Grandad Was Telling the Truth

Brushes with fame can be inconsequential…and leave an indelible memory only one can appreciate.

And so it was with my brush with Mr April Love — Pat Boone.

For those less familiar with the music of the 1950s or 60s, Boone was a singing star and icon of the era —

Whom a small nine-year-old didn’t know and ended up shooting a few forehands with.

3 p.m.

At a local tennis club where grandad happened to be a coach. Practising forehand, not too happily, under Singapore’s rather scorching sun.

Grandad Charles abruptly squinted, paused mid-volley and pointed at the next court.

“That’s Pat Boone.”

“Who?” I grabbed my racket and hopped over.

“You’re too young to know him. He’s the tall American man in the next court. Get me his autograph.” He gestured discreetly.

I almost dramatically refused. What if he wasn’t who Grandad said he was? I was a nine-year-old being forced to play tennis under Singapore’s somewhat unforgivingly humid conditions.

Grandad continued his volleys. He knew better than to push a nine-year-old at risk of exploding in front of a favourite celebrity.

Add to that that I’ve never been much of a fangirl.

Grandad proceeded with his forehand volleys, and I proceeded to miss them, much to his awkward delight.

Then, a stray ball wandered into our court.

A name sewn on the side.

Pat.

It had rolled over from Pat Boone’s court. Or the man Grandad claimed was Pat Boone. I returned it with a forearm flourish.

Apparently, celebrity meet-ups begin with —

Stray balls.

Then —

The ball came back.

I sent it back, this time, with my racket.

So Pat Boone and I exchanged a few kiddish forehands, his identity still unconfirmed.

For a while, just the player in the next court.

He laughed at the exchange —

With a nine-year-old Singaporean girl.

No autograph —

But a little tennis.

Grandad showed me a set of casettes he had in his car on the drive home.

There he was.

Pat Boone.

He’d apparently been telling the truth. Of all his embellishments, this had been the one to believe.

I never did get the autograph.

Too surreal.

This random celebrity encounter became an engraved adulthood stamp.

He was a star.

It WAS extradordinary.

He, on the other hand, was merely visiting Singapore and playing tennis at the invitation of someone he knew.

Whether he remembered the encounter, I would never know.

And that was alright.

We had outdone one of Grandad’s embellishments —

And made this one real.

Far more important.

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.

Evan Mercer

Remembrance Days were ironically hazy for Monica; after all, she was just a tot on September 11.

The day the Twin Towers fell.

But her dad, Daniel, wasn’t so hazy. At least, his behaviour on that day wasn’t.

September 11 was the appointment he never failed. He showed up every year for a remembrance gathering — and never announced it.

He just went and returned, bearing an unfathomable silence.

He’d been in Lower Manhattan that fateful September 11th, 2001.

He survived the Towers’ tumbling debris. When anyone mentioned it, he’d offer a terse, almost recorded reply:

“I got out. That’s all.”

So the family, Monica included, learned not to ask.

Monica somberly added Daniel to her list for Remembrance Day offerings this year —

He passed away on that very day.

Among his papers was a name: Evan Mercer.

Circled in blue ink.

2002. Evan Mercer.

2003. Evan Mercer.

2004. Evan Mercer.

Different programmes. Ageing paper. The same name.

Her father had remembered this stranger more faithfully than family.

Than HER. Why?

So Monica embarked on a little investigation. She wasn’t planning a Sherlock mystery. She only wanted to know what Daniel never told her.

Who Evan was.

He wasn’t a relative.

He wasn’t a friend.

He wasn’t a colleague.

The near-dismissal was maddening. She nearly pulled her hair out as she sat at her desk.

A thick, black journal lay in one of the boxes that housed Daniel’s possessions.

Monica thumbed through the yellowed, dog-eared pages.

Her father had been caught in a swirl of panic as security officers tried vainly to evacuate the World Trade Centre’s famous twins.

Fear.

Confusion.

At some point, he couldn’t move.

Then, a stranger’s hand touched his shoulder.

