✨🏮✨🏮✨🏮✨✨🏮✨🏮✨🏮✨
Some lanterns lure more than you know.
✨🏮✨🏮✨🏮✨✨🏮✨🏮✨🏮✨
Lanterns bathe in fog,
Drawing willing moths to flame—
Weary souls entrapped.
✨🏮✨🏮✨🏮✨✨🏮✨🏮✨🏮✨
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For World Animal Day, 2nd October
They cluck–and need care too.
🐓🐄🐖🐴🐐🐓🐄🐖🐴🐐
Bukit Plain. A rural kampong (Malay for Village) in Singapore shrouded in mist, with moonlight spilled over the zinc rooftops.
The corrugated doors creaked, though no one appeared to be there.
Shadows—mismatched.
The kampong animals behaved, well—
Out of kampong sync.
Chickens huddled in groups, whispering.
Cluck.
Cluck.
Clucking.
Discussing secrets known only in Chickendom.
Cows stood silent, still.
Ghostly sentinels on a moo strike.
A lone horse didn’t neigh—it stared at the moon, communicating with it in series of morse code snorts.
The metal doors grated open—-
Creak.
A chilly draft that snaked.
Swinging, alone.
🐓🐄🐖🐴🐐🐓🐄🐖🐴🐐
The animals moved in patterns, as if to a minor beat of “Old Macdonald.”
The chickens sent sms messages through coop flaps.
A pig council oinked in a heated discussion.
Shadows moved illogically, one grating against the other.
Latches shifted, though no one pulled them.
Buckets tilted, filling themselves with water about to splash.
Clucks of hens bounced off the walls.
Cows banged their horns on fences, —judging at a tribunal.
Assessing human care and concern.
🐓🐄🐖🐴🐐🐓🐄🐖🐴🐐
All the animals converged in a clearing, in sync.
Their own Kampong ceremony.
Hens flapped their wings in distended patterns.
Shadows warped, merging with the dim light of the moon.
Hooves clicked in the Old Macdonald rhythm of old. Hens supplied the cluck beats.
A creature chants.
A pig dropped to the floor, mid-chant.
Chicken scribbled notes—animal Mozart.
The Kampong chief peeked outside his door—
And gawked.
Guilty.
He knew he had forgotten.
The animal orchestra reached a deafening crescendo.
Then paused.
They knew—
He knew their notes.
Their needs.
🐓🐄🐖🐴🐐🐓🐄🐖🐴🐐
The animal orchestra froze. Its hen conductor’s wings stretched and hung—
Mid–air.
The Kampong chief approached them hesitantly, with a sheepish smile.
He nodded at the orchestra, slowly filling troughs.
The hen conductor batted him with one wing, the other raised.
He finished filling the troughs.
They slowly returned to clucking, clicking, and neighing—
Their orchestra—
Heard.
🐓🐄🐖🐴🐐🐓🐄🐖🐴🐐
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On National Poetry Day, I gather—leaves, memories, and moments—into gold.
🍂🧺🌿🧺🍂🌿🧺🍂🌿🧺🍂🌿🧺🍂🌿🧺
I collect red leaves,
Nuts and fruit;
Echoes of harvest gold.
In threads drawn into a single weave.
A gatherer of thoughts;
Of family,
Friends,
And joy.
🍂🧺🌿🧺🍂🌿🧺🍂🌿🧺🍂🌿🧺🍂🌿🧺
Corn falling into a wicker basket
Grain chatting with the wind,
Leaning to scythes.
Soil kissing pulled roots.
Jars in rows, autumn in glass.
And the harvest turns—
Day by day.
🍂🧺🌿🧺🍂🌿🧺🍂🌿🧺🍂🌿🧺🍂🌿🧺
Photos strewn on the ground;
Faces vivid in the mind—
Warm voices like lullabies in the ear.
Fireflies cupped in eager palms
Conversations on torn pages.
I grasp—
Laughter.
Faces.
Time.
In my hands.
🍂🧺🌿🧺🍂🌿🧺🍂🌿🧺🍂🌿🧺🍂🌿🧺
I collect not to keep,
But to bring forth,
Stringing beads into a necklace of days,
Weaving a quilt from time’s strewn cloth,
I take what stays
When seasons go.
