All editors have certain biases either against or for certain types of stories. Children or teenagers can make a tale painfully annoying or . . . utterly creepy. Peter Salomon achieves the latter with his subtle narrative about a young woman and her worn-out apparel.
Victoria ran fingers down her dress to smooth out the wrinkles. It didn’t help. Never did. The fabric wrinkled right back up. The lace curled, a little yellow, but mostly white. Squeezing the edges between her fingers to keep it together, a string ripped free, caught the breeze, and disappeared. Another. She lunged after, trying to save it, but fell short, unable to move as quickly as the wind.
Time for a new dress. Past time. Too little time. Papa told her the rules, repeated them until she knew them by heart. The rules were all she had of him now. The rules and the dress, fraying and wrinkled and wasting away. Like her, disappearing in the wind with every thread.
“When the dress begins to fray,” Papa said, his hands working the loom with an artist’s touch.
“I know, Papa,” Victoria said, though she hadn’t been Victoria then. She’d been someone else, she knew, but the memories were fading, fraying, disappearing with the threads she couldn’t catch. “Only touch the next dress to wear.”
Papa smiled. Papa always smiled. Then he turned back to the loom. “When the dress begins to fade?”
“Touch wrong and kill the love so dear.”
“When the dress begins to fray?”
“Forget the memories with every tear,” she said.
“When the dress begins to fade?” he asked, stopping his work long enough to look at her, the smile forgotten.
“Lose the dress and disappear.”
Time and sunlight had bleached the fabric, threadbare at the elbows and knees. It hadn’t faded for years, at least not before Mama died. Or did Papa die first? The memories were hazy, the details lost.
She remembered being able to remember. When the dress was new. At least she thought she remembered the dress being new, learning the rules. She remembered the rules. But even they were fading.
Victoria took a deep breath, trying to remember who’d taught them to her. Was it Papa? Someone taller? Shorter? Was Papa short? Papa was tall, taller than her. Wasn’t he?
Didn’t matter any longer. The dress was the dress; it was the only one she owned, though she couldn’t remember buying it. A gift, perhaps. Was it ever new? Was she ever new? Papa would know. Wouldn’t he?
“When the dress begins to fray,” Victoria said, watching another thread fly away. The first hint of the sun fell across her face and she knocked on the door.
“Come in,” a young man said, swinging the door open and then heading back inside. He was older than her, at least a year or two, she liked to believe.
“I’m bored,” she said, walking behind him.
“You’re always bored.”
She pulled at the lace, at the curling edges, hard enough to fray the fabric even more. A strand pulled free, drifted to the ground, and she tried to catch it before it dissolved.
When the dress begins to fray
Only touch the next dress to wear
When the dress begins to fade
Touch wrong and kill the love so dear
When the dress begins to fray
Forget the memories with every tear
When the dress begins to fade
Lose the dress and disappear
The rules. She remembered them. Didn’t she? Those were right; they had to be right. Papa had said, Papa had sewn, Papa had taught her the rules before he died. Each dress forever more, he’d said, would one day fade and fray and disappear. This was the fourth dress. The fifth dress? There’d been the button one and the mistaken one and the first one that Papa had made for her when everyone was afraid to touch her. So many dresses, so many papas.
Another thread drifted away as she walked through the house. “William,” she said, the memory of him coming back from wherever it had momentarily disappeared.
“That’s me.” He never mocked her in her poverty, for having to wear the same dress every day or for forgetting his name every so often.
“Yes,” she said. “It is.” And smiled, for his understanding and the times he’d tried to touch her and she’d run away despite wanting to be touched. Needing him to touch her. But the rules were the rules; she still remembered those, even when everything else was fading away to nothing.
“Where to, today?” William asked.
Victoria shrugged, lost in trying to remember the rules, the dresses, the papas.
“Follow me, then,” he said, reaching out to take her hand.
She pulled back far too quickly, shocked out of her thoughts. Not wanting to touch him. Not now. It was the rule, the only rule she lived by. No touching. Not him. Not yet.