“Come on, you can do this. Keep going.”

And he did.

Somewhere in the sea of terror, they drifted apart.

One reached the bottom of the stairs…just before.

One had reached the last stair. Just before.

She ploughed through the names of those who had passed.

Evan Mercer.

She closed the journal and bit her lip. She glanced at her watch.

Still time.

So she took her father’s place at the remembrance gathering.

Dad Daniel couldn’t be there now. But she could.

With his last program.

Someone read the list of names and came to the inevitable.

Evan Mercer.

She couldn’t pretend to mourn him — she’d never met him.

But she could honour him.

As someone who died.

After getting Dad to live.

Posted on Septem

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Michelle had a talent for turning annoyance into a theatre production.

She became annoyed when —

People stood on the wrong side of escalators.

People sent more than a single voice message.

People sent reminders — even gentle ones.

Aggravation was her middle name.

Work had been particularly irritating, so Michelle wasn’t in a giving mood.

A new phone app manifested itself.

Annoyed? Report them.

“A new complaint service,” she thought. “About time.”

A passenger shared music — at an unsolicited number of decibels — on the train.

Another sang off key.

Another occupied two seats.

On went her phone camera — and the app.

Like all apps, it consumed.

She reported the off-key singer again.

The lady —

Vanished.

The two-seat passenger, too, disappeared.

As did the music enthusiast.

Michelle was delighted. The world was quiet.

At last.

She started a voyeuristic search.

A notification hovered.

“The perpetrators are at the complaint department of Annoyed. They will remain here until you withdraw the complaints.”

Before she could register this, another notification.

“You have been reported.”

Within seconds, she found herself at the complaint department.

Dripping taps.

Mosquitoes.

Too-bright screens.

She glanced over her shoulder.

The off-key singer. Still off-key.

They had used the app.

“Now…perhaps an agreement?”

The Laptop Was Hungry

Clara Wong’s writing appetite was voracious.

Nothing escaped her laptop.

Family drama.

Embarrassing moments.

Overheard quarrels.

Her friend, Mara, approached her with a devastating secret and a caveat —

“This stays between us.”

Clara agreed.

But…such a scintillating headline!

Mara’s secret couldn’t go to waste.

It could be —

Fiction.

A different name. A different place.

Same hurt. Same tension. Same drama.

Mara wouldn’t be the wiser.

She uploaded it.

Likes. Comments. Traction.

Guilt visited — only briefly.

Her next teaser —

“Ready for more?”

But the readers weren’t the ready ones.

Her laptop accessed private sites —

Voraciously.

It deleted entries.

Exposed private messages —

A secret confession.

Click. Fiction.

Shocked, she shut it.

The cursor jumped.

Clara had only seconds to stop the gobbling.

She tried to delete the story —

But the laptop became even more voracious.

Then, the cursor hovered, blinking.

Over Mara’s angst.

Then, she knew.

She deleted the wayward fiction.

The cursor waited, blinking.

Clara typed.

Her own story.

Another Day Away

Lana coursed through the park, her bicycle swerving expertly with each turn in the familiar territory. She loved parks; being one with nature was second nature to the botanist’s daughter.

As she neared the park’s centre, her eyes fell on an intriguing structure.

A fountain.

Jetstreaming —

CHOCOLATE.

That would make Hershey’s spin.

It smelled…divine. Surely one sip wouldn’t hurt.

No one knew who emplaced it. There was only a sign that bore a caveat:

Drink as much as you wish.

Each sip postpones your birthday by a day.

But you will continue to age.

Lana took a sip. A joke? She’d play along.

So she did.

Her phone calendar did digital calisthenics, moving her birthday from the upcoming Saturday to Sunday.

Lana grew edgier as her birthday approached.

She detested birthdays.

She wasn’t afraid of ageing…everyone grew older.

She wanted to be REMEMBERED.

Her phone had remained stubbornly silent.

Last year, she had scrolled through her text messages. She had received a few automated ones. Her closest friends did remember —

A few days later.

