Mystery Hidden in Plain Sight
Avia was an unremarkable neighbourhood — unremarkable.
Save for the pigeons, which continually pecked at unsuspecting feet and blocked breadcrumbs.
One, a grey, nondescript fellow, had an unusual reputation—
He appeared continually outside different homes
That–
Was not unusual in itself.
Perhaps portentous.
But misfortune, as grey as he was, often followed his visits.
The first was a coincidence.
The second, him looking for food.
The pilgrimages increased.
The bird somehow knew.
The bird’s uncanny knack for disaster soon reached the notebook of reporter David Scroll. The journalist decided to spend some time in Avia to satisfy his curiosity. His notebook filled before his belief in its powers of foreboding did.
The pigeon was, at first, just another bird. Landing. Leaving. Landing. Leaving. But catastrophe rode on its wings. David recorded an unfortunate event every time it arrived. The evidence accumulated. His conviction didn’t. The bird’s beak remained closed.
So David decided to do what every good investigative reporter does– investigate. He followed the pigeon as it flew from its nest to different homes.
The sea of possibilities was far too vast. A trained bird. A hidden mastermind. Or pure instinct.
All real yet false.
It decided to land somewhere–
Ordinary.
Regular.
Puzzling.
Each time it landed, it landed somewhere new.
Then, its grey wings carried it into a fast flock of pigeons.
David could no longer see it.
Blending. Hidden. Omniscient.
Its foreboding had vanished into the grey commonplace.
Still plain.
The ordinary had foretold —
That some mysteries remained concealed because they blended in.
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.