Literature / Classic Singapore Horror Stories

No vampires, no werewolves, no zombies, no serial killers... well, maybe scratch the last one off the list.

"Damien Sin is helping to invent a new genre of popular fiction: Singapore Noir... Classic Singapore Horror Stories is a monster hit." - THE ASIAN WALL STREET JOURNAL

Take Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, set it exclusively in Singapore, put it through a set of realism filter, with a dose of twisted humor, a blend of macabre imagination, some excessive blood and gore, some adult themes, and... voila! Welcome to the macabre mind of Damien Sin, into the deep, dark Singaporean underworld.

Classic Singapore Horror Stories is a 4-issue anthology of Urban horror from the late Damien Sin (1965–2011), an ex-poet, musician and writer. His most popular work so far, and the defining example of early-90s Singaporean literature, the entire anthology shows the side of Singaporean myth, culture, and traditions people never saw, conveyed through the author's trademark telling strokes and bizarre, kinky humor. Described as verbal bullets at Singapore icons, more often than not Damien Sin's stories features no supernatural elements or black magic (despite the stories being firmly rooted in the horror genre) but instead reveals the true horror as from the dark side of humanity.

The first book was published in 1992, with each subsequent installment released between regular intervals; the fourth and last were published in 2003. Damien Sin cites lack of ideas and personal issues as reasons for the delays of a possible fifth book, but still reveals that he does have interest to continue writing the long-gestating fifth installment. Unfortunately, his death pretty much ensures the series would stop at its fourth.

There was an attempt to adapt one of the stories, ''One Last Cold Kiss'', into a movie, but as of 2014, the project is currently stalled in Development Hell.

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Classic Singapore Horror Stories provides examples of the following tropes:

• Accidental Suicide: The sadistic prison warden from "Hangman", who ends up accidentally hanging himself when he tried to pose with a noose around his neck.
• All for Nothing: Damien Sin's tendency to kick every dog he sees on the street have led to more than one story ending like this.
  • Jailbird: Robin Wong, a 24-year-old fresh graduate, agrees to be sentenced to prison for a few months in exchange for an exorbitant cash reward of S$200,000. However, a Loophole Abuse quickly turns the prison sentence from a few months to over a year, and while Robin is capable of coping with the first few months (encouraged by his benefactor cousin, Eddie, claiming that part of the reward money has already been transferred to Robin's bank account), a near Prison Rape experience with a homosexual warden leads to Robin committing an Accidental Murder that gets him sent to solitary confinement. And although Robin is eventually cleared of all murder charges, his sentence ends up getting extended to nearly 4 years. Worst of all, by the time Robin finishes serving his sentence and is finally released, he ends up discovering that Eddie has fled Singapore altogether, delivering barely a quarter of the promised money. To top it all off, Robin's girlfriend up and left him during his absence.
• All Just a Dream: Inverted in the last few moments of Message In A Bottle. Our Villain Protagonist Japanese Admiral thinks his encounter with the Sea Hag is just a dream and he's safely back home in Tokyo, then he wakes up...
• And I Must Scream: Damien Sin's stories frequently ends with the readers nearly screaming in horror at what his twisted mind can cook up.
  • Once Upon A Swine: Crooked cop John Law ends up with his head forcibly removed by a furious Chinese war deity and swapped with a pig's head. He is no longer capable of speech, only grunts.
  • Parasite: Amanda's fate from a ritual gone wrong has her swapping bodies with the titular parasite - a penanggalan, a type of Malaysian vampire whose body consists of a floating head with exposed intestines. Worst of all, she is Invisible to Normals, and can only watch as the vampire completely takes over her life.
  • Suffer The Children: A child abuser who regularly tortures children ends up having her tongue cut off by the same child she regularly abuses, who then turns the table on her...
  • Little Devil ends with Veronica getting possessed and completely taken over by the titular devil, paralyzed with fear as it crawls into her body...
• Apocalyptic Log: Message In A Bottle depicts the last recovered Message in a Bottle from a Japanese submarine which mysteriously disappeared during World War II. Turns out the entire crew had an unfortunate run-in with a vengeful Sea Hag, with no survivors.
• Artifact of Doom: The Sea Hag's necklace in Message in a Bottle, the Statue of Prahma in Prahma the Horned God, the painting of Beelzebub in The Artist Arcane Tao, among others.
• Art Initiates Life: The Artist Arcane Tao features the titular artist's painting of demons coming to life in the end.