Last year’s chocolate cake had been meant for three people.

But she finished it —

Alone.

She wondered whether anyone would bother —

At all.

She had an idea.

If her birthday never arrived, no one could forget it.

She returned to the fountain.

Sipped.

Another day.

She sipped again.

She dropped by the fountain every day after work.

Her birthday retreated across the calendar —

While others’ arrived in perfect time, with candles flaring.

It postponed her birthday by a week, at first.

Then it pushed the date back by another week.

And another.

Soon, it was months away.

But life continued —

With everyone’s birthdays.

Someone received a birthday cake at work.

A child celebrated his beneath a banner that marked the occasion.

People complained as they aged, but blew candles out anyway.

Lana told herself that she didn’t care.

But noticed.

Every time.

And kept drinking.

She approached the fountain one afternoon.

“Lana!” The call was insistent.

It was her friend, Mabel.

With a small chocolate cake on a table, enough for two.

Her name in icing that was obviously too sweet.

Nothing elaborate.

Just the cake.

Mabel explained that she didn’t want to forget this year.

“I thought I’d catch you ahead.”

She froze.

Someone actually remembered.

Then glanced at the phone. Her birthday wasn’t next week.

It was months away.

SHE had made it impossible to reach.

She passed the park the next morning.

The fountain still jet streamed chocolate, burbling a tantalising invitation.

It kept flowing.

She slowed her steps —

And reached for her thermos.

Then kept moving forward.

Her birthday remained on a much later month because of all the chocolate she had drunk. But she could stop pushing it away.

For once in a long time, the date moved to her.

It finally arrived.

Without fanfare.

Just Mabel.

Two friends.

And two forks.

She had allowed someone to make tea for two.

Unauthorised Emergency Intervention

What should be happening? No one really understood.
Disorda was in chronic trouble -always experiencing an apparent disorder epidemic.
Residents put the wrong bins out for disposal. Colleagues were 6 minutes late for committee meetings. Children wore mismatched socks and pinafore sections.
There was a constant outbreak of activity-at a highly unacceptable level.
The situation couldn’t be allowed to deteriorate. Officials convened an emergency council meeting. Prevention far outranked the reaction of Disorda’s townsfolk.
For ANY chaos.

The department’s measures initially sounded - sufficient. Residents planned journeys, maintained contingency food supplies, and notified each other of schedule changes. Everything was - orderly.
People approved the initiatives. Prevention, of course, was better than any cliched cure. They issued directives: “Failure to predict unexpected outcomes will result in severe consequences.”

So the Department of Chaos Prevention expanded its initiatives.
It created forms for:

Changing one’s mind.
2)Arriving unexpectedly;
3)Cancelling appointments; and
4)making unwarranted purchases.
One had to provide 72 hours’ notice before commencing spontaneous activities. It sanctioned Approved Spontaneity.
A resident received a warning after making an unauthorised decision not to have her usual noodles for dinner. Another received a court summons for undeclared sneezing. The resident had failed to make reasonable efforts to expect it.
Of course, unauthorised decision-making fell - By almost 98 per cent.

So Disorda experienced a cultural shift. Its people stopped deciding things - on their own.
A shopkeeper’s refrigerator leaked until the water reached knee-height, but he waited for authorised maintenance assessment.
A teacher noticed a hanging classroom fan but would not move the students before authorised approval.
The caution applied especially to council employees.
Extreme caution.

Then, the town encountered chaos worthy of its name.
A water main burst in the town centre. A flash flood of water poured across the road. “Shouldn’t the water supply be shut off?” A Disorda-ly resident asked. “Well…” The municipal worker hesitated. It would amount to an -
Unscheduled Infrastructure Intervention.
The water continued rising - dangerously. But it hadn’t offered advance notification.
“Why don’t we just shut the valve off?” Someone suggested meekly. Everyone shot him dirty looks.
At last, the worker discovered CP-47: Permission To Respond To Unexpected Circumstances.
A collective sigh of relief.
Until they read the instructions.

