Inside the tailor's workplace, the wind was as bone-dry as a termite dune. But the twelve-year-old boy had no choice - he only had until the next day to get the costume his little sister cut in pieces back. No other noises could be heard, except for the dull sounds the measuring tape makes every time she used it. The tailor stretched her arms past his shoulders. A few seconds later, she wrote 12½ inches on her paper - his neck's cicrumference.
The tailor wore thick eyeglasses that gave her the fish' eyes. Her cracked lips, her sweaty arms, her crocodile-skinned palms, her teeth like rotting graves. She was known to be the best tailor in town. But, gossips about the mysterious disappearances of her customers quickly spread like a virus across barrios. People also said that she always had tons of clothes to sew. But tonight, she unhesitantly flashed him a grinning yes saying she loved emergencies.
Would the hearsays turn out to be true? He would know. He would know any minute from that moment.
His clammy hands clenched into fists, he stood up as she instructed. A sharp zing from an oversized, rusty pair of scissors caught his attention. He swallowed an ounce of his saliva while his eyes were fixed on the wedge.
"What's that for?" he stuttered.
She just chuckled and placed it atop a table. Then, she pulled the measuring tape hanging from her neck and stepped on its one end. Humming the Old McDonald song, she jotted down his head-to-toe height on a separate piece of paper.
His joking words sounded like helpless croaks, "I didn't want overalls, Mrs."
She looked up to him and said, "Dear, this is not overalls. This is a coffin."
YOU ARE READING
The Tailor (Flash Fiction)
Misterio / SuspensoRumors spread across the barrio that some of those who enter her workplace go missing. But will he?