• Asshole Victims: Many of the worst characters in the entire anthology gets pretty much what they deserve by the end. See Karmic Death and Laser-Guided Karma for examples.
• Badass Biker: The entire plot of Ghost Riders revolves around two rival motorcycle gangs clashing over territorial dispute.
• Bad People Abuse Animals:
  • The titular hangman from The Hangman, who wants to capture, starve, and flay a cat just because it scratched him. In self-defense, as he was the one who attempted to attack the cat first.
  • The White Tiger of Kalimantaro is all about this; a pair of retired policemen who tries to hunt and kill an endangered White Tiger just for fun.
• Beat Still, My Heart: In Sealed With A Kiss, Ricky, a pimp and womanizer who conned a teenager into becoming a sex slave of an old pervert, ends up having the teenager's vengeful spirit possess him and rip his heart out. Through his throat.
• Be Careful What You Wish For: The entire point of Prahma The Horned God. The main character's wife wished for wealth from Prahma; Prahma responds by killing the couple's only son, so that the couple can become immensely wealthy from the compensation and insurance money. They wished for their son's return; this only results in Prahma taking over their son's spirit and regenerate itself into the mortal world. However, they still have one last wish, and with that they wished for Prahma to be banished back into the netherworld where it came from, finally putting an end to the evil god's reign of terror.
  • The story When You Wished Upon A Star features a formerly-famous singer wishing to regain his fame, only for the wish to backfire horribly.
  • Black Romance features a similar premise, a troubled teen and a janitor making a blood pact to a Hindu goddess in exchange for a wish, just to have it Gone Horribly Wrong.
• Big Creepy-Crawlies: Cockroach ends with the revelation of the cockroach empire, a civilization of human-sized roaches that lives underground, ruled by an albino Cockroach King, and is secretly plotting to take over the world after the nuclear holocaust wipe out humans.
• Big Damn Heroes: Soldier Of Fortune ends with The Monkey King coming to the rescue, to save the vixen sisters from a horde of wereboars.
• Bittersweet Ending: A recurring theme for some of the less scary or depressing stories.
  • The Devil's Bargain ends with Ace Darkstar dead, but his friend and soccer manager Veloo is determined to keep his legacy alive in his memory.
  • In the Name of the Father: Sister Annabelle succumbs to cancer, but her death inspires Father Dominic to rediscover the meaning of life.
  • Stepchild ends with Katherine's attempted suicide, but when she recovers she finds that she brought her estranged family closer to her than ever. And the titular stepchild, an outcast of the family, has finally embraced his step-siblings as his own.
  • A Night at the Opera: The opera business is saved, and the performance troupe is inspired to make their show even bigger than ever... but then the Hsiao family, the benefactors of the show are revealed to be ghosts, and as such can no longer remain in the mortal world...
  • Subverted in Moon in a Puddle. You'd think the death of Mary would inspire Jacky to have a change in his outlook in life, but the story literally ends with Jacky pissing away his emotions after being drunk in a nightclub...
• Black Comedy: In spades! Damien Sin's writing oozes with this trope.
  • Moon In A Puddle gets its title from the final scene; Jacky, unable to recover after Mary's suicide, decides to just drink himself to drowsiness in a nightclub. His bladder full of alcohol, he ends up urinating in public at a roadside, where he reflects his life after seeing the Moon reflected in a puddle of his own piss.
• Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: Katherine from Stepchild has a tendency to talk like this. Justified though, because she's a teenager.
  "These are clothing that will look good in airports, restaurants, and airport restaurants." - Katherine
• Breather Episode: After reading through scores and scores of macabre, disturbing, borderline nightmare-inducing story, it is only fair that the last story of each book becomes Lighter and Softer, with minimal gore or mature themes, for the books to end in a more optimistic note.
• The Bully: If the story has a school setting, expect at least one of these to show up.
  • Black Romance has three of them who regularly picks on the main character. All three of them end up receiving various Karmic Deaths by the end.
• But Not Too Foreign: Emma from Skin Deep is part Singaporean from her father's side, and part-British from her mother's side. Unfortunately, due to her western upbringing, she ends up being ashamed of her Singaporean heritage, at which point she starts making herself "artificially" Caucasian by going through one plastic surgery session after another.
• Creepy Crows: Crows are an omen of death in Maid In Singapore; during the funeral scene the presence of crows are constantly noted throughout.