William shrugged and started walking. Down the gravel driveway, oak trees shaded them until they reached the main road. He led her across the street, past a number of houses abandoned after the plant closed, leaving the town to fade away and fray at the edges. Too many had been boarded up, hidden away behind industrial-strength fences.
They took a shortcut through a private garden they’d discovered one quiet afternoon, partially overgrown yet oddly tended in parts; if anyone owned it, they didn’t seem to care when it was invaded by curious teenagers. Finally, at the corner, the sun peeked out from behind the clouds, shining down on a house with people scrambling all over it.
“What’s going on?” Victoria asked.
“I think someone’s actually moving in.”
“Why?”
He pointed to a car sitting in the driveway. “Ask them.”
They watched as a man pulled open the door to help a woman out. She moved slowly, hands cradling her stomach.
“I’m not fat,” she said loud enough to be heard over the men unloading the moving van. “Just pregnant.”
Whatever the man said in return couldn’t be heard as the back door opened.
A teenage girl got out, her blonde hair catching the sun. Victoria shifted behind the tree, hiding from view. Her dress snagged a branch and the thin fabric tore, exposing skin that hadn’t seen the light of the sun in far too long.
Her heart stopped. She held the two pieces together, fingers tightening as she looked at the strands flapping in the breeze, trying to hold the tear together. When the dress begins to fray . . . when the dress begins to fray . . . She held tighter, trying to remember the next line, on the tip of her tongue, slipping away, and then she found it. Only touch the next dress to wear.
“What?” William asked, turning to her. “Did you say something?”
Victoria shook her head, staring back at the girl where she laughed before running around her parents and disappearing inside the house.
William turned to Victoria. “See, something not boring.”
“Fine,” she said, trying to pretend she hadn’t torn the dress, that she hadn’t forgotten the rules. “I’m not quite as bored. Now what?”
He shrugged. “That’s all I had to show you.”
They watched the father help the mother walk inside the house, Victoria staring hard enough to burn the image into memory so she’d never forget. Even though she would. She always did. With every mama and papa. With every dress. “I have to go home,” William said after his stomach growled for the third time.
“Go eat.” She watched him walk away, and then watched the empty place where he’d just been, reaching out her hand to touch the air that had touched him.
Victoria walked around the house until she stood in the shadows with the new family. The mother sat outside beneath an umbrella stuck in the ground to give her shade. A glass of something pink sat on her stomach, balanced on the baby.
Boy, Victoria thought, not knowing why.
“Never touch a baby,” Papa said bent over the loom in the middle of the night, candles flickering to cast away the darkness.
“Why?” she asked. Tiny fingers and toes newborn soft. So touchable.
He slammed his hand down so hard the ratchet wheel broke off and rolled across the room, his face red and splotchy. “Never touch a baby,” he said over and over again as he put the loom back together and continued making her dress.
Papa was angry. Papa was sad, raising her on his own after Mama died. That was the first papa. She remembered him. But the memory was faint and fading. Papa with the brown hair. Papa with the gold hair. Papa with no hair. Papa with the gray hair. Papa with the black hair. Papa with a little hair he combed over in thin rivers. So many memories, so many papas.
The teenage girl came out of her house, all blonde and happy. Her shirt pink and shiny as the sun.
Victoria smoothed her dress out, wrinkles returning as soon as she let go, a few more threads gone with the wind, and watched the girl and the mama and the soon-to-be boy, trying to remember the rules.
When the dress begins to fray
Only touch the next dress
When the dress begins to fade
Touch wrong and kill the love
When the dress begins to fray
Forget the memories
When the dress begins to fade
Lose the dress and disappear
She kept touching her dress, trying to catch the strands before they vanished, holding tighter, the words fading. The rules fading. The dress, the next dress. There had to be a next dress. Always. Papa had taught her the rules. Or was it Mama sewing at her loom? The wind picked up, tearing loose a handful of threads and blowing them away.
William and Victoria sat in a tree, hidden by leaves, and learned the girl’s name the next day, when her mother called her in.
“Chloe!”
And Chloe dropped what she was doing, straightened out another pink shirt that didn’t need straightening, and ran inside.
