Echoes of Newtone
Lisa’s life was a rhythm of routine: work, dinner, television, a fleeting scroll through social media. Then, the message arrived. "Hey, Lisa. It's Craig." Craig Newtone. The voice of her youth, the singer whose music had been the soundtrack to her dreams.
The messages were a balm to her loneliness, filled with personal details and whispered confidences. He spoke of needing a break, of finding solace in connecting with a "real" fan. Lisa, flattered and yearning, believed.
Then came the subtle shifts. The hints of a personal crisis, the whispered requests for help. "Just a small favour, Lisa. You're the only one I can trust."
Lisa hesitated. The money he asked for was significant. She told Danny, who dismissed it instantly. "A scam, Lisa. Ignore it." Firdaus advised her to block him immediately.
The advice was sound, logical. But her heart ached. She’d built an emotional world around this connection, a world where she was seen, valued, loved. The thought of losing it was unbearable.
Nights became a blur of tears and anxiety. She’d stare at her phone, the messages a constant temptation. He needs me, she’d think, then recoil at the potential naivety of the thought. Inconsistencies started to appear, small details that didn't quite line up. Each one was a tiny stab of doubt.
One morning, after a sleepless night, Lisa sat on the edge of her bed, her phone trembling in her hand. The weight of her friends' warnings, the gnawing doubt in her gut, finally tipped the scales. With a deep breath, she blocked "Craig Newtone." Then, with a shaking finger, she deleted her account.
The act was both liberating and devastating. The digital world she’d built, the illusion of connection, vanished in an instant. A wave of grief washed over her, a raw, aching loneliness.
Days turned into weeks. Lisa felt adrift, disoriented. She’d catch herself reaching for her phone, then remember. The silence was deafening.
Yet, life moved on. Lisa began to notice the world around her again. The sun on her face, the sound of birdsong, the warmth of a cup of tea. Small things, but real.
Driven by a persistent longing, she created a new social media account. This time, however, she approached it with a newfound caution. She scrolled through profiles, wary of overly flattering messages and requests for personal information.
A part of her still hoped to find genuine connection, a flicker of belief in the possibility of online love. But she was different now, more guarded, more aware. The digital world, she realized, was a minefield. And she, Lisa, was no longer willing to walk blindly through it.
She paused, her finger hovering over the 'search' bar. Would she ever truly be safe? she wondered. Then, with a sigh, she typed in a new name, a local book club. Maybe, she thought, maybe real connection started with real places.
Tessa Yusoff
27 Feb 2025
Contact: aeedaoli@gmail.com27 Feb 2025
Echoes of Newtone: A Story of Loss and Connection #ShortStory #Fiction #Loss #Scammer #Celebrity #Crush #Resilience #Texting
The 9:07 AM Disruption
The rhythmic clatter of the train wheels was the soundtrack to Ray’s life. Clack-clack. Clack-clack. It was a sound that had replaced the rustle of trees and the gentle slosh of a water hose—sounds he hadn't realized he missed until he was 70, crammed shoulder-to-shoulder on the 9:07 AM KTM Komuter train into KL Sentral.
Ray was a fixture on this route, a man whose spine was a little more curved each year, yet whose resolve was still forged steel. He had to be. His wife, Maria, wasn’t working, and the relentless city demanded constant tribute. Rent, medicine, food—daily life in Kuala Lumpur didn't just feel expensive; it felt predatory. And then there was the insult of his recent pay cut, slicing his already thin security blanket in half.
He thought of his brother, Abu, in the countryside. Abu, the man who measured time by the sun and the birdsong—not by the agonizing minutes wasted during a Komuter breakdown. Abu, whose simplicity felt like a deep, untroubled sleep compared to Ray's perpetually anxious wakefulness."Here in the village," Abu had once said, his voice slow and calming as a stream, "there is no cat race. People are too simple and happy with what they have."
Ray's reality was different. He lived for his children, the safety net of their proximity, even if they were too busy with their own cat races to notice the fraying of his. He’d read the articles, too, the cold, hard statistics about Malaysia’s accelerating urbanization and aging population. By 2030, approximately 5.8 million people in Malaysia will be aged 60 and above, representing about 15.3% of the total population.
His friend Dino's warning echoed: growing need for age-friendly infrastructure, growing pressure on governments to spend money.
Ray just needed the train to run on time. Today, the train was stopped. Again. The air-conditioning unit above them dripped a slow, steady rhythm onto the floor, mimicking a faulty clock. "This is the lack of proper connectivity," Ray muttered, leaning his forehead against the cool, grimy window. "It’s not just the trains; it’s everything. No one connects the old to the new."
