Monday, December 12, 2016

The Missing Flip-flop (失踪的拖鞋)


Clara was a university lecturer from Taiwan teaching in a public university in Pennsylvania, US many years ago and she was a faithful Buddhist too. She said that the house she rented while she was in Pennsylvania was pretty much haunted.

One night while she was reviewing her students’ dissertations in her bed, she heard someone called her name. Without any doubt or hesitation, she casually acknowledged the call as she thought it might be one of her friends. Although afterwards Clara realised that she was staying alone in her house and there was no housemate whatsoever. After she searched around her room, Clara found nothing around but a gust of cold breeze was blowing towards her. Being a learnt scholar as she touted herself, Clara paid no attention to the incident. She then tugged away the dissertations and switched off the light and sleep.

The next morning, Clara woke up and after taking some lazy stretches on her back; she lowered her head to search for her flip-flops. To her surprised and bewilderment, Clara could only find one flip-flop beside her bed and the other one was nowhere to be seen or found. Clara remembered that it was her custom to park her flip-flops nicely by her bed every night so much so that this has become her routine. Being a person who paid particular attention to every details, Clara scrutinized her routine last night from the time she came out from bathroom to the time she went to bed and she was damn sure that she had not made any mistakes in displacing one of her flip-flops, she kept asking herself where could the other slipper be?

There was no logical explanation as there is only one bed in Clara’s almost empty room. Determined to find out whereabouts of her the other missing flip-flop, Clara started to search high and low within her bedroom but nothing could be found and Clara kept murmuring to herself: “There must be a logical explanation to this… a flip-flop cannot disappear without a logical explanation… why is it that the other flip-flop remains as where it is?”

About two weeks later, Clara’s friend Joanne came to visit her and Joanne was also a lecturer from Taiwan. Both of the ladies were good friends and they used to sleep together during their school time. So, this time; Clara invited Joanne to sleep in her bedroom so that they could have an all night’s chat to catch up their old times.

At one point, Joanne told Clara her strange encounters with spiritual world. According to Joanne: “Please don’t acknowledge any voices calling your name at night wherever you may be or very bad consequences may happened! I once responded a voice called my name when I was on a scooter one evening and guess what? The next morning, my scooter rammed into a big tree and I was hospitalised for one whole month!”

Hearing Joanne’s words, Clara giggled and then laughed out loud. She made fun of Joanne: “Come on man, you call yourself a senior lecturer believing in those old grandma’s story? I heard someone called my name but I only lost one flip-flop! Ha! Ha! Ha!”

Just as both highly educated lady lecturers were laughing out loud, suddenly a disembodied voice was heard in the air: “CLARA!”

Almost instinctively, Clara replied: “Yes! Who’s calling?”

As soon as Clara acknowledged the call, suddenly a flip-flop dropped in front of Clara; in between Clara and Joanne! There was an immediate moment of silent, and both ladies looked at the flip-flop. It was Clara’s missing one alright. Then, both Clara and Joanne started to yelled hysterically and rushed out of the house in the middle of the night, in the middle of the winter.

As I was told by Clara later, they squatted in Joanne’s car for the night and eventually rescued by her neighbour. Since then, Clara vowed that she would not enter her house alone again.

No comments:

Post a Comment