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.