the Twilight Zone theme.
The kids made no bones about how they felt.
“Old.” And doodled mini-Caspers on their notepads.
The dismissiveness drove Eileen closer to the edge than she thought possible.
They wanted Casper? They’d get him.
They’d see that it was an alternative…being.
Meanwhile, the vegetables worsened in appearance. The broccoli was exhausted. The carrots displayed —
Shrivelled anxiousnesss.
The cabbage was visibly distressed.
The lettuce suffered an existential crisis–
And looked the part.
So Eileen set a trap. A webcam. Strategically placed, hidden, at the top of the refrigerator.
Where all the vegetables could see it.
She waited till the next day, and finally reviewed the fottage.
She wasn’t alone. Neither were the other members of the family.
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She gathered the family iin the living room the next day. The children rolled their eyes at their father, who grinned.
After all, his wife was cooking dinner. And his stomach had priority over wandering vegetables.
The footage was–
Footage. A half hour of kitchen. At first.
The vegetables knew their place. In the drawer corner.
The children looked at each other and shook their heads. Eileen clicked on the recorder.
“I swear….”
She was about to concede ridiculousness when–
A shift. The timestamp at the corner–
12:00 a.m. A significant development.
A translucent silhouette, doing an enthused prance on the kitchen floor. Pulling at the refrigerator door–
Frantic. Excited.
Holding each vegetable as if engaging it in a waltz.
The children glanced at their father, open-mouthed.
The enthusiastic being began to collect vegetables from the compartment like an urban farmer.
Then–
It faced the camera.
“Kids,” He held up a head of lettuce that appeared to be squirming in protest. “You don’t know how important these are.”
The lecture went on. The figure, a cross between Elmo and Grover, would have done either proud.
The voice, reminiscent of a Hanna-Barbera cartoon.
“You’ll need a pound of these every day. EVERY DAY. They don’t taste nice, but stay positive – your test results. TEST RESULTS! You have the power.”
He raised the broccoli in his right hand. Straight up.
Its passion? Undeniable.
Meanwhile, the broccoli sat, deflated, as if asking it to curb its enthusiasm. It hadn’t had a rest day in weeks.
Enough was enough.
After all, they were only–
Vegetables.
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As the Elmo-Grover cross continued its lecture, a few potatoes started to rise from the drawer.
Meanwhile, his passion intensified.
“Gulp ten glasses…remember….ten glasses of tomato juice before bed, and you’ll never go wrong.”
The children looked at each other, gawking.
“Hey, you.” A clump of Bok Choy suddenly interrupted. “Have you quite finished yet? WE’RE the vegetables. And I say we’re–“
“DONE!” The others chorused.
“Done! Done! Done! Done!”
The unified chiming haunted. The complaints begain.
“Hey, buster. We’re the vegetables. We get it. We’ve heard it all before.” The carrots intoned purposefully.
“Yeah. They’re not going to eat more vegetables from a corner. Hai”
The Japanese cucumbers motioned, as if pouring tea.
“And we need a break from being—examples.” A tomato intoned, lookng less red than it could have been.
Elmo-Grover paused. He gazed at a crowd of farm-fresh carrots holding placards and relented.
“Alright. Alright. I’ll slow down.” Then he peered into the camera.
The family watched, transfixed.
“I just wanted the kids to -“
“WE KNOW!” The vegetables chorused in unison.
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Elmo-Grover sighed. “So…what do you all want?”
The head of broccoli, who had been waiting for things to unfold from his drawer corner, emerged with a clipboard.
“I think….we need rules around here, don’t you?”
The carrots, tomatoes, lettuce and potatoes nodded in agreement.
“Firstly, we don’t meet up when we’re too tired. Eileen is always prepping us for some dish already.”
The kids, expectedly, nodded in agreement.
“We understand what you’re trying to do, Elmo-Grover. But we need to slow down.” The broccoli continued. The other vegetables nodded. For Elmo-Grover, a little too vigourously.
“I suggest meet ups just once a week. We’d have more time to benefit Eileen’s family this way.”
Eileen and her family stayed glued to the camera, still wordless and transfixed.
But the children did include a few more carrots to the next day’s lunch. And a head of broccoli – shared.
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Original story by Michelle Liew Tsui-Lin. AI tags are coincidental.
Mirrors of the Mind by Michelle Liew is a collection of psychological and supernatural short stories that explore the quiet unease beneath ordinary moments. These are not tales of spectacle, but of subtle fracture — where memory distorts, silence speaks, and the self is not always singular. In these stories, what is unseen often carries the greatest weight, and what lingers is not what is shown, but what is felt.
