That end-of-year office party. Mabel needed new clothes.
A new skirt in a thrift store.
“It moves with you.” The salesperson grinned.
Mabel donned it. Perfect.
She left the price tag —
She hadn’t ordained it.
New skirt in a bag, Mabel headed for the office party.
She felt a tug.
She dismissed it. Too many passengers.
Then, another tug.
She turned.
Her skirt had become friends with a passenger’s umbrella.
The passenger was about to get off —
He moved towards the doors.
So did Mabel.
They warned with a beep.
Public transport and clothing had created an emergency.
Mabel somehow detached herself from the umbrella and moved through the doors.
To the escalator.
The moving steps.
Her skirt.
The moving steps.
Then —
A long hem.
Attached to the steps —
About to swallow it —
And her.
She gathered her skirt and rode upward, as if crossing a river.
And that created more spectacle.
A child stared —
Through his spectacles.
Lunch, to her immense relief, didn’t involve skirting issues.
She relaxed with a diet coke.
Then, she stood.
With the chair.
She stepped forward.
And the chair followed.
She stepped again.
The chair followed.
Another hem.
The skirt had become her biggest fan.
She disentangled herself under the gaze of a flummoxed waiter.
Finally, the office party.
She had survived.
Then a colleague noticed —
And pointed.
A long hem.
Almost no skirt.
With the price tag — still hanging.
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.
