At 8:30 p.m., August twentieth, ‘10,
An old man named Jong took a walk once again.
Through New Taipei’s streets, he strolled in the night,
Returning to his daughter’s place, warm and bright.
Outside stood a lamp with a poster displayed,
A missing woman’s picture, her smile had decayed.
Her name was Chen Yanqui, from the very same place,
A patient with dementia, now gone without trace.
A week she’d been missing, her kin filled with dread,
The police and her neighbors searched where she had tread.
Jong gazed at her photo, committing her face,
In hopes he might help bring her back to her space.
He sighed, then moved on, and inside he would glide,
To the elevator waiting to lift him inside.
He pressed for the seventh, but by accident pressed six,
The car slowed to halt, a small button-mistake mix.
“No matter,” thought Jong, “it will open, then close,
And rise one floor higher, as everyone knows.”
But when those doors parted, he froze at the sight,
And a scream from his throat shattered silence of night.
His daughter at work got a call full of fear,
Her father was yelling, “I’m trapped! I can’t steer!”
She phoned for the staff, then she raced to the scene,
Expecting by then he’d be safe and serene.
But police filled the lobby, still trying their best,
Her father hysterical, refusing their quest.
The officers whispered, “He must move what’s inside,
But panic consumes him, and fear will not hide.”
Confused, she demanded, “What thing must be done?”
They told her, and instantly horror had won.
She took up the phone, begged her father with care,
“Please, Papa, be strong, you must move her from there.”
And minutes passed slowly, till ding! filled the hall,
The doors slid apart, Jong stumbled, near fall.
Disheveled and shaken, he burst out in fright,
While police rushed inside to confront the grim sight.
For there lay poor Chen, the woman once gone,
Trapped five endless days in a cruel, narrow dawn.
She’d pressed the wrong floor, stepped off unaware,
And found a locked gate, with no one else there.
The doors had closed tight, her voice went unheard,
Each plea in the silence like wings of a bird.
The resident gone, on vacation away,
Left Chen in that prison with no food to stay.
For five starving nights she endured in despair,
Till death claimed her soul in that tight, airless lair.
And when Jong arrived, doors revealed her remains,
Her body fell backward, stiff, locked in her pains.
Pinned under her weight, he had screamed in dismay,
Her form blocked the doors, there was no other way.
At last with his daughter’s firm words on the line,
He pushed her aside, though the act felt malign.
The police took control, laid her gently with care,
But grief filled the building, a ghost in the air.
Though law spared the owner, no crime could they prove,
He paid out in silver for a death he helped move.
So Chen’s tale was written in sorrow and stone,
A woman who wandered, but died all alone.
And Jong would remember that night evermore,
The day fate had stopped on the sixth elevator floor.