I was abt 6-7 yrs old. At dat time, my grandparents had a HDB apartment in Clementi. Around dat time, I was the only little girl among my cousins other than my kakak saudara(elder female cousin), who was abt 7 yrs older than me.

Being a tomboy, I loved playing soccer, ‘catching’, catching spiders in drains & almost everything that my little boys love doing. So everytime when there was a kenduri(religious family gathering), I refused to stay in the kitchen to help the ‘auntie-aunties’. My aunts always complained to my parents about how lazy I was & kept saying that no man would wants to marry me if I wouldn’t want to step into the kitchen. And being a spit-fire back then, I would always reply back,”Don’t want, don’t want lah! Don’t marry also don’t die! No need people touch touch my body! No need become fat fat!” Then my mom would always try to catch & slap me but each time, she’ll end up laughing instead.

As soon as my family arrived at our grandparent’s house, Abang Mizan(my eldest male cousin), Abang Min(my elder brother) and I dashed downstairs, not planning to wait for the other cousins to arrive. Grandpa would always tell us to be home before maghrib if we don’t want the Hantu Tetek to catch us.

Instead on just playing at the playground or under the block, we joined the other ‘members’ from the neighbourhood to go inside Hutan(forest; actually it wasn’t a forest but we called it hutan anyway coz the place was dark and far away from the neighbourhood) to search for bigger spiders. We ended up inside big drains and got ourselves so dirty and smelly.

By the time we wanted to go back, it was 5 mins to maghrib. So we dashed back to our neighbourhood, remembering Granpa’s warning. Grandpa’s unit was on the 2nd floor and 5 units away from the staircase. By the time we reach the block, we were out of breath & climbing up the staircase to the 2nd floor was like climbing to the 12th floor. As we were climbing up the stairs, I noticed the white rag in one of the boxes moving as if something was trying to get out of it(the units had little spaces at the corridor and the neighbours had habits of placing junks there). Feeling tired, I ignored it, just telling myself that it was just some cat that had jumped into the box to take a nap.

We walked in a straight row & by the time we past by the 2nd unit, both Abang Mizan & Abang Min stopped walking & their heads were turned. I was puzzled why they stopped. So I turned around to look at what they were looking at. What I saw was a pair of white gloves(the kind which gardeners use) all stretched out floating in the air. I just kept staring at the gloves as if hypnotized. Then Abang Min & Mizan pulled my hand. Strangely enough, the gloves rushed behind us as if it wanted to strangle. It seems like we were running down the corridor forever. As soon as we reached Grandpa’s unit, we banged on the door like hell. Grandma opened the door. Being an old woman, she still had time to nag at us & took her own sweet time to reach for the keys & opened the door. As soon as the door was opened, both Abang Min & Mizan rushed in pushing me behind. We dashed to the toilet to wash our faces and legs. Grandpa then asked so tense. We just replied that all of us had to pee and our ‘tanks’ were overloaded.

After the incident, none of us ever went out of our parents sight each time we went over to our Grandparents place or ever talked about the incident. A few years later, the unit was sold as Grandpa passed away & Grandma didn’t want to stay there alone.