Uncle Tan walks the 12th floor of Block 43,
Bukit Merah, every Thursday at 5pm, knock twice,
wait three breaths, leave the stamped receipt
under the door. He’s done it since 1967, when
the first HDB flats swallowed the kampong and
the air smelled of wet cement and durian skins.
The flat’s tenant, a quiet man named Lim Beng
Huat, vanished in ’72—no notice, no forwarding
address, but the rent always arrived. Until last
month.
The rent stopped. Not late. Not late at all.
Just gone.
Uncle Tan checks the ledger. No signature. No
cash. No postman’s note. Only the smell—wet joss
paper and burnt coconut husk—clinging to the
doorframe like old incense. He calls the town
council. No record of eviction. No death
certificate. The flat’s still listed as occupied.
The rules say: if rent is unpaid for six months,
the Housing Board repossesses. But the rules
also say: if a tenant vanishes and the flat
remains untouched, it belongs to the ghost until
the next moon of Hungry Ghost Festival.
He waits. He knocks. He leaves the receipt. On
the seventh Thursday, he brings a stick of
agarwood. Lights it. Lets the smoke curl into
the keyhole. That night, the neighbour’s cat
vomits blood on the stairwell.
On the eleventh night, Uncle Tan breaks the lock.
Not with a crowbar. With his bare hands—he’s 73,
arthritic, but his fingers remember how to pry
open a bamboo rice bin from the kampong days.
Inside, the flat is untouched. Furniture wrapped
in yellow plastic. A single bowl of cold kueh
lapis on the table. On the wall, a child’s
drawing: a man in a white shirt holding hands
with two others, all under a big HDB block. One
figure has no face. Below it, scrawled in pencil:
They said if we pay rent, the blocks won’t
swallow us whole.
He finds the rent book. Every month, from ’68 to
’72, the same name signed. Lim Beng Huat. But
the ink is faded. The handwriting changes. Each
entry smoother. Younger. Like someone else kept
writing it.
He doesn’t call the police. Doesn’t tell the
council. He takes the rent book. Walks back to
his own flat in Block 42. Puts it on the shelf
beside his NS uniform and his wife’s photo. The
next Thursday, he knocks. Leaves the receipt.
The smell is gone.
The rent comes the following week. In crisp new
notes. No signature. Just the same stamped slip,
folded small. He puts it in the box. Doesn’t
cash it.
They say the HDB blocks remember who paid. That
the concrete holds the cries of those who lost
their homes to progress. Uncle Tan doesn’t speak
of it. But every Thursday, he still knocks.
Twice. Waits three breaths. And leaves the
receipt.
The flat is still occupied.
He still collects.
And the rent, somehow, always arrives.
