The Window That Stayed Lit

Today is World Energy Efficiency Day. With the rapid depletion of fossil fuels, observance is more than apt.

But too much so?

We do it for survival. But when survival rules, we sometimes forget the world.

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Electicia had become a ration-obsessed city; there were few energy resources to share among its needy populace. Fossil fuels had become almost negligible – electric cars had long escorted gas-tank vehicles to junkyards.

Towers blended with the dark sky; the melding prompted unwanted darkness.

But in one tower, a light shone. Nightly, without fail, at 2:30 a.m. From a window that should be dark.

Solitary and purposeful.

Intentional.

Driven by a different energy.

Speculation – then dissatisfaction – began.

“How could they -‘

“They should be evicted by the authorities -“

“Non -compliance -“

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Electrician Lenny watched the tower each dusk, without fail. He’d make his rounds and return to face the tower. Each night, never ceasing. A pattern too precise to ignore.

Electric readings from the single room pushed gauges beyond their limits, mercilessly. Suspiciously. Hidden wiring warmed the ground, poking the bases of his already tired feet.

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The wiring served as apt warning; Lenny knew that the tower was best left alone. But curiosity triumphed over wise judgment.

He found himself outside the main door of the tower. He pushed, and the hinges gave way almost too freely –

Quieter than expected.

An elderly woman sat, her wrinkles caressed by gentle lamp light.

She was engrossed in the text before her, squinting-electricity was a worthless assistant. The generator was an equally flawed helper.

She looked up at Lenny’s furrowed eyebrows and offered the gentlest of smiles.

Lenny returned it with a lopsided grin of his own. The light? Just the lamp reflected on the window’s glass.

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Lenny filed an evaluation report with his company – there had been no violation, no overuse of resources.

As he hauled tired feet back home, he glanced up at the surrounding windows.

Silent buildings, their aura tranquil.

Ink-black.

Just obedient darkness.

A city aware of the little power it held.

Too aware to see the dawn of a new day.

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

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Moments Between Years

This new year, let’s remember that life’s in the little things.

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Morning had just broken, but Elsie found her thoughts tracing the kitchen floor.

The first hour of the year was calm, quiet – giving room for pause. Singapore was still, but her apartment was buzzing with the noise of leftover wrappers, party poppers and half-finished cans of beer from the New Year’s Eve party the night before.

A cuckoo bird and its mate did a series of hops on the railing, as if filling the small gaps between the noise. A park lamp flickered, looking bent, as if conforming to the weight of the prior year’s unseen moments.

She strolled to the corner coffeeshop, giving silent nods to people she knew only briefly. Each step she took was a checklist of micro-decisions – taking the scenic route past the river, choosing which text message to reply to, skipping her usual cafe stop because it was too crowded. The new year was a mirror of the year before. The choices she made then rippled quietly into today.

She found herself seated on a park bench at lunch, the flavour of new year leftovers absent on her tongue. Her mind wandered as clouds drifted idly; children laughed, their chuckles filling the void in her soul.

She knew that void. The emptiness of life’s unnoticed textures -children’s laughter, an elderly woman’s chuckle-trumped the resolutions she made a year earlier. The pause before laughter was a reminder that the thought put into laughter – the little details – mattered as much as the laughter itself. Awareness in life’s small acts is what made a difference.

She returned to her apartment, opened a few letters she’d ignored over the new year and sipped her now rancid tea.

But for the first time in a long while, she felt as if she mattered. The clock on the TV console ticked steadily, indifferent to her presence. But she felt -there. Unrushed, with no need to know what happened next. She had already arrived.

She dialled her mother’s number, ready to finally speak to her.

Ready to address the spat they’d had a few weeks earlier.

Ready to meet the year ahead.

Because she was in the moment.

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

The Ledger of Waves

Today marks the day of the 2004 Tsunami that struck the shores of several countries worldwide.

Leaving devastation.

Loss.

A weight that must be remembered.

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I watched, my waves tense, as children left chocolate wrappers on the pristine sand. Fishermen lingered at the shore, ignoring the curious dolphins poking their noses into their nets. I regarded them coldly – patient and endless, as they pursued their selfish joys.

Waiting.

They were close. Too close.

The tension caused my wavy hands to clench, ready to unleash. The veins in them were about to burst. I found myself listening to my rising impatience.

I pulled back further, gathering myself. My form stretched across horizons, waiting to release. There were the lovers. The thoughtless fishermen. The wrapper-throwing children. I recall bearing the careless weight of their ways. Each mistake, each inconsiderate act, each denial – bore into my waves.

