Emotional Blackmail

There was a woman who emotionally blackmailed a man into having sex with her. After a few times, she was impregnated, and she emotionally blackmailed him into letting her keep the baby and to move in with her. When she was a few months from the due-delivery of her baby, she emotionally blackmailed the man into marrying her. Of course, all along the way, she would constantly emotionally blackmail the man to get her way in every little way.

When the baby was born, it turned out that he was a little monster.

He had six limbs and an upside down face - his eyes were nearest to his neck and his mouth nearer the top of his bald head that was made of blueberry cheese cake - as was the rest of his body - and to match, he was covered in blueberry jam and a fine film of water - like condensation from being taken out of refrigeration too long ago - except that the water was probably salty and more like the perspiration of a fat labourer at the end of the day - which was not how he smelled like, though - He smelled like clean rotten durian yogurt mixed in with a little of how babies' shit would smell like. He had claws like that of a parrot's instead of hands and fingers. He had a tail like that of a rat's. And he had a piece of steamed yam for his little stick of a dick.

When he came out of his mother, the delivery nurse screamed and cried and felt so guilty for dropping the baby that she jumped out of the window - they were at the 23rd storey of the building - and died from the fall.

The little monster stretched a little and yawned and danced a sneaky dance to his mother's side - it was a miracle because he could walk and knew his way about - and strangled her with the umbilical cord - still attached to the womb.

(sneak.)

The Overworked Girl

There was a girl who graduated from somewhere on a bad economic year, so she had to take up a job offer which wasn't that great and had long hours, and she had to appreciate it.

So, she worked and worked, and gradually her hand and her legs and her lower back and her shoulders started aching. At first, she didn't think of much, perhaps it was just having to accustom to the long hours of computer usage. Then she wondered if it was carpal tunnel syndrome or something. Then she saw in the news that some other overworking girl died overworking, so on the third day of consecutive late nights at work, after she threw up in the office because of, she concluded, her disrupted circadian rhythm, she decided to quit her job. After all, come to think of it, it wasn't like her family was dependent on her income to sustain the livelihood at all. With the savings she saved up from the past year of over-working, she decided to go to the doctors to fix her ailments.

The doctor tested her blood, and found a large amount of aluminium in her blood, which was unusual, since aluminium wasn't usually found in the blood. From the x-rays in her arm and ailing physical parts, they found blood clots, and decided that it was bad blood circulation.

Until one day, she "accidentally" slit her wrists and was sent to the hospital, they found out that the accumulation at her ailing portions was not due to bad blood circulation but that aluminium was coating her veins a bit, and she was actually transforming into a machine. The transformation was permanent and it was irreversible. The doctors recommended her to this underground workshop, should she require any servicing. From their personal experiences, this particular workshop's servicing was reasonably priced and the repair crew was knowledgeable - as they figured out how the machinery works from their own personal experiences. They used to be biochemists.

Grandmother (4)

外婆说， 当我们遇到挫折的时候，我们不可以说: "惨了!" 或者 "死了!" 之类不吉利的话.
因为这些话会衰.
如果有需要, 应该说:"发了!" 或者 "恭喜了!" 之类 的吉利话.

HR

Once upon a time, a long long time ago, companies used to believed that "HR" stood for Human Relationships. They didn't see their employees as merely a resource that is quantifiable, and measurable, or dispensable, or "anyhow sell them a career proposition and make them work for as long as possible-able".

Then one day, some smart ass HR consultancy firm, in order to make their solutions and business scalable, decided to tell everyone that treating employees as merely as resources and impersonal- is the "in" thing in the market ("everyone's doing it!"). In order to build up their credibility, they named themselves after some quack guy from the USA, who was a friend of a friend who was a PHD, who allowed them to use the name for a price and some fame. And they made their reports rather expensive. And they treated their reports and information with a lot of secrecy and "hush hush" and discouraged further disclosure, even though the information was rather standard, and they just copy and pasted recommendations, and switch inputs to the "to-field" in their emails. And like how the tailor sold the emperor his new clothes, the companies bought it, one by one. In this way, companies started to treat their employees as a resource - Human Resource as opposed to natural or mechanical resource - except for one company.

