The Inverted Stairs
Some houses remember every name they were taught to forget.
The path to freedom begins where reason ends.
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The Lim's Victorian home was opulent. Victorian balustrades. Overstated balconies. Ornate doors. Untamed Bougainvillaea on its walls.
A cookie-cutter Victorian home.
But different.
Its staircase.
The spiralling feature was -
Inverted.
From the smallest to the largest stair, upstairs down.
It wound, like a little finger, crooked and beckoning, a forbidding picture of cold stone marble.
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The whimsical construction led homeowners to the multi-tiered home's shadowed landings.
Landings where one could discern echoes of "You!" "You!"
Each was an exact mirror of the last, and refused to end.
Memories of the homeowners, encased in wall portraits that watched from the hallways. Familiar thoughts that became-
Unknown.
Their names floated away, together with distant shadows.
Silence anchored each footfall.
Ominous.
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Reality folded in on itself in each of the home's endless, elongated corridors, each too dark to discern.
The Lims had been a successful family of traders.
Professional traders. Of what they shouldn't.
The corridors echoed what they had traded, with submission.
Each with aplomb and gentle force.
On each, a precious belonging. Gone cruelly unnoticed.
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The staircase. From the largest to the smallest stair. Leading to a landing where the traded could escape.
By speaking a name.
Their names.
Names for freedom.
Many tried. Success had neared; the portentous, winding staircase and corridors bore endless places where they could hide.
Freedom that encased them in each of their portraits in the corridors.
Behind shut and bolted doors on landings.
They never really left.
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Original story by Michelle Liew Tsui-Lin. AI tags are coincidental.
Mikeydred's June challenge
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.
About the Creator
Michelle Liew Tsui-Lin
Hi, i am an English Language teacher cum freelance writer with a taste for pets, prose and poetry. When I'm not writing my heart out, I'm playing with my three dogs, Zorra, Cloudy and Snowball.
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