“She seems nice,” Victoria said.
William nodded, his cheeks flushing red.
“Talk to her,” she said.
He scrambled down the tree and ran back home. She stayed behind, watching Chloe until watching wasn’t enough.
Victoria tried to smooth out the wrinkles. It didn’t help. More threads disappeared.
She knocked, and then clasped her hands behind her back.
“I’m Victoria,” she said to the man who answered the door. “I live up the street.”
“Looking for Chloe?”
Victoria nodded.
He yelled up the stairs then turned back, stretching his hand out to shake. “I’m Mr. Crowe,” he said. “She should be right down.”
Victoria held her hands up, showing him the nails. “Just painted, nice to meet you, though.”
“Teenage girls.” He laughed while shaking his head. “You and Chloe will get along great.” He turned around when she came bouncing down the stairs in blue jeans and a bright pink T-shirt. “This is Victoria.”
“Hi, I’m—”
“Chloe,” Victoria said. “I heard.”
“Want to come in?”
“I was going to see if you wanted to come out, but in is good.”
Chloe turned to her father.
“Go,” he said. “Be back for dinner. You start school tomorrow.”
Victoria straightened her dress out. The plain colors stood out in such stark contrast to the vibrant pinks of Chloe’s shirt.
“I’ve seen you around,” Chloe said, “hanging out with some guy. Figured that was your boyfriend.”
Victoria turned away, staring at the sun through the leaves. “Just a friend,” she said. “Want to meet him?”
Chloe smiled. “Sure.”
The sun was high overhead as they walked, passing one deserted house after another.
“This is it.” Victoria stopped in front of one of the few houses that looked lived in.
“What are we waiting for?”
“William’s a little shy.”
“Will two girls standing outside his house help?” Chloe asked, laughing as she leaned her shoulder into Victoria. Victoria pushed back and the two of them ended up swaying together.
“He’ll think we’re dancing for him.” Victoria stepped away, smoothing out her dress. The collar was fraying and another string fell off, disappearing into the wind. It had been new once. Bright too. Not pink-Chloe bright, but colorful. And clean. And fresh, unworn. Each stitch tight, as though it would last forever.
Victoria reached for Chloe’s hand. Rules were rules, after all. And she needed a next dress.
“He’s shy,” Victoria said. “But you’re going to love him, I just know it.”
Chloe followed along as Victoria tugged her up the porch steps. “Does he know you like him?” she asked, her voice a false whisper, like a spy in a bad movie.
Victoria shook her head so hard another string fell from her dress. She tried to catch it but it was gone too quickly. “Just a friend,” she said. “You’re his type, not me.”
“Hi,” William said when he opened the door.
“This is Chloe,” Victoria said, pushing the other girl forward.
Victoria tried to smooth her dress as Chloe stretched her hand out. They shook.
Victoria sighed.
It was a silent sound, almost a gasp but not quite. She blinked a tear away. How long since she’d cried? Hard to keep track of all the tears after so long without them. Was it Mama who told her “never let him see you cry”? Something about giving away her soul, about letting Papa know he’d caused pain. Better to hide the hurt behind a veil of laughter. Or, better yet, just to hide.
Tears will kill as easily as words. As a knife or gun or rock, if nothing else is close at hand. Tears wound. Sticks and stones and all that.
Another string fell free, the dress one thread lighter now. Victoria bent down, looking along the old wood planks of the porch for the string, but it must have fallen through the cracks.
“School starts tomorrow,” William said. “You going to McKinley?”
Chloe nodded. “How is it?”
He shrugged. “It’s high school. Physics teacher is pretty cool, if you’re into that kind of stuff.”
She laughed, shaking her head. Blonde hair went flying every which way and she pulled it off her face. “I was thinking more like English, maybe drama.”
Victoria remembered school. There were more rules, Papa said. To keep her safe. To keep everyone safe.