They renamed their "Human Relationships department" to "HR department", and that was pretty much it. What people from HR did was to sit around with their employees, and replied to their queries, called them to chit chat, arranged gatherings, went drinking with them, entertained them, and went to visit them when they are in hospital, went to pay respects to their parents who just pass away, talked to them, and told them that the organisation valued them, listened to them bitch about their boss, in confidentiality, be their friend, told them that life is never ideal, take it easy, told them to leave the company if they were truly unhappy, remind them the advantages of staying, smsed them gong xi fa cai, and remember their children's birthday, and talked to their bosses if about how they were managed, bring them home when they're drunk from going out drinking together...

All the other companies who switched to Human Resources pointed their fingers at this Human Relationship company and laughed. Haha, they thought, human relationships can never be scalable! And they are so expensive to maintain! Human Resources are so cost efficient! We'll be rich and you can smell my fart!

But the Human Relationship's company never waivered. The management enjoyed having HR to talk to, in times of woe and appreciated their empathy. HR was often one of the reasons for their own retention. Despite not being scalable, everyone in the company was making good money. Being scalable was over-rated.

The companies which adopted the Human Resource approach never doubted their choice. Everyone in the company was making good money. If they had any problems, they talked to their families or friends, if they were unhappy, they either left or suck it and worked harder, nobody went to their parents' wake, and those who did had the look of obligation on their face, but it's okay, they didn't want to see them too, they only liked the "white-gold" (condolence money) they gave. Making friends at work was over-rated, one should keep work and personal relationships distinct.

The bosses of the consultancy firm laughed their way to the bank and back and spent all their money and went bankrupt and haha whatever who cares everyone just left and switched jobs.

...

1000 years later, all the companies collapsed due to the natural course of things. Everyone who ever cared about Human Resources or Human Relationship was dead and turned into dust. The question of which was a better model for your company was asked by nobody.

Grandmother (3)

As I was sitting on the toilet bowl, incubating shit, I recalled my grandma telling me that constipation strained her heart, and it occurred to me that, one day, I, too, might grow so weak that just shitting would excite my heart to beat harder, and perhaps so much harder, that it would be too much harder and kill me.

Edward

Edward had been working overtime for the sixteenth day straight (over weekends), and he lacked sleep and energy to do anymore "brain work" tonight. He thought to go home, but it was still one hour away, according to the company policy, before he qualifies for the overtime transport allowance, so he thought he might as well wait and then he would go home on a taxi cab. In the meantime, he decided to do some filing and went to shred away his unwanted documents. It's a good time since there was nobody around to annoy with the noise.

Ah, it's quite therapeutic... to just destroy copies of the paper and data reports that he spent nights and weekends preparing for nobody to read... (Kudos to the management for simply asking for a verbal summary at the meeting and made the decision from there...)

Edward zoned out and at how the shredding machine eat up the papers fed to it. Whatever life dealt the shredding machine with, it just shred. Except for staplets. Please remember to remove them. Other than that, perhaps he had a lot to learn from the shredding machine... just suck it up, Edward, just suck it up. But what would be the "staplets" in the analogy here? Edward wondered and watched the shredding... Suddenly, Edward noticed something written in a blue pen that was not his handwriting. Oh no! It was a signatory of his boss's boss's boss! For the approval of some decision that was relevant to some other decision that he was referring to in his report!

Without second thoughts, Edward fought with the shredder to pull out the paper halfway and lost... his fingers!

His immediate response on seeing the bloody stump that used to be his hands was "fuck, now how am I going to use the computer?"

Xiao Bai and the man

There was once a man who had a friend in his pick up truck which was white in colour and was named "Xiao Bai" meaning little white. The man worked as a fishmonger and drove Xiao Bai everyday from home to the fish market and here and there to collect and deliver goods. The fishmonger worked hard and had an optimistic outlook in life. His dream was to earn and save up enough money to travel by road to the Sea of Japan which he had a picture book he read about when he was little. The picture book was second hand and when it had words, they were in Japanese, which he did not understand, but he learnt much about the fish of the Sea of Japan which was what the book was mostly about. He liked the book a lot not because of any particular reason except for that particular affinity that one sometimes develop for things for no particular reason.