🍂🧺🌿🧺🍂🌿🧺🍂🌿🧺🍂🌿🧺🍂🌿🧺
I collect memories
My arms aching, but heart full—
To live,
To love,
A basket of gifts
Of love
Of life
Of gold.
🍂🧺🌿🧺🍂🌿🧺🍂🌿🧺🍂🌿🧺🍂🌿🧺
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Please find a book of my horror microfiction, Echoes in the Dark, free for download here.
One can be too clean.
💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥
An after-hours nurse, Rin had made cleanliness his life—Marie Kondo would have called his dedication to sterility an obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Nothing could be out of order.
Or dirty.
Not a speck of dust.
He got into bed one morning, put out after his shift.
But woke with a start. His apartment was clean—too clean. He was a neat freak, but this level of cleanliness was enough to send someone as fastidious as he was over the edge.
Odd—an operating theatre too clean.
He looked at himself in the mirror.
There was NOTHING to look at.
Nothing except broken images that looked like outstretched hands—
Gangly.
Wieldy.
Like glitching glass veins.
Pulsing.
KNOCK.
KNOCK.
KNOCK.
Startled, Rin touched a window to see a hand—
Not his.
NEVER his.
💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥💥
KNOCK.
KNOCK.
KNOCK.
The glass pulsed. To the knock’s rhythm.
The veins in the glass throbbed harder.
Brighter.
Red.
Then white.
KNOCK.
Thud. His chest answered.
The window fogged.
Scrawled letters on the frosted pane.
KNOCK.
Cracks appeared, a mangled spiderweb, across the mirror.
His own pulse skipped. It sounded just like the knock.
The fingers grew longer.
More gangly.
Pressing harder on the pane.
KNOCK.
It rocked—like a petrified heart.
🌐✨🌐✨🌐✨🌐✨🌐✨🌐✨🌐✨🌐✨
The crack in the windows widened—light bled through, as if bones had split.
In the middle of the fracture—an eye.
It blinked—and winked.
Too close.
Too knowing.
Another knock—within his chest.
Then a finger passed through the glass.
It pointed—at him.
Dripping static and leaving a dripping trail of red.
Rin’s ribs tightened, locking him in place.
The rhythm had bound him.
The apartment door rattled to its urgent beat.
Then, something within the mirror moved.
The lights followed the pulse—Vibrating.
Too exact.
🔊💢🔊💢🔊💢🔊💢🔊💢🔊💢🔊💢🔊💢
The mirror’s surface stretched—-bulging, bated breath from within its depths.
The eye within the fracture multiplied, blinking.
Syncing with the knock.
The veins in the window lashed—its binds tightening.
The door creaked—the knob turned.
A tad.
The lights flickered again—Rin’s pulse quickened to the same rhythm.
Static crept into the air—his ears buzzed.
Then, a shadow.
Seeping in from the gap below the door.
A crack within the mirror formed.
A mouth.
Gaping.
Teeth within—sharp.
The door handle twisted fully.
🩸🖐️🩸🖐️🩸🖐️🩸🖐️🩸🖐️🩸🖐️🩸🖐️🩸🖐️
The mouth moved.
Not speaking—whispering.
The shadow under the door thickened, spreading across the floor——
An irremovable stain.
The door shook uncontrollably.
Then—stopped.
Silence.
KNOCK.
From within the room.
White lights flared—turning a garish red.
The mouth opened wider—-the frame ripped apart.
It. Crawled. Out.
🔀🔀🪞🧍🪞🧍🔀🪞🧍🔀🪞🧍🔀🪞🧍
It slithered out of the doorframe, bending—
To him.
It approached, raking its fingers across the wall.
Creating sparks from within each scrape.
Then, the mouth snapped shut.
But the light from the glass still bled.
The shadow under the door seeped around him, circling his feet.
Locking him in place.
His face-half his, half static.
His teeth flickered.
The knocking continued—from within his chest.
In time with his breath.
Pulse.
Fear.
🔀🔀🪞🧍🪞🧍🔀🪞🧍🔀🪞🧍🔀🪞🧍
The sparks from the wall burned the veins in the glass—fire crawling through arteries.
