All the People Imagine
and other Short short stories

All the people imagine poster.jpg
“[It is a] “Haruki Murakami-meets-Tim Burton-meets-blog entries collection of short fiction...”
— The Arts, Today, 17 Feb 2009

This collection of 46 flash fiction stories and poems is about the collective imagination transforming the mundane.

It was published in 2008.

Please contact me for more information.

“This book demands that you disengage from reality. It features twisted fairy tales and love stories gone astray. Animals and plants are strangely human; they talk, teach and philosophise. This is the stuff of our dreams... This is an invitation to embark upon a flight of fancy, open to all.”
— Vanessa Yeo (http://cuspofthirty.blogspot.sg/)
“I’m enjoying your book. These are not so much short short stories as anti-fables. You’ve the quirkiness of Spike Milligan and Edward Lear.”
— Felix Cheong, Poet and Author (Sept 2009)

Support for the work

Read Vanessa's full review here. 

Contents

A Sample Story

  1. The Fox Spirit
  2. Friends Haiku
  3. Trois
  4. The Frog in the Toilet Bowl
  5. Rambutan Nose Girl
  6. My True Story
  7. She 4
  8. Young Adult
  9. Past Times
  10. The Lonely Long-Legged Fly
  11. At Times It Just Makes Sense
  12. Crush
  13. A Friend for the Long-Legged Fly
  14. Office Romance
  15. Bird Lovers
  16. The Green Fairy
  17. Dead Dog
  18. Where have you been?
  19. Call Her Tomorrow
  20. Sometimes I Rest
  21. 4 a.m.
  22. Reminder: The Jilted Lizard Loves Her
  23. She 2
  24. All the People Imagine
  25. She 3
  26. Iced Honey Latte
  27. Hiding
  28. Mr Monday
  29. A Rodent’s Tale
  30. Mr Jiang
  31. Existential Nonsense
  32. Young
  33. The Dragonflyboy
  34. Silverfish Graveyard
  35. To Catch a Thief
  36. Pastimes
  37. 29/08/03
  38. Where are you going?
  39. The Chicken Coup
  40. The Boy with Dragonfly Wings
  41. Dear You
  42. The Bitterness of Things
  43. Coffee and Butter Cookies
  44. The Bear with the Biscuit Face
  45. She 1
  46. The Veracity of Something

 

42. The Bitterness of Things

 

She picked on the sliced red chillies that were soaked in light soya sauce and carefully removed the chilli seeds with her chopsticks. As she was about to put the red strips into her mouth, they sang to her,

“Don’t eat us! For we will be minced by the cruel teeth of your cruel jaws!”

This made her giggle and wonder about life and death. How was it that these little dead chillies could even want to struggle for their existence? When most of the time she was drunk and could not bear to consider the meaning of her own life? They ought to think of it as some metamorphosis. Like they will be minced, and swallowed, and pushed into the stomach with the rest of the food that she has swallowed and will eventually be passed out of her as, well, shit.

“Look at it this way,” she said to them in her head, “it’s like, the closest you would ever get to becoming a butterfly.”

This reminded the chillies how bitter it was that they felt towards the disgusting caterpillars, that bored into and completely ruined their brothers and sisters, before morphing into butterfly-like-moths, hatching like angels into the skies.

Although she did not realise that they indeed tasted a little bitter, she whispered telepathically to them,

“If you give me your hearts, I will promise to break them.”

They replied begrudgingly,

“If we don’t give you our hearts, who else will we give it to?”