The Library Between Realities

True change lies within. – Michelle Liew

And yes, it helps to visit a library.

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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.
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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.”
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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.
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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.
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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.

“You bet,” Avery punched the air.

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The Teenage Mutant Ninja Squirrels – Rodents in a Nutshell

Rodents in a nutshell. Squirrel Power. –Michelle Liew

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“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.

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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.
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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.

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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.

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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.

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This story is entirely original. AI tags are coincidental. The number of words between the quote and disclaimer is 500.

If you like what you’ve read, do join me on Patreon!

Find other great books on Amazon! Today’s great book:

Power Games by David Applegate

Face Value

Our baggage holds surprises. – Michelle Liew.
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Mr Goh moved into the old boarding house in Kong AIk road without much fanfare, quiet man that he was. The impeccably dressed accountant always had his trusty briefcase with him; though a little worn, its leather sheen never dulled, and it was always at his side, as if it contained something indispensable. He was just a stranger, a face in the crowd.

Then, strange disappearances. Mysterious coincidences—until they weren’t anymore.

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Coincidences they were, but they didn’t get past Detective MIra Chong. Her trained instincts spotted them the minute she got Mr. Goh for a quiet sit-down.

He was polite. Too polished. As if he had rehearsed every word.

“Detective,” he cautioned with a practiced look of smugness. “Some people aren’t meant to be found.”

“What do you mean?” She sat back in her chair, tilted her head, and caught his eye. He simply placed his briefcase on the table . When it snapped open, it was absolutely–

Different.

She expected documents. But instead saw–movement.

She staggered back, breath hitching.
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Inside the briefcase were….faces. Eyes blinking, mouths frozen mid-scream. Features distorted, as if pressed against glass.

“You see, Miss,” Mr. Goh murmured, smug and assured, “I don’t kill them. I collect them.”

Seasoned detective though she was, bile burned her throat. She swallowed hard, keeping the nausea down. These were the people who had vanished. Their souls—stored.

She reached for her gun. Old Man Goh sighed, eyeing her too calmly.

“Careful, Miss Chong.” His smile was too knowing. “You don’t want to be with them–too.”
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Mira pulled the trigger. The briefcase moved, though Mr. Goh remained stoic. He merely chuckled, seeing the bullet hole in it seal itself.

“It doesn’t work like that, ” he fixed her with a condescending gaze. “Didn’t you know?” You can’t kill the dead.”

He opened the case with a flick of his fingers and tilted it towards her. The faces shrieked. Mira felt a tug. Pain razed her skull. Something was pulling her very essence, dragging her towards the case.

The briefcase wasn’t Mr. Goh’s storage box. It was a doorway. And it was STARVING.

Her fingers slackened, and her gun drifted to the floor. Her vision doubled. Her body gave way. She stepped back, but it no longer listened to her.
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No.

She gritted her teeth and banged the table with all the energy she could muster. The sharp sting in her head kept her grounded, keeping her soul anchored in her body, where it was meant to be.

“You’re stronger than most women,” Mr. Goh’s eyes glimmered with faint surprise. He quickly masked it with a sinister grin, his voice dripping with both admiration and something—-dark. “But you’re too late.”

Mira returned his grin—with a diabolical snicker. “You’re not the only one who collects, you know.”

She stood tall, eyes locked on his. She reached for the torn rucksack slung across her shoulder. Inside, pairs of eyes. They flicked about constantly, searching for an exit.

Mr. Goh’s grin faltered. And he knew.

This story is entirely original. Any AI tags are coincidental. It 500 words between the quote and disclaimer.

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if you like what you read, do join me on Patreon!

Check out today’s amazing book on Amazon:

The Pangean Chronicles by JP McDougall

The Patient Part 1

Trust the doctor. -Michelle Liew

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Liam tossed and turned in his hospital bed, the medicinal odour of antiseptic burning his nose—and underneath it, something else—sharp. The walls were too white, too—sanitized, as thought they had something to hide.He couldn’t remember how he got there.

