>>5348190>>5348805>>5348813>>5348829You moved in between the two to shade Cass from your sister.
“Forgive her, Mary. Let her have one of your dresses and the rest of the things. Let’s be mature about it.”
“No way!” Mary pushed you aside. She stomped with a wobble to Cass to pick the black hat, and the rest of the clothes Cass sported no interest in, off the ground. “I’m not giving it anything, especially not my favourite Cloche, or my favourite scarf, nor my finest gloves!” The hand she pushed Cass with bounced back; Cass twirled her attention from the mirrors to the dress. “And how do you know that thing is not centuries old? It might had been living in the bogs before Compostela had even been built!”
Perhaps, but unlikely. You took Mary by her shoulder, turning her around.
“Just for one day, Mary. I’ll make sure she won’t damage the dress further."
Mary hit off your hand. She harrumphed, looking at the dress as if to remember the way it was, and every wrinkle that there’ll be, as well as Cass, to spot her head in a gathering of thousands, to find and poison her with lead.
Mary pushed her hat and then walked out, to a mirror not fashioned and occupied by an alien slime.
“You should put your ‘arm’ through here.”
Your fingers jiggled once you touched and held onto Cass. She paused; her attention, and her alien eyes, turned to you. It was not like you knew how to put on a dress, but you assumed you knew what one should look like in one. Thrusting into the fabric, Cass wore the dress in a non-straight non-curveless way it was worn by other gals. You preferred it in that way, you confessed.
*** *** ***
Mary’s taxicab shuddered on the unpaved dirt roads of Compostela’s outskirts, the so-called Corndump. It had stopped raining by the time you left your house and Mary started the engine. The pouring rain did not leave without blood trails, reminders of its visit: sunken marshes and yawning peat hollows laid everywhere. To question to ask was not if one of the wheels would sag into the swamp, but how soon and for how long?
Mary hiccuped, clutching the steering wheel with such force it was as if she was trying to rip it off. The automobile, moving like a heavy clockwork turtle, trudged through and pass the hills and trees concealed by the nightly dark. At first, the engine revved with life, and minutes after, choked and died from too much of it. Mary pushed the pedal as if she was trying to hammer a nail with her boot. Like after a turn of the windup key, the automobile moved on for a brief second. You did not ask Mary if this was the safest way to do it.