The first classroom might have been plain wooden boards, rough, giving splinters every time she brushed against them. There were cinder blocks at one school, gray rectangles towering over her. She’d count them to stave off boredom. In the corners, the blocks were poorly cut to fit and light would filter through. Or was that in the one-room schoolhouse? Each teacher looked like all the rest, the same starched dress that smelled of mothballs and breath that smelled of moths. Dead moths, leaning over her, spraying her name when she dawdled or failed to pay proper attention.
“Yes, ma’am” and “no, ma’am” and the ruler on her knuckles leaving red marks brighter than the sun. The principal so kindly and grasping as his own hand left marks on her bare skin in the quiet of his office, even when she was proper in her appearance and her attitude and her “yes, ma’ams” were all in order. So many principals leaving their marks on her.
Papa would be mad. Papa would be jealous.
So many papas leaving so many marks.
High school was different from those drafty rooms with starched teachers and mouth-breathing principals. No more rulers now. She remembered rulers. But like her dress, those memories were fading. It had been too long since she’d been a child. Too many memories had been written and rewritten on the wrinkles of her dress.
Victoria pulled at the hem, stretching the fabric enough she could almost see her legs through the thinnest spots. Pale skin, shadows barely hidden by fabric as more strings fell to the porch, carried away by the wind before she could snatch them out of the air.
“I should really be getting home,” Chloe said, resting her hand on William’s arm for a brief moment.
Both Victoria and William stared at the contact, William turning red in the late afternoon sun. Victoria sighed again.
“We could walk you home.”
“That’s okay,” Chloe said. “I need to learn my way around.”
“You should ask her out,” Victoria said as they watched her walk away.
“What? No.”
“Seriously. Now, tonight. Don’t let her get to school tomorrow and meet someone else.” She bit her lip, then shook her head. “You’ll only get this one chance, William. Go for it.”
“She’ll say no,” William said, turning away.
Victoria reached her hand out, holding the fingers right above his skin where Chloe-with-no-rules had touched him. It’d be warm, she knew. She remembered that much, the warmth of skin. No touching. Not him. Not yet.
Rule number one. Every rule, the only rule.
She’d broken it once. Touched one of the hims in her life. She’d loved him; she remembered that even though his name was as frayed as her dress. The memory of him just a faint image of a dream. Not even real any longer. If it ever had been real. If any of the fragile memories were real.
So many papas. So many principals. So many hims. Lost to time, frayed strings falling to the earth and fading away like lost memories. There’d been the boy with the long blond hair and the wild eyes and the broken rule. He’d serenade her on the corner, motorcycles idling on the street, filling the air with noxious fumes as he played his guitar and sang for her and passing strangers would fill his case with change.
The songs were full of sadness, longing to hold her, just once, since she’d never let him touch her. Chaste, he named her, and wrote poems for her, to be turned into songs, asking always to allow him the blessing of unbuttoning her dress and finally letting him taste the warmth of her in his arms.
But the rule was the rule was the rule. And touching him would be bad, she knew. The rule was all she had of Papa. All that was left after he was taken away and burned at the stake like Mama.
And now, this boy sang to her on the streets of Haight-Ashbury and offered his song for just a touch.
Victoria shook her head even as she accepted his sacrifice. His skin so warm, soft as he touched her, kissed her. So cold as he died in her arms.
She pulled her hand back, away from William. Unwilling to risk his soul for one simple touch. Not when so much more was finally so close.
“Go,” she said, pointing to where Chloe had turned the corner to head to her house.
And William went, Victoria trailing behind to offer encouragement.
Outside Chloe’s house, Victoria hid behind the familiar tree while William walked to the door. She counted the seconds, knowing he’d never knock.
Victoria smoothed her dress down once more before sprinting up the stairs, running around him to press the doorbell and then racing back to the tree. Hidden by leaves, she tried to catch her breath as one string after another fell to the earth, sinking into the dirt.
The dress was almost white now, no color remaining at all, and for a moment she couldn’t even remember her name.
Long after watching William head home to get ready for his date, Victoria remained in the tree, staring at Chloe’s house while she tried to smooth out the wrinkles in her dress. Every tug straightened out the fabric for less time than the tug before. Each pulled multiple strands free to float on the wind or sink into the dirt. Some were too thin and frayed to even see.