The Disconnected Connection
Ray looked down at his hands, his knuckles prominent against the smooth, worn leather of his briefcase. This job, this train, this routine... it was his life. And yet, he felt utterly irrelevant.
He was sitting near the carriage door when a sudden, lurching stop plunged the lights into a flickering yellow dimness. "Another breakdown," a young man sighed, already pulling out his phone, annoyed.
But Ray didn't sigh. He moved.He didn’t move towards the emergency exit or the conductor. He moved towards a small, middle-aged woman struggling with a massive, old-fashioned suitcase—the kind with brass latches. The latches had sprung open, spilling out a chaotic mix of knitting yarn, old photos, and a massive, heavy technical manual. "Let me help you, Puan," Ray said gently, his voice surprising even himself. He knelt down, using his body to shield her from the passing commuters' frantic shoves.
As he helped her gather the contents, his eyes caught the title of the manual: KTM Komuter Signalling Systems: 1980-2005 Edition.
The woman, whose name was Puan Aishah, looked up at him, her eyes tired but sharp. "My late husband worked on these. When they first laid the tracks. They’re replacing the whole system, and my son asked me to finally clear his old stuff."
Ray stared at the diagrams of relays and current transformers. An idea, wild and ridiculous, sparked in his tired mind. His children lived in the city for emergencies, but Ray's own emergency wasn't a medical one; it was one of purpose.
He reached into his briefcase and pulled out his own work documents—detailed, hand-written notes on logistics and inventory systems. Ray was 70 and still working, not just because he needed the money, but because the structure—the function—of work was the one thing the city hadn't taken from him.
He had been a specialist in complex system mapping for decades."Puan Aishah," Ray said, pointing to a schematic of a level crossing sensor. "The intermittent failure pattern... I know the logistical equivalent of this issue. It’s a communication loop failure."
The young man who had sighed earlier watched, phone in hand, as Puan Aishah’s face lit up. "My husband always said the old manuals were the key to understanding the new glitches!"
They were stuck for thirty minutes. Ray and Puan Aishah spent that time pouring over the yellowed schematics, Ray drawing parallels between outdated signal relays and modern supply chain bottlenecks. He wasn't connecting with the city's frantic pace; he was connecting with the city's infrastructure. He was linking the forgotten past (Aishah’s husband’s work) with the frustrating present (the train breakdown) through his own obsolete, yet valuable, expertise.
When the train finally shuddered back to life, Ray arrived at KL Sentral late—by a full thirty minutes. He would be docked pay, but he barely noticed.
He stepped onto the platform, holding a slip of paper with Puan Aishah’s contact information and the address of the main KTM office's historical archives.
The twist wasn't in escaping the city like Abu. The twist was in finding the peace, the quiet joy, and the cat race exemption inside the city’s largest, most disruptive problem.
Ray realized his purpose wasn't to survive the commute; it was to fix it, one forgotten connection at a time. The problem wasn't the lack of connectivity between parts of the country; it was the lack of connectivity between the knowledge of the past and the need of the present.
The pigeons cooed a familiar, grating sound, but today, Ray heard a new rhythm underneath it: the sound of a system waiting for an old man to finally give it the attention it deserved.
Tessa Yusoff
20 November 2025
Contact: aeedaoli@gmail.com
The Apple Crumble & The Chosen Ones
Dust motes dance in the Saturday light, A solitary ritual, orderly and bright. With bitter-sweet coffee and a crumble so tart, She guards the quiet fortress of her heart.
Disrupted by children, a whirlwind of red, She thinks of the life that she didn't wed. The "Chosen Ones" promised a future of gold, But left her with stories that ended too cold— One taken by sickness, one stolen by lust, Leaving "forever" to crumble to dust.
"She studied in English, so she couldn't choose," The grandmother’s verdict, bitter news. But looking at couples in their gentle decay, Wati finds peace in the David Gray way. No screaming, no chaos, just a corporate throne, A jet-setting queen, happily alone.
Yet the family leaves a forgotten trace, A crayon, a receipt, in that hallowed space. The judgment dissolves into something sweet, A sudden grace on a downtown street. She leaves them a gift, a debt paid in full, For the beautiful noise in the morning lull.
Walking past the Mercedes, sleek and grand, She takes her happiness into her own hand. No need for a husband to make the picture right, The Chosen One chooses her own colours tonight.