The shadow wound tighter around his ankles, dragging him.
Rin saw himself at work, masked, a scalpel in hand.
Wiping the operating table the surgeon was working on—
Incessant.
Continuous.
The thing’s mouth opened—not to breathe out, but breathe in.
Sucking his breath.
His chest collapsed with its rhythm—each knock sucked a heartbeat.
The mirror quaked, a fractured web.
🔀🔀🪞🧍🪞🧍🔀🪞🧍🔀🪞🧍🔀🪞🧍
The fire veins were a virtual tarantula, bursting through the mirror’s cracks.
The Thing drew a final breath in—
Deep.
The glass veins snapped—
A shower of red light.
The shadow around Rin shrilled, yanking the fissure, along with the Thing.
Rin fell back on his chair, collapsed.
Breathing.
His room, as it was.
Just cracks.
In the mirror.
And himself. Scalpel. Disinfectant.
And cloth.
In his mouth.
The knocks continued.
🔀🔀🪞🧍🪞🧍🔀🪞🧍🔀🪞🧍🔀🪞🧍
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Some knocks remind.
🔑🗝️🔐🗝️🔑🔐🗝️🔑🗝️🔐🔑🗝️🔐🗝️🔑🔐🗝️🔑🗝️🔐
Avi wasn’t like others–he loved the late shift because it was– Quiet.
Serene.
Because he could work alone.
Moments of solace in his apartment were a treasure–rare and city-free.
But something spoiled them one night.
A knock.
Deliberate.
Purposeful.
It didn’t belong to the hour.
He peeped through the keyhole with a light stamp of his foot– No one.
Silence.
It then fractured–measured, urgent beats.
Each more demanding than the next, shifting from the door–
To a cabinet in his living room.
🔑🗝️🔐🗝️🔑🔐🗝️🔑🗝️🔐🔑🗝️🔐🗝️🔑🔐🗝️🔑🗝️🔐
Avi took a few hesitant footsteps towards the cabinet–he couldn’t get the knock out of his head.
The door was locked.
But shuddered.
With each knock.
Then, shadows.
Lengthening across walls.
The family photo on the living room cabinet.
The knocks persisted
Like an alarm that couldn’t turn off.
The floor creaked.
In sync with the knocks.
The same, persistent reminder
The family photo on the cabinet glowed.
Curiosity overcame fright—he flung the door open.
A package. To a familiar address.
Too familiar.
In it, a brass key.
Warm to the touch.
And a note—a memo.
“You forgot.”
Then the knocks increased–
On the windows.
And the walls.
The ceiling.
🔑🗝️🔐🔑🗝️🔐🔑🗝️🔐🔑🗝️🔐🔑🗝️🔐🔑🗝️🔐
The brass key in his hand–
Hotter.
Heavier.
The elevator door creaked open.
Empty.
But the knocks grew louder–inside.
He stepped in—it descended.
Without him pushing a button.
Reopening–on a dimly lit floor.
The knocks softened–but became more
insistent, pulling him–
To a door.
With a number he knew–
But couldn’t quite place.
🔑🗝️🔐🔑🗝️🔐🔑🗝️🔐🔑🗝️🔐🔑🗝️🔐🔑🗝️🔐
He approached the numbered door.
He knew it—needed to open it.
He raised the key to open it–the knocks stopped.
The door clicked open—almost unwillingly.
A room.
Smelling of antiseptic.
A corridor.
Of a hospice.
The family photo–now flashing insistently
in his head.
The number—to his parents room.
🔑🗝️🔐🔑🗝️🔐🔑🗝️🔐🔑🗝️🔐🔑🗝️🔐🔑🗝️🔐
He stood outside his parents’ room, fighting with his mind.
With the brass key.
The photo.
The KNOCKS.
And the responsibility–he forgot.
He placed his hand on the knob–he didn’t dare turn it.
After a few minutes–
The door opened fully.
The knocks softened–but not completely.
They now counted–like time.
Until he moved.
