After years of gathering dust, the old tailor’s shop reopened.
The new seamstress was a quiet woman, her face calm, her words measured.
She was skilled, her hands steady and precise. It wasn’t long before the townsfolk grew comfortable with her presence.
They brought her their mended coats, their torn skirts, their worn trousers. Her small shop buzzed with the rhythm of her sewing machine, a sound that soon became as familiar as the tolling of the church bell.
When the townsfolk began to fall ill, no one thought to blame the seamstress.
When the first deaths came, they turned to her for the shrouds. She sewed their funeral clothes with the same meticulous care she had given their everyday garments.
As the weeks passed, the town emptied.
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Homes stood silent, shutters drawn. Streets echoed with the cries of mourning.
The seamstress never left her machine. Her needle danced through black and white fabric, stitching grief into every thread.
She sat and watched them grieve, the mourners in their dark garments—garments she had made.
Her mind wandered to another time, another place.
She remembered her mother, bent over a sewing machine much like this one, her fingers trembling with exhaustion.
She remembered her baby brother, his cries growing weaker as hunger hollowed him out.
And she remembered the day the townsfolk had come, how they’d driven them out with curses and stones, her mother clutching her sewing machine as if it could shield them.
They had wandered the roads, starving and shivering, until her mother collapsed. Until her brother stopped crying.
The seamstress blinked, her focus returning to the present. She picked up her scissors and cut another length of fabric.
The sewing machine hummed again as she began stitching a new dress.
Outside, the town was silent, its streets empty.
The seamstress smiled faintly. It had taken years, but she had finally finished her mother’s work.