SEAMWORK

Originally written for a three-prompt short story challenge, this piece has been lightly revised after feedback.

Content warnings: mild violence, body horror, gun violence, and death.

The house on the hill looked down on the suburb the way a secret looks down on a lie.

It crouched above the cul-de-sacs with its narrow tower and dark panes, watching the neighborhood as if it owned the light below. The streets curled in soft loops. Porch lamps glowed the color of warm honey. Pastel roofs sat neat beneath the moon, perfect the way paintings are perfect: pretty at a distance, harmless from far away.

Mina moved through the kitchen the way Isaac had taught her, slow and careful. The oven ticked. The timer blinked its orange eye.

She set two plates on the table.

One for him. One for herself, though she did not eat. She liked the shape of the ritual, the simple geometry of it, and what it did to Isaac’s face when he came in and saw she had remembered.

Behind the oven glass, the casserole browned.

Isaac appeared in the doorway with rolled sleeves and the faint metallic scent of his work. His gaze went to her cheekbone, to the seam half-hidden by her hair.

“There you are,” he murmured, like she could have vanished.

“I am here,” Mina said, practicing the magazine smile he liked.

He stepped close and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear with a gentleness that always startled her. His fingers paused at the seam there, almost tender.

“You’ve been good,” he said. “My darling girl.”

Something inside Mina warmed at the words. Not a heart, but something that answered him anyway. Something that wanted his voice the way a plant wants light.

The oven clicked, then stuttered. Hot dust and oil filled the air. The timer shrieked, and the sound hit Mina all at once.

Panic came before thought. Her vision flashed white. Her fingers locked, stiff and helpless.

“Stop,” she tried to say.

Isaac crossed the kitchen in two strides and killed the oven with a hard twist. The shriek cut off mid-breath, and the house sank back into its low hum.

Only then did he turn to her.

“Look at me.” He cupped her face with both hands, careful as if she were delicate glass. From his pocket he drew a small flashlight, the kind a doctor might use, the kind an inventor kept close. He clicked it on and aimed it into her eye.

Something in her pupil caught the beam and shimmered back.

His smile stayed, but tightened. “Dimmer than it should be.”

Mina couldn’t blink.

“It’s an adjustment,” he whispered quickly. “I’ll fix the calibration. Nothing to fear. Not while I’m here.”

Her gaze slid toward the window, pulled by the glow below the hill, by the neighborhood that looked like a storybook from far away.

“Eyes on me,” he said.

Mina’s hands would not unclench. Isaac kept her attention with his steady voice until her focus obeyed.

“My beautiful Mina,” he said, forehead to hers. “Do you know what you are?”

She swallowed. The answer lived in her.

“I am yours.”

He kissed the corner of her mouth, chaste and sealing. “Safe. With me. Always.”

Then he crossed to the counter and unlocked the wooden box. Vials nested inside; each glowed its own light.

The Tonic.

The liquid that steadied her hands, sharpened her sight, called her voice up from wherever it hid.

Mina watched him tilt one vial. There was too little left.

For a moment, his sweetness slipped, replaced by calculation; then his smile slipped back into place. He angled her closer with a careful hand and slid his fingers to the seam beneath her collarbone. He pressed gently on a hidden panel until it clicked open.

Mina held perfectly still. 

He fitted the needle into the small port beside her heart, precise as always, and pushed the plunger.

Cold steadiness flooded her chest. The flicker behind her eyes stabilized. The world stopped trembling at its edges.

“There,” he breathed. “There you are.”

Mina leaned into him as if his hands were the only thing that kept her real.

He closed the panel with his palm, covering her heart like a promise, and kissed her forehead slowly, like a final check.

“I need to go out,” he said.

The words hollowed her.

“I’ll be gone a short while,” he promised. “No windows. No wandering.”

Mina nodded because nodding was safe.

He smoothed her hair like he was arranging something precious for display. “Do not be afraid. I always come back.”

Then he took his coat and left, and the house seemed to notice the moment he was gone. The rooms quieted. The floorboards settled.

*

Time passed in routines that meant nothing without him. The record ended. The casserole cooled. The hallway turned cold.

Isaac didn’t return.

The hum beneath Mina’s ribs thinned, not pain exactly but a dimming, like a light losing power. Her hands tingled. Her thoughts felt a half step behind the world.

She opened the drawer beneath the lamp.

Magazines. Women with warm cheeks and bright mouths. Wives at doorways, laughing under porch lights. Isaac brought them home, “so you can understand,” he’d said. “So you can practice.”

Mina had practiced until wanting felt like remembering. Until she could no longer tell if the wanting had begun in her, or in him.

She copied a pose, hip cocked, chin lifted, and felt it fail on her frame, as if the angles of her body refused the lie.

The magazine came with her to the window instead.

The glass was cold beneath her palm. She did not press her face to it. Isaac disliked that. He said the world outside took everything it did not understand. He said it had already taken enough.

She stood close enough to watch the neighborhood below as if it were a moving picture.

Men arrived home, and wives stepped out as if summoned: arms looping, ties adjusted, kisses given like punctuation. Mina tried to imagine it for herself: A yellow dress, sun on her skin, Isaac coming home to that.

Something inside her dropped, and the fantasy cracked.

The house held its silence. Then the oven answered with a quick stutter of clicks. The timer screamed through the kitchen as if it had been waiting for Isaac to leave.