🔑🗝️🔐🔑🗝️🔐🔑🗝️🔐🔑🗝️🔐🔑🗝️🔐🔑🗝️🔐If you like this story, do join me on Patreon! Buy this blog a coffee — it keeps the words flowing and the lights on! Your kind donation via Paypal would be greatly appreciated!
Please find a book of my horror microfiction, Echoes in the Dark, free for download here.
An endless search, a voice unbroken.
🐺
I walk through the quiet streets,
A sea of faces swarms.
Each one turns to me,
Each one mocking—
The difference they do not want.
🐺
I follow the laughter from restaurants,
Doors that lead to warm rooms,
The comfort of bonds
That I find unfamiliar.
I follow its sound
The way a lone wolf hunts for
Its pack.
🐺➡️🐺🐺➡️🐺🐺➡️🐺🐺➡️🐺🐺➡️🐺🐺➡️🐺🐺➡️🐺
For a second,
I think I hear it call for me—
A voice distant but warm,
Faintly calling, nearly mine
But when I turn,
It wavers,
An echo not meant to be.
🐺👀🐺🐺👀🐺🐺👀🐺🐺👀🐺🐺👀🐺🐺👀🐺🐺👀🐺🐺👀🐺
And then I hear—
The lost footsteps of others
Looking too—
Their eyes frantic,
Their smiles plastered
Each hunting for wolf packs
Where they didn’t belong.
🐺🐺🐺🐺🐺🐺🐺🐺🐺🐺🐺🐺🐺🐺🐺🐺🐺🐺🐺🐺🐺
I look at my empty hands,
Yet heavy,
Belonging not caught,
Still sought.
It grows in me
Never taking root–
I still howl.
🐺🌌🐺🐺🌌🐺🐺🌌🐺🐺🌌🐺🐺🌌🐺🐺🌌🐺🐺🌌🐺
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Please find a book of my horror microfiction, Echoes in the Dark, free for download here.
Some words should never be read.
🍂 🍂 🍂 🍂 🍂:🍂 🍂 🍂 🍂 🍂:🍂 🍂 🍂 🍂 🍂:🍂 🍂 🍂 🍂
Words on autumn bark—
Luminous letters in blood,
Letters of the slain.
🍂 🍂 🍂 🍂 🍂:🍂 🍂 🍂 🍂 🍂:🍂 🍂 🍂 🍂 🍂:🍂 🍂 🍂 🍂
Message on fall’s earth—
Cryptic words where none should be
Keeper of my soul.
🍂 🍂 🍂 🍂 🍂:🍂 🍂 🍂 🍂 🍂:🍂 🍂 🍂 🍂 🍂:🍂 🍂 🍂 🍂
.If you like this story, do join me on Patreon! Buy this blog a coffee — it keeps the words flowing and the lights on! Your kind donation via Paypal would be greatly appreciated!
Please find a book of my horror microfiction, Echoes in the Dark, free for download here.
Fragile glow, steadfast heart.
🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔
Darkness descends, and twilight gently falls
The shadows wide, a lantern’s light’s new frame
Brings solace to the walkers who stand tall.
🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔
My lantern’s glow is steady, ever same
Its proud flame holds, its light grounds my feet,
My heart stills in the quiet, cobbled lane.
🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔
The lantern grows close, its glow my eyes meet
Its flame in the wind, quivering, almost blown;
But light still seen in its heart, its fragile seat.
🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔
Its fine glow now sits, and I walk it on,
My hands round the flame, and its graceful song.
🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔🪔
If you like this story, do join me on Patreon! Buy this blog a coffee — it keeps the words flowing and the lights on! Your kind donation via Paypal would be greatly appreciated!
Please find a book of my horror microfiction, Echoes in the Dark, free for download here.
Listen…to the quiet warnings.
📅📅📅📅📅📅📅📅📅📅 📅📅📅📅📅📅📅📅📅📅
Mei was preparing Chinese waffles in the family kitchen, getting the children ready for what was supposed to be a routine morning.
“Eh, get up! The school bus will be downstairs in an hour!”
10-year-old John and 8-year-old Sam sat up in bed.
With looks grouches would be proud of.
A horse racing calendar hung on the kitchen wall, omnipresent. Slightly dog-eared, Mei had flipped the pages countless times to mark important dates.
