Elaine sat in her bower sewing. The
expanse of brilliant green velvet filled her lap and overflowed down
onto the floor, lush and abundant. She trailed a hand over it,
feeling its luxurious softness, running it along the length of the
material until she encountered the smooth wood of the hoop. The
fabric was pulled tight between the two circles, about the width of
both palms. Her fingertips lingered over the raised roughness of the
metallic thread she was using to pick out the pattern of the
embroidery. The bright gold stood out strongly against the green
and, although she held the hoop close to her face so she could see
the fine details of the pattern, balancing it with one hand while she
pushed the needle through the taut fabric with an audible pop with
the other, she knew the brilliant contrast would be striking from
across a room as well. Switching the hoop to her other hand, she
reached under to grab the needle and draw the thread through, the
gold hissing against the velvet. Already, the metallic strands were
starting to unwind at the end, where the thread had been forced
through the eye of the needle, showing the naked cotton core
underneath but the main length of the thread was still whole and, if
she worked carefully, the unraveling would not travel much further up
the strand, to the parts that would show on the finished garment.
Punching the needle back through, she again switched hands and the
cycle repeated.
Already, the neckline and bodice were
stiff with the twining patterns, hounds contorted into impossible
poses, their legs, necks, and tails laced into intricate knots, each
biting the heels of the one before, and she was partway through the
border that edged the first of the two sleeves. At this point, all
that remained was to complete this daunting task, hem the sleeves and
bottom of the skirt, and put a the panel in the back to cover the gap
left by the laces, though this was no small task for the sleeves hung
down past her waist and the hem was pieced to form a full circle,
trailing into a train in the back. She knew the dress blind, inside
and out, could follow its construction in her sleep for she had
pieced it together, not once but three times, first out of cheap
waste fabric to preserve the costly velvet until she had gotten the
fit perfect, then out of the glorious deep green material itself, and
finally, out of a plainer but still rich black silk lining to shield
the velvet from the dirt of her body. She had long since lost count
of the hours she had expended on the gown over the last months,
cutting and sewing the various pieces, binding the lining and
over-gown together, inserting the metal rings for the lacing, and now
the embroidery. But what matter the time when there was little else
she could wile away her long weary days on?
For there was plague in the land, a
creeping doom that poisoned invisibly, leaping undetected from one to
the next and rising to slay suddenly with no sign or warning. Four
times and more the moon had waxed and waned since the dire sickness
had risen. But Elaine knew this only by means of tracking the days
on a calendar. She had not herself seen the moon wax and wane. In
this time of sickness, all those who valued their lives kept isolated
out of fear and so she she was a prisoner of her own four walls, her
own tower. A lady imprisoned in a tower. But no knight could save
her from what kept her penned inside, even if any would, she thought
bitterly, frowning as her gold thread tangled.
The glass of her bower, south-facing
out over the main road and its tree-shaded side path, was her only
limited contact with the outside world and it was not positioned to
allow her to see the moon. She had seen the trees come into leaf,
felt the cold of the glass fade, then be replaced by a ever
increasingly heavy heat, noted the light that came angling through
the window lingered longer and later. But that was all she had to
mark the changing seasons to know, other than her own counting, that,
while she had been confined, winter had changed to spring, and spring
to summer. She had forgotten the smell of soil, the sound of leaves
rustling, the feel of wind on her face. Only when the dark sky hung
low, heavy with rain, could she sometimes see the brief, sharp
flashes of light, hear the thunder crash, penetrating, though
muffled, into her fortress. And then the clouds would open and the
torrents of rain drum on the roof.
It was her wedding dress she sewed.