• Crying at Your Birthday Party:
  • 12-year-old Katherine from Stepchild is shown breaking into tears after her attempt at performing a musical number for her guests is hijacked by the titular stepchild, who began playing pop songs - improvised - on her piano instead. Things quickly goes out of hand until Katherine's eldest brother Augustine slams the piano shut, telling the stepchild to stop crashing his sister's birthday, but at that point the party is ruined.
  • Exaggerated example with Emma from Skin Deep, a Spoiled Brat, who is shown crying at her party... because she overheard a friend of hers, Sharon, saying her nose is too big.
• Death of a Child: Constantly, sometimes children who did nothing wrong would end up getting the short end of the stick. Expect multiple Kill the Cutie moments.
  • The younger sister from Suffer the Children gets her skull cracked open by her own aunt in an Accidental Murder moment. Said aunt then tries to convince the neighbors that the child accidentally fell down a flight of stairs and died as a result.
  • Devil Child: One of the titular devil child's victims is Ian's baby son, barely a year old. At least it happened off-screen/off-page.
• Didn't Think This Through: In Paint It Black. Jessica, a con artist and Gold Digger, tricks old Indian millionaire Gopal into taking her as his third wife, and then arranged to have the first two wives killed before killing Gopal personally while he is vulnerable. Unfortunately for Jessica, she forgot to check her facts; Gopal's native Indian family still believes in the act of Satti, or ritualistic burning, where the wife is cremated with the deceased husband. Sweet dreams!
• The Dog Bites Back:
  • In Suffer The Children, the long-abused older brother turns the tables on his tormentor by spiking her stew with laxatives, and then proceed to slice off her tongue and began abusing her back with nails, wires, and various sharp instruments.
  • In Hangman, the titular hangman who regularly bullies his assistant warden and wants to kill a cat For the Evulz gets hanged himself when the cat causes him to have a fatal accident, while the oft-abused assistant delightfully watches.
  • The entire clone population Turned Against Their Masters in the end of Down on the Farm.
• Dirty Cop:
  • John Law in Once Upon A Swine.
  • The two main characters from The White Tiger of Kalimantaro are retired ex-cops, which have committed multiple deeds worthy of this trope. Including abuse, interrogation, and bribery.
• Earthy Barefoot Character: The native Indonesian safari guide from The White Tiger of Kalimantaro is explicitly described as preferring to go barefoot everywhere, even in the jungle.
• Downer Ending: Several, from the main character throwing themselves off a building or a ship, to becoming insane or losing the only person or things precious to them, frequently overlapping with Kick the Dog and Shoot the Shaggy Dog.
• Dragged Off to Hell:
  • The titular artist from The Artist Arcane Tao, courtesy of the Demon Lord Beelzebub which he attempted to summon.
  • The soul of Master Kong in Maid In Singapore. It's his fault for trying to force an innocent maid to take over his sins and be taken to hell in his stead though, so he kinda deserves it.
• Drowning My Sorrows:
  • Thomas from Factory, after being rejected by his crush. Four bottles of alcohol later, he ends up embracing his dark side...
  • Jacky in Moon in a Puddle does this after Mary's suicide.
  • The Japanese Admiral in Message in a Bottle gets drunk on sake at one point.
• Eldritch Abomination: The titular deity of Prahma The Horned God, described as a crustacean being with webbed, frog-like feet, a pot belly, giant crab claws, tentacles all over its lips... so yes, basically a Muslim version of Cthulu.
  • It gets even worse in the ending, when Prahma manages to physically manifest itself into our world. The sheer sight of Prahma in the flesh is enough to make anybody Go Mad from the Revelation.
• Fat Bastard:
  • The Administrator from Down on the Farm, an overweight pervert, sadist, and pedophile who at one point forces a clone child to "pleasure" him.
  • Moses Neo from China Bride. The first paragraph of the story even directly describes him as an overweight bastard!
• Fetus Terrible: The titular creature of Little Devil, which is a toyol - a demon fetus from Malaysian mythology.
• Fish out of Water:
  • Rosie, the titular maid from Maid In Singapore, a Filipino maid who was conned into becoming a scapegoat for an unholy ritual.
  • Sonia Romanov from From Russia With Love (no, not that movie), a Russian student, supermodel and con artist who just arrived in Singapore.
  • Soldier Of Fortune revolves around a Singaporean soldier posted on tour of duty in Taiwan.
  • Jessica and Robert in Paint It Black, respectively a Gold Digger and an inheritance lawyer who tried to take over an Indian millionaire's property in his native New Delhi.
