0. Editor’s Note

First Light Of A Crooked Sun — August Linn

Machine Learning — Tan Jing Min

Grape, Backwards — ash chua

And They All Lived: Remembering the Happy Smiley Writers Group — Ng Yi-Sheng

Searching for One’s Roots 2.0 — Shawn Seah

Island — Stephany Zoo

Falling into a black hole — Ann Grá

Monsoon Season — Zavier Seow

The Winter of Our Science-Fiction Discontent, Part 2
— Vivekanandan Sharan

When They Burned the Butterfly: An Interview with Wen-yi — Megan Chee

Strange New Worlds — Brandon David Servos

Grape, Backwards

ash chua

ash chua is a creative non-fiction and short story writer who finds joy in dissecting the human condition and honoring unseen lived experiences. They spill it all about sex, intimacy, and queer yearning on their substack with not a care about whether anyone wants to read all that. They also enjoy dabbling in the many subgenres of science fiction now and again.

“What do you mean, he’s aging backwards?“

The doctor, jaw slack and slightly open in a way that makes him look gormless, said, “Exactly what I mean. Last month’s ultrasound showed that it’s on track, it’s a boy, you know, and all that. This is the third one we ran, and it has… lost its gender. It looks only 16 weeks’ old.”

Brows furrowing everywhere. An irritated pause. “Do you mean our boy has some developmental issues? Is that it? We can do more tests-“

“No, it is healthy, I mean, he’s all healthy. It’s just that he looks 16 weeks old on this ultrasound I’m holding up right now, and 22 weeks in the one you had four weeks ago.”

The man, flustered and anxiously wanting to reassure his wife that he has some semblance of control over the situation, stood up abruptly. “Then we will go to someone else.”

The other doctors also said the same. “Hm, it is 16 weeks on the ultrasound.”

“But we confirmed 16 weeks old four weeks ago.”

“Hm. Well, sometimes ultrasounds can miss out developmental issues. Let’s take some tests, and you and your wife can come back next week to discuss the results. We will try our best. We know it can be scary for new parents.”

The man once again stood up and reached for the door, straightened his knees mechanically, overextending them in a way that would mean a complaint of knee pain two days later. His wife, a smaller, mousey person, grabbed his elbow and followed. Her face was also slack, in the way that suggested a habit of assuming things will work out for her all the time, without any exertion on her part.

As the couple made their way back to their car, they both became preoccupied with their own thoughts, not noticing the true level of each other’s distress.

The man, angry, anxious, and ashamed at his lack of control over the situation, was preparing to write a complaint about the first doctor in his head.

The woman was not really thinking about much at all, and thinking this was all just surely a fuss over nothing. She however expected that her husband would maintain that fuss, to prove that he really cared for her. Otherwise, she was not really that stressed out about this at all.

One week passed, and the lab tests said nothing.

But a new ultrasound that cost them too much seems to suggest that their child is 13 weeks old, the size of a stone sitting in her stomach, gathering into a heavy black hole of dread, coalesced from the emotions of its parents.

There was too little time to make any sense of this, to reframe this as a miracle, or a nightmare, or to arrange any actions, however panicked, such as flying to Dubai for a second opinion or convening a church-wide prayer over WhatsApp or on a Sunday.

No, the couple simply just went about their work week in some sort of daze, convinced that they are indeed 13 weeks into their pregnancy, and never was 28 weeks.

Her belly was indeed getting smaller. She rubbed her hands then rubbed her belly, feeling the warmth over her taut skin. It was a biohack she learnt on Instagram, some Ayurvedic technique to ensure that her skin remains tight even as the baby grows. In fact, wasn’t it happening now, as her belly shrank. Her skin looked just like it did before she bought that test.

She looked at herself in the mirror, turning this way and that, looking at her belly. She remembered the ambivalence as she watched the lines on the test become bolder, feeling excited at finally reaching that milestone that all her friends sprinted past years ago. She remembered doing quick calculations in her head in the store, looking forward to finally having a Taylor Swift autumn-themed first month celebration for her baby.

They also had a gender reveal party. Everyone was given streamers to pull after tea time at an al fresco cafe. Blue paper everywhere.

She walked out of the office restroom and back to her cubicle.

Eh, why are you looking so slim? Just like before you were pregnant!

She smiled at her unpleasantly cheerful colleague, a spike of anxiety and great annoyance surging up her gut.

The slimming programme really helps! She replied.

It was all fine before Sally opened her mouth. Now it has become real. Once this phenomenon had been observed by an outside person outside her head, it was now real.

Her husband did not count. Years of being together had morphed him into a part of her psyche, projected outward, that lives and breathes and eats and speaks.

The rest of her shift was a blur. She could only replay Sally’s words over and over again in her head as she stared at her cubicle walls, absentmindedly playing with Post-It notes she pasted on her desk. The Post-It notes were too green, the air-conditioning was too cold, and her back hurt from stiffly sitting in her chair, frozen, too afraid to get up and bring more attention to herself.

Eh, why are you looking so slim?

The next day the woman felt even lighter, if that was even possible. She had a sinking feeling that if they did an ultrasound now, her precious boy would just be a few weeks old, a grape swimming in her uterus.

She paced around in her flat, her work forgotten. She missed an online meeting, which would usually make her feel so guilty, but she had not even noticed. Her half-eaten lunch went cold in its glass container on the dining table.

What happens as time passes? Would her son get smaller and smaller until he disappears with a pop? When will this all stop? Is she also (she gulped as she thought this) aging backwards? Will she get younger and younger? Surely the government wouldn’t let this happen?

A sharp rap of metal on wood and a jingle of keys. Her husband had come home. She waddled out to greet him before remembering that she didn’t need to waddle anymore, and straightened herself. He frowned when he saw her in her crop tank top, his eyes impatiently darting away from her exposed belly. She didn’t like that at all. It was as though he was watching a misbehaving household appliance that is not working as promised and causing a lot of inconvenience. She felt a big swell of anger.

What do you mean?

Maybe it’s all God’s plan!

Can you just be a little more concerned about this? Are you even there? You always do this, you’re living in your own world, I can’t even begin-

Well what can I possibly think? This is unimaginable, I don’t even have the brain space to think about-

You need to stop avoiding your feelings, like our counsellor said-

Don’t gaslight me-

She gasped and stopped mid-sentence. Her belly gurgled and she had looked down. It was concave.

I think what we need to do is to call Dr Lim again, demand to speak to the senior pediatrician-

Shut up, shut up!

What, what’s going on?

The belly remained ever so slightly curved in. The man accidentally looked as she looked again at her belly, and felt a rising panic in his throat. Oh, how he wanted to dismiss this. He averted his eyes and looked around the living room, as though for an escape route.

I don’t see anything-

But what he saw finally caught up with him. He stopped and with great effort and some desperation pulled his eyes back to look at her belly.

It was slowly caving in.

There was a brief moment in time where everything hung in the air - his contempt towards his hysterical wife, his own panic, his bad knees locking up, his voice faltering in his throat.

Her belly is pulling into itself through a small point where her son used to be.

The point seemed to look so small and yet so infinite at the same time. It was moving and yet not moving. Colours went in, into the point, and yet the point had no colour.

The woman started screaming.

The man realised distantly that he had never seen his wife make that ugly expression or that awful sound.

A stretching sound, like ripping skin.