A doctor stood at the foot of his bed, combing through his charts. “Mr. Loong,”he said, his voice professionally polished but his eyes—distant. Can you remember anything from your accident?”

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Liam’s mind swam with fractured memories. Flashes of dark roads. A loud crash. A garbled, static-filled voice. Headlights, but they didn’t belong to his car. He gripped the armrest, his knuckles white.

“Your car–took the worst of it. But your injuries are…odd.”

She pulled back his blanket. No cuts. No bruises. Not even a scratch.

The way she said “odd” unsettled- as if he knew more than she let on.

Liam’s throat dried up. “That’s impossible.”

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The doctor set his chart on her desk grabbed a package marked “radiology”. “Your scans came back. They’re clear…but we need to treat… something else.”

He held up a small mirror. Liam took it from him, his hands shaking. He held it up.

He wasn’t looking at himself.

At least, not the self he knew. His color was wrong. The shape—looked odd. His lips moved in the way his didn’t. A stranger returned his gaze. Watching from within.

Then, the reflection lagged, a breath behind reality.

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Liam’s chest moved up and down. “Doctor…why do I look like this?”

He didn’t respond. Instead, he reached into his pocket and pulled out a syringe filled with a viscose, black liquid. It wasn’t medicine. It pulsed, alive.

“Liam,” he cajoled, “You need to stay calm.” His smile was too professional. As if he’d done this before.

Liam’s heart pounded. His instincts told him —RUN.

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Liam’s fingers clenched into fists. The mirror slipped from his grip, shattering on the floor.

The second it broke, his mind wrenched open, and a flood of memories rushed in. Ones that didn’t belong to him.

He ran for the door.

The doctor lunged, too late.

Darkness won.

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Check out other books on Amazon. Today’s book: The Pangean Chronicles by JP McDougall

The Final Witness

Detective Jonas Kay was the best in his field—he never left a case unsolved. The Lieutenant had an uncanny ability for unearthing dark truths, shattering iron-clad alibis, and dragging confessions from the unwilling.

There was one thing he couldn’t explain, though. How he always knew who the killer was.

“How does he know?” They whispered in the precinct coffee rooms. Officers gave up their seats for him. Criminals fled as he approached. He commanded fear and respect.

But, across the interrogation table, something felt—different. The suspect wasn’t breaking a sweat. Or making any pleas.

He was just smiling.

A slow, crooked smirk.

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Kay laid the evidence neatly on the table. The suspect on the CCTV camera footage. The victim’s blood on his shirt. The case should have been straightforward.

Except—it wasn’t. The suspect eyed Kay, without fear or doubt, but with recognition. He leaned forward, a movement so casual, that his pulse spiked. He described the details of the crime scene—details never released to the public.

He never denied them. Not one. “Detective, how did you know about the scar?” His eyes were lowered; a sneer shaped the edges of his mouth. “It comes so easy for you, doesn’t it? Like the answers were waiting for you.”

Kay’s breath caught, and his vision blurred for a second. The victim DID have a scar on his wrist. But no one had ever mentioned that. Had he seen it? Or had he just… known?

“So you do remember them. Even before the blood dries. ” ****************************************************************

Kay’s head throbbed like an erratic drumbeat. His fingers nearly tore his case notes as he ran through them. Something just wasn’t adding up. Dates mismatched. Witnesses seem coached…altered.

Then, his fingers landed on a case that took place five years earlier, involving the same crime scene. The same suspect. The same confession.

No…that was just ridiculous.

His breath became sharper…quicker. His eyes scanned another case. Another. And another. Different names, same crime. The faces were..odd. But the confessions? Exact replicas.

The suspect eyed him, amused derision lacing his eyes. “You’re catching on quickly, aren’t you? Dig a little deeper, Detective Kay. When did this case begin? The names mirrored each other. But the faces? They were different.

