I missed National Pillow Fight Day on the 10th of April, but here’s a little comedy in honor of our favorite camping, sleepover, or just bust-the-sibling hobby.
Happy feathers!
🐶🤍🐾🐾🤍🐶🤍🐾🐶👑🐾🤍🐶🐾🐶🤍🐾🐾🤍🐶🤍🐾🐶👑🐾🤍
Clementine Dong was the reigning queen in three areas—obscure trivia, ninja stealth and sibling pillow combat. The children’s bedroom of 42 Pitbull Street became a veritable battlefield of war cries, popcorn catapults and, mostly, pillow fluff.
But her brother, Percy Dong, was not to be outdone. Tired of living in his big sister’s shadow, he began training in secret. But unlike the feisty Clementine, he was a thinker. His ammunition would, hopefully, put Clementine out of commission on the feather front—the wacky Super pillow.
Percy’s pillow had secret chambers and a zippered compartment that could hold massive weapons’ arsenals. No one noticed Mum’s glitter jars disappearing, or the smell of popcorn drifting from Percy’s room. He wasn’t just preparing a surprise attack—it was Operation Pillowgeddon.
And so, the attic became a cinematic pillow arena, with Percy and Clementine as the main gladiator cast. The action was fast, furious, and reminiscent of a few forgotten snacks.
The first hit was a cloud of slapping feathers. Percy struck. Clementine countered. The alarm clock on the table shrilled in approval. The victims—unassuming feathers—-drifted to the floor this aggressive day.
Just as Clementine reached to grab another pillow filled with feathery fluff, Dame Cloudy the Dog of Cushionshire entered the gladiator arena.
At the sheer nobility of her bark—-a gentle, yet sharp monotone—-a dignified queen berating her court with a single sound—-the siblings ceased fire.
Their mother stepped in, shaking her head. “Thanks for the assist, Dame C,” she patted Cloudy, and the little dog sat quietly in the corner. “What did I tell you two about pillow fighting? Or ANY fighting.” She shot them a look that spelt “grounded.” Clementine and Percy gave her sheepish looks of acknowledgement.
Clementine, still not daring to look up, finally spoke. She extended the olive pillow. “Er…let’s call it a draw.I think we’re both sick of feathers going up our noses.” “Yeah, my allergies are acting up. Uh..ex…CHOO!”
Thus, there was no score. Just two defeated siblings and a throne of Truce. All three laughed so hard, the attic beams rumbled in unison.Cloudy, still a member of esteemed canine aristocracy, gave a quiet bark of approval.
📚📖📚📚📖📚📖📚📚📖📚📚📖📚📖📚📚📖📚📚📖📚📖 Award-winning architect Avery Lin, one-time award-winning architect, now a shadow darting between streetlights. She watched the city lights blur around her, all the time guzzling cans of Anchor Beer.
Drunkenness was her only relief; it protected her from downturned eyes.
Stray cats were her only company; some even became fast friends. One, its silvery eyes communicating feline messages of invitation, beckoned her down an alley.
At its end was a weathered, oak door. Scratched. Etched with the crude marks of vandals. She pushed it open and was hit instantly by a musty smell.
Musty, yet thrilling. Intrigued by its possibilities, Avery stepped in further to find…
A plethora of books lining shelves from right to left. Volumes of ancient encyclopedias speaking wisdom she was yet to understand. Staircases coiled up through the levels like question marks–this was a library full of answers. 📚📖📚📚📖📚📖📚📚📖📚📚📖📚📖📚📚📖📚📚📖📚📖
The bookshelves towered over Avery, emanating a comforting smell—a woodsy mixture of must and oak. It was a veritable sea, extending from floor to ceiling with waves of white and black print.
The brown wave overwhelmed Avery, drowning her in a Tsunami of questions. The pages and tomes seemed to wrap around her, like newspaper cuttings enveloping her in a desert of uncertainty.
Despite the library’s relative serenity, Avery drifted restlessly between aisles, the books a landslide threat. Some of them had unnerving titles—The Life You Could Have Lived, and Balm for the Lost Soul.
The first opened itself to a page—one with moving images of herself on it. A version of herself that never gave up. Skyscrapers around her rose. Laughter reverberated. People clapped. She shut the book, fingers trembling.
The second opened to another page of moving images, showing the moment her confidence crumbled. Into irretrievable fragments. She relieved this past–but through the eyes of a witness.
The pages breathed when she fingered them–too a lived to be mere paper. She watched herself live a version of life that she only dreamt of.
The librarian appeared, tall, mirrored, ageless. Her eyes were dark, twin mirrors. Bespectacled, donned in a white blouse with its collar wrapped around her neck. “‘You’re long overdue,” they taunted. “Not for a book. For becoming who you should be.”
A storm raged briefly in the poetry section. Words rained down her overcoat. She wiped her hands on her sides, then brought them in front of her face. They were ink-stained.