It contained one crucial requirement:
Nature of anticipated circumstance.
The municipal worker couldn’t complete it. The event had been impossible to predict.
“Ridiculous!” The Disorda-ly resident protested, summarily shutting the valve off. An official agreed - with rehearsed sympathy.
“Unfortunately, extenuating events fall outside our existing framework.”
After all, regulations were - regulations.
He issued the Disorda-ly resident a citation for Unauthorised Emergency Intervention.

The Disorda-ly resident garnered - unusual sympathy.
The Department was forced to intervene.
It conducted a review that found its procedures - insufficiently comprehensive.
Additional safeguards had to be put in place. They promised that such disorder would never happen again.
A new body was formed to oversee its procedures:
The Department of Chaos Prevention Prevention.

The Final Page Had Other Ideas

Reading. A habit that the bibliophile in me has never been able to vanquish.

So when I came across an antiquated title entitled The Captive Reader in the corner bookstore, my curiosity was naturally piqued. The bookseller termed it The Most Captivating Book One Would Ever Read. His face beamed with suspicious relief when I bought it.

I made it my bedtime reading that night. I forgot supper. The messages on my mobile went unanswered.

I was captivated.

So captivated that I reached the ending — after perusing almost a thousand pages — at 2:13 a.m. in the morning.

The final phrase of the book —

The most captivating of all —

Now write.

I chuckled. But…

My laptop blinked unceremoniously.

A blank document opened.

I closed it.

It opened again.

I closed it again.

It opened with a bigger browser window.

I closed that window.

It opened ten browsers.

I slammed the laptop shut.

Then, an irritated click.

Then I heard…

Instructions.

Write Chapter One.

I was never any good at obeying directives. They grated.

So I refused it.

The lights flickered angrily.

I wasn’t too happy about being pushed around by a book. But I didn’t want one becoming my electrician. So…

I reluctantly typed a sentence.

The lights came on.

So I started to experiment.

Whenever I stopped typing, the lights would flash like Zeus was in one of his tempers. Or the coffee pot would percolate by itself.

I got so fed up that I tore a page.

And then…

The printer began to spit ink.

Rude editorial comments.

Weak opening!

Cliché! Cliché!

And that proverbial slap in a writer’s face?

Show. Don’t tell.

Type.

Tear.

Type.

Tear.

Type.

Tear twice.

I started a full-blown book-gument.

By sunrise, I was…

Out of words.

So I typed —

THE END.

And everything —

Stopped.

I heaved a sigh of relief.

But the printer, enraged, started to whir.

It spat a freshly bound book into the tray.

With the title —

The Captive Writer.

Book One of Eight.

I stared at the seven blank documents opening simultaneously.

Oh yes. I had been biblio-napped.

The Key To Being

FulfilFent was a town where everything had to have —

A purpose.

A reason for being.

The little township had an established Department of Purpose which examined possessions yearly.

A chair? For sitting.

A book? For reading.

Ornaments? For anything more than mere decoration.

Young goblin Milo arrived, bearing his grandfather’s old key. No one knew what it opened.

Then there was the key.

That didn’t seem to open anything.

Purposeless.

The Department confiscated it.

Its officials tried it on everything.

Doors.

Drawers.

Chests.

“Everything must have a purpose!” A flummoxed inspector declared.

Then —

Click.

The key turned —

To him.

And a tiny compartment in him abruptly opened.

The department decreed that it warranted investigation.

They tested it on:

Bakers.

Teachers.

Even —

The Mayor.

Everything had a compartment—a neat label.

Then, they tested Milo. Who contained —

Nothing.

Who panicked frantically. What was he for?

Then he remembered —

No one had given him any.

He winced, then smiled. Perhaps being was purpose.

For now.

Pending Payment

Graham had a single source of pride —

Productivity.

While others slept, he created. His YouTube Studio playlist was probably longer than that of YouTube Vlogger Mark Weins’.

Productivity was a bedtime novel.

He often scrolled till dawn broke, standing firmly by the maxim that sleep was for losers.

