There was a new smell on the storm that night. It was scrubbed clean of itself, like a sheet of clear glass, ringing into the senses like the arrival of some relative so long-gone you didn't remember if they were welcome or not. It made our hair stand on end, bade us put on cardigans and thin sweaters, sent shivers through our houseplants. There was no scent of earth whatsoever; when the pattering stopped and we opened our windows, our cat hid himself in a corner, wary at the strange wind.

"It's not just the smell," said Kevin. He drew his new shawl a little tighter around his neck, the one we only took out for vacations. "You hear that too, right?"

And now there was a sound like a rumbling, the faint palpitations of some distant shuffling thing that swept all around us. The cat hissed. I stood outside, trying to hear better, but it seemed to come like thunder, from a place just beyond the horizon. Across from us, other people were out of their houses, heads craned to the heavens. It seemed that whatever it was had wrapped the whole of Bishan up in a blanket, such that even the sunlight shone muted through the clouds.

I shivered. "We best get on with our day. I have a spa appointment at two."

In the days that came, the smell lingered. It was hard to believe, but it somehow grew stronger, that smell-of-no-smell, displacing all other smells we never noticed we were subconsciously tuned to: musty HDB concrete, mirage-hot asphalt, rising damp of sun-baked grass. And the sounds grew too, rolling over the tops of the flats in the early afternoons and late nights, coming and going in waves so strong I swear I could feel our floor shake. Kevin held me in one arm and the cat in the other, whispering into my ear: "Let's just pretend that was thunder, sweetie." But no rain ever fell, and the chill only grew.

Even the newspapers stopped talking about it eventually, and it joined other curiosities such as the waterspout over Tanjong Pagar, and the hailstones over Upper Seletar. Only that it spread to other parts of the island, too, and word began to spread of a new kind of haze, perhaps borne from burning gas flares in the South China Sea. "Sulphur dioxide blocks the sun, did you know that?" said my boss over lunch over a bowl of hot clam chowder. "Drops the temperature like crazy, too. PRCs, am I right?" Steam fogged my glasses; I couldn't help but nod.

One day the smell came to a peak. Traffic stopped up the highway, and our corridors were filled with aunties, their noses turned to the heavens. You couldn't record this on a smartphone, you couldn't upload this to STOMP. Old Mrs. Fang from next door couldn't take it any more, and toddled away with her red shopping trolley behind her. "I can't stay here anymore," she cried, "I'm going out for a walk!" Only to find that the lift had stopped at every floor, packing in rows upon rows of every auntie in the block, bearing their own legions of red shopping trolleys too. Outside, below the flat, the aunties had begun to march.

The rumbling was now joined with a clattering, and the murmurations of a million lost aunties. From somewhere far away somebody was playing a song: All I Want For Christmas. Kevin groaned. It was only June! Then I gasped. Something was coming from the sky. "Look, dear, look!"

Kevin followed my finger upwards. The sun, pale and white, had been joined by several others. The clouds parted, hanging streamers of purple and gold in all manner of shapes -- star, crescent, rectangle, sphere -- each lit by their own fluorescent sphere. The chill and the rumbling had peaked, and now the smell was joined by many others: the puff-puff of antiseptic handwash, the oily scent of a man.

Our cat yowled. I felt the urge to move -- to grab something, anything -- but nothing came to hand. Kevin frowned. "I literally cannot handle this right now, Karen," he mumbled, shaking his head.

The biggest banner had descended from the sky. It was as wide as the Bishan stadium, and maybe ten times as long, and it was bright red. On it, in tasteful capitalised Arial, read the words: THE GREAT SINGAPORE SALE HAS BEGUN!!!

The ground beneath us rumbled. The mall was coming home.