You’ve never read anything quite like the SWFFP honorable-mention winning story “A Victorian Exception to the Uncanny Valley Hypothesis: A Case Study.” This quirky, precise historical fantasy tale by Houston writer Sabina Gartler intrigued our judges and staff. The writer also crafted a stellar title. Enjoy this fun read!

A Victorian Exception to the Uncanny Valley Hypothesis: A Case Study

She always starts with mending the socks. “Mr. Richard Dadd, you are made of wax. How do your stockings become so threadbare?” Sarah often spoke to the waxworks. Asking them questions they would never answer.

I enjoyed watching her nimble fingers work. Cradling each delicately articulated foot in her hand, rolling the silky brown sock off of the unbending figure. Pulling the sock onto her arm and running it over her outstretched fingers, looking for tears.

“Where do your stockings go, Mr. Dadd?”

Then out pops the pox marked darning mushroom from her mending kit. Sarah carefully inserts it into the sock and rests it behind the tear. Her hefty needle is swift as she weaves the thread under and over, sealing the hole. Her practiced fingers re-sheath the wax foot with the patched sock.

Undressing and dressing motionless bodies in the workshop is how Sarah spent her days. Fixing a bit of errant lace here; a popped button there. Wear and tear on lifeless wax dolls.

I pitied Sarah for the time she spent in that cellar workshop. The raw stone floors are swept each night but are never clean. Even the work done in daylight needed the oil lamps as there is never enough sunlight for the detailed sewing Sarah employed. The only sunlight bleeds in from the narrow windows when not choked by a hundred feet rushing past on the busy Liverpool street. It is stagnant and damp, soot floating in the air from the oil lamps. Sarah toiled alone in this permanent twilight.

I remember the first few weeks of Sarah’s employment with Mr. Higginbotham’s Wonderous Waxworks and Emporium. If I offered a jolly “How’s your morning, Miss Jones?” she would focus her eyes on the floor as she gave a two-word response before retreating to her workshop scarcely to be seen until it was time to venture home.

But after a few months, Sarah was changed. She would wander into the shop with a smile beaming, eyes shining. A “Good Morning” offered as she passed on her way to the workshop. A vacant smile while she mended the night’s damages.

Sometimes I would catch her staring into the waxworks’ eyes. Especially Mr. Dadd. Kneeling before him, the coarse cloth of her skirts lying chaotically on the floor. She gazed into the austere glass that filled the space where eyes should be. Her lips in a crooked half-smile. As if Mr. Dadd’s eyes were a scrying orb portending her future. She was enthralled by visions of what?

And one day Sarah was gone. Her usual prompt morning arrival came and went without her. The curator, Mr. Havelock, sent the other seamstress, Mary, to inquire at Sarah’s boarding house. Mary found the landlady cleaning Sarah’s empty room and irritably muttering to one in particular. “Up and buggered off with no notice,” the landlady finally managed to break from her angry labor and explained the situation to Mary.

After Mary returned with the news, the gossip at the waxworks became sport. There were rumors of gangs in London that would kidnap young women and send them to foreign climes to service Sultans and Kings. Surely Sarah had been a victim of one of these gangs. Or Sarah ran off to America as the paid-for bride to a cowboy.

But the gossip was wrong because it ignored the most glaring piece of evidence that was staring everyone in the face. Or, I suppose, not staring them in the face. Mr. Richard Dadd was gone too.

Sabina Gartler enjoys writing short-form fiction and non-fiction such as flash fiction, zines, and case studies. She’s partial to incorporating elements of the supernatural or science fiction into her stories. Sabina publishes a monthly online zine, “That Plant Fucker”, to indulge her love of herbs and herbal medicine. Sabina has the requisite collections of journals and books as required for any sort of writer. She is an adequate slave to her cats and has lived most of her life in Houston, TX.