I woke on a metal table with stitches around my throat.
A man leaned over me and called me by a name that did not fit.
He said he was my husband. He said there had been an accident. He said the grafts were necessary. He said the scars would heal, as long as I rested, took my medicine, and stopped asking questions.
Questions about the locked rooms.
Questions about the servants who would not meet my eyes.
Questions about why my body remembered things I had never learned.
My right hand played piano with another woman’s skill. My legs folded into ballet positions while I slept. My throat opened at night and sang in languages I had never studied.
Then I stopped taking the medicine.
And the memories got louder.
The stitches circled my throat. My wrists. My thighs. Every joint was a seam. Every seam marked the place where his version of me ended and someone else began.
My husband called it healing.
My body called it evidence.
He built me to be grateful.
He did not expect me to remember.
Don’t Touch the Stitches is a gothic body horror retelling of Frankenstein about marriage, ownership, stolen bodies, and the kind of woman a man creates when he thinks obedience can be stitched into skin.
For readers who love:
- Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
- Mexican Gothic by Silvia Moreno-Garcia
- The Death of Jane Lawrence by Caitlin Starling
- Poor Things by Alasdair Gray
- The Silent Companions by Laura Purcell
- Leech by Hiron Ennes