Mina reacted automatically. Hands to her ears. Eyes squeezed shut. The sound hooked into something deep in her and pulled.

“No wandering,” Isaac had said.

But her fingers found the front doorknob anyway.

Isaac wasn’t back. The Tonic was fading. And something within her, something desperate, whispered: If he won’t come back… I will find him.

She turned the knob and let the door swing open. Night air slipped in, smelling of detergent and cut grass. Mina stepped into the unfamiliar.

*

The suburb was brighter up close. Pink porches. Mint green siding. Glowing yellow windows.

A dog barked.

Mina flinched so hard her joints stiffened.

Every sound was too sharp, as if the world had been tuned too high.

Headlights swept over her, and a car slowed. A woman stepped out, robe, curlers, and cigarette in hand, the kind of wife she had practiced being.

“Honey?” the woman called, sleepy-politeness softening her face. “Are you lost?”

“I need Isaac,” Mina said, and the words came slow and detached.

The woman squinted. “Sweetheart, where are your—”

A porch light clicked brighter, spilling over Mina’s cheek.

The woman’s gaze widened as she looked at Mina in the light. On the wrongness. On the seams.

Mina tried to smile.

The smile faded.

“Wait,” the woman whispered. Fear sharpened her voice. “What is that?”

Her cigarette slipped and hissed out.

Then she screamed.

Porch lights snapped on up and down the street. Doors opened. A man came out holding a bat. Faces gathered in doorframes.

“Call the police!”

“Get inside!”

“Monster!”

Mina stood with hands half-raised, useless. Her chest hummed erratically, shaken loose by the noise.

She stumbled back into a parked car and caught her reflection in the window.

Blue skin, pale as moonlit steel. A patch of metal cheek, not flesh. Seams set where the magazines promised softness would be. Eyes too bright, too still.

Mina’s mouth opened.

Nothing came out.

The crowd pressed closer.

A siren rose, faint, then deafening for her.

Mina folded, her knees to the asphalt. Her hands to her ears. Red-blue lights began to paint the houses.

Over and over, she heard Isaac’s promise like a prayer: I always come back.

“On the ground!” an officer shouted. “Hands where I can see them!”

Mina couldn’t move. The torturous siren lived inside her now, rattling her thoughts into broken frames. Her vision stuttered and snapped.

A shot rang out.

Impact slammed through her side. Dark fluid spread, shining like oil under streetlights.

She dropped.

The neighborhood gasped. Footsteps thundered.

“NO!”

Isaac tore into the street with his hair wild, coat half on, a paper bag crushed in his fist. Glass clinked inside: vials. The Tonic.

“Don’t shoot!” he shouted. “She’s frightened. She’s—”

“Sir, stay back!”

Isaac didn’t listen. He dropped beside Mina and put his body between her and the guns.

“Look at me,” he begged her, hands shaking over her wound. “Oh, darling, look at me.”

He yanked a vial free. “Just a dose. I can fix it.”

Mina caught his wrist.

“Isaac,” she whispered, shaking. “Why did you make me like this?”

His hand cradled her jaw, thumb brushing the seam at her hairline as if it were sacred. “Mina, you’re beautiful,” he whispered, “you don’t need to look like them to be beautiful to me.”

Their foreheads touched. “I’m here,” he breathed. “I always—”

Another shot split the air.

It hit Isaac.

He folded into her, warmth spilling onto her hands.

“No,” Mina cried.

His fingers found her cheek, smearing blood across it. The blood was bright red against her blue skin. “It’s okay,” he managed, a lie shaped like love.

Her breath hitched. “But they—”

“I know.” His voice broke. “They only know how to love what looks like them.”

Her eyes darted to the doorways, to the gathered faces. “I wanted to be like them.”

His gaze held hers, soft and sorrowful. “That was never the point,” he whispered, “God, Mina, you’re perfect.”

“Per-fect,” she echoed.

“Because I made you,” he whispered, and his face tightened as though he hated himself for it. “Because I was lonely, and I thought if I made someone just for me, I would not feel so alone.”

Mina’s hand slid to her chest. The hum there was growing faint. “Then don’t leave me,” she said. “I can’t do this without you.”

“Mina—no—”

But she found the hidden seam beneath her collarbone and hooked her nails under it. The panel clicked open.

Inside was her life force: the small heart-pump nested in wires, pulsing weakly, light flickering as she faded.

“Take it,” Mina whispered. “Hold it with me.”

Isaac reached in with shaking hands. When his fingers closed around the warm metal, it turned slick with his blood.

Together, they held the heart that he created.

“I don’t want to live without you,” she said, lips near his ear.

Isaac shook his head. “Mina, please.”

But she looked past him, past the guns and porch lights, toward the house on the hill. Toward the window where she had spent her life learning how to want.

“I choose this,” she whispered.

He pressed his mouth to her temple, trembling. “With you,” he breathed. “Only with you.”

Mina tightened her fingers. “Together”

Isaac, sobbing silently, tightened his too.

The heart surged once, bright and furious, then cracked with a sound like breaking glass.

The hum inside Mina stopped.

Isaac went still against her.

For a moment, the sirens were only a fading sound. For a moment, porch lights looked like stars.

Mina rested her cheek in his hair, holding the broken heart between them like a vow.

Then her eyes drifted closed.

And the neighborhood kept glowing, perfect as a magazine cover, with no room for what did not belong.

Thank you so much for reading and stepping into Mina’s strange little world! xx McKenna