That voice.
“What did I instruct you?”
Low.
Soft.
Immediate.
Raspy.
Smoothened by years of instruction.
L14 bowed in abject reverence.
Not obedience.
Reverence.
The portraits lowered their eyes along with hers.
The chandeliers contributed their trembling deference.
The mansion converted.
In sync.
In rhythm.
Its very heartbeat.
His.

---

Tap.
Tap.
Tap.
The polished white cane traced the marble.
Never a bruising beat.
A gripping one.
A guiding one.
One measured tap.
After another.
The Fedora, tipped.
The gentleman stepped forward.
Composed.
Unhurried.
An iron grip on his cane.
His face in the fedora’s gilded guise.
Except for his mouth.
Too thin.
Too visible.
Shaped by the cruelties of time.
His eyes went over the ballroom in a fell swoop.
Pausing at one portrait.
L14s.
The raspy instruction lingered.
Way longer than he.
His mouth stretched in a thin grin.
The forgotten girl’s grip around the brass plaque tightened.
Not to defend herself.
The name beneath.
The portraits came to life.
Still unmoving.
But recalling.
Somewhere behind the velvet walls–
A piano.
A note.
In a minor key.
The Fedora tipped.
He listened.
His smile vanished.

---

The fedora tipped again.

The Lim’s patriarch.

The Godfather.

He didn’t turn towards the piano.

But he knew.

The minor note hovered, a raven about to fall in a grand swoop.

His wrinkled fingers gripped the white cane, reminiscent of steel.

A harsh silence covered the ballroom.

Every portrait stilled.

Every one but L14’s.

Her grip around the brass plaque tightened further.

Not because she was afraid —

But because she was determined.

The raspy voice droned in a familiar, damning monotone.  

“Who instructed you to remember?”

Stoic silence.

“Who. Instructed. You. To. Remember?”

No answer. Only a minor piano note

Hovering.

Closer

Accompanied by the pristine, singing voice of a Chinese woman.

Soft..

Raspy…

Trained…

Weathered.

---

The melodic voice drifted into The Godfather’s ears.

He stood, expressionless.

No gun.

No knife.

Just his ears, listening.  

Mirrors of the Mind  by Michelle Liew is a collection of psychological and supernatural short stories that explore the quiet unease beneath ordinary moments. These are not tales of spectacle, but of subtle fracture — where memory distorts, silence speaks, and the self is not always singular. In these stories, what is unseen often carries the greatest weight, and what lingers is not what is shown, but what is felt.

---

It was a good intention that became way too seen. A report intended as a confidential procedure. To raise a concern about a colleague’s inappropriacy. About a professional boundary that might have been broken. No more.

I discreetly copied my superiors on the email loop. Not to seek redress or trigger disciplinary action, but to seek their guidance.

If it escalated, the job turnover in the department would rise — with immediate effect. I had to stop it.

To save my job. It wasn’t about getting anyone into trouble.

So I crafted the email.

The shared inbox and misdirected forwarding unveiled it all.

That email. It raised the issue, in apparent confidence. I kept my superiors in the BCC loop — I needed guidance.

Not action.

Written in the hopeful belief that it would preempt and correct — quietly.

I clicked on the send button and went on a mid-morning coffee break.

It was Procedure. That’s all.

Nothing unusual, just a log of a routine slip.

---

I believed the process to be ordinary. Internal. Just a chastisement. Professional guidance.

A gentle correction for the drawing of boundaries, before matters escalated.

I never anticipated exposure. After all, the system was solid.

A confidential chain.

Restricted circulation, never meant for his eyes.

With the usual safeguards.

But what was private became—

Shared.

Public.

Irreversible.

He shouldn’t have had any access to it.

A mistaken forward, to his professional nemesis.

Then, the entire department.

And finally—

Its head.

A misdirected forward loop.

“So this is what you think of me. After all those years working together.”

His tortured voice.

---

Too late to recall.

The cardboard box. The desk, cleared.

Him, walking past, giving me that lowered, sideways glance.

His raspy, trembling voice accused. “So this is what you really think of me. You never even asked me anything.”

I would have fixed it. But it’s already on the company’s records.

What would you have done?

---

Original story by Michelle Liew Tsui-Lin. AI tags are coincidental.

Mirrors of the Mind  by Michelle Liew is a collection of psychological and supernatural short stories that explore the quiet unease beneath ordinary moments. These are not tales of spectacle, but of subtle fracture — where memory distorts, silence speaks, and the self is not always singular. In these stories, what is unseen often carries the greatest weight, and what lingers is not what is shown, but what is felt.

The heavy, male footsteps continued their ponderous, synced beat along the corridor.

