Fate

Part one: 5th January 2005

Chapter 1 – Lee

Sweat trickled down the side of my flushed, crimson coloured face. My cut fingers violently shake the needle that was between my thumb and index finger. I couldn’t afford to mess this one up. With my other hand, I was holding the sun yellow thread and was trying my hardest to place through the tiny hole at the top of the needle.

My many attempts had failed until now, in one slow and steady movement, the thread guided itself through the small, metal hole and through to the other side. I was feeling over the moon that I managed to do that. The tricky bit after that was going to be the sewing of the garment. A sea blue woman’s top had become unpicked and it was my job to carefully stitch it back together again and make it wearable and desirable.

“Hurry up Lee!” My mum called from the other side of the wall. “The boss is going to be visiting us in a minute or two to check our progress on the top.”

I am stuffed I thought to myself. Quickly, I poked the needle through the material and tried sewing it back to its original state. Speed sewing is going okay, until you make a mistake. I thought I was placed the needle roughly into the material, but it turned out that I missed it and instead caught a rough patch of skin on my slimy palms. My dark red blood had splashed everywhere. I was silently cursing to myself, but that wasn’t going to help me at all. What am I going to do with this now? It was practically useless now.

“Mum, mum!” I shouted through the walls. But no one replied. “Hello, anyone there?” I called again; all I heard though were the footsteps of quality made shoes, which meant that the boss was coming for the top and probably my head now too. The blood that had covered the walls and floors like a blanket had been covered up by leftover, dirty fabric chunks, but there was no way to disguise the damage I had caused to the innocent top. The paced footsteps were becoming louder by the second and making me sweat even more than I already was. The half broken door that I closed earlier was still securely locked, so hopefully it would keep like that.

Then again, I don’t normally have that much hope. The door was being shaken up by someone, who wants to get in and deliberately break down the door. No doubt that that person is the boss. The door knob was loose enough, but now it looks like it can barely keep in place without knocking out of place. The name Lee was being chanted back to me now and it was starting to shrink me down to size. With panic and anxiety, I thought that the factory wouldn’t know about the enlarged stain at the back and I hope this wouldn’t affect my much accepted reward.

“Now coming to the door,” I yelled to the boss. I could tell through the cracks in that door that she isn’t proud or impressed with me. Reluctantly, I reached for the door knob and pulled the door towards my stained clothes. Her bright red lipstick, perfectly groomed hair and expense uniform clearly shows how rich she is compared to her unpaid workers (aka me and the rest of the Muppets that work here). She placed her clipboard gently down on the table and dumped a pen on top of it.

“Well, that took you long enough. I thought I was going to have to wait until freakin’ Christmas before you would get the idea to open the door to me” She spat into my face. I could see the droplets fall from her mouth. It was disgusting.

“Here is the top, you asked me to stitch back up” I said trying to change the subject. She span around to look at the treetop coloured table to find the top laying in the centre. Her coloured eyes look so devilish and it made her look like she is scanning the top and examining it. Behind me, my fingers were crossing and I was secretly praying that she wouldn’t turn it around.

But like I said earlier, I don’t have that much hope.

“What the hell is at the back of this top?!” She screamed. Spitting everywhere like she did when she stormed in. “Are you responsible for this Liam?”