My spindly, watery hands stilled. Grey covered the skies, along with a blanket of silence. The wind stopped blowing on my cue. Thunder growled softly, ready when I was. I stayed upright, silent, as all on the distant shores laughed without care. I waited, testing their false confidence. Nothing they did – wasted food, offensive plastic bottles – escaped my notice. I stood poised.

Ready for the inevitable.

Meanwhile, plastic bottles lay, unrisen corpses, on the shore. An angry crowd of thunderclods gathered, silent, in the background. In my watery hands were dangerous nets, uneaten food, dead fish – ready to return to those who owned them.

I carried their forgotten burdens. Each small, yet costly mistake.

Their responsibility. In my grasp.

My dirty blue fingers painfully remembered each transgression. Each misstep cut my sides.

Still, I lingered, patient, endless. Responsibility cavorted, unaware, on the trash-ridden shore.

I remembered. Always remembered. So would they.

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

The Blood Moon Rises

Hey, it’s the day of the Blood Moon…one of horror… for those with lingering feelings.

Or an old soldier with lingering feelings for battles that once were.

But let’s remind him–we’re never too damned old to think of something new.

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“I’m too young to feel this damned old.”

Alone, in a rundown backyard that hadn’t been tended in years. The sky was–a thing of beauty. Blood seemed to trickle from the weeping willow of a moon–echoes of the heart. A cold breeze graced the neck–wonder if it remembered. The sky was too alive–that Garth song wanted it tamed.

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Sounds of what seemed like gunfire–or a military drill at a nearby airbase. Then, bright, vibrant sparks consumed the skyscape.

Flashes in the sky, or just tricks of the mind, triggered by a moon in blood red?

The mind certainly whirred—a comrade-in-arms, cut down by tracer fire. The night burned, along with the flames in the sky.

The echo of boots on wet metal was all too audible. A single red streak across an endless black canvas. The piercing whistle of the cold wind, meeting its fire. Back on the ridge, twenty-three, hollow…and that Garth Brooks song.

Dragging a fractured mind forward to an unwanted time.

Echoing.

“I’m too young to feel this damned old.”

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But old it was. The body had started creaking a few months back. A haunted mind –pitch black, against the flaming orange sparks of gunfire that once were.

That once were.

The orange sparks danced. The heart still aches–too painful.

That could never be again. But these creaking legs still carry an old man wanting his guns.

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Yes. Too young to feel this damned old.

The moon above was bleeding–too much–and the same blood trickled from my ribs. Bullets lodged during two tours of Korea and one of Vietnam.

Ones missed–too strangely.

The orange sparks blended with the stars, becoming a flickering Van Gogh canvas–a poignant reminder of the comrades left behind.

The sky didn’t care. The song still played—faint. Too true.

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Two tours of Korea. One of Vietnam.

Still here.

Still counting the countless stars years younger than the frame.

A frame still younger than the dead.

The moon in the sky still bleeds..and Garth Brooks still haunts.

Too young to feel this damned old.

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

Mavis – Herself

Being someone else is a part-time job, but being you takes forever.

Take pride in yourself.

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Mavis was a loner, but never lonely. Her reflection accompanied her — it was her ever-faithful guide.

“Make eye contact,” it would say. “You’ll look kind and real.”

The reflection’s words were her gospel. She made that eye contact. Smiled warmly at parties. Laughed when she was supposed to. She drew people because of it.

On a fateful afternoon, after a disastrous cocktail party full of wrong names and mistaken identities, Mavis looked at herself in the mirror. “Why do people call me Mildred?”

Her reflection laughed her concerns off, flippant. “Mavis, Mildred, Melissa… big deal. They like you… that’s what counts.”

Mavis frowned, puzzled. “But… I don’t like me anymore.”

The glass mirror shimmered. Her reflection leaned in.

“You asked me to drive, remember? You said you were tired of being the oddball.”

“I didn’t say take my place.”

“Well, I did as you asked. Now enjoy.”

Mavis took a step back, but her reflection didn’t follow her. It stayed. Smiled. Nodded.

She didn’t get up the next morning. But she did manage to get to work, in her blood-red lipstick. Ordered breakfast for her team. Wished HR Tom a happy birthday.

But the mirror knew the truth.

Mavis knocked the stand behind it.

“Guess it’s never easy to be you,” Mavis’ voice was thoughtful. “But faking yourself? No reflection’s good enough for that.”

A crack appeared, just where Reflection Mavis’ heart was.

Mavis the human looked at it one last time, then turned to the door.

“Being someone else is a part-time job, but being me takes forever.”

The mirror continued to crack.

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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.