• Flaying Alive: The fate of Emma in Skin Deep; getting beaten unconscious by her father, then having every inch of her skin surgically removed. Oh god, poor Emma...
• Gaia's Vengeance: Featured in The White Tiger of Kalimantaro. The two ex-cops who decides to go on an impromptu safari just to kill an endangered white tiger ends up regretting their decision for the rest of their lives. Well, the one who didn't die, but becomes insane after witnessing the supernatural white tiger's divine powers and lose his penis to baboons worshipping the tiger, at least...
• Gold Digger:
  • Jessica Kwan from Paint It Black, which is described as a "Fortune Huntress" who solely married the nearly-Century-old Indian millionaire Gopal for his wealth.
  • Diamond Dave from Great Pig Mother wooed, and married an old widow to con her of her pig farm, and subsequently her savings.
• Gratuitous Foreign Language: Well, not actually foreign on a technical term, since Singapore is a melting pot of various cultures and races, but the default language of the books are English, and every now and then there are Mandarin, Cantonese, Hokkien, Malay, Tamil, Japanese, German and various other languages being used. Whenever these happens the non-English text will be Italicized for differentiation purposes.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Veronica from Little Devil, who will do anything to win over the heart of her colleague. Who is already married with a son.
• Hanging Around: The short story Hangman revolves around a sadistic prison warden who gets promoted to becoming a hangman in Singapore's Changi Prison, where he delights in watching prisoners getting their necks stretched, and even playfully ordered his lackey to take a picture of him posing with the noose - which was used to hang another prisoner barely 48 hours ago - just for fun. That proves to be his undoing when the trapdoor under the noose he's posing suddenly breaks, and he ends up hanging himself in an Ironic Death moment.
• The Hunter Becomes the Hunted: The main point of The White Tiger of Kalimantaro. This is what would happen when two retired ex-policemen with too much time on their hands decides to venture into the deep, dark Indonesian jungles to hunt a divine white tiger.
• I Love the Dead: The main character of One Last Cold Kiss is a morgue worker who had trouble in his love life, who eventually decide to steal the corpse of a supermodel and regularly have sex with it in his apartment. Rigor mortis? What rigor mortis?
• Insistent Terminology: Katherine from Stepchild would constantly remind the readers that her family are Indonesian-Chinese. Not Indonesian, not Chinese, but both. Heck, you can play a drinking game every time she mentioned that fact in the story.
• Intergenerational Friendship
  • Black Romance has the friendship between a troublemaker teen and the school janitor as its main plot.
  • In Jailbird, the 24-year-old protagonist easily befriends several inmates, including those in their 30s and 40s.
  • The Devil's Bargain has this between Veloo, a retired soccer coach, and Ace Darkstar, a rising soccer champion.
• Ironic Name:
  • The protagonist of Dead Man Tell No Tales is a corrupt judge, named Judge Solomon Pao. Which is ironic since he is named after King Solomon of Israel and Judge Pao-Zhen of China, two of history's fairest judges.
  • Let's not forget the corrupt cop named John Law.
  • Or the mentally troubled teenager from Moon in a Puddle, who is implied to have suicidal tendencies, named Jacky Fun. (while this is an actual surname that exists in Singapore and Malaysia, it's actually rather obscure - a more common variation would be "Fung").
• Karmic Death: Oh god, where to start?
  • Moses Neo from China Bride, who boiled his sex slave bride and her lover into a vat of molten soap, gets boiled alive by his own shower system which mysteriously gets stuck and overheated while he's in middle of a bath.
  • In Hangman, the titular hangman who delights in abusing animals and takes his job as an excuse to bully those below him, have his neck broken when accidentally stuck on a loose hangman's noose.
  • The Japanese Admiral Villain Protagonist of Message In A Bottle, who ordered his crew to destroy an American warship and personally sank several lifeboats, is the last to die when his submarine gets flooded by the Sea Hag.
  • The Administrator from Down on the Farm delights in torturing clones, and sending multiple clones which he declared defective into the incinerator. He gets shoved into the incinerator himself by a horde of vengeful clones during a massive clone revolt.
  • John Law from Once Upon A Swine, after gaining the favor of Kuan Kong the Ancient War Deity, treats the deity as his lackey to dispose of his unfaithful wife, his informant, and anyone else that gets on his bad side. He eventually gets decapitated by Kuan Kong after pissing him off the wrong way.