When, the day came when he finally had enough money, the man ran around making exciting arrangements about the route and finding somebody to take over his business during his on year of absence. The preparations geared Xiao Bai up for the excitement of the adventure that it had heard about since the first day the man bought and drove it around.

At the end of the first Lunar month, the man and Xiao Bai took off. They wanted to travel during this period so that they would not experience winter in the middle of their road trip. They drove across different countries, and they saw landscapes that they've never seen before, experienced wilderness they've never had before, and felt loneliness like they had never felt before. When they reached the sea of Japan, they travelled along the coast for a month. They saw the different fish, some kinds of which they imported and sold, and had a good time watching the sun rise many times, and counting the number of fishing boats they could find. Looking at the fish at the fish market, they wondered what kind of life the fish must have lived, and how much more of the Sea of Japan it must know than what the man or Xiao Bai ever will.

When the time was up and the amount of money left was down, they turned around and headed back. On the way home, winter was harsh and it was difficult to drive around on the slippery roads and in the cold. The man couldn't spend the nights in Xiao Bai as he usually did, because he would die of the cold if he did, so he didn't. Xiao Bai was alone in the carparks and the man, in his rented room. The nights were dreadful and sleepless for them who were conscious of how the trip was nearing its end.

Finally, the day came when they reached home. After a heated rush of administering the everyday life to set mundane routines into motion again and mastering them. In between, they reminisced about the road trip.

The man concluded that his favourite part of the trip was seeing the Sea of Japan and seeing the fishing boats unloading the fish he recognised from the picture book he had when he was young. He especially liked to see dark clouds and rain fall out at the sea from the distance. In the distance, the rain looked like a gentle grey shadow of nothing which he enjoyed watching and imagining how it might be like to be out at sea.

Xiao Bai's favourite part of the trip was when they traveled in the mountaineous region, Xiao Bai was not as old as the mountains, but he was made of the mountains because steel and other raw materials that Xiao Bai was made of came from the earth. When they drove up and down mountains, Xiao Bai would like to observe the rain and how close they were to the clouds above and how rain fell at such altitude.

After some time, the fishmonging business was back to usual but the man was less enthusiastic and Xiao Bai aged significantly, and they wondered when should Xiao Bai retire and the man thought about getting married and starting a family and settling down.

One day, while on the way home from fishmonging, it started to rain very heavily. Xiao Bai was tired and it broke down as it thought about how life was more than selling fish knowing that it would always continue to age and would never get any younger tomorrow than today. While comforting Xiao Bai, the man felt alone sitting in the truck by himself in the middle of the way in the middle of pouring rain.

By the way: There's something about the way

There's something about the way he looked, sitting on the back of the lorry truck.
Maybe it's the way he crossed his legs or maybe it was the way his bright orange uniform shone in the afternoon sun.
Or perhaps it was the way he listened to his friend, or not, or the way he leaned against nothing.
Maybe it was the way there's something about the way he looked at me.

The bee minder

Billy went to see a lot of expensive doctors and specialists only to be diagnosed as a mild schizophrenic for reportedly hearing a bee buzz all the time, except when he's asleep. The truth was that there was a bee living in the fourth dimension in his head, it was alive and well kept and buzzing around in his head. If he was not distracted from it, he could feel the bee knocking against his skull sometimes. He even almost choked a few times when it flew too close to his nose and wind pipe.

He dare not describe his true sensation to anyone for fear that they diagnosed him as a severe schizophrenic, which he was not. He was just a man with a bee in his head that nobody else would ever believe him for, unless someone invented a fourth dimension seeing glass and cut his head open or something.

After running out of faith in medicines, Billy spent his money drinking, because it helped dull his senses, and he could take a break from hearing the bee's buzz when he got the beer buzz buzzing louder.

Mary

Mary was the kind of girl who wouldn't strike you as a Mary. In fact, she thought of herself as more like a Marian, or a Marilyn, but she didn't get to choose her own name. (Her late father's uncle thought that Mary was a fashionable sounding name.) To her, "Mary" was just a name which begot the other kids in school to ask her if she had a little lamb. At first, she would think of snide witty remarks to reply with, like "no, I have a goat, though", or "I do love lamb chops" (which was true); but when they started to ask "then, how does your garden grow?", Mary grew to dislike her name, because she realised that these corny mary-jokes would never come to end.

