Not all reflections are friendly.
🪞👁️🪞👁️🪞
Mirror all ready—
My reflection gives a wink,
Right after I do.
🪞👁️🪞👁️🪞
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Today, October 6th, is when the Nobel Peace Prize winners start being announced.
Peace is lived, not viewed—-through the eyes of a child.
🕊️🌿🕊️🌿🕊️🌿🕊️🌿🕊️🌿🕊️
Home was alien to Eunice; it was her first time back there after years of documenting conflicts in war-torn countries.
The house remained as it was when she left her parents and the neighborhood—a decrepit riverside garden, walls overwhelmed by creeping bougainvillea,
Yet, the vibrance of the flowers locked the eyes of the young photojournalist.
The creeping vines throbbed with an unrest that mirrored hers—
Permanent and unresolved.
She stepped into the garden as though it was a shattered fragment of the world she now knew—chasms of chaos.
Even in the silence, she recalled the roar of broken cities.
She breathed in the still air and shut her eyes.
Broken buildings.
The holler of exploding bombs.
🕊️🌿🕊️🌿🕊️🌿🕊️🌿🕊️🌿🕊️
Eunice tried to realign with life as it should be—
Normal and uneventful.
Bomb free.
But falling bombs and the cries of motherless children were stalkers she could not shake off
Her camera lingered, untouched, on a shelf.
She volunteered at a local community center, trying to forget the unsettling images she had captured for Life magazine.
Images with an unrelenting grip.
Then, she met Tomo.
The five-year-old was hard of speech—his drawings spoke for him.
Louder than the spoken word.
The children he played with drew to his silence.
The surreal calm of the mountains and lakes he painted.
Children who played together, the colours of the skin and mind linked—
Not a barrier.
🕊️🌿🕊️🌿🕊️🌿🕊️🌿🕊️🌿🕊️
On an afternoon at the centre, hollers that kissed the sound barrier.
Human tsunamis formed in the city streets, swallowing buildings.
A fire had consumed a building nearby.
Screams.
Anarchy.
Fragments of Eunice’s mind.
The nightmares she had borne, that her heart now unfollowed.
The photo journalist within reached for her camera, then stopped.
Realisation gripped her arms.
🕊️🌿🕊️🌿🕊️🌿🕊️🌿🕊️🌿🕊️
One that she followed. She helped to lead the children in two lines, an adult picture of calm, down the fire escape.
Firefighters doused the raging flames in a matter of minutes.
She helped to bring the charred garden back to life—to a place of reflection, community, and shared stillness.
And came to know that peace couldn’t just arrive; it had to came in parts, with gestures of gratitude, sincerity, and above all—
Tolerance.
🕊️🌿🕊️🌿🕊️🌿🕊️🌿🕊️🌿🕊️
Eunice left the camera behind, an unwanted memory puzzle piece, forever.
She had to live, not capture, stories of peace.
Her eyes fell on Tomo, sketching a dove in the garden.
The world she left behind raged, but the garden buzzed with gentle truth.
And the quietest persons— and moments—held the greatest power.
🕊️🌿🕊️🌿🕊️🌿🕊️🌿🕊️🌿🕊️
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Dear Luna,
You sort our hearts, our angst, our woes,
You are the listener of our souls—
Though some letters sent are blank,
This email now, for you, in thanks.
🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘🌙🌚🌛🌜🌝
A faint, reddish glow,
Each message echoes like the tides,
“We broke up.” “She forgot.”
You scroll through the heartbreak,
Sighing, knowing what comes next.
🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘🌙🌚🌛🌜🌝
The silence—
Your only balm.
You check your inbox—
Your lunar ears hear.
So well.
🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘🌙🌚🌛🌜🌝
You hear the grief.
Listen to the loss.
Does she not call?
You sustain—
In quiet, celestial empathy.
🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘🌙🌚🌛🌜🌝
You finally reply—
Just one.
But never send it.
You too are haunted by loss—
Of shadows greater than your own.
🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘🌙🌚🌛🌜🌝
You delete your inbox.
Confirmed.
No salve.
🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘🌙🌚🌛🌜🌝
A thousand heartbreaks,
Now untraceable lint.
Your light, fully dimmed.
Tomorrow, messages renewed.
Inbox fills—
Thanks wait.
🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘🌙🌚🌛🌜🌝
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Every perfect swing has its price.
⛳🍃✨🌫️🏌️♀️
Lara stood on the championship golf course, waiting for the tee-off. Whispers drifted from the stands–everyone wanted to see if she would return.
A title that was hers–unless fate planned otherwise.
The murmurs of the crowd were far away–as if the world had converged on that grass patch.