Victoria clutched the air to catch them but they evaded her, seeming to drift on air currents just a little out of reach, disappearing before she ever caught one. Still, she worked on the wrinkles. She pressed down on her collar, trying to get it to stay flat.
She climbed down and walked to the house to ring the bell.
“Hi, Mr. Crowe,” she said, waving so he wouldn’t try to shake her hand.
“Chloe!” he called up the stairs before opening the door wider to let her in.
Victoria squeezed by, holding her dress so not even a fraying string could escape to touch him. Then Chloe was there and Victoria grasped her hand, the skin warm.
She followed the other girl upstairs and into a room so pink it hurt her eyes. It was so Chloe and she loved it more than she knew how to express, knowing how happy she’d be there. There’d been rooms before that were so Victoria or, well, all the prior names that had disappeared to time. But the memory of the rooms remained even if remembering was more difficult every day.
Small and cramped, with a narrow metal bed with a lumpy mattress that squeaked every time Papa sat on it. She’d curl up in a ball, pretend to be asleep, and Papa would leave her alone. Or not. Depending on his mood and how much he’d had to drink or if Mama was home.
That was the Papa with the thinning hair, she remembered now. Another thread slid free from her dress, floating away as it escaped. So many papas. So many squeaking mattresses bumping against the wall as she pretended she wasn’t herself, she was someone else, anyone else. Everyone else.
And she was.
“You heard?” Chloe asked.
“About your date?” Victoria smoothed out her dress. “William told me.”
“Sure you’re okay?”
Victoria smiled. “Depends on whether you let me help pick out your dress or not.”
Chloe laughed. “And if I don’t?”
With a matching laugh, Victoria shrugged. “I’ll have no choice but to tell him you are unworthy due to poor choice in clothing.”
Chloe opened her closet door, pulled out the first shirt she could find and threw it over Victoria. “Well, wouldn’t want that to happen.”
“No, of course not,” Victoria said as she lifted the purple blouse off her head. “Not this.”
“I was thinking—” Chloe turned around holding a sparkling red dress against her. Long blonde hair covered most of the top until she moved it out of the way.
Victoria shook her head. “Much too much,” she said. “Do you have anything that isn’t, well, you?”
“Me?”
“All bubbly and pink and—” Victoria stood next to Chloe studying her closet.
Chloe pushed Victoria out of the way with another laugh, the sound filling the pink room. “What about this?” She twirled around, a pale silver gown far too formal for a summer date, neckline plunging down way too low.
“You want him looking at you,” Victoria said. “Not your dress.” She pressed down on her collar but it popped right back up. Another string fell loose, from the sleeve this time, almost sliding into her palm before falling to the carpet and getting lost in the pile.
So many papas. So many principals. So many rooms. So many hims.
But most of all . . . so many dresses.
She’d lost count with the fading memories. They lasted only so long before needing to be replaced. Fraying over time. There’d been the starched black dress with the matching veil. Was that the first, taking her privacy and solitude so seriously, married to God and Christ? The father was Papa and principal, and her room was cold and austere. Rock walls and a metal pan for unmentionables. Father had been kind. And unkind. In equal measure.
Was there a dress before that dress? A papa before Father? A room before a convent’s cell? A him before him?
The memories were faded away and hard to catch as they escaped. Free, free at last.
Victoria slid the pinks and purples and reds to the side, exposing a rather plain, more traditional sort of dress hung all by itself. It had a simple collar, flat against the shoulders, even if the neckline was more daring than she’d like. The sleeves were longer than she wanted, tired of not feeling the sun on her forearms. Nothing to be done about it. A sturdy hem with no frayed edges to be seen. Not too many buttons.
In the back, the dress would let peek a hint of shoulder blades behind the long blonde hair. It would do. Shorter than she was used to. Not as short as the little thing she’d worn when the boy had sung to her on the street corner. That was scandalously short, exposing far too much of knee and thigh and, if she sat too quickly, even more than that. She’d let him see once, to show she wasn’t chaste, so much as cautious, but in the end it hadn’t mattered. She’d accepted his gift and only remembered the song now in brief snippets that faded like strings escaping on the wind.
