The Last Stop on Mann’s Tour

Some hauntings don’t rattle chains. They wait in your notifications.

🕯️🌫️🚶‍♂️📖✨

I gathered with Elvis and the rest of the group, ready to grace ghostly lanes with gentle tiptoes.

Our guide, Mann, was a fellow who engaged…though without unnecessary pomp.

The buildings around the park were old. The streets, narrow. Lamps hummed in a slightly strangled way, as if they hadn’t enough Strepsils.

And we followed behind Mann like obedient shadows.

Mann launched into his spooky stories. But…they were…oddly personal.

Someone chortled suddenly. Uncomfortably.

The air thinned as the guide came to each stop.

The stories narrowed, like a zoom camera.

Oddly familiar – and tied to each group member.

A woman who declined her mother’s last call – that same woman was now frantically tapping her mobile’s keypad.

Then, there was the tale of the man who chose profit over humanity. That same man was shoving company leaflets.

Then, there was the teen who caught footage of people falling off their bikes. He was filming a boy skidding past on a skateboard, yielding to the pavement.

Then Mann stopped with an abrupt flourish. He swiveled around from his position in front to face the group.

“These stories aren’t recorded hauntings. They’re our regrets. Our behaviours. Choices that replay in a Youtube loop long after we’ve made them. Check your phones.

Each group member scrolled through their message feeds and looked up, sheepish.

With a missed notification. An unread message.

“These spirits don’t flood buildings. They’re ours. Our neglected responsibilities.”

Suddenly, we weren’t afraid of darkness. Our fear? What awaited us at home.

The silence was loud. Clanking.

Reminding.

And regret swarmed in, dark, hungry flies.

It crept over us quickly, a dangerous blanket. We dispersed, trying vainly to avoid it.

Mann again. With a new group of ghost tourists.

With their stories. Stories they must complete.

🕯️🌫️🚶‍♂️📖✨

Original story by Michelle Liew Tsui-Lin. AI tags are coincidental.

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Written Too Straight

Society expected perfection from Sandra. But is perfection perfect?

📚✔️❌❓

Ms. Sandra Lee always arrived in class five minutes before her English lesson was to begin. There was no reason for this day to be any different.

The classroom had already risen before she stepped in. The lights were already on, and her students, quiet and standing, ready to greet.

But their morning salutation was not for her.

She’d always had a problem writing in a straight line on a ledger-less chalkboard.

But her name was on it this day.

She already knew the kids – there was no need for it.

It was in a line – written by someone else.

Too straight.

📚✔️❌❓

The students offered their polite greeting – almost too polite.

Their grace, too well-crafted.

Responses – too normal.

Sandra observed the teacher – an uncanny replica of herself, doling out marked homework and instructions.

The students, responding for once without any quiet rebellion.

They had finally accepted her for who she was.

But this was not her. Their politeness to this new her – her own erasure.

📚✔️❌❓

The formulae offered by Sandra’s replacement – herself – were doubtless.

Efficient. Perfect.

The students accepted the model solutions she offered without a single raised hand in protest.

No digression. No lingering questions.

The teaching was excellent, but without an ounce of warmth.

📚✔️❌❓

Then, the letter on her desk.

Thanking her for her service.

The parents were happy with Sandra’s replacement – she taught in the way the students recognized.

There was improvement. Formulae were clocked correctly, according to the letter. She had taught well, it said.

Just not good enough for – herself.

📚✔️❌❓

Sandra cleared her desk, putting her books and now needless worksheets in a box.

She carried it past the classroom and looked in at herself, finally explaining the formulae without a single missed equation.

But as she passed the classroom window, the replacement – her perfect upgrade – asked a question.

Then wrote the wrong sum on the board.

And vanished at the sound of the bell.

📚✔️❌❓

The students with half the needed formulae.

📚✔️❌❓

Original microfiction by Michelle Liew Tsui-Lin. AI tags are coincidental.