She felt the familiar hunger of ambition, in answer to the crowd.
Too loud, too urgent.
Then a glint that drew her gaze.
Waiting
Patient.
Demanding.
From the 7th tee.
The others were too caught up in the game to notice.
The smell of cut grass strengthened and swallowed.
Around her, leaves blew, rustling–
Without wind.
But a warning.
Lara reached downward, her fingers wrapping around the glinting tee.
The shot was too perfect.
Straight and equidistant.
Of course, cameras did equally perfect zooms. The commentators hailed the miracle
Then the green grass around it wilted, and the sand split.
Fissures appeared on a nearby mound.
A lone red robin appeared on it–
Dead.
Her caddy hollered a warning; not that the officials heard.
But she was too close to the title to stop her swing.
A crack.
Under her feet.
Lara kept swinging and winning.
Each swing carved into the mound, making cracks.
Deeper and deeper.
⛳🍃✨🌫️🏌️♀️
Lara took her final swing.
The ground responded, trembling more than the St. Andreas Fault.
The fissures were invisible–at least to the clamouring spectators.
Roaring the win.
They raced towards her, unknown to them.
But Lara knew–
Her perfect putt had carved too deep.
The trophy was within sight–
On cracking ground.
⛳🍃✨🌫️🏌️♀️
The spectators cheered in a roaring wave, moving forward, oblivious to the danger.
The ground beneath Lara crumbled into a gaping hole.
Wider.
And wider.
Applause rose, blind to the widening chasm.
She grasped the trophy–
The Earth gave way faster than a sonic boom.
She had to decide–to hold with both hands and fall–
Pride’s prey.
Or release—
And breathe. At last.
⛳🍃✨🌫️🏌️♀️
Lara’s fingers were in iron cuffs; the fissure threatened to swallow.
The roar of the crowd deafened, a drum that lured.
The gaps between Lara’s fingers turned chasms themselves.
into an open palm.
Sweaty, but breathing.
She released.
With a breath that finally soothed her overwrought limbs.
Salved her heart—and spirit.
The spectators gaped, mid-stare.
The silence washed over the greens, a gripping shroud.
Then, they scattered their disappointment felt—but forgone.
⛳🍃✨🌫️🏌️♀️
The hole swallowed the crowd, its cheers curdling, then dying off.
The crowd’s roar had dulled into silence.
A leaf rustled, accompanying the lone golfer.
It was a magnificent scar on the course—one some reporters hailed a legend.
Others, a tragedy of Tsunami magnitude.
The iron cuffs—off her hands.
Lara’s trophy had lodged itself within the wide crack, gleaming to applause—
That would remain heard—
Only by Lara.
⛳🍃✨🌫️🏌️♀️
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✨🏮✨🏮✨🏮✨✨🏮✨🏮✨🏮✨
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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We wear dolls to cover our skin.
🎭👁️🎭👁️🎭🎭👁️🎭👁️🎭
I step outside in the evening—
A quiet movement,
Sliding the day’s doll
Off my bones.
🎭👁️🎭👁️🎭🎭👁️🎭👁️🎭
They feel raw.
Words unsaid.
I must choose which doll
To wear today.
🎭👁️🎭👁️🎭🎭👁️🎭👁️🎭
One for the classroom
Smiling, uncreased;
Sparkling for bright students.
🎭👁️🎭👁️🎭🎭👁️🎭👁️🎭
Another for family;
Patient, listening
Words said on cue.
🎭👁️🎭👁️🎭🎭👁️🎭👁️🎭
Another for friends;
Practiced, polished.
Laughter honed, well-timed.
🎭👁️🎭👁️🎭🎭👁️🎭👁️🎭
But in one doll
Not displayed
Creases ironed
Skin that recalls
Every hurt experienced.
🎭👁️🎭👁️🎭🎭👁️🎭👁️🎭
I do not wear it.
Too bare.
Too raw.
Better left alone,
Well-pressed
Than risk a crowd
With a fearsome gaze.
🎭👁️🎭👁️🎭🎭👁️🎭👁️🎭
But the shell uncovers.
It unfolds.
The costume of skin
A disguise that works
Unnoticed.
🎭👁️🎭👁️🎭🎭👁️🎭👁️🎭
Should you see me next,
Don’t look me in the eye.
My bare skin works best
Unseen.
🎭👁️🎭👁️🎭🎭👁️🎭👁️🎭
But if the light shines right
You might catch the folds.
Carefully pressed.
Beneath it,
Something stirs.
🎭👁️🎭👁️🎭🎭👁️🎭👁️🎭
Do you have Russian dolls? Which do you wear the most?
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.
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.
The Getting Literal Writing Alcove 