The Dressmaker’s Curse

“You know they have machines for that, Irene,” she mimicked in a high pitch voice after checking Laura was out of ear shot. “Oh help me Irene! Help me!”

“You know complaining behind her back won’t change anything.” her daughter sighed, sipping at her tea, eyes never straying from the papers she was marking.

“Yes but it makes me feel better. Katherine, honey you have to stop putting sugar in your tea, it’s making your face break out again.” 

Katherine nodded like she agreed but Irene knew she had stopped listening, giving her permission to complain more.

“Honestly, if she had come to me when I had offered, or a week ago, or even a few days ago I might have done something with this but now, with one day?” she waved the soft, silky, snow-white fabric hopelessly. “With the design she wants, and the time I have, I’d need four more hands”

“And two more mouths to complain with”

“And is she thankful? No! Do you know, she saw me prick my finger earlier and she actually had the nerve to suggest I’d smeared blood on the dress. Said I was trying to ruin her day because I was jealous. Then, when I suggested she go with a simpler pattern after that designer fellow, what’s his name, Gato or something”

“Garro”

“Whatever, when I told her I couldn’t do it, she ran to your uncle Antony and told him the whole event was in shambles and she couldn’t go through with the wedding. Seriously! Such a drama queen.”

“You know I was there for all of that, right?”

“Yes well you do not seem to be nearly upset enough about it.”

“I’m a teacher. If I was upset every time someone disappointed me I’d be a bigger nutcase than you.”

“Why are you still marking with pen and paper like that by the way? Where’s that enchanted pen I gave you last christmas?”

“You refuse to use a sewing machine, I prefer my mundane red pen. I have to read their work thoroughly to get to know the students.”

“You’d sell your soul to that place if they gave you free food.”

“I wouldn’t settle for anything less than free food and coffee.”

“And that’s another thing. He’s marrying her without even an ounce of knowledge as to how she is going to react the first time he drops his coffee cup and it levitates on instinct.”

“He hasn’t practiced magic in five years, mom. He’s not going to start up again any time soon.”

“That doesn’t mean he won’t change his mind. Some people are still incredibly prejudiced you know, and considering the fuss she put up about the berry red thread as opposed to ruby, I wouldn’t put it past her to be just such a person. I just don’t know what he sees in her, honestly. Yet, it’s all too obvious what she sees in him. It’s clear as day that she’s marrying him for the money, yet here I am, sewing this all in one night, free of charge, just to be squawked at repeatedly.”

“People who squawk too much truly are the worst” Katherine’s sarcasm did not require her to look away from her papers still. Her tone said plenty. “Why not just say no to her?”

“I’d never hear the end of it. Seriously, I’d either need to live with her flapping fish lips in my ears forever, or cut poor Antony out of our lives.”

“And considering he owns the shop, the latter would be problematic.”

“Oh hush! You know better. Blood of the coven is thicker than the water of the womb and, whether he wants to admit it or not, he is both to us. What’s the matter?” 

Katherine had pulled a rather displeased face with her mug halfway to her mouth 

“Plagiarism.” she cursed.

“Oh. I’m sorry, dear. Online?”

“No, off of each other.”

“That’s the worst.”

“What’s the worst? Nothing’s wrong is it?” Laura dramatically flounced back in the back door of the shop, her auburn curls bouncing, and her face the picture of rehearsed despair.

“Children .” Katherine muttered.

“Oh aren’t they wonderful. I cannot wait to have some of my own. Antony and I have already discussed it. We want one boy and one girl. The boy will be named Seth and as soon as he is old enough we’ll enroll him in karate. I want him to learn how to be firm, but noble. I can already imagine his trophy case. And Star, that will be our girl, will master the violin by age 11 with any luck.”

“Why didn’t I think of any of that with you? It may have made you so much more tolerable.” Irene peered at Katherine who shrugged, clearly not wanting to get invested in the conversation. 

“Oh you mustn’t blame yourself, Irene. After all, Anny and I have time and finances to plan for these sorts of things. With your rather, well, unexpected situation that you had, it was a much different experience, and you did well considering the resources you had to work with.”

Katherine peered over the plagiarized paper, shot Laura a look, but said nothing. Laura seemed to not have noticed.

“Anyway, the first step in my plan is my wedding and already everything is going horrifically wrong. I just spoke to the venue and they are two chairs short! Two! They had others in storage but they were faded. How do they expect the photos to turn out with two chairs looking completely different from the others? Anyway, Anny, being the hero that he is, fixed it and ordered chair covers for the lot of them, so if you don’t mind, the two of you will have to help put them on tomorrow morning.”