• Laser-Guided Karma: If a story features a Jerkass Villain Protagonist who didn't die a karmic death, chances are they will be on the receiving end of this trope.
  • Ah Boy from Ghost Riders is a gangster obsessed with violence and sex, who physically and sexually abused a young nurse named Annie until she was Driven to Suicide. He ends up hallucinating Annie's ghost coming for him, prompting him to jump six storeys down a hospital building, where he broke his legs, permanently lose the function of both his testicles and have to spend the rest of his life on a wheelchair.
  • Jimmy, the sex-obsessed main character in One Night In Bangkok who thinks he's contracted AIDS, and subsequently tried to spread the disease all throughout Singapore, going as far as sexually assaulting his sister to pass her the disease, eventually discovered he didn't have AIDS after all... and has pretty much ruined his entire life because his actions made him a total outcast of society. For good measure, he even gets the snot beaten out of him by his taller and stronger brother-in-law.
• Maniac Monkeys: Close enough, but in The White Tiger of Kalimantaro the main characters have to contend with Indonesian baboons which are described to be extra feral and savage.
• Misplaced Wildlife: Related to above. There are no baboon populations in Indonesia, unlike those depicted in The White Tiger of Kalimantaro.
• Never Bareheaded: Kermit Singh from Checkmate is NEVER seen without his turban, which covers most of the upper part of his head and described by the text as "it's as large as half his head". The final scene where the enraged Professor Narul hacks Kermit to death, ripping off the turban in the process, reveals that Kermit is actually Two-Faced, with a smaller, shriveled head underneath.
• Non-Indicative Title: The entire series in general. Several of the stories aren't set in Singapore at all, or features Singaporeans as the main characters.
• N-Word Privileges: In Skin Deep, Dr Quek's daughter Emma who is half-English from her deceased mother's side has no qualms calling her father a "chink" after having sex with him.
• Our Clones Are Different: In the future shown in the story "Down on the Farm", clones are harvested for their parts. Because the story takes place in a time when pop culture is practically extinct, the clones are usually cloned from celebrities for their attractive appearance, with the protagonist being a clone of Bruce Lee named Bruce. There's also a mention of another clone named Muhammad Ali, cloned from the boxer of the same name.
• Our Ghosts Are Different: In One Night At the Opera, the elderly Mr. Hsiao, his daughter Hsiao Jin-hua, and by extent his entire family, are revealed to be ghosts from some ancient Chinese dynasty. Singing, operatic ghosts, to be precise.
• Our Werebeasts Are Different: In Soldier of Fortune, our main character (a Singaporean soldier on military duty in Taiwan) discovers the mountains of Taiwan to be populated by werefoxes, werevixens, wereboars, and the Great Monkey King which is pretty much a very powerful weremonkey.
• Panthera Awesome: Subverted, then played straight in The White Tiger of Kalimantaro. Two retired ex-cops travels to the Indonesian jungles to hunt a divine white tiger, only to realize the tiger to be old, mangy, lice-ridden and ready to die of age and disease. They kill it anyway. Then the real white tiger shows up, and it turns out to be a god-like entity the size of an elephant possessing supernatural necromantic powers, given how it resurrects the old, slain tiger into a tiger zombie...
• Please, Don't Leave Me: In Skin Deep, Dr. Quek begs his daughter Emma not to leave him to pursue a modelling career in the States, only for her to scoff at him. Resulting in his Rage Breaking Point snapping and a shocking Downer Ending for both father and daughter.
  You shouldn't have said that, Emma. Dr. Quek, before attacking her and knocking her unconscious, then removing every inch of her skin without killing her
• Prison Rape: Dangerously close to happening in Jailbird. No thanks to the homosexual warden. For context: Robin Wong is a first-day prisoner undergoing inspection, where the warden in charge asks if Robin needs a "plastic bag". The other prisoners around him shake their heads, hinting for Robin to refuse; it turns out later that the warden is gay and "plastic bag" is a slang for condom.
• Prisoner's Last Meal: In the short story "The Hangman", the executed victim, Tan, was given a lavish final meal which he ignores, preferring to spend the last minutes of his life smoking, instead.
• Serious Business: In Checkmate, Professor Narul considers chess as not "just a game", but a matter of life and death. To the extent of abandoning his wife and children, cutting off all social ties, and even resorting to murdering a rival better at chess than him.
• Sealed Evil in a Can: The titular deity from Prahma The Horned God.
