the seamstress of room 16

¡Hola! I'm very excited to inform you all that I've started work on a new story. It's inspired by an old manor in Scotland, and its mysterious Room 16. The creative owner had decorated it as a seamstress' room, and while I'm unsure whether or not a seamstress ever actually lived there, it's a great basis for a story. To quote Ursula Le Guin, "truth is a matter of the imagination."

I plan for it to be a shorter-term project, either a short story or novella, since I have several other ideas in the air, am creating a curriculum for a creative writing after-school class, and am still focusing on fine-tuning The Shadow in Her Pocket. I'm really happy with the progress I've made this summer in bettering TSIHP's story and prose. I'm hoping to attend the Writer's Digest Conference again this year, and this time, I'll be infinitely more prepared.

Now to the point. Here's a rough sample of the first short scene of Room 16:

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--I’m dying—Is it blissful?—It’s like a dream--


With Deafheaven screeching through an earbud, Vaishnavi gulped down iced coffee. With the night outside an inky black, and her room crowded with shadows, it was really too late for caffeine, but her will was weak, and tomorrow seemed a distant prospect. A pair of monstrously long suit pants rested in her lap, along with a needle and thread.


Vaishnavi paused. An old, plastic radio nudged in a corner of the room had turned on by itself somehow, and the weatherperson was raving faintly about hail somewhere “the size of pickled onions!”


She stood to turn it off, setting down the pants and her music, but a noise from behind made her jolt.


“You,” said a breathy voice. “You can help me.”


Vaishnavi whirled to see a woman standing behind her, hands gently clasped. A creamy white face and soulful dark eyes stared back at her. Vaishnavi tensed, her heart hammering as quickly as her music had been. She had locked her door; she was sure of it—and she would have heard it open, because it creaked like a cat’s yowl every time you even thought about opening it. The window was still only cracked open enough to welcome the whisper of a breeze, its sheer curtains floating forward as if in slow motion.


“Who are you?” Vaishnavi demanded.


The woman stared back at her intensely. She wore a white dress of soft, draping folds, and her wispy black hair was loosely tucked behind her and puffed up on the top, making her seem blurry and undefined.


In one hand she held a stiff roll of fabric, which she placed onto Vaishnavi’s table. “I need this fixed. Impeccably.” Hand reached into pocket, and shimmering spool was waved in front of Vaishnavi’s face. “Gold thread only. Please.”


“Um,” said Vaishnavi, still stunned. “This is my house. Not my store. My house.” What else was there to say? Objectively, she knew she should do something more about the intruder, but the woman was so uncanny that Vaishnavi wasn’t sure what to do. The woman didn’t really feel real, somehow.


The woman reached out and took Vaishnavi’s hand, and she flinched. The woman’s hand was icy and stiff. A ring—a diamond ring—was pressed into her palm, and the woman closed Vaishnavi’s fingers around it.


“This,” the woman said, emphasizing her ’s’s so her words sounded like a hiss of steam. “This is your reward.”


Vaishnavi just stared at it for a long second, dumbstruck. “I, uh, I’d really prefer PayPal. Or something. Let me get you my business card—”


She turned to rummage through her bag, but when she turned back around, the woman was simply gone. The woman had vanished, as quickly, as quietly as she had appeared.


Vaishnavi absently, gingerly, set down both the business card and the ring. Her eyes darted warily around the room.


The radio had stopped playing.
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