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The White Field

It’s Penguin Awareness Day, and being the cute junkie that I am, I’d like to pay tribute to these wobbly fellows.
They are cute. They are also firm and stand by those in the colony who need them. Even when forgotten.
But the day isn’t just theirs. It belongs to anyone who has stood stoically by others in the face of any adversity.
Not all guardians are remembered. All are necessary.
🐧 ❄️ ❄️ 🐧 ❄️
The snowstorm had created an unending white sea – one that Buzz and his family navigated year after year. White waves swam from an omnipresent sky, covering the colony not with protection, but with threat.
The sea was rogue this year – the waves splashed forward without warning. A snow wave had almost drowned Buzz – not that the rest of the colony paid heed. Not even his parents.
He waddled painfully past the wave and looked ahead. No other penguin.
But one. A little chick.
He positioned himself beside it, nudging it forward with his beak, relieved when it finally trudged a few steps forward.
Snow continued falling; white curtains shrouded the Antartic landscape as Buzz forged ahead, a non-present adult in his colony.
The South Pole wind howled her discontent. Resilience reigned over her as the penguins made do, rotating their positions to keep the young intact.
The outer edges of the colony bore the cold. Buzz and his adult comrades slipped, uninstructed and observed, into different parts of it to shield the little ones. Like Buzz, the other birds guarded them with stoic silence.
They could have moved within the brood – duty bade them not to, and they acquiesced, without a chirp.
The snowstorm ended as suddenly as it started, leaving massive white hills in her wake. The sun peeked behind soft pillowy clouds, indicating safety to the birds as they ploughed on without pause.
The little ones, their soft grey fur and blubber offering warmth, no longer needed Buzz for protection. They plodded just as relentlessly as the elders, paying him no heed as they forged ahead.
They arrived safely at the next snow hill, their footfalls unheard and unseen. Like Buzz, they would grow and guard, unnoticed and unrecorded in a white field.
🐧 ❄️ ❄️ 🐧 ❄️
Original story by Michelle Liew Tsui-Lin. AI tags are coincidental.

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Please find a book of my horror microfiction, Echoes in the Dark, free for download here.

Lines in Brown

This day in 1919 marks the Great Boston Molasses Flood, when a molasses storage tank burst in Boston’s East End and consumed 21 lives.

21 lives lost, and undocumented.

While history records the events, it doesn’t record the names.

Some histories cannot be left on paper — they wait to be remembered.

🟤📄🕯️⚖️🟤

Criminalist Eleanor’s job was her haven – she adored the precision and the intimate attention to detail it needed. Years in the Commercial Affairs department of the police force had ingrained foolproof method and reliability – traits that made her renowned.

January 15 took her to an abandoned industrial site – one where tension and chaos were still very much married. Molasses had erupted in waves of brown from industrial containers, drowning 21 workers in viscous sea of dessert thick enough to build another Berlin wall . The atmosphere overwhelmed in a sickening instant.

Molasses lines still trailed along the sides of tanks, creeping from something – unseen. Brown and sticky. Gripping. Unyielding.

Accusing.

But Eleanor was but a monitor of records, not memory. She was tasked with verifying the truth – not on reflection of responsibility.

The sickly-sweet dessert was a trained assassin assailing Eleanor’s nose – the cloying scent wrapped her nostrils with a vengeance. The air bore sweetness where none should be. Time had softened, but not erased it – it didn’t move. But remained almost deathly unsettled.

She had recorded the event before, without missing a beat.

Safely. Accurately.

But the events and dates did not sync. The numbers bore no weight – meaningless. The dates had no breath.

Accuracy had trumped reverence.

The names of the 21 lost souls, dissolved with the viscosity that had enfolded them.

Then, the viscous remains reshaped.

Hardened.

Becoming a tangled mass of brown limbs, melded together in linked chains that could not be broken.

Then they rose, in a circle, surrounding Eleanor.

Approaching her, but not reanching.

21 links, glistening with dessert gleam.

Reminding.