• Sink the Lifeboats: In Message In A Bottle, after the Japanese submarine Kagemusha sinks an American ship, the Japanese Admiral which is the Villain Protagonist deliberately shoots the lifeboats.
• Smart People Play Chess: The entire point of the story Checkmate. Professor Narul considers himself to be a high-class intellect because of his unbeatable skills in chess, and considers the game to be sacred.
• Spoiled Brat: Emma from Skin Deep. Its not entirely her fault though, due to her upbringing, so the justification of her eventual fate is still questionable.
• Spooky Painting: Featured throughout The Artist Arcane Tao in the titular artist's studio. From a portrait of ghouls feasting on victims, to a portrait of the three-headed hound Cerberus, and the Lord of the Flies Beelzebub.
• Talking Animal:
  • Great Pig Mother ends with Diamond Dave, the Gold Digger who conned a widow of her pig farm and all her belongings until she hangs herself, being mauled and sexually violated by the titular giant sow, which can talk with the widow's voice. Implied that the widow's soul is now one with the sow's...
  • Cockroach ends with the discovery of giant, sentient cockroaches, who can talk. And plans to take over the world.
• Three Wishes: Prahma will grant three wishes to whomever restores his position into the world. Too bad he is a Jerkass God which screws over pretty much everybody who worships him.
• Time Stands Still: In Black Romance, this happens when the main character prays to Kali, the goddess of destruction, while being assaulted by several cops in a police station. Naturally he takes this opportunity to gleefully whack each and every one of them in the nuts.
• These Are Things Man Was Not Meant to Know: Featured constantly, especially if the story involves occultist studies. One notable case in The Artist Arcane Tao, where the titular artist's interest in demonology to create the most macabre paintings ever ends up unleashing demons into the mortal world.
• Tongue Trauma: Suffer the Children ends with a child tormentor finally getting what she deserves when the child she regularly abused turns the tables on her, the first thing he did which is slicing off her tongue.
• Treated Worse than the Pet: Played for Drama in "Stepchild", which revolves around the titular character, a Singaporean stepchild, adopted into a wealthy Indonesian family who migrated into the country because of their superstitious father wanting a "lucky offspring". The entire Indonesian family, including the teenage protagonist Katherine, ostracizes the stepchild, insults him behind the back and treats him lower than the family's terrier, Romeo. This leads to the stepchild plotting revenge by secretly feeding Romeo pieces of meat with nails and shards of glass hidden inside, causing severe agony in the poor pet until it needs to be euthanized.
• 20 Minutes into the Future: Down On The Farm.
• Vengeful Ghost: In a few stories featuring the supernatural, the spirits of the wronged will come back seeking vengeance against their tormentors.
• Vorpal Pillow: In Paint It Black, implied to be how Jessica disposes of the frail, disabled Gopal.
• Whole-Plot Reference:
  • Jailbird lifted much of its plot from classic prison movies such as Cool Hand Luke and One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest.
  • Skin Deep is a Darker and Edgier retelling of Lolita, with a shocking Downer Ending.
  • One Night At the Opera is basically The Elves And The Shoemaker, but in modern-day Singapore, and with opera performances instead of shoes.
  • Moon in a Puddle is Damien Sin's attempt to retell Bridge to Terabithia using his own twisted, demented ways of writing; a troubled boy who is a loner (ironically named Jacky Fun) finds a new outlook in life after befriending a girl who is equally an outcast, where the time they spent together inspires him to have a more optimistic outlook in life... until she dies. For bonus points, her death involves a rope. And our main character ends up blaming himself over her fate while questioning whether she would go to hell because of her beliefs towards God.
• Woken Up at an Ungodly Hour: The short story, "Prahma the Horned God" have the protagonists, Professor Rashid and his wife Carmen, rudely awakened in the dead of night by a phone call, which Rashid answers while half-aware phone calls at this hour are rarely good news. Turns out the call comes from halfway across the globe from the States, where their son, Adam who works as a foreman in an American chemical plant, had died in an accident that destroyed the whole structure.
• Would Hurt a Child: Suffer The Children revolves around a 30-odd single woman who's unfairly scorned by her more successful sister, and decides to commit a Revenge by Proxy by abusing her sister's children. She gets a rather revolting and disturbing but still somewhat satisfying comeuppance.
• Zerg Rush: In Cockroach, the main character - a roach-hating pest controller - ends up being overwhelmed by a swarm of roaches and captured to meet the Cockroach King.

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