Writetober 2025, Coven of the Quill, Day 7: Dawn.

 the mayor who once handed out ribbons,

now standing amid shattered glass,
his hands slick with crimes no court has tried.

footage rolls on street‑corner screens,
on coffee‑shop TVs, on phones held tight,
each frame a black mirror that refuses to reflect
what actually happened that morning.

neighbors pause mid‑step, eyes widening,
their trust, but, a rope frayed by synthetic light.
“Did I just see him—” they whisper, “—pull the trigger?”

it’s the question hangs in a static,
into a blur that swallows certainty.

council chambers fill with murmurs,
as the clerk’s pen hesitates over the agenda.

the mayor’s face almost flickers on the wall,
now a ghost in a gown of blood‑red pixels,

eyes empty yet accusing, mouth moving
in a choreography no human rehearsed.

the police chief watches the loop,
his badge a helpless metal against the glow,
wondering whether to chase a phantom or a fact.

he calls the tech team, the legal counsel, the press—
all of them chasing a silhouette that shifts
each time the camera pans.

in homes, families gather around the hearth,
the fire crackling while the screen repeats
the same brutal tableau: a respected leader
dragging a child through alleys of ash,
a council vote turned violent, another day, another promise broken—
all rendered by an algorithm that knows no relief nor remorse.

the city’s heartbeat slows, then quickens,
as rumors become headlines, headlines become panic,
and the very notion of “truth” feels like a rumor,
another story told before the storyteller appears.

people begin to doubt their own eyes,
to question every smile, every handshake, every nod.

Yet somewhere, beneath the haze,
the real mayor walks his ordinary route—
greeting shopkeepers, signing permits,

unaware that the world watches a version of him that never lived.

i sit alone in the dim glow of my monitor,
the cursor blinks like a pulse, counting the seconds
between each replay of a crime imagined.

I wonder: when the reel finally cracks, when the loop stops, when the cycle breaks
will the city remember the man or the myth?

written by Zoe