Her wedding dress she would never wear for her wedding day had
already come and gone while she remained trapped, buried alive,
barred from taking part in the most important day of her life. And
why did she continue to work on it when it was all in vain? Elaine
could not have said, only that she felt she must. It was as if some
ancient curse had possessed her so that she must be sewing, forever
sewing and watching, looking out the window at the world she was no
longer a part of. It was a form of perverse mental torture reminding
her of what she was, spinster, seamstress, needle-worker, old, ugly,
unmarried, maid. Though, in reality, the being ugly had nothing to
do with being old, though it had everything to do with being
unmarried. That was how she had become an old maid as no one had
ever bothered to woo her or court her.
Elaine was startled out of her trance
of sorrow by a low grating rumble as a car came moving along the road
outside. Since the pestilence had come, the flow of traffic had
slowed but never wholly dried up. Likewise with the people passing
on foot. Even at the height of the plague, the dog-walkers had moved
up and down like perfect clockwork, like the crazed dog that came by
twice a day and would charge, yapping its head off, straight up the
tree on her front lawn and have to be dragged down and away by its
leash. Once, there had been the man in a tyrannosaurus costume.
But, for the most part, the walks had stayed empty. Now, all that
had changed. Now, hordes of people poured past, heading for the
nearby beach, in shorts and flip-flops, towels slung over their
shoulders or tied about their waists, screaming children dragging
brightly colored floating noodles or animal shaped inner tubes. One
man had his inflatable kayak balanced on his head, the ends bouncing
up and down vigorously as he went past at a half jog.
Elaine had to turn her face away from
the sight of the happy people, darkness blurring across her sight as
she felt her heart hurt in her chest and the tears well up behind her
eyes but drain away again before they spilled and marred her
precious, useless work. These people no longer cared about the
plague. The call of sun and fun and the crystal blue rippling water
was too much for them. Besides, the word on the internet was that
the pestilence was on the wane. Oh it was not gone yet. The hordes
of beach-goers were rash and unwise and probably causing it to spread
again, like a savage beast, making a final mighty surge before its
death rattle, in which it managed to take many with it. But that was
beside the point for, even if it was not now, that day would come,
when the plague would be gone and the all world go back to normal.
All the rest of the world, for it was too late for Elaine.
And that was what disgusted her the
most about the people outside, how incredibly normal they
seemed. The scene could almost pass for any summer day in any other
year, back before the horrible calamity had fallen, before everything
had been destroyed. Almost. Many, though not all, maybe not even
most, of the people passing by wore masks, the sight of which made
her want to be sick. In addition to the fact that the masks were a
reminder of all that had happened, everything she had lost, the idea
of making herself faceless, expressionless, without individual
identity, revolted Elaine. She had always been socially invisible.
Becoming physically invisible as well was unbearable. And the people
were all acting as if they didn't care at all. The bright colors and
patters on the masks made her gag, a sign that the wearers had
succumbed to the moronic lie that the mask was some form of
“self-expression.” If people actually preferred using masks as a
form of expression, they would have been doing it long before the
plague arrived and so there would have been no need to pass laws
requiring their use.
At least she refused to play those
mind games. She had a mask, actually several, for extreme
emergencies, but she would never wear them for anything less. Deep
in the dank recesses of the basement...dungeon, the dungeon under her
prison tower, she had unearthed a still mostly full box of
construction masks she had bought some ten years before for doing
home renovations. Yes, ten years before she had been a house buying
adult. This lady was growing old and dried up in her tower because
no one had ever thought her worth rescuing. These generic, hardware
store issue were plain white, the bottom half printed in blocky,
faded letter with the default warning about how misuse would result
in death, complete with a crude image of a person with their lungs
being flooded with particles...or plague. The heavy paper of which
they were made allowed little airflow, making the small chamber
inside hot and smothering in a matter of seconds. The rough, stiff
edges of the paper abraded her skin and there was a small metal piece
on top, curved to fit over the bridge of the nose that gouged deep
into the flesh. She had hated the masks ten years ago and she hated
them now. But, in the current situation, masks should be
hated. No one would catch her being weak and pretending they
were anything other than the torture devices they were. It was just
one more facet of the cruel, sadistic joke the fate was playing on
her. Instead of a veil, she got masks.