“I might still be working on the dress then.” Irene excused herself from the task, but then realized her mistake by the rare and shocking silence that ensued. Laura stared at her with her fish lips agape.

“B-but you said you’d work on it all night!”

“And I will, but the design you want is very complex, like I said.”

Katherine piled up her papers and carried them out to the front of the shop in an attempt to work in peace.

“How can one dress take you so long? You own a dress shop for goodness sake! And what is that?” she jabbed her finger at the stitchwork “that flower petal looks like a thumb. If you’d bought an embroidery machine, like I’d told you to, you’d have finished by now and all the flowers would look like flowers and not some old woman’s thumb.”

“I’m not done that petal yet. It will match the others soon.”

“How long does it take for you to do one petal.”

“A little bit longer than it takes for me to stitch a thumb.”

“Really? Because you seemed to be stitching into your own thumb earlier just fine. Did you manage to get that blood out yet?”

“There was no blood, Laura. It will be fine.”

“How can it be fine? I told everyone I was going to have an original Garro and instead, on my special day, I’m going to have a bloodstained old woman dress like something from a horror film.”

Irene’s hands shook as she resisted the urge to stuff the fabric between Laura’s flying fish lips.

“It will be done by 8am tomorrow with plenty of time to do any modifications you might want after you try it on. I promise. And look, see,” she finished a few more stitches, “a perfect flower petal.”

“I hope so. My heart really can’t take anymore of this, Irene.”

With those parting words, and great relief to Irene, Laura let herself out the backdoor, fanning herself with her hand like she may faint at any moment. 

Once she knew the door had shut tight, Irene shouted up to Katherine at the front of the shop, “I’m going to curse her!”

“You always say you’ll curse people but you never do.” Katherine shouted back.

Irene narrowed her eyes at the needle in her hand. What if, just this once, she went through with it?

It was so quick and easy. It only took a minute to stitch the small sigil, and it blended in perfectly with the rest of the design. As quietly as possible, she went over to the storage cupboard, shifted past the jars of needles and bobbins that she really should organize better sometime, and felt around for the small button that unlatched the hidden drawer in the back. The joys of antique furniture; people were better at keeping secrets back then. Of course they had to, what with persecution, firing squads, genocides, etc. All good reasons to keep your supplies hidden well. Now she did it just because it felt right, like that is where her herbs and crystals belonged. Herbs, crystals, and a little bottle of something-something that she very rarely had to use but kept it around for special occasions like this. She reached into the back, careful not to topple anything over as she drew out the small vial of ancestral blood. 

It was an old trick she’d picked up from her mother. Your own blood could easily be traced with today’s technology, but no one kept efficient records of the dead. Her great grandmother’s blood had been passed down for generations and it worked just as strongly for these types of spells as it would if Irene used her own blood. Far less messy too, she thought, and she used the dropper to very carefully apply the blood just along the stitches forming the sigil. Easy. Thank goodness Laura had chosen such a conveniently dark red for her embroidery. The blood wasn’t even noticeable, and Irene took great joy in the fact that now, technically, she had bled on this god forsaken dress. Now her personal touch was done until it came time for her to say the incantation. A few words would activate the curse which, she told herself, she probably would never say. No matter, it felt good knowing she could, if she wanted to. That thought, along with a box of shortbread biscuits, carried her through the rest of the night’s tedious task of repetitive stitching and stinging eyes.

 ***

The wedding really was elegant and, to no one’s surprise, quite expensive seeming. No matter, Irene was content with her cake in the end and the various compliments she heard about hers, Katherine’s, and Laura’s dresses. A good number of Laura’s friends seemed to be young, and definitely the marrying-rich type, so in the end, Irene decided the night’s work had been well worth it for the publicity and future business prosperity it could bring. The dress really was one of her best pieces, curse mark aside. She made a note to ask Laura, as sweetly as possible, to use one of the wedding photos for her shop’s website later.

Of course this line of thought went down the drain when she overheard Laura exclaim to a rather large, red-hatted woman, “Why thank you! It’s an original Garro.”

Irene saw red, and it wasn’t just because of that awful hat. How dare she! After working all night! After dealing with her hysterics? Not even giving due credit? How dare she!

Special day be damned, Irene cursed as she marched up to Laura.

“A word, dear sister.”

She didn’t give Laura a chance to protest, grabbing her firmly by the elbow and tugging her off her skinny, spiked heels so that she stumbled off to the side for their much needed, private conversation.

“Careful! This fabric wasn’t cheap, you know!” Laura proclaimed.

“I know! Because I made that dress.”

“Oh I know and everyone simply adores it. My skin tone really suits the shade, doesn’t it?”

