Drawtober 2026: Stitched Together
Time: 4:48 p.m., October 31
Snip. Snip. Snip.
The little gold scissors in Amelia’s hands were so even, so regular in their work, that they sounded like a clock telling time. Errant strings and loose ends fell away beneath them.
Snip. Snip. Snip.
She started with the stitches along her thumb, carefully inserting the little blade and cutting away the waxed thread she’d used when last she’d changed her hands. Thumbs, she’d found, were easier to set in on their own rather than with the whole hand. They moved more dexterously that way.
Snip. Snip. Snip.
She was on the wrist stitches now, her old thumb laid aside on the sewing table. Her old Singer sewing machine, well-oiled and dusted, sat quiet as she worked on this last part of her new body. She always had to do the hands last and, ironically, by hand. That was the trouble with sewing yourself together. You needed hands to do it with.
Snip. Snip.
Snip.
Her left hand fell into her lap as she severed the last thread. The stuffing of her arm—fresh white cotton that she’d bought from the mercantile last month—puffed out like the head of a dandelion. She stuffed it back in before picking up her old hand and setting it beside her thumb.
Normally, she wouldn’t have bothered with a whole new body. But this year had been…hard. Not for any particular reason. It was a thousand little things that had built up, like leaves in the gutters. Her favorite pair of scissors broke. Her bicycle had been struck by an automobile and needed to be fixed. Her boyfriend had broken up with her, which should have left her heartbroken but instead left her numb. The world had eaten away at her figuratively.
Well, and also literally. Moth larvae—the bane of every seamstress’s existence—had gotten into her fabric and fiber stash this year. Including her own meticulously crafted body. The experience had left her ragged and full of holes.
If everything went well, though, tonight would be a fresh start. She had spent the past two months clearing out all the moths and larvae from her stash, and in so doing, decided it was time for a new body. Something to show everyone—herself most especially—that the year hadn’t destroyed her.
Her last body had been made of wool. Good, sturdy fiber. A little heavy, perhaps, but pragmatic and straightforward. She’d spent more time making it practical than making it beautiful.
This time, though, she chose silk. Silk for skin and cashmere for hair. Delicate pearl buttons to fasten at her joints. She’d taken her time, crafting every part of herself with the most beautiful fibers she could find. And today, she was finally putting them all together.
Absently, Amelia reached for her new hand. Her fingers met wood instead of silk. She turned.
One hand remained—the right one. Her new left hand was quite gone.
#
After an hour-long search that left her hyperventilating and in tears, Amelia found her missing limb. It was buried in the garden beside the dying sunflowers. She fell to her knees when she found it, drawing it from its grave into her lap. The silk was torn and muddy. The nails, which she had painstakingly embroidered in pale purple thread, were fraying. It was nothing short of ruined.
Sniffling, she glared at Butterscotch. Her dog, a big golden retriever with pleading brown eyes, was covered in dirt. It didn’t take a detective to know what had happened. She remembered Butterscotch pulling at her this morning, trying to drag her outside to play. She had sternly told him no, shooing him out of her sewing room so she could work uninterrupted. Apparently, he’d taken something with him.
She wanted to be angry with him. No, she was angry with him—he knew better than to take things off her sewing table.
She held up the ruined limb, picking at a thread around the half-detached pinky. She had three choices.
Try and repair this before tonight, which was likely impossible and would probably leave her even more upset.
Put back on her old hand, which was very moth-eaten and which she’d just spent a good forty minutes pulling apart.
Use something from an even older body.
In the end, it wasn’t really a choice at all.
#
Amelia’s attic was a labyrinth of half-finished projects and forgotten garments. She hurried past a rack of incomplete bell-bottoms and brushed by an old wedding dress for a wedding that never happened, aiming for a cedar chest in the back corner. It opened with a click.
The cedar had kept the moths out, but her old body smelled musty anyway. This was one she’d worn, what, six or seven years ago? She hadn’t don’t a good job packing it away, and the arms tangled haphazardly around the waist rather than lying neatly across the chest. She’d used a gingham quilting cotton to make it. The contours of the face, which she’d worked so hard on when she first crafted the body, now look deflated rather than soft, an old balloon with all the air gone.
Her new nose wrinkled as she examined her work, skin prickling with the kind of disgust one usually feels for toenail clippings or clumps of hair in the drain. A thing once part of her but no longer. She considered letting the trunk lid fall shut. She didn’t need both hands that badly. Many people functioned just fine with only one or none at all.
But what will people think, a soft voice whispered in the back of her head, when they see how unfinished you are?
She gripped the lid with her remaining fingers, her silken stomach churning. What would be worse? To be unfinished, or to mismatch? What would make her least ashamed, would chase away the voice in her head that had gnawed at her for years and had gained such a foothold this summer?
The sound of paws on creaky wood made her turn. Butterscotch had made his way up the stairs after her. He trod carefully between the projects, head low and something in his mouth. When he reached her, the big dog sat and let his prize fall to the ground, then looked up at her with imploring eyes.
Amelia bent and picked up the gloves. They were old. The lace of them was yellowed with time, and some parts were a little frayed. But the pattern was beautiful nonetheless—delicate and frothy.
Tears prickled the corners of her glass eyes. In this whole wretched year, Butterscotch had been a bright spot. When her scissors broke, he’d let her cry on him. When her bike was in the shop, he relished the extra walks and made her enjoy them by proxy. When Theodore had broken up with her, he growled and barked him out of the house and then laid in his spot in bed every night, reclaiming it the way only a dog can.
Kneeling, Amelia set the gloves aside and hugged Butterscotch around his big neck. She buried her face in his fur. The dog panted against her and licked at her chin in an apologetic way.
“I’m still mad at you,” she mumbled. But she didn’t let go for a minute longer.
Then, she picked up the gloves and turned back to the body. The gingham hand was imperfectly made, but it was whole. Beneath the lace, perhaps no one would notice the mismatch.
Stashing the lace gloves in her apron, she pulled out her little golden scissors and knelt beside the trunk with determination.
Snip. Snip. Snip.