Though some might make the argument
that she should be glad of an excuse to hide her face. Ugly, ugly,
ugly. She had never been asked. Never asked for her hand in
marriage, never asked to a dance, never even asked on a date. She
was not worth making the effort to ask. More, no one had responded
favorable to her asking. All her life had been spent guilting and
pressuring men to try to get what other women were begged for. In
high-school, no one would ask her to a dance so Elaine had asked,
even though she knew this was a step down because other girls didn't
have to ask. She had asked again and again and it had gotten her
absolutely nowhere. Even when she had found someone who would
acquiesce to be in a relationship with her, he had still refused to
take her to prom. She was fit for sexual satisfaction behind closed
doors but not for something public like that. She had lain on the
floor for hours sobbing, begging until her throat was raw and it had
availed her nothing and she, worthless thing that she was, had given
him her virginity anyway, his only excuse, after it was too late was
“I didn't know how much it meant to you.” After all that, how
could he have not known?
After graduation, she moved on to
adult relationships. Likewise rare, these were the same. They would
move in together, even for years and years, but never marry. While
other women got surprised with romantic proposals, she, burning with
shame, would drop hints, then play up her depression, and, finally,
initiate a direct confrontation. This dance could take years of
advance and retreat, stealth and evasion, crawling a few bare inches
forward at the risk of fiery destruction, like in a WWI trench line,
as the man tried to evade and avoid for as long as possible. When
she, at last, had him cornered, he who should have been trying to
corner her, one of two things would happen. Either he would demure,
usually with some variation on he wasn't ready, but with enough force
so fear that pushing further would jeopardize the relationship, would
cause her to abandon the topic for the next few months, or years and
then, usually when something heart-wrenching happened, like seeing a
bride on a bill-board, or having a cousin announce their engagement,
the whole dance would begin again.
Worse was the alternative, where she
would stand firm and he would eventually grudgingly agree to a
marriage, or at least to “work towards” one. Sometimes there
were even stilted, forced, obviously phony proposals, like the time
her partner had taken her to the top of the local clock tower on the
way back from their anniversary dinner. Elaine had seen it coming a
mile away and when he knelt to her in the sterile, white, empty hall,
filled with discarded, out-of-date computers and fax machines, in
front of a window that would trigger her fear of heights to look out
of, she had to struggle not to show how sick she felt. She always
knew it was fake, done under duress, and he had admitted as much a
few months later, at which point she had to grovel and beg to save
the relationship, bend over backwards for months to please him and,
most importantly, ruthlessly suppress any feelings about marriage for
years. She was still unworthy, unable to inspire another to want
to seek marriage with her, like other women could. And she hated
herself always, knowing that she would never have that feeling now
but if she had had been patient and waited, if she had behaved like a
proper lady, maybe she could have, maybe, some day he would have been
“ready” and been swept up in the need to court her, terrified she
had changed her mind from all the years he had put her off. Even
though it was painfully obvious that she was far too desperate, too
easy, for such a thing to every happen, she still hated herself for
destroying the slimmest of slim chances that it would.
Overcome with despair, she let the
fabric fall back into her lap, one golden dog head gnawing the air
where she had not yet stitched in the leg of its fellow that was
supposed to pass through its jaws. Letting her eyes unfocus, she
gazed out her bower window, seeing the highway near winding past her
front walk. It was empty at the moment in the gray twilight, late
enough in the lingering summer for the growing herd of people who
were back to commuting to work to have returned to their homes
already, the lingering summer she was unable to feel or smell behind
her prison walls. Somehow, the day had slipped away without her
noticing while she had been engrossed in her futile task. Not the
first time it had happened and, doubtless, far from the last. She
picked up her hoop, squinting at the legless dog, but the shapes all
blurred and ran together. In the rapidly fading light, even the
sharp contrast of gold on green was impossible to make out in the
necessary detail to say nothing of the much less vivid pattern
guides. Soon, the moon would be overhead, the moon she was unable to
see. Elaine groped for the light switch and the candle bulbs on the
wrought iron chandelier above sprang to life. She lifted the dress
again and this time, could make out the shapes of her patterns,
sketched on tissue paper. It was not at good as full daylight,
nowhere near, but enough for her to work by.