Irene could feel her blood boiling, but from across the room Katherine made eye contact with her and Irene knew she was going to have to change tactics. Patience was never her strongest asset, but she knew one tactic that usually worked with customers as dense as Laura: flattery.

“It’s simply stunning on you. Really it was like you and that dress were made for each other. However, you see Laura, I am so impressed by all the wealthy, beautiful friends you have.”

“Of course. Beautiful people tend to find one another. Your brother understands that.”

“Yes. I suppose that makes sense. What I mean is though, if you were to tell people I made the dress, it could really help out my business.”

“Oh, you mustn’t go around telling people that! They’ll think you’ve gone mad. This is clearly, without a doubt, an original Garro. Something like this could never be bought in a shop.”

“No, you didn’t buy it, but it was from my shop.”

“Listen, Irene, I am sorry you are reliant on that dusty old closet of yours to make ends meet, but those are the consequences of your choices. You cannot expect me to take the blame for your situation, nor can you expect me to slander my name, or your brother’s name for that matter, just to save your little hobby shop. It’s bad enough you have a crowbar in poor Antony’s wallet, pretending you know what you’re doing. You can’t guilt trip me.”

“I make my living just fine. And if not for that shop, you would have gone to your wedding in your skivvies.”

“Please contain your hysterics, Irene. I will not have such a vulgar display on my wedding day. Look, I understand you’ve made mistakes in the past, and I commend you for making do, but take my advice, drop the shop and get a man. With Katherine moved out now, they needn’t know your blighted history and you can finally have some real money.”

“Laura, that’s not how the world works for normal people” Irene sighed and rubbed her temple, trying to figure out if there was any way of getting what she wanted from this conversation still or if she should just walk away. Did Antony even know she made the dress? Most likely not. 

“Don’t worry, Irene. You’re not that old! I’m sure you can find a man with a reasonable income and then all your problems will be solved.”

Irene opened her mouth to argue again but Laura cut her off, “trust me, it’s worked for me, hasn’t it?”  

With that Laura walked away to speak to a gaggle of young ladies surrounding the red-hatted woman.

There it was then, Irene thought. Laura had outright admitted it. She’d married Antony for his money. Laura thought Katherine was a mistake. Laura was not going to give credit where credit was due. Laura was the worst.

“Labia Piscis” the spell was muttered under her breath before she could give herself time to overthink herself out of it. She’d never actually done a curse before. A strange shiver of excitement ran down her spine but it left an uneasy pit of discomfort in her gut. She ignored it and turned to grab herself a drink from the table by her. As the feeling dissipated she was greeted with a satisfying shriek behind her.

Spinning around in mock surprise, the scene laid out before her was more satisfying that she had anticipated. The cry had come from the red-hatted woman who had fully been knocked off her feet by the large, flapping extensions that had suddenly sprung from Laura’s face. Her eyes full of terror and confusion, Laura continuously flailed her giant fish lips about, shouting in a horrific sounding gurgle. No comprehensible sounds could escape. 

The room stood in a stupor for a moment. All Irene had to do was stare and not let herself really see. If she saw the hands waving and bright pink waggle of Laura’s warped mouth, she’d be lost to a fit of laughter.

Then the shouting started.

“Somebody call the police!”

“Where’s the groom?”

“What’s wrong with her?”

“It must be a spell!”

“Not a spell, a curse!”

Everything became somewhat of a blur after that. Everyone was running about. Some were running to Laura, many were running away. Irene kind of let herself disappear into the crowd, standing off to one corner, watching her brother hold and comfort the awful woman that he let himself believe was his true love. It was pathetic, seeing him like this, but no matter. Without practicing magic, he’d never discover the origin of the curse.

“She could write that you made the dress. Or, if they manage to reverse the effects, she could tell them it was you. Do we run?” Katherine leaned against the wall beside her mother. 

Irene smiled, proud of her. She’d clearly been planning their getaway already.

“No need. It will be an easy corrective spell, which I’ll even offer to do for free. It will save poor Antony a small fortune on medical bills. But first, I’ll remind her that her dress was made by Garro. I’m sure she wouldn’t want to change that story now. We’ll meet them at the hospital once things have settled”

“You lasted longer than I thought you would. If you hadn’t done it, I would have.”

“You saw the mark?”

“Clear as day.”

The cops had taken control of the scene by now. They’d brought in a special agent who’d recognized the stitchmark curse immediately too. The chorus ran through the questioned crowd. “It was a Garro.” 

“An original Garro, no doubt.”

“Must have been a mistake with the machine.”

“You can’t trust those machines, you know.”

“Crazier things have happened.”

“Same thing happened to my cousin’s friend out west!”

“Blasted machines!”