She sat in a quiet alcove in the library’s corner, watching her “perfect life” replay again and again between that pages of The Life You Could Have Lived. Her heart pounded with a series of dull, painful thuds.
A figure manifested in the corner of the room—tall, ageless, her eyes eerily mirrored. She drifted toward Avery, finally stopping to shoot her a condescending look. “You’re long overdue. Not for returning a book, though that needs looking into. We’re concerned about you—becoming.” 📚📖📚📚📖📚📖📚📚📖📚📚📖📚📖📚📚📖📚📚📖📚📖 Avery shot her a look—a stormy mix of frustration and confusion. The librarian hovered around the alcove, her shadow noiseless. Then, without looking at Avery, she dropped a tome on her table. It bore no title—only running ink.
“You’re to fill it in.” Her voice was broken, as brittle as the ancient volume’s paper. “You’re not to erase anything. What you write remains—set, alive.”
Avery stared at the notebook, her look as blank as the pages before her. They were blank, but warm to the touch.
The librarian added, with a touch of kindness. “When you’re ready, shelve it where everyone can see it. Becoming is for all to witness.”
The dust in the alcove no longer clung to her: it settled, like time taking gentle breaths. The surrounding shelves became a polished brown. The pages of the old tomes were pure white; they had lost their dog ears and yellow tone. 📚📖📚📚📖📚📖📚📚📖📚📚📖📚📖📚📚📖📚📚📖📚📖 The sun shone, its gentle rays jostling her awake in her car. The sky’s faint blue colour was one that she hadn’t seen in months. The now familiar library tome lay on her lap, smelling faintly of salt. In her hand was a black charcoal pencil, fresh, eager to begin.
No librarian. No one else around her. Just the sound of the pencil scratching against paper.
And so she writes. Not for anyone else’s eyes. She began to pen the tome, now no longer ancient, just for herself.
And she smiles, for the first time in years. 📚📖📚📚📖📚📖📚📚📖📚📚📖📚📖📚📚📖📚📚📖📚📖
Avery stepped into the library two years later, beaming as stepped into the alcove. The fresh smell of new books greeted her. New shelves scaled the walls, filled with new tomes and encyclopedias, each with fresh pages.
The tome she had written lay on the table she had sat at two years earlier, waiting for her to turn its pages. The same fresh smell entered her nose gently, rousing her other senses, widening her smile.
The librarian hovered over to her, now dressed in pressed jeans, a sweet tee and a denim vest. She had tied up her hair in a high ponytail.
“Ready to add a new chapter to your tome?” She grinned, her long fringe cascading over her eyes.
Change, though abhorred, sparks growth. -Michelle Liew 🌊⛵🐟🌿💧🌊🌊⛵🐟🌿💧🌊🌊⛵🐟🌿💧🌊🌊⛵ The river flows, so wide and calm Its currents slow, its water balm But over time, its banks do test Prompts needed shift in its great quest 🌊⛵🐟🌿💧🌊🌊⛵🐟🌿💧🌊🌊⛵🐟🌿💧🌊🌊⛵ The stones once still do turn and shift. Its waters move, and currents drift The flow remains, but something’s askew A familiar course, now starts anew. 🌊⛵🐟🌿💧🌊🌊⛵🐟🌿💧🌊🌊⛵🐟🌿💧🌊🌊⛵ In this new time, the river knows Its own strength, as it flows It moves not back, but straight ahead Along fresh paths, those unsaid. 🌊⛵🐟🌿💧🌊🌊⛵🐟🌿💧🌊🌊⛵🐟🌿💧🌊🌊⛵
The suburban town of Hollow Hils was the ultimate utopia—residents lived neatly dug lives, with each blade of grass in place. Everything was just so—perfect in the eyes of all who visited it.
As the town’s status quo coordinator, Ivy Lin marketed the sameness lifestyle with finesse. She was the go-to person for anyone who found it difficult to keep up with the Joneses. “I sell the perfect life.” was her slogan. Even her dinners were curated and carefully photographed for social media.
But keeping up would prove a challenge—especially when Geoff Gopher arrived. He made surreptitious appearances, poking his nose out of the soil in backyards. Appearing near garden hoses.Shoving his knowing nose through picket fences.
It seemed he wanted something from Ivy that she couldn’t give—her silence. He popped up next to the dandelions that Ivy grew and gnawed her toe to get her attention.
“You can’t bury what everyone needs to know,” he cautioned.
“I sell dreams, not dirt,” was her wry response. 🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️ But the gopher just wouldn’t let up. And he went after Ivy like a—gopher after soil-covered groundnuts.
“Everyone here smiles like there’s not a single crack in their China. That simply can’t be,” It thought, gnawing at the edges of her idealism.
He flashed Ivy visions of the perfect life gone wrong—-holes in white picket fences. Stains on too-perfect dresses. Perfect hair that simply couldn’t be combed.