Time passed. As usual, Elaine could
not be sure how much but the bitten leg as well as the main body of
the beast it was attached to had taken shape when next she became
aware of the dark glass of her window. It was definitely well past
moonrise now though this was rendered obsolete by the soaring
floodlights lining the road. Along the pale corridor of light they
cast, she could see a few scattered forms come walking. All she
could make out were the black outlines, a tall man with a dog, a
hunched form staggering along, clutching a mass of what were probably
grocery bags, and a strange amorphous shape moving slowly that, after
squinting very hard, she realized was two people walking close
together. They lingered along in the lamp light, allowing her to,
just barely make out the smoother, more reflective, surface of skin,
in contrast to hair and clothing. The arm of one reached up around
the shoulder of the other, which, in turn, reached down an arm to
encircle the waist of the first, pressing close, hip to hip, as only
the most trusting or the most foolhardy would ever do now.
Could it be? Yes, a pair of lovers,
so infatuated that, even in the midst of the death and tragedy, they
had eyes only for each other, beating back the darkness with their
own searing flame of pulsing life. Perhaps, they were lately wed,
one of the lucky few who had tied the knot steps ahead of the plague,
achieving consummation in the last innocent days before doom struck.
Or, they were not yet but would be the second they were free, their
shared ordeal driving their passion and devotion beyond the bounds of
what was humanly possible under normal circumstances. And, even as
Elaine watched, too petrified to move, the pair stopped, heads turned
in the darkness, tilting. She could not see clearly but did not have
to to recognize the gesture. They were kissing. Elaine groped for
the light with shaking hands, dousing it. In the darkness, she
trembled, her breath coming in great gasps. Her chest felt tight.
Her heart ached like it was being squeezed, swelling with a pain she
would not let herself fully realize, that struggled to get out, held
tight against her breast bone by the imprisoning muscles. “I'm so
sick of shadows,” she whispered to no one as the silent tears began
to run from her eyes unbidden.
After that, Elaine left her bower,
left the great window where she had spent almost every waking moment
for the last six moons or more. She did not want the people, going
up and down along the highway, to be able to look in through the
glass and see her. She could not bear the thought of them wondering
about her, speculating, guessing, mocking her misery, or telling
themselves not to worry because, when the plague receded, she too
would recover and be alright, just like she was expected to be. A
few times, when she was standing at her casement, trying desperately
to drink in as much sunlight and sight of green as she could from
inside her prison, little as that was, she had seen them look up at
her, though she had been unable to read their faces, quickly making
sure to avoid eye contact. A few times, out of her unfocused
side-eye, she had seen them wave their hand at her, pause a moment,
then turn away and move off abruptly, as if miffed by her failure to
wave back.
So now, she took her great heavy gown,
her hoop, threads, scissors, tissue papers, the patterns she had
printed out and traced, took it all and lugged it up the stairs into
the tower. The window here was smaller and it looked out onto a
parking lot but it was also higher so she could get more light and
air, even see the tops of trees. Well, a tree. Part of the single
tree on the edge of the lot just managed to peek around the edge of
the house so she could see it out the window. But, in any case, she
had privacy. Those people could no longer see her and, more to the
point after what had happened the night before, she could no longer
see them. Watching the steady parade of people, happy, normal
people, or, at least, of people willing and able to put on a front of
happiness and normalcy had been slowly eating away at her for months
but the love-struck couple had been the very last straw.
©Amanda RR Hamlin 2026