And yes, to make horse racing bets.
But the calendar didn’t turn on dog ears. Over time, they began to peel– and curl.
Almost like curved nails, reaching for attention.
Its metallic tang lingered in the kitchen, at he edges of her mind.
She fingered a number– the print felt too dense.
Alive.
The metallic smell grew as she neared certain numbers.
She glanced at it.
September 18th glared at her.
Familiar–yet wrong.
📅📅📅📅📅📅📅📅📅📅 📅📅📅📅📅📅📅📅📅📅
She stared at the date for a few long minutes.
The metallic smell of the calendar turned her nose red.
Numbers started to peel off the pages–
Faster and faster.
The phenomenon was beyond Mei’s exhausted–yet frantic mind.
Her two-year-old toddler ambled into the kitchen and tugged at her sleeve.
She took the little boy in her arms– and his fingers brushed its pages lightly.
Another date flashed.
Her deceased grandmother’s birthday.
With a shocked gasp, she backed away, trembling fingers reaching for the kitchen knife on the table.
It tensed within her grip.
The dates were–too correct.
Her mind flicked to each one–as if it knew.
It stored–more than mere numbers.
It was telling.
Choosing.
It had–
Chosen.
Her.
She had to warn–or confront.
Fate lay in those numbers–hers, or another’s.
September 18th.
📅📅📅📅📅📅📅📅📅📅 📅📅📅📅📅📅📅📅📅📅
The numbers on the calendar peeled off–
A whirlwind.
September 15th.
16th.
17th.
The metallic smell overwhelmed.
Mei’s pulse thudded.
“September 18th… I know this date…”
Then, she remembered.
Her older sister.
The one whom her mother had cried over countless family gatherings.
She had died after fingering a kitchen knife.
Curiosity.
She had turned it turned it–
To her heart.
The knuckles around the knife in her hand turned white.
She backed away from the calendar– near her toddler.
The knife.
Waited.
Then, she dropped it.
A sigh of relief.
She gazed at the young child, giggling, still tugging at her dress.
The calendar’s hinted page.
September 17th.
She clutched her young daughter’s arm.
The calendar curled. With the smell of metal.
📅📅📅📅📅📅📅📅📅📅 📅📅📅📅📅📅📅📅📅📅
We each have two faces.
🔥💭🌧️✨🌙🕯️🔥💭🌧️✨🌙🕯️🔥💭🌧️✨🌙🕯️🔥💭🌧️✨🌙🕯️🔥💭🌧️
Morning light shines upon his handsome face
A bright glow that catches every new breath;
All around him long for his fond embrace
His warmth and shield from echoes of the dark.
🔥💭🌧️✨🌙🕯️🔥💭🌧️✨🌙🕯️🔥💭🌧️✨🌙🕯️🔥💭🌧️✨🌙🕯️🔥💭🌧️
Yet night reveals the shadow he conceals
A wounded soul that breaches with its sin;
His want now turns to wound that cannot heal
His kindness lapses into cruel lies
🔥💭🌧️✨🌙🕯️🔥💭🌧️✨🌙🕯️🔥💭🌧️✨🌙🕯️🔥💭🌧️✨🌙🕯️🔥💭🌧️
A soul that rides the storm of day and night.
His damaged truth still lives, both well and ill;
The halves together form the human soul
A dissonant sound bound by truth and pain.
🔥💭🌧️✨🌙🕯️🔥💭🌧️✨🌙🕯️🔥💭🌧️✨🌙🕯️🔥💭🌧️✨🌙🕯️🔥💭🌧️
And so he walks, both Good and Evil’s son;
A spirit bound on Earth, that lives as one.
🔥💭🌧️✨🌙🕯️🔥💭🌧️✨🌙🕯️🔥💭🌧️✨🌙🕯️🔥💭🌧️✨🌙🕯️🔥💭🌧️
If you like this story, do join me on Patreon! Buy this blog a coffee — it keeps the words flowing and the lights on! Your kind donation via Paypal would be greatly appreciated!
Please find a book of my horror microfiction, Echoes in the Dark, free for download here.
The Getting Literal Writing Alcove 