She’d sung it once, as they lowered him into the ground, and never again.
Perfect dress. She held it out to Chloe, who shook her head. “My mom bought that,” she said. “I’ve never even tried it on.”
“He’ll love it,” Victoria said. “Trust me; he’ll only have eyes for you.”
Chloe stared at it. “It’s so . . . plain.”
Victoria smiled. “A dress is never plain,” she said. “A dress is the gift wrap.”
“He is so not unwrapping me on a first date.”
“Not that!” Victoria said with a laugh.
“Maybe the second,” Chloe said, taking the dress off its hanger. “I want him looking at me, right?”
“Right.”
“If he hates it, I’ll have no choice but to tell him you are unworthy of him due to poor choice in clothing.” She laughed then pulled the pink shirt off, exposing an equally pink bra. The blue jeans followed and Victoria covered her eyes and spun to face the door.
“Pink bra okay?” Chloe asked.
Victoria shrugged, still not looking.
“You can turn around.”
Long blonde hair hid most of the collar, and most of the cleavage. The dress wasn’t as plain on her as it was on the hanger. It had curves now and flow. Chloe brought it to life and Victoria smiled.
“It’s perfect.”
Chloe ran her hands down the front of the dress, smoothing it out even though it was too new to have any wrinkles. The doorbell rang. Her father called up and she smiled. “Showtime.”
“He’ll love it,” Victoria said as they descended the stairs hand in hand.
Victoria and Mr. Crowe watched William and Chloe walk down the driveway. The moon reflected like fireflies off her blonde hair until they were too far away to see.
“Have a good night,” Mr. Crowe said as he turned to go back inside.
“You too,” she said, and then Victoria hurried after the young couple. She knew William, knew the town. There were only so many places to hang out on the final night of summer vacation.
A first date required some privacy, at least. Victoria counted on it, turning down one street after another until she’d long since lost track of William and Chloe. It didn’t matter. Might actually be better to wait for Chloe to be alone, but there was too great a risk of losing the dress.
She’d done that once too. A brief memory, too short to really count. Caught too late, she’d been stuck in a nightgown that time, all frilly and scandalous. She shivered as the memory faded. Victoria tried to smooth the wrinkles away but the dress tore with the motion, the fabric so fragile it could no longer sustain its own cohesion. Individual stitches were escaping; every step left a trail of thread like breadcrumbs, disappearing in the moonlight.
Time, like memories, was running out, fading away. A risk remained that if she’d chosen wrong, if William failed to bring Chloe to the private garden along the riverbank, she’d never even make it back to Chloe’s house. There might not be enough time or memories or thread for a Plan B.
The garden was covered in leaves, gold and red and yellow. Wild apple trees along the river, stirring her earliest memories, as fragile as the dress. Winter roses had yet to bloom but the garden was inviting nonetheless. It belonged to someone, leaves raked even as more fell to color the paths. But they didn’t know who and no one ever bothered them for walking there.
It was where William had first tried to touch her. She’d barely skirted his fingers in time. Instead, she laughed, batted her lashes to show there was no rejection in backing away. If he’d known the word, he’d surely have called her chaste as well. He’d never known her desperate ache to be touched by him, to show him how well she knew all that would prove her unchaste.
By habit, she started to smooth the wrinkles out, stopping just in time before more of her dress ripped. With each breath, threads floated around her, the very air itself tearing them free. The memories, of all those papas and mamas, and Father and Christ with the dirty feet, and some even older than that. Of songs and boys and dresses and beds, faded away until nothing remained but the yearning to touch William.
To be touched.
The memory of a new dress. A flat collar. A pink bra.
She’d never worn a pink bra.
William and Chloe walked into the garden. Not hand in hand, but close enough to touch shoulders where the path narrowed. Chloe laughed at something and William blushed in the moonlight. Victoria shivered, threads falling to the earth as the dress faded and frayed.
The wind swirled around her, filled with thread. Her fingers shook as she finally caught them, like catching lost memories slipping away. The rules returned to her, every blessed word of them. She whispered them, lost in the shadows of the garden, as she remembered.