Eleanor stared at the forms, too dumbstruck for words. Mesmerised – but aware enough to find them odd.

None of them spilt forward. None screamed.

She remembered the file that she had put on the table beside her, open to a blank page.

The figures stared, nodding.

And she understood.

The record she had to complete. That she would complete.

And the day she would finally mark with remembrance.

🟤📄🕯️⚖️🟤

Original story by Michelle Liew Tsui-Lin. AI tags are coincidental.

If you like this story, do join me on Patreon! Buy this blog a coffee — it keeps the words flowing and the lights 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.

Roots Remember

This day in history, Henry Ford patented the soybean car. Atypical. Even amusing.

The car wasn’t meant to last – it would wither into the soil, with corn growing where the engine once slept.

Sometimes the smallest, unseen roots yield the sweetest harvest.

🍃🍂🍃🍂🍃🍂🍃🍂🍃🍂

If there was one thing Elias Goh had lots of on his hands, it was time. And the retired horticulturist spent it squatting beside stubborn saplings near his Housing Board apartment. The young trees asked for patience, as trees were wont to do.

Elias worked where few cared to look. Neighbors scoffed at the slow-growing saplings, chiding Elias for wasting time and community funds. His daughter asked, “Dad, why all the worthless effort?” But Elias knew that growth pushed back against being hurried.

And then…

A notice that inflamed the skin, in angry, red ink – a redevelopment notice.

The government had marked the land for demolition. Total destruction –

Including his little green labours of love.

Still, Elias, ever stoic, never raised a word in protest. He never wrestled with negative endings. With meticulous fervor, he labeled his saplings and left them behind, along with a set of cryptic instructions.

“Growth is timeless.”

After Elias stopped tending to the unfortunate saplings, they caught the eye of Ah Lam, the assistant groundskeeper. The plants leaves touched together, almost pleading. He remembered Elias’ words :

“Roots matter.”

He took the sapling and replanted it in the estate’s community garden – before any demolishing could reduce it to nothingness.

The onset of El Nina meant the painful and inevitable – a drought.

Yet, the tiny, relocated sapling came to the fore- the fruit it bore , ravishing and juice-filled.

The harvest had come – out of season.

Children began to gather, in droves, beneath the now-revered sapling.

They never knew its planter. The one who nourished it – nameless.

But the lone sapling’s fruit had given him one.

🍃🍂🍃🍂🍃🍂🍃🍂🍃🍂

Original story by Michelle Liew Tsui-Lin. AI tags are coincidental.

If you like this story, do join me on Patreon! Buy this blog a coffee — it keeps the words flowing and the lights 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.

Veil of Shadows

1964 marks the year President Lyndon B Johnson initiated a War on Poverty, aimed at increasing employment opportunities, revamping education, and boosting healthcare.

While reviews of the polices had a mixed tone, it did decline by about 8%.

Some vows like these, however, remain unfulfilled.

Reprieve and fairness is sought.

Promises spoken. Justice delivered. Echoes that endure.

⚡👁️🗨️🕊️📜🔥

Murmurs of excitement ran through the conference hall as Mayor

Carl Sim launched into the speech his eager audience was craving. A throng of journalists, waiting to fill their pages, gathered in the corner, asking sensitivity breaching questions. Their pens hovered above notepads waiting to serve as canvases.

Everyone was too preoccupied to notice the faint shimmers at the periphery of the room. His palms were slippery with nerves – the room held its breath. Sentient shadows scaled the walls – artists with hidden secrets none wanted to know.

Carl cleared his throat and began his speech, one filled with glowing promises of sweeping changes that would enhance lives.

No one noticed the very slight tilt of their chairs – even as they were sitting on them. Papers fluttered in the windless air-conditioned hall, drifting like white gowns above the ground.

The room was – living. With a heartbeat that didn’t sync with Carl’s. As he spoke, a chill worked its way up his legs through his spine. A cloying smell of crisp, pressed white linen grabbed the air.

And it wasn’t air-conditioning draft.

