A Butter-Soaked Tale of Neighbourly Consequences
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The smell of Marigold butter wafted under the nostrils of anyone who passed Auntie Tan’s apartment every Thursday evening, before a storm made an appearance. Thunder resounded, as if heavy furniture was being dragged through her estate. Yet there would be 12 biscuits, rising with beautiful ease from their baking moulds. Except one. It gripped, a persistent thought refusing to leave.
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Auntie Tan tried vainly to get rid of the offending snack. She would throw it down the rubbish chute. It came back. She would throw it again. It would come back.
It always returned.
Each clap of thunder seemed to rouse it. The oven whispered, sounding miffed. It smelled of burnt sugar and faint soil.
The storm was heavier than usual on a fine Thursday night. Until that Thursday, the biscuit never popped out of its mold.
But that day, it rose. The kitchen fell completely silent.
The dough expanded with the sound of a rubber band. Stretched. Ready to snap.
The biscuit drew a breath. Lightning illuminated the kitchen.
And the tray.
Weeks passed. Auntie Tan continued to produce batch after batch of biscuits.
They were never satiated.
Alert residents heard odd whispering coming from the kitchen, the voices an almost buttery cajole.
And the residents answered with more butter so that Auntie Tan could make more of them.
It got to the point that the Town Council issued a decree:
“Residents, please don’t feed the biscuits.”
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Original microfiction 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.