Kay took a quick breath and stumbled back. The cases were complete fakes. He had been solving the same crime…again. And again. No matter how many times he solved it, it never ended.

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The door burst open. A male nurse strode in, his eyes ominously dark. In his hands, something made of thick fabric.

“Kay,” he directed. “Sit.”

Kay stood rooted. His heart hammered his chest.

CHAIR?

He turned, and his reflection stared at him. But the interrogation room wasn’t the same. It was white. Empty. One chair. One clipboard.

The nurse pushed him onto the chair and unveiled the fabric—-part of a jacket.

The kind of jacket that locked a man in place.

The case file? There never was .

The Final Entry

A lone candle flickers in an abandoned study, its wax gathering in a pool on the rosewood table. Layers of dust shroud the room, undisturbed for years. A tattered journal lies open on the table, its yellowed pages filled with frantic script. The air is dense with something intangible—not just with time and dust, but with a presence unseen.

Historian Bob Thorne and his wife, in search of the perfect abode, come across the rustic wonder.

The rooms were vacant, its halls silent—but it was inviting.

They come across the journal, resting in wait on the study table. The words should have faded over the two decades that anyone was last seen in the room—but the ink was gleaming, wet beneath the candlelight.

Bob thumbed eagerly through its yellowed pages. The entries seemed run-of-the-mill, nondescript at first—daily reflections and complaints about the heat.

Until his fingers stopped at a page dated 50 years earlier. Fifty years of silence, pierced by a page that should not have existed. The ink was fresh, as if penned only moments earlier.

A draft crept through the room, although its windows were completely sealed. Bob’s eyes hovered over the final entry quickly, wanting to reach its end—but prompted Bob to freeze. Dated that day, the journal documented his movements, sentence by finely penned sentence, as though unseen eyes were watching.

The writer of that entry never meant for anyone to read it. But now that Bob had, he understood why.

The candle flickered violently; there was a shadow on the wall, not its own. It shifted, morphing into a shape so distended that Bob fell back.

The journal’s pages slowly turned on their own, with a new line:

You are not alone.

Bob felt it—a cold, chilling breath creeping down his neck. The breath of another person in the room. Unseen.

He stumbled back, his heart hammering in his chest, with the flame becoming—taller. Extending. Coming closer to him.

The ink bled onto the journal’s page, forming words not there before. Darkness swallowed Bob whole, and a whisper came from the place he least expected–his own mind.

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Leave the Light On Part 2

You may not know who you are. –Michelle Liew

Part 1 is here

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Lina’s fingers wound around the photograph, clutching it. Hard. She couldn’t get past the resemblance. The man in the photo. Future Eric.

But how?

The air in the apartment had never been warm, but it was now ice in her lungs.The cold clenched her troat. Her eyes widened, pupils dilating, as Eric stared at the picture without a word. His tiny fingers caressed its aged surface. Slow. Deliberate. Almost reverent.

A little too lovingly.

He shouldn’t have known that face. Shouldn’t have any idea who it was. But his eyes darkened–they were too old for a child’s.

Then he whispered softly:

“I remember now.”

It was not his voice. Not entirely.

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The little boy started to speak–unclearly.

About things he shouldn’t have known. He described his mother’s room, how she laughed–how she bawled ceaselessly when they “came for her.” His voice sounded far away, as if he was recalling a dream.

“She begged them not to take me,” Eric murmured. “But they don’t listen.”

His voice shifted, as though two of him were speaking at once. One was the little boy in front of her–the other was someone ancient. Menacing.

The baby monitor came to life again. This time, the whispering wasn’t far away–it was right next to her ear.

She stumbled back. The closet door gaped open, like a ravenous mouth, spilling shadows into the room. A breath of cold air rushed out of it, along with a scent of damp earth and something–rotten. Eric didn’t look at her anymore. He was looking past her.

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Lina grabbed Eric, ready to run–but the little boy resisted.

He smiled a smile that was a mix of innocence and knowing.