The paper gowns gathered and filled – with forms from a world unknown.

They were ageless. Visible. Slowly approaching.

Imposing.

The crowd in the room took tentative steps backward, mouths hung wide open.

Then, the room erupted in gasps and whispers.

Screams ricocheted off the walls. Bodies piled against doors, grabbing handles.

Pressing against each other as they tried to exit.

Carl’s pulse raced faster than a Formula One driver’s car. A mix of awe and dread filled his being.

The vows he had made all along, to the millions he had soothed?

Mere words.

The guardians had made their dreaded – and expected – entrance, drifting with logic not to be challenged.

And vindication for words unmaterialised. For people -unwanted.

Then, chaos unfolded. Not haphazardly – but in structured, elegant patterns. Tables had overturned outside the hall -lifts were malfunctioning.Officials around Carl scrambled to protect him, but he remained stoic.

His face – unreadable.

The guardians drifted to the stage, mouths fixed and straightened. Gasps of disbelief filled the room. The smell of smoke and wonder enveloped the crowd.

Carl saw the gnawing gap between his empty promises and the painful realities the people in his town dealt with.

Increasing crime. Inadequate public schooling.

The guardians’ feet traced the steps of the stage.

One by one.

Then, they vanished. Leaving overturned chairs, flickering lights and chaotic whispers in their wake.

The air had an empty heaviness few could articulate.

Mayor Carl knew that some forces of poverty – tense family dynamics, unchanging mindsets – were beyond his control.

As ambiguous as the guardians’ warning of justice.

He carried the weight with him, along with their lingering shadows.

A light flickered in his eyes. Their echo resonated, undying.

⚡👁️🗨️🕊️📜🔥

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Please find a book of my horror microfiction, Echoes in the Dark, free for download here.

Once a year, mothers gather before dawn to fast, pray, and wait.

Sakat Chauth is a Hindu festival not marked by celebration, but by endurance — a quiet vow made on behalf of a child who cannot yet speak for themselves.

No grand promises are asked of the heavens. Only this:

Let the little ones stay.

🕯️🙏🏼🕯️🙏🏼🕯️🙏🏼

A blanket of quiet covered the city. The region of Alumbra was in winter slumber – a go-to for quiet benediction. The bare branches of the trees above were Anita’s soul – it needed refilling.

Anita took purposeful steps towards the shrine on the morning of 8 Jan. Each one was a little echo – a prayer for her three-month-old daughter.

Cancer had consumed the little girl – with recovery standing ahead at a hopeless distance. Sakat Chauth – the Hindu festival of maternal devotion – held significant weight. It was the child’s only reprieve.

She pressed her palms together, enjoying the warmth that slowly grew against the chill.

Memories of gurgles and the tugs of tiny hands tugged at her heart. Each thought of little Ila was like a little ember that warmed her spirit – a spark that lifted it above the frost. She followed the rhythm of her prayers in her mind, as if choreographing a dance of hope.

A cacophony of activity resounded throughout the temple, its ground awash in a tapestry of vibrant colour.

The sacred grounds seemed unaware of the sacred petitions she was about to offer. Shouts and laughter brushed against her ears like wind caressing bare branches.

A bevy of women gathered for the Sakat Chauth, their hands clasped in benevolent reverence. Everyone was lost in thought – even the frost was indifferent to her vigil.

Her hands joined in prayer, Anita whispered her hopes for her child into the chilly January air. Candlelight danced around her, as if in tune with Illa’s need. As the flames swayed in almost perfect unison, the weight her heart hauled grew lighter – she prostrated in a relief she hadn’t felt since her daughter was born. Quiet tears drenched her cheeks.

She felt a reassuring hand on her shoulder, and turned to its source. The mother next to her nodded. “The mother of a child in need knows.”

The two women prostrated again, in complete tandem. The flames continued their dance of quiet hope, warming them with gentle resolution.