The Apple Crumble & The Chosen Ones
One bright weekend, the late morning sun slanted through the tall glass windows, illuminating the dust motes dancing in the air of the downtown café. Wati sat alone, a ritual she cherished. In front of her lay the perfect pairing: dark, fragrant coffee and a generous slab of apple crumble, its crust flaking just so. She came here every Saturday, a self-imposed appointment with peace.
The silence was briefly, violently shattered. A young family entered, their two children a whirling dervish of primary colours and shrieks. One of them, a girl with a bright red bow, careened dangerously close to Wati’s table, sending a tremor through her cup. Wati’s jaw tightened. She disliked the noise, the intrusion, the messy vitality that felt alien to her carefully constructed tranquility. Luckily, they left not long after, the father ordering his takeaway at the counter before swiftly ushering his troupe out the door.
The café settled back into its comfortable hush.
David Gray croons in the background.
Please forgive me if I act a little strange.For I know not what I do
A couple of quietly dressed married couples drifted in, settling at a large booth far away. Watching their gentle, practiced movements—the way the husband helped the wife off with her light jacket—didn't trigger sadness, but a curious sense of peace and security. They were markers of a path not taken, a life she had tried to forge, and failed.
Sipping the warm, bitter-sweet coffee, her mind drifted back to her school days. A boarding school, a citadel for "the intelligent ones." The chosen ones, they were called. A title that promised success and a flawless future. Yet, looking at their lives now, the post-mortem of the "chosen ones" was messy: many single, some divorced, a small, statistically insignificant percentage 'happily married.'
"It’s the trend," her BBF, Rita, had said with a laugh that didn't quite reach her eyes. "We go home alone. If we die, we go to our forever home, alone. That’s life."
Wati had gone home alone twice already.
Her first marriage to a kind man ended after three short years when he was taken by illness. Two years after his passing, she met a handsome, smooth-talking guy on an elevator. The connection was electric, the courtship a whirlwind.
David Gray croons on the background
When ya kiss me on that midnight streetSweep me off my feetSinging, "Ain’t this life so sweet?"
But the sweetness curdled quickly. The second marriage lasted just a year, shattered by the cliché of the young, sexy secretary. The betrayal sent her reeling to her mother’s house, tears blurring the pages of her well-planned life. That was when she overheard the words that stung her more than the infidelity itself:
"I studied in a Malay school. I know how to pick a husband. Wati studied in an English school and didn't know how to pick a husband."
The wise old grandma. Wati didn't think it was wise; it was a painful, unnecessary verdict.
Yet, sitting here now, she suddenly felt an unshakeable contentment. The bitterness had dissolved. She had a great job, excellent pay, and perks that sent her traveling overseas for major corporate meetings. Marriage? No. That dream had been exchanged for a jet-set reality. She was no longer chasing the ghost of a family with kids running around.
The Small Act of Atonement
Wati stood up and walked to the cash counter to pay her bill. As the cashier processed the transaction, Wati paused, her eyes catching a small, slightly wilted bouquet of colourful roadside flowers—bunga raya and some yellow daisies—on the counter, waiting to be discarded.
"That family that was here earlier," Wati asked, pointing vaguely towards the door. "The father who got the takeaway. Did he pay for his order?"
"Oh, yes," the cashier said, checking the receipt. "He paid. But I think he forgot something. A child's colouring book and crayons. They must have left it on the other table."
Wati looked down at her own hand, gripping the card receipt. She had resented their noise, judged their chaos. They had left behind something small and innocent.
"I’ll pay for his order again," Wati said, surprising herself. "Please refund him when he comes back for this."
The cashier blinked. "Ma'am, he already paid."
"I know," Wati smiled, a genuine, soft smile that hadn't touched her lips in weeks. "Just put it on a gift card, then. Tell him... tell him the lady with the apple crumble appreciated the colour he brought to the room." She paused, then added, "And tell him he has the best taste in music."
She stepped out of the café, the cool air hitting her face. The sleek, black curve of her Mercedes was parked perfectly out front. She didn't head straight to the driver's side. Instead, she took out her keys, clicked the lock, and walked past it. She crossed the street and headed towards the small bookstore. She wasn't visiting Rita right away. She was going to buy herself a new colouring book. The 'chosen one' had chosen herself, and in her own quiet way, she had found her own kind of happy noise.
TESSA YUSOFF
24 November 2025
Contact: aeedaoli@gmail.com
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#DavidGrayLyrics
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