The Quilt

The moment my grandmother passed away, her quilt possessed the unique ability to stitch small portraits of its own accord. A week later, without fail, the portrait’s muse would appear on the evening news, slain in the most mysterious of circumstances.

The quilt never manifested the hows and whys of the muse’s demise, it just moved on to its next victim. As troubled as my family and I were by this macabre phenomena, getting rid of it was not an option, for we feared the retribution that could befall us. Thankfully, no one else knew about the mystifying quilt, so we made a vow never to tell another living soul and left the quilt to its own devices.

Eager to find out who was next on Death’s list, my sister and I would stare at the quilt for hours, watching the faces slowly appear, as if invisible hands were busy stitching away. At first, it was fascinating to watch, but the attraction quickly dwindled and we began to ignore it; normality resumed.

For years and years, the untouched quilt lay on my grandmother’s bed while those ghostly seamstresses maintained their unrepentant foreboding. Then, without reason, my sister went missing.

Days passed with no news, so my parents and I bravely searched for my sister’s face on the quilt, but to our relief, we never stumbled upon her portrait. It was a promising sign she was still out there and alive, nevertheless, the days continued without an answer to her disappearance.

“Perhaps there’s something wrong with the quilt,” I overheard my father say to my mother one evening.

"Let’s just keep looking and remain hopeful,” she had replied, and that’s exactly what we did, however, there’s only so long one can “remain hopeful”.

Like a boat with a slow leak, reality sank.

Unable to endure the constant reminder of my missing sister and the torturous sound of the seamstresses’ needles, I grabbed my father’s lighter and took the quilt into the backyard, placing it on the grass. Flicking the lighter, I lit the quilt. The fabric erupted ablaze as though it had been soaked in kerosene. The smoke from the quilt began to release the smell of burning, human flesh which worked its way into my lungs; leaving a foul, gamey taste at the back of the throat. Coughing and sputtering, I was turning away when I noticed it. There, on the corner of the quilt, the ghostly seamstress was sewing their final creation. As they worked, the fire began to eat the portrait to its side and to my shock, I recognized the image... it was my sister.

How could we have missed it? How long had the stitch been there? How do I tell my parents that their daughter is dead? Hundreds of questions fluttered around my head as I watch my sister’s print burn. Then the seamstress suddenly stopped; having finished sewing their last stitch. Snapping out of my grief filled trance, and before the fire consumed the last corner of the quilt, I caught a glimpse of the final portrait, and it was… YOU!