Tap.

Tap.

Tap.

Measured.
Patient.

Never rushed.

L14’s mouth froze in that rounded, petrified gasp.

And I knew.

The portraits stopped that frantic whispering.

And waited.

The room paused, prepared

Rehearsed.

Silence had learned obedience.

As though every chandelier, hallway and cabinet in the home had waited for those steps to instruct them.

The mansion had learned its master, too well.

Fear kept in perfect time.

The footsteps finally fell beyond the ballroom doors.

And the girl moved.

---

The eyes of the forgotten girl never left the doors. She reached for the brass plaque.

Slowly—

Almost apologetically.

She lifted as if—

Afraid.

And under it—

A forgotten name.

Almost totally erased.

Only barely recalled.

The portraits trembled.

Vigorously.

The lips of each parted.

Not in terror.

In remembrance.

Then she shook her head.

Not yet

Someone had told the house to stop the names from being spoken.

---

Tap.

Tap

Tap.

The ballroom doors creaked open—

Slightly

A polished white cane.

Then, a shadow.

A fedora.

With no face.

A voice—-

Too calm.

“What did I instruct you?”

CL14 bowed, too instinctively.

She backed away, much too disciplined.

Having learned the lessons that a girl of her age should not.

---

Mirrors of the Mind  by Michelle Liew is a collection of psychological and supernatural short stories that explore the quiet unease beneath ordinary moments. These are not tales of spectacle, but of subtle fracture — where memory distorts, silence speaks, and the self is not always singular. In these stories, what is unseen often carries the greatest weight, and what lingers is not what is shown, but what is felt.

Some prisons have no bars. They have numbers.

---

A soft, ominous click.

The iron lock sprang open.

Pedantic darkness didn’t await.

I looked around, eyes sweeping corners, before stepping through.

Into the —

Light. Not a pitch-black shroud of darkness.

But a ritzy wing of the Lim’s questionable abode.

Grandeur that surpassed anything I’d ever laid my eyes on.

Crystal chandeliers. Mirrors with ornate, gold frames.

Wallpaper with an opulent, oppressive purple velvet sheen.

A ballroom touched by a golden grift, untouched by dust.

The Lim’s private residence.

---

I made my way slowly through the gilded ballroom, its grandeur overwhelming my breath.

Each chair. Each chandelier. Each polished floorboard.

Raised a question.

How many girls paid for this?

Splendour. Not splendiforous.

But purchased.

Every ornament bore unseen fingerprints.

Every item, an exchange for comfort.

And at the opposite end of the ballroom, a portrait.

Empty.

Below that, a brass plaque, golden, neatly wiped.

But somehow tainted. Tarnished.

A bold engraving etched firmly.

The girl. Missing. Unidentified.

Nameless.

L14.

---

I stood there for a long while, rooted by fear and realisation.

Then, the click-clack of heels. Not elegant. Ponderous.

A shimmer, to my right, in the hallway.

In a forgotten Chinese cheongsam.

Her mouth rounded in that familiar, silenced gasp.

Almost a scream.

She extends her hands. Not for me. Not for the portrait.

For the brass plaque.

Her fingers trembled as they circled it.

“This was never my name.”

In a flash, I comprehended.

And she nodded, wanly.

Her elegant, well-chiselled face shaped not by beauty, but by sorrow.

The Lims had never wanted or recorded names.

Only inventory.

Faint whispers, coming, in a synchronised chorus, from the portraits around me.

The girls.

Each reclaiming.

Each trying not to fade.

---

L14 slowly lifts the brass plaque.

It comes away, with almost no effort.

Underneath, carved marks nearly undecipherable —

A girl’s name.

The portraits around me started stirring.

And blinking.

Mouths slowly rounding in dreaded gasps.

One.

By.

One —

They whispered. Then their whispers became voices.

Not pleading voices.

Voices that recollected.

Then, L14 smiled.

She hadn’t escaped the Lims, or their arrangements.

But because she had been reclaimed.

The floor beneath my feet shook.

---

Then…

A tap

Tap.

Tap.

The sound of leather shoes clicking across polished marble.

They didn’t belong to any missing girl.

But to someone else.

With a distinguishable male swagger.

The portraits fell silent.

The spectre of the forgotten girl turned.

Her mouth. In a gasp.

---

Mirrors of the Mind  by Michelle Liew is a collection of psychological and supernatural short stories that explore the quiet unease beneath ordinary moments. These are not tales of spectacle, but of subtle fracture — where memory distorts, silence speaks, and the self is not always singular. In these stories, what is unseen often carries the greatest weight, and what lingers is not what is shown, but what is felt.