Anita left the temple, her heart syncing with the quiet hum of bustling Alumbra. Vidhya, the other mother, followed, her own heartbeat providing a solid, rhythmic harmony. A breeze tossed their plaits gently, carrying with it hope fused with joyful relief.

For Ila. And Meera.

The frost no longer bit – that light had chiselled, and broken through.

🕯️🙏🏼🕯️🙏🏼🕯️🙏🏼

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Please find a book of my horror microfiction, Echoes in the Dark, free for download here.

Imparting Differences

Today is the International Day of Human Solidarity – one when a jigsaw becomes completely fitted.

When walls part, and partitions close.

When differences meet, magic happens.

🌟

The city of Parting was – parted. There were many parts, true to its name.

Every district spoke a different language. And within each language, a separate dialect.

Rules veered like cars as they steered from street to street. Neighbours saw each other – only with their eyes. Glances fleeted, lasting shorter than seconds.

🐾

Kevin frowned at George’s odd dances. Harry squirmed at Sheila’s crooked smile – one fixed on her face due to facial paralysis from an accident.

They laughed at Juno – he wrote, but climbing Everest was easier than reading.

But the little child smiled like an angel.

Then, the Mayor threw them a ball into a curve that was already curvy.

The Day of Differences. A town holiday.

To mark the day and make it as COMFORTABLE for the edgy as he could, he PAIRED the townsfolk.

Two worlds collided in a day.

Leila, the quiet librarian, frowned at George’s heady dance moves. Tom, the straightlaced mathematician, baulked at Ben’s cheeky eyebrow raising.

The differences sounded louder than cymbals.

Hearts listened, though minds ignored.

✨

The diversity blanketed Parting – now Imparting – and beyond.

Leila held Dance Appreciation Days at the town library – with George’s help. Ben spun records at the radio station with the help of a metronome that Tom assembled – after a mouthful of quirky complaints.

And containers were no longer separate – the differences melted hard plastic partitions.

Into nothingness.

🌟

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The Snowflake Thief

Sharing is the season’s greatest gift.

❄️

A Yuletide snow blanket covered Windleaf Town, turning chimneys, roofs, and roads a dirty white. Holiday lights cast their glow on streets shrouded in frost.

Marlow was the town Grinch – a staunch disbeliever in the Christmas spirit, he kept to himself. No one dared touch the toys in his store – or so he thought. Snow muffled the world’s noise – to Marlow, it was the sound of jingle bells hatching an annoying plot.

Then, Marlow’s ornaments began to disappear.

One.

By.

One.

Right under his nose.

Each missing ornament felt like a tiny stab in his back. Near the cash register, a faint jingle – reminding him of each missing bauble.

❄️❄️

The disgruntled shopkeeper refused to let missing decorations daunt him – he decided to fight the good fight.

His solution was simple: traps and a little subterfuge.

Armed with a little strategy, he placed them where kleptomaniac fingers would pinch.

Near his Christmas tree.

Near the window.

Near the cash register.

Near the mouse hole (just in case).

Traps carefully set, he waited with trepidation – his heart thumped with hope, not fear.

Trap evidence brought in the usual suspects -brown mice with cheeky grins, a gust of wind, and human footsteps craving for warmth long absent.

Then, Mary, a long-time customer, brought in a bauble.

“Doesn’t this belong to your tree?” She shot him a quizzical look

He shot her a puzzled one of his own.

Mary was a retired widow whose husband had recently passed.

Then, a nutcracker, brought in by Tim.

A man who called park benches his home.

And a little angel – whose place was the top of his tree. Brought in by Katherine.

“Is…is…this…yours?” The sentence emerged, though with some effort.

Then, mid-craft, he dropped his tools with a jolt.

Not in anger, but in realisation.

His ornaments had gone to the hands of those who needed them.

And the gruff grinch understood the gift hidden in his loss.

❄️❄️❄️

Project Catch Bauble Thief went on for two heart-stopping days.

For a grinch who often felt his heart on the wrong side of his chest.

Then – payoff.

On the store’s CCTV camera was little Elvie, placing the ornaments in gift bags, bow-tied with meticulous precision.