When the dress begins to fray
Only touch the next dress to wear
When the dress begins to fade
Touch wrong and kill the love so dear
When the dress begins to fray
Forget the memories with every tear
When the dress begins to fade
Lose the dress and disappear
There were buttons on her dress, forgotten and unused. It had been so long since she’d been naked she couldn’t even remember if she had a bra on underneath. Not that it mattered.
The new one would be pink.
Like Chloe. So pink.
Victoria undid the first button with shaking fingers as she whispered the rules over and over again. The fabric stiff around the buttonhole, only successful because the dress was so threadbare the stitches of the button popped free. The skin beneath was pale and warm where the moon shone upon it for the first time since the days of the song and the broken rule. She’d been so good ever since and this must be her reward.
The loose button went on top of the little pile of threads. Another button. Another.
Memories of pain returned. Of hating this step. Of knowing it had to be done. She always forgot the pain. Blocked it out. Now, she remembered. The choice was pain or death, and she always chose pain; no matter what her name might be, the choice was always the same.
Victoria grabbed the hem of her dress, the edges splitting even as she touched them, and took a deep breath. She began to pull the dress off over her head in one motion.
Inside her shoes, the skin of her toes parted. Big toe first, as it was farthest away. Then the next as bones escaped, scratching against cotton until, free at last, they melted away. Leaving behind nothing but socks steeped in rich red blood.
Unable to stand, she collapsed to the ground. Still, Victoria pulled at the dress. Inch by painful inch, slicing skin and tearing muscles and ripping nerves as though skinning an animal.
The pain never ended as she undressed, willing herself to keep removing the wrinkled, fading dress. The skin of her ankles parted, exposing white bone for just a moment before her insides became outsides and escaped. The skin came free in one long molting whisper, teeth breaking as she bit them against the pain.
The hem reached where her hips would be, attached to her skin as though they were two parts of the same thing. Nothing remained below but a spreading pool of blood as skin and dress were slowly pulled up. The lining of her stomach tore, intestines spilling free and escaping with a sigh until she had no more lungs to sigh with.
The memories of her name disappeared with her heart, dress and skin pulled up and over her head. Her skull bright white in the moonlit shadows before it too dissolved, leaving nothing but a graying pile of brain to be caught by the wind before escaping.
And Victoria was nothing but inside-out skin and dress now.
Free. Free at last.
The pile of skin and dress dissolved until nothing was left but threads upon the air.
She floated on the breeze, close enough to Chloe to smell the perfume she’d sprayed on her neck. Then, as light as air, one thread after another landed, burrowing beneath the smooth pink skin.
Chloe cried out as though caught in a swarm of gnats, before slumping against William for just a moment.
She opened her eyes.
Long blonde hair fell around her shoulders, covering the plain brown dress.
Perfect.
Chloe smiled, smoothing her dress down out of habit. It wasn’t necessary. This dress was new. With a pink bra underneath that William wouldn’t get to see but she’d let him touch. There was so much she’d let him do now.
Soon enough, the dress would fade and fray, and she’d have no choice but to say goodbye. He’d be old, while she’d still be a teenager, in her plain brown dress, with her long blonde hair. Chloe. She’d try to remember her name this time.
A new papa and mama too. They seemed nice. That pink room, she’d be happy there. For a while, at least. Until they noticed one day she never aged. Then they’d have to die too, so she could live just a little longer as Chloe.
For now, though, finally, so long spent watching William, she could finally touch him. Safe until the dress once more began to fray and fade.
Chloe hadn’t planned on being anything but chaste on their first date.
Victoria had no such plans.
William smiled as Chloe kissed him, his fingers clumsy where they tried, in vain, to unbutton enough to reach her skin.
Chloe laughed, placing his hands where she wanted to be touched and pulling him to the ground on top of her.
“You’ll get all dirty,” he said, even as she rolled him over so she was on top.
“Don’t worry,” she said, running her hands down her skin to smooth out the wrinkles. “It’s just a dress.”