The crack of thunder was music to her ears as she administered the last stitch to the black knee length dress she was putting together. It was the eighth garment she had to put together in her seven hours of work so far. She was meant to get off work in an hour, but she knew at any moment her boss was going to open the door and ask her to stay back. It happened every day. They were understaffed and losing a new staff member almost every week, putting further strain on the already existing staff members to produce garments faster.

Blair picked the dress up and looked at it. It was perfect. The stitching, the lining, the design. It was everything that was asked for this piece. She was sure the clint would absolutely love. She quickly put a hanger through the neckline and a dress bag over it.

"Hey Valerie, this is ready for Mrs Conners," Blair said as soon as she reached the manager who sat at the front desk, holding a piece of paper in her hand.

Valerie looked up from her sheet of paper, taking her glasses off then tucked her black hair behind her ear. "Wonderful darling. It looks perfect. I'm sure Mrs Conners will absolutely adore this piece. You can hang it over there." She pointed to an empty golden rack by the far wall, down the hall behind the counter.

Blair gave a simple nod and smile before she turned around to follow her bosses request. She had only walked three steps before Valerie called her back.

"Hey sweetheart, do you think you can stay back and help us some more? I don't think these girls will be able to get all these final garments done before we close at 8pm." Valerie had some grey hairs through her black hair, her forehead creased a little.

"Of course. You know I could never say no to helping you ladies out," Blair lied. The truth was she hated this place and she hated staying back to sew garments. She was exhausted and hungry. The only food she had was breakfast. She was meant to have her break, but she never took it due to her extensive workload.

She quickly turned around again and walked towards the rack, hanging it up then returned to her desk and checked the next order. Quitting was an option for her, but she couldn't do that, they needed her. As much as the place smelt bad, she loved her coworkers, even though she often wanted to slap them in the head with her sewing machine. The cracks on one of the white painted exposed brick walls was getting worse by the day and Blair knew no one was going to fix it anytime soon, unless the shop crumbled and killed them all with it. The ceiling needed a new paint job as well. She had sworn the cracked paint fell on herself and her coworkers at one stage when they were working.

Her next order was an elaborate shirt design that used silk and lace. She internally hated these sorts of orders, and it took a lot of time and focus to get it right. Any small mistake or mis stitch could ruin the entire design and make them lose hundreds of dollars in sales. Valerie often gave her the difficult designs as she was the best person to do them. The last time she trusted another girl to do these kinds of garments, the girl butchered it to the point it did not look like a shirt and was completely unwearable.

Blair quickly went to the material room. It was heaven. All the materials were colour coded so it was very pleasing to the eye, and it was quite easy to find what colour or material was needed. She had gone to the white lace towards the back of the room, measured what she needed and cut it. She had done the same for the black silk material and headed back to her desk.

Hours had gone by, and it was only a few minutes to closing time. They had finished all the final garments needed. Valerie locked the front door and pulled the curtains closed then turned to face the ladies who had stood just stood up to leave.

"Before you girls go," Valerie started. "I would like you girls to know that today was the last ever day we open our doors. This is the end of an era."

Blair was confused. She glanced around the room and saw equal confused stares. "What do you mean?"

Valerie sighed and looked around. "We are closing down. If we continue to open our doors, we will continue to lose profit and that wouldn't be fair on your girls especially when the workload increases due to staff lose. It isn't ideal and it hurts me to do this. I have taken the liberty of writing your final checks do please take them before you leave."

Blair didn't know how Valerie could keep a straight face. When she looked around, some of the girls had tears rolling down their faces.

Before Blair left, she took her paycheck from Valerie and left. It had been an emotional thirty minutes and now she didn't know what she was going to do with herself since she had no job now.

When she had gone home, she finally opened the envelope to see her paycheck. Her eyes almost popped out of her head as she saw the amount. It was over ten times the amount she usually got paid. A little over seven hundred thousand was written right there.

–

It had been just over a month since Blair lost her job. She spent a whole 32 hours driving halfway across the country to get to Port Fernsfield. At one point she did stop at a hotel to sleep for the night before she drove again. During the month that she had been laid out of work, she had been looking for another house and a job. One listing had caught her eye for three hundred thousand. It was a grey three-story house with white painted around the windows. From the few images, the inside had wooden flooring with grey, white or black walls alternating through the rooms. It also had a huge backyard pool that looked heavenly. Of course she had to buy it. Blair hadn't found a job, but she was sure when she got there something would come up.