“Mom.” His voice was a soft plea and a commanding threat. “She’s here.”

Then, her name. In urgent, resounding whispers. “Sophie Lew. Sophie Lew.”

They rose, becoming deafening–“SOPHIE LEW!”

The photograph in her grasp had changed. It was no longer Eric, but a grainy picture of her–Sophie.

Screams. Her screams.

The closet slammed shut.

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Lina shook the six-year-old awake. But he never remembered anything.

The once-angry scratches on his arms were gone. In dawn’s light, something seemed different.

The apartment felt–lighter. The whispers had stopped. But the silence was worse.

Her missing person file was now–empty. She, Sophie, was free. As if someone had taken her place.

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Lina’s breath came in punctured gasps. She backed away from the file, hands quivering. The truth pressed down on her, a heavy stone slab. Wrapping her. Suffocating.

She had answers to who the missing girl was– but she did not want to believe them.

Eric stretched, rising from bed. As if nothing had happened. “Mom, what’s wrong?”

She tried to speak, but her throat ran dry. She stared at Eric, open-mouthed. She had no words.

And the apartment was quiet. Too still.

Then, the baby monitor came to life. Dissonant, but familiar.

Lina swiveled, and Eric was standing in front of her, his eyes wide.

But his lips were not moving.

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Leave The Light On Part 1

The past is never really gone. Michelle Liew

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The apartment would have put most tenants off– flickering lights, a musty odour that clung to the air, and shadows that slithered across corridors.

But for single mother Lina Crew, content wasn’t an option–only survival. With her bank account nearly empty and six-year-old Eric to support, a cheap rental like this was all she could afford. Besides, all she wanted–and needed–was a fresh start.

They settled in as best they could, clinging to the promise of some stability after a bruising custody battle. To the relief of the financially-stretched but dedicated mother, he began to make friends.

Perhaps too many. Some…were wrong.

Muffled whispers came from his room. Lina thought nothing of it and let them be; they were nothing but harmless playdates and sleepovers.She didn’t want to be the sort of mother who appeared at her son’s bedroom door in the middle of the night.

Then one night Eric murmured: “The girl in the closet doesn’t like darkness.”

The whispered voices grew louder, bolder. Darker. As if they were not just speaking, but waiting.

Eric’s complaints grew like repeated recordings; soft scratching, like nails clawing desperately on wood, behind the walls. The closet opening and closing. Lina still dismissed them as child’s play. The busy mother always threw herself onto the sofa after a long day, falling asleep in front of him.

Time passed, and young Eric became a mere shell of himself. Odd, rake-like scratches appeared on his arms. His arms, once plump and full of energy, now hung limp. Cold. He stopped talking.

The rakish marks finally caught Lina’s divided attention. Muffled whispers came over the baby monitor one midnight, and she raced to Eric’s room. The little boy was fast asleep.

But the closet door stood ajar. Open, a fraction of an inch– she knew that she had closed it herself.

As if inviting her to explore.

And so she did. But that was all it was–a closet, albeit old, dank and dark.

The scratches on Eric’s arms were becoming deeper, more blood seeping from them with each passing day. She pushed her way into her landlord’s office.

“Ma’am, I don’t think there’s anything to fret over” He waved his arms and pushed her to the door. “Besides, the apartment’s ancient….hey, you knew that when you rented it.”

She found herself at the town library, fingers flicking through countless records in desperation.

A young girl, Sophie, had lived in the apartment decades ago–but had vanished. Her parents had appeared on television, hollow-eyed, grief wrapping them like a second skin.

Clipped behind the the torn pages of the news clipping was another photo- a yellow grainy picture of a man whose sunken eyes stared.

Straight at Lina.

Her throat caught. The man in the photograph was an older version of Eric. The same pale features, the same haunted demeanor.

Lina’s pulse raced as she slammed the file shut. Was the past was talking to her son?

Then Eric’s voice: “Mom, who’s that?”

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