My mum had gum disease when she was fully human and, gradually, over the last couple of centuries, her teeth have, one by one, fallen out. The last tooth, a sharp and pointed molar, came out while she slept one night, when I was around twenty, and was there on her pillow in the morning – the last semblance of her demon body, she said, that God had

We only ever got pigs’ blood. This wasn’t because it was the only type of animal blood the butcher had. ‘Pigs are dirty,’ my mum said once. ‘It’s what your body deserves.’ But it turns out that pigs aren’t naturally dirty. Rather, humans keep pigs in dirty conditions, feeding them rotten vegetables, letting the mud in their too-small pens mix with

There’d been nothing in our house that we’d had just because my mum liked it; nothing that stood as a memento of her human life, her life in Malaysia. Everything was about convenience, not her taste or personality.

I can’t really describe how it feels to have another person’s blood in your veins, feeding to your heart, even just a little bit: a human’s blood, not a pig’s, two legs, upright and elegant, hints of something – of foods and memories and experiences, of birth, of being ill and getting better, of love and grief and fear – in its flavour.

‘Er, so … I can’t actually see the forms,’ he says. He laughs and looks up. ‘But I’ve marked crosses where you need to sign.’ He brings his head low over the table and squints. ‘Um,’ he says. ‘Here’s one.’ He slides a piece of paper and a pen across the table towards me, his thumb held firmly part way down the page where I need to sign. I can see

Amrita Sher-Gil. I take this last one off the shelf and it falls open at the middle page, which has a picture of her painting Three Girls on it.

I arrive at the Otter and the front door is closed and there is no one to let me in. This is what I always fear about arriving at new places. Being stuck outside. I stand as close to the wall as possible so I’m in shade.

‘You must have been influenced by him as an artist.’ Gideon says this as a statement, not a question. ‘It’d be interesting to see your work.’ ‘I suppose I have been, yes,’ I say, feeling guilty again that I haven’t made any work for such a long time. ‘Were you close?’ Gideon asks. ‘Actually, he died before I was born.’

Crimson Orchard recommends that residents have as many of their belongings – photos, books, furniture even, any personal artefacts – arranged around their rooms as possible, because old things with memories already associated with them encourage the formation of new memories, apparently. But Mum still ended up having too much stuff. She essentially