She turned right into a dark gravel path that had trees towering it on either side. Her eyes wondered down to the navigation for a split second to see she was on the right track. The sun had long been buried on top of the large trees and she could barely see a few meters in front of her. This went on for as far as the eye could see. Blair wanted to turn back around and leave but she couldn't. It was a one lane road with no room for a three-point turn.

Eventually she reached the house. Her eyes went wide, and her mouth hung open. Her tongue felt like the Sahara desert. The house was similar to the picture but also not at the same time. The pristine grey on the outside of the structure had turned green and moldy in multiple places making it look like moldy bread. One of the wooden steps was missing while the rest looked like they would collapse any second. Cobwebs grew on some of the corners of the windows. The grass was overgrown, and the outer wooden fence looked like it had seen better days.

"Oh, my goodness," she whispered under her breathe as she looked around. "What is this?"

She looked up the property and noticed a small circular window on the very top near the roof. She could have sword she saw the shape of a handprint dragging down it, but she shook her head. Surely, she was just seeing things. The house probably looked better on the inside than the outside. The house didn't have a garage, so she assumed it was probably towards the back of the house. She parked her black Dodge Hellcat on the side of the property and stepped out. The air was fresh. At least that was a positive for her. She stood in front of the house for a few moments, taking it all in. Unlike her last place, she didn't get any visions of people in the past by just standing outside the property, so she was relieved. She hadn't received a vision in over three months now.

People like her, with her kind of power, were well hidden in society. Thirty years ago, people of her kind were killed because they were thought of witches. They weren't. Her mother had told her that they were just blessed. March fifteenth was the darkest day in their history. The day where hundreds burnt alive while being tied to metal. Their pained screams could be heard for miles. The sky was said to be pitch black as the smoke filled the air. A loud crack of lightning sounded.

Her mother had hidden it well, so no one suspected and now Blair had inherited this power. It had taken her an entire year to get used to, but she got there in the end and mastered concealing it amongst the human race.

Blair inserted the key into the door and pushed it open, grimacing as it screamed when it swung open and thud against the wall. The strong scent of rot and decay hit her almost immediately and it took almost everything in her to not close the door again and drive away. As much as she wanted to, she couldn't. This was her new home no matter how much she hated it. It looked nothing like the images she saw but she couldn't do anything about it now. It was her house now.

She took a few steps into the house. The walls along the hallway looked like they were once pristine white but now they had turned a sort of yellow colour, even the light switch beside the door had the same hue of the wall. To her surprise, the lights worked. They weren't bright but they were enough until she got them replaced. The wooden floors creaked when she stepped but stopped the further she got down the hall. There was something off about the house, but she couldn't quite put her finger on it just yet. She walked through an arched doorway to her right and saw what looked to be a living room. The furniture was covered in some sort of plastic and had thick layers of dust all over them.

She flicked the light switch on and the dim, almost burnt out lights in the chandelier on the dark ceiling lit up. The white and black wallpaper around the room had started to peel and scratch in places revealing the cream coloured wall underneath. The rug on the floor was covered in thick layers of dust making it almost impossible to tell what colour it had previously been. Blair pulled off the plastic cover on one of the large objects, almost coughing when the dust flew up into the air at her. It was as if she coughed her lung right out, but she was fine after a few seconds. Underneath laid a three-seater sofa that was black with a gold frame and four legs that matched. Blair had only seen one of these in vintage places, but she never imagined a house she bought would actually have one. These kinds of chairs were very expensive and would always be out of her budget. They were always over ten thousand dollars and never cheaper.

Blair moved on to the item that was covered in front of the sofa and pulled it off. Another smoke of dust went into the air, making her cough again. Before she had left her other place, she had sold all her furniture, figuring she would buy new ones when she got to this house. In front of the chair, she had uncovered laid an antique wooden table that had four trumpet legs that supported it. From the corner of her eye, something caught her gaze. A little pink doll laid on the floor. She approached it and noticed a few small drops of what looked like blood on the dolls dress.

--

Total word count: 2090