The Template

Whose voice is it?

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Clara Ng had finally come across what every good scribe feared - Writer's Block. When the pen would not respond. Hours at the table were simply hours in a mental void. 

Walks. The library. The coffee shop. She tried them all. 

She still drew a persistent blank. 

A book or article wasn't going to start that way. 

She turned to every writer's go-to medication  - social media.

Finally, a group that dealt with writing hurdles. Obstacles that only writers would understand. 

Like Writer's  Block. The way they crossed the block was--

Prescriptive. 

The community seemed normal at first. Then, a pattern emerged. The stories started sounding strangely--

Alike. Some word-for-word. Phrase for phrase

Under different names. the same endings. 

Stories wearing similar masks.

She brought it up in the group. The uncanny similarity simply slipped off their shoulders.

"It's what everyone wants."  James practically flung it off his shoulders.

Success was too tempting a lure. So she penned her tale. 

Word for word. Phrase for phrase. Just like the others. 

That night, she submitted her story and fell asleep at her desk. 

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And was back on the challenge website. 

The website seemed an infinite walk into darkness. 

Rows of story pages floated like doors aside

an endless path. Writers wandered their corridors.

Their faces. 

Each face was--

The same. 

Their smiles mirrored each other. Then, they spoke. 

"Excellent work."

"Awesome."

"Great twist."

"Loved the ending."

Each sound lilt for lilt. In sync. Each praise echoed hollowly, like a bot-crafted recording.

She opened one story after another. Each wore the same skin.

Each tome bore the same paragraph, in repeat. 

The characters' dialogue echoed. Plots melded into one another.

She held her pen, trying vainly to write a new story. Vainly.

Because the sentences she typed dissolved. 

As she wrote them. 

In their place were stock phrases she never penned. 

But she accepted the changes -- 

Her stories went viral. 

After all, the website ranked them higher and higher. 

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The website had brought her success--

In an endless loop. 

Of words stolen before she could pen them.

Meanwhile, the writer crowd moved as one body, advancing, faces blank. 

Towards her. 

She banged on the URL to each story, desperate for an exit. 

Finally, a hidden section of the site. 

With thousands of blank, nameless profiles.

Each of these seemed to belong to a writer who had entered a challenge. 

Their names --

Void. 

Tapping on the link to each entry led to an account--

That bore no information. 

She scrolled down each entry to a final message. 

"Originality successfully removed."

She turned around to see the writers surrounding her, each in a black suit and tie. 

The same hairstyles. The same faces. 

In jarring sync, they offered her a choice.

"Continue to write as you do, and remain unseen. Write in our voice, and succeed."

So Clara opened her mouth. 

The words she spoke reached her lips and vanished, one by one. 

And she couldn't recall what she wanted to put down on paper to begin with. 

The writer crowd closed in, chanting--

"We know what readers want. We know what readers want."

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The writer crowd reached for her, their frenzied hands searching for hers. 

She rounded her mouth in a hollow scream.

No. Sound. At. All.

She jolted awake, in welcome relief. 

The challenge piece she was working on stared at her from the screen. 

Still there. The way she wrote it. 

She looked around.

At thousands of desks, with writers typing. 

An infinite stretch of rows. 

The same story. Frantically. At breakneck speed.

In fearful, synced silence.  

Their monitors bore words in large caps. 

"Content approved."

Her nightmare hadn't disappeared---

It had merely taken on a new form.

She looked quickly at her own screen. 

Her story was already written. 

Approved. 

With her name beneath. 

Her voice and self ---

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For Vocal's Out of The Dream 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.