“Your memory’s got claws, Ivy. Be careful they don’t scratch you.” 🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️
The visions grew in intensity, sending Ivy—too deeply rooted in perfection—round the bend. So she decided to follow the scent of the gopher—she dug.
And she unearthed a cover up so toxic it sent her reeling.
The gopher? He wasn’t a pest. He was there to deliver a reckoning.
“You’ve sold Perfection like prime real estate. Your contracts are stacked like an ivory tower—but that’s about to topple. And I’m here to remind you. If you will listen.” 🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️
The town of Hollow Hills began started to cumble under the need for being just so. Everyone had been masking their emotions—afraid to show sadness, anger or failure, afraid to be the weak link in a perfect chain.
The truth knocked softly on Ivy’s door. Then in started to tunnel its way in. She realised she couldn’t build a paradise on a false stone.
Ivy took to the podium in Hollow Hills Square. She bore it all—told the people that they were living manufactured lies.
“You deserve to understand what you’d been sold, ” she intoned, her voice sombre.
“Thank goodness she told us. We don’t have to do what everyone tells us to anymore,” A young college student cried.
“You mean we’ve been living a lie all this time?” A young, bespectacled doctor hollered, his arms flailing. 🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️ And day by day, Hollow Hills filled out, becoming less—empty. Ivy started a new career—she became the town’s motivational guide. Hollow Hills reinvented itself, becoming Sunrise Peaks.
A small nose poked on of the soil near the old Hollow Hills signpost one morning, just as the sun crested over the town. It perked up as Ivy took to the podium, speaking about the authentic self.
Goeff Gopher sniffed the breeze one last time, squinted at the light pouring over the sign. And with a satisfied sniff, he clamboured out of the soil.
Rodents in a nutshell. Squirrel Power. –Michelle Liew
🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️
“Quick, the little squirt’s catching up!” Pip the bold mind behind the squirrels’ operations, darted ahead. Behind the group of four buffoning rodents was a hapless toddler, wailing and stumbling after his stolen PB and J sandwich.
Of course, the said sandwich was already ‘mysteriously’ disappearing as the toddler sobbed his way through the branches, his hassled mother behind him: “Let it go, Tom.”
🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️ It was four tails, one task. Nutty, Hazel, Chipper and Pip were to pull off the snack theft of their lives. Their mission—to steal an unsuspecting human’s lunch and vanish. They had trained for this—in alleys, parks, in the shadows of sandwich shops. They simply couldn’t fail.
And it seemed that operation PB and J was a go—they had struck before the poor child’s lunch even hit the grass.
🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️ I call it, “The Last lunchwich!” Chipper had whispered, just seconds before the drama unfolded.
Just as Chipper, the renaissance squirrel of the group, hung painting from a branch with his prize, the sandwich in his cheek like a bomb about to go off, a blinding ray of light surged from a nearby laboratory.
A sonic BOOM.
A throbbing pulse.
The earth started shaking.
The sky gave a loud hiccup, and the trees bowed inward, as if reminiscing on something old and forgotten.
Their world contorted. Time fractured. Something suspended the rodents midair—then drops them like ripe acorns. A ripple hit them like solidified thoughts. They fell inward—not down. 🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️
The squirrels rose, relieved to be alive.
But they were—-different.
In essence, their bodies were the same. But their thoughts were far from the usual.
They spoke. They reasoned. But they recalled things that were strange—-not their own. Even the trees in their park seemed—off. Too bent. Too tall.
Hazel calculated wind vectors—but had cut every class in Squirrel School she could. Chipper, of course, became the carver of tree trunks. Pip—well—he whispered coordinates that made sense to himself and noone else.
And the Teenage Mutant Ninja Squirrels were born.
🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️ Nutty, the sensible voice of the group, declared their next mission.
“We must defend the park.”
The other squirrels shot thoughtful looks at each other, nodding in agreement.
Defense, however, meant sabotage. Something—-or someone—sliced the power lines. Garbage trucks had to reroute, and the air became dense with their suffocating stench. Cell towers sizzled, their signals swallowed in static.
To the squirrels, human tech were trespassers. Parasites. They needed to purge it. Misson parameters shifted: control, contain, cleanse.
The battle cries? Lines of nutshells, ready for a seige.
Hazel disarmed a CCTV with a satisfied smirk.
The rodents’ actions seemed like harmless mammalian play to the passersby in the park. But to the squirrels? It was DEAD serious.
🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️
Then, even stranger things happened. The mission shifted—again.
Chipper glitched, sculpting trunks with binary, not pictures. Pip’s codes twisted into circuit diagrams. Nutty’s sentences fractured like corrupted data.
The squrrels hadn’t mutated—they were rogue AI implanted in organic hosts.
They took off, awakened.
🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️🐿️ This story is entirely original. AI tags are coincidental. The number of words between the quote and disclaimer is 500.
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