Mary was the kind of girl who would constantly remind herself to watch "Breakfast at Tiffany's" if she would ever have the chance, so she could quote it as her favourite movie, and whose dream was to drive a Mazda 3, and to marry a guy whose income could be combined with to afford them a Nissan Cefiro, and they could ideally eventually live in a condominium.

She was the kind of girl, who would want to name her daughter, "Kimberly", and she and her cefiro-prince would speak only English to "Kimmy", to give her a strong foundation in the language and in giving people the impression that she's more high-classed. "Kimberly" was symbolic of Mary's favourite food, which was kimchi. Her favourite cuisine was Japanese, with the occasional craving for north Indian food, because they made her feel like a sophisticated metropolitan.

Kimchi, in turn, was symbolic of Mary's graduation trip to Korea, which sparked off her professed love or passion that was travelling. In recent years, she had taken to planning her two to three holiday destinations at the start of every financial year aligned to the mission, vision, and values of her life. It was similar to how organisations made annual business plans, which were what she worked on for a living - as an annual business planning executive - for the past seven years with the same company. Like the company she worked at, she too, did not include tangible steps for attaining her life goals in her plans. She just planned her travels, and largely ignored developments in other aspects of her life.

Mary had several relationships that looked promising to everyone, except that she had always known somehow that they wouldn't have worked out; so she managed to somehow let the guys lead the relationships astray. She told herself that she just did not feel that any of them were close to the type of guy she could spend the rest of her life with anyway. It was either because they did not have the cefiro potential income, or that they did not approve of Mary's travelling (expenses) as a "constructive" way of life.

Mary, however, was in denial of the true reason why these relationships didn't work out. It was because of a deep, dark secret that she had, and she did not dare to share it with anyone, even her boyfriends, some with whom she slept, which led to an impenetrable emotional isolation. A person in a relationship with Mary might have an impression that they were very close, but it was really like holding hands with somebody in the dark and not knowing of a grand canyon of a chasm in the space between.

Mary's secret was that she secretly loved the smell of shit.

She loved to smell the smell of shit like how a pimply overweight teenage girl would secretly love to smell the smell of the cologne of the teacher she had a secret crush on, or like how a durian fanatic, who married a petty angmor wife who hated durian, secretly loved the smell of a delicious durian during durian season and thought his wife stupid for hating it even though he vowed to denounce durian at their wedding. She loved the smell of her own shit, and how it differed from the smell of other people's shit, which she also loved to smell. She loved to distinguish how different diets would affect the smell of shit that eventually got shat out.

If only Mary would be honest with herself, she would recognise that smelling shit was the real reason behind why she seemingly loved to travel, to go to different places, and to eat different things. She had just wanted to smell how the change in diet and physical location affected her shit and if the people from different countries shat shit of different smells. She also liked shitting in the airplanes, because she was thrilled by the intensity of the smell mixed with the excitement of the embarrassment when she opens the door to greet the next toilet user.

If only Mary would be honest with herself, she would confess that she loved the smell of Korean shit the most, because of the way shit smell with eating kimchi, and that Japanese shit was her second favourite, although it sometimes smelled a bit too sweet for her liking, especially during winter when shit usually smelled a little like ice-cream. The smell of baby's shit was like japanese shit in winter. On rainy days, shit usually smelled a little muddy, like the smell of wet muddy sneakers from playing in a wet muddy soccer field on a rainy day. Shit was typically the most pungent on sunny days, and it was easily affected by spicy food, which was most spicy on sunny days. It could be due to how chillies grown in the dry season are more spicy than chillies grown in the rainy season.

If only Mary would be honest with herself, she would then realise that it was not so shameful or despicable to love to smell shit, and she would be able to laugh a little about it, or write a little book with all her gathered knowledge, and be unabashed and tell her next boyfriend who may find it a little odd and overall cute and endearing and indulge her a little and love her and marry her and live the Cefiro-Kimberly dream with her, and remember to leave the toilet door open when he shits his shit for her.

(sneak.)