Then, on a fine morning at 3:15 a m. —

A gentle, courteous knock.

Tap. Tap. Tap.

The taps clicked like punctured malice.

Politeness was never so unsettling.

A sharply dressed Repo Man.

He knew this day would come.

“Good afternoon, Sir. I represent The Union Bank’s Department of Restitution. You’ve probably been expecting us.” The smile on his face was almost a sneer. “And according to what we have on record, you’ve accumulated substantial debt.”

Graham laughed.

He blatantly ignored the banker’s attempts to administer the necessary documents for the repossession of his home.

Then, he lost the ability to yawn.

The next morning, the coffee’s ability to rejuvenate him was —

Useless.

Soon, every sleepless night increased the Repo Man’s presence.

He arrived courteously. More punctually than the city bus.

And he claimed something —

Strange —

With each visit.

Then Graham’s dreams vanished.

Music no longer motivated him.

His sense of humour was repossessed pending —

Payment.

One receipt at a time.

Peaceful afternoons vanished.

Graham gulped cup after cup of coffee. His energy depleted with

each cup.

The more he drank, the more of himself he lost.

In exhaustion, he signed contracts his mind never read.

The collector arrived for his final visit.

He closed the ledger.

“We will collect your tomorrow…

Tonight.”

And for the first time, Graham declined the late-night demand.

He ignored the knock.

The collector never returned.

But his yawn did.

Then, he laughed again.

Sleep finally returned — in peaceful starts.

Rest started to accumulate interest.

Graham still focused on production.

But he no longer paid for it with Himself.

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.

The Great Grip Expansion

The gargoyles blew back, wings extended in triumph, to Father Primwell after the night’s sordid inspection.
One of them, Clutch of the Grotesque Claw, had a rather sombre report for the rest.
“The townsfolk are starting to lose their grip.”
“Oh, I see,” Fr. Primwell nodded sagely. How could he account to the Bishop if the people lost their moral fibre?
“What did they do?” He questioned Clutch with a raised eyebrow.
“Their grip is slipping. They drop - ” Clutch paused with dramatic seriousness. “Things.”
“Things?” Fr Primwell furrowed his brow, puzzled. Then, he shrugged. Perhaps people were getting -
Clumsy.

Our zealous gargoyles started improving everyone’s grip while they were -
Asleep.
Perchwick’s citizens rose each morning with extraordinary hand strength.
And the improvements made an indelible mark on everyday life.
Mugs stayed in hands -
Permanently.
Pencils snapped in half.
Door handles broke.
People shook hands -
And left without them.
Everyone admired one another’s newfound confidence.

The good Father Primwell began to receive reports of the gargoyles -
Unquestioning discipline.
The humble parish priest realised that what they believed to
“get a grip” was -
To get one.
The gripping conclusion.
And a humble catch phrase had become -
A moral statute.

The gargoyles reported yet another successful campaign.
But good Father Primwell didn’t praise them -
Yet.
Because the townsfolk still couldn’t release their mugs -
Pencils -
And bars of soap which they couldn’t abandon while showering.
They needed to learn not to hold tighter -
But to let go.

Instead the gargoyles tightened their grip—

Everywhere.

Their approach?

Enquiry expansion.

More inspections.

Increased observations.

Increased evidence.

At hand was a town-wide crisis.

So the campaign reached all corners of Perchwick.

It involved not just people.

But homes.

Offices.

Shopping malls.

The expansion soon reached fever pitch.

They fortified their grip —

On family life.

Friendships.

Responsibility.

The definition of ‘grip’ broadened.

It became a universal principle.

And increasingly literal.

Life in Perchwick became —

Inconvenient.

Not dangerous. Just —

Gripping.

They held on to stop signs.

Gripped one another’s hair.

Gripped one another’s shoulders.

And formed conga lines.

Dear Fr Primwell soon discovered that expansion had to include—

Wisdom.

Understanding.

Its reach had to broaden.

Judgment had to be —

Balanced.

A good grip — and moral solidification —

Did not have to include everything.