Sending them to the lonely and needy with thoroughness that spoke ‘care.’

He made his move on Christmas Eve.

The little boy gasped mid-gifting and dropped a bauble.

Marlow the Grinch fixed the little pilferer witha penetrating gaze.

On his face was his signature scowl – one that he dropped after a while when he thought of the little boy’s heart.

One that knew that gifts should be held by the hands which needed them.

❄️❄️❄️❄️

The grinchy shopkeeper succumbed to Yuletide’s resonating charm – he drove Elvie to homes that needed seasonal cheer.

His shop opened to customers with an unfamiliar glow.

Warm and welcoming.

It had never felt fuller or readier for a new start.

For a grouchy shopkeeper, sharing had become the season’s greatest gift.

❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️

Original story by Michelle Liew Tsui-Lin. AI tags are coincidental.

If you like this story, do join me on Patreon! Buy this blog a coffee — it keeps the words flowing and the lights 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.

Whispers of Evergreen

Today is Small Town Election Day – when small communities vote on what matters.

Small voices matter – when sounded together.

🌳

🌿Evergreen was a town at almost perpetual rest – one where activity crawled. Shops opened late; restaurants shut right after dinner.

And its people seemed to tread with the help of walking canes.

A dense forest fringed the edge of the town, its thick shrubbery rustling like gentle whispers. The weight of generations-old trees, leaves brown with age – pressed on one’s shoulders.

Its reputation? For taking what it shouldn’t have.

38-year-old Clara Moon, school teacher and avid history buff, wanted to give these tangled murmurs a more audible voice. She sensed the gravity of stories etched on every tree bark.

She was wilful about it. And notorious for that.

🌳

🌿It was time for Evergreen to make a decision; election fever hit. Townsfolk assembled in droves at the polling station, their voices tinged with raspy excitement. The station’s hall resounded with their whispers.

To preserve – or not.

Developers gathered at the gates, plans in hand. Then, quiet, materialistic murmurs about profit.

Clara’s eye fell on Little Elliot. The child had wandered into the forest, his teletubby legs wobbling after a rabbit. Before long, bramble bushes grasped his ankles.

A hush fell over Evergreen. The forest had opened its mouth for –

Its prey.

Clara bit her lip. This was more than a child losing himself in the forest-it was the forest’s refusal to release him.🌿

🌳🌳

🌿 Clara rushed into the forest, hoping to grab the child before the forest swallowed him completely.

She did discover – not a child, but a sapling grove no one thought existed.

Baby trees shaped like infant animals.

At the periphery of her vision – chainsaws and axes.

Developers and dismissive grimaces.

The trunks of the saplings twisted towards them, like sentinels marching to an errant beat.

Clara’s eyes darted from one sapling to another. They stared back at her, leaves parted, almost pleading.

She wanted to help them. But that meant exposing Evergreen to their truth –

One the backwater town was not ready for.🌿

🌳🌳🌳

🌿Clara was torn.

To preserve? To tell the truth?

Her solution – a new approach.

The savvy schoolteacher arranged tours for a few of the town’s more open-minded residents.

Some backed away when they saw the saplings, their mouths open.

Others reached out to the leaves – and fingered them gently.

Clara faced those who dared touch – and cajoled.

“Such green magic is rare – your children need it in their meals daily, to grow.”

She turned to the others, their mouths still agape.

“They frighten you. But they also protect you – your peace.”

A few days later, the vote passed. Thinner than a blade of grass.

Plight mattered more than a fight. 🌿

🌳🌳🌳🌳

🌿Clara showed the way with soft hands – and won the vote.

The forest had parted its leaves quietly, revealing a clear path.

Not just one leaf or tree – piles of them.

It wasn’t just one sapling that marched – they all did.

To a single beat that played in perfect rhythm -for the greater good. 🌿🌿

If you like this story, do join me on Patreon! Buy this blog a coffee — it keeps the words flowing and the lights 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.