Some mysteries refuse to stay buried. Others just bury your slippers.
🧦 🧦 ❓ 🧦 🧦 ❓ 🧦 🧦 🧦
They wait in the hall
Shadows watching, footfalls soft--
A faint jingle sounds.
🧦 🧦 ❓ 🧦 🧦 ❓ 🧦 🧦 🧦
The footfalls quicken
As I reach for my brass key
They follow me out.
🧦 🧦 ❓ 🧦 🧦 ❓ 🧦 🧦 🧦
A missing blue sock.
Meat missing from the pantry.
Panting in the dark.
🧦 🧦 ❓ 🧦 🧦 ❓ 🧦 🧦 🧦
Faint whines from the hall.
My slipper, once new, now chewed.
The waste bin upset.
🧦 🧦 ❓ 🧦 🧦 ❓ 🧦 🧦 🧦
Low growls from the room.
This morning's bacon, laid bare.
Fried morsel, now chewed.
🧦 🧦 ❓ 🧦 🧦 ❓ 🧦 🧦 🧦
A knock on the door.
Postman places the parcel.
Excited scratching.
🧦 🧦 ❓ 🧦 🧦 ❓ 🧦 🧦 🧦
Footfalls still follow.
Soft treading right behind me
They stop where I stood.
🧦 🧦 ❓ 🧦 🧦 ❓ 🧦 🧦 🧦
I turn around slowly
The footfalls pause right behind
Right behind me and --
🧦 🧦 ❓ 🧦 🧦 ❓ 🧦 🧦 🧦
And the collector.
Sitting and wagging his tail.
Emits a soft bark.
🧦 🧦 ❓ 🧦 🧦 ❓ 🧦 🧦 🧦
Original Senryu Chain by Michelle Liew Tsui-Lin. AI tags are coincidental.
For Vocal's Don't Turn Around 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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