Stitches

In the years running up to its closure the Hexagon had an unofficial mascot of sorts; a small teddy bear named Stitches. Stitches was a curious looking character to say the least. His body was made from a patchwork of surgical scrubs, he was stuffed with the material taken from inside the facilities pillows and the delicate needlework that held him together was not thread, but a fine weave of human hair.

In spite of his odd appearance Stitches was a fairly popular character among the Hexagons populace. Indeed, even some of the most deranged inmates would stop flaying themselves in order to have tea and entertain their cuddly friend.

Stitches was made by one of the women who used to live in the Hexagon. Her name was Patient 669427-B and she lived in the ‘profoundly disturbed’ section of the solitary confinement wing. Of course, this was not always the case. Before coming to the Hexagon her name was Laura Blundel and she lived in my town, a few doors down from me.

Laura was the epitome of nice, little old ladies. She always wore big spectacles and a neatly tied apron, she was always smiling and always had her hair pulled back into a tight bun. When she was not helping out at the town hall or taking tea with the vicar, she was making a variety of preserves or cakes, invariably leaving something on the windowsill to help it cool down. She was every TV-land grandmother brought to life.

When I was younger I spent a lot of time at the Blundel house (a mixture of not knowing my own grandparents and Laura being such a wonderful person) and I learned a lot of things while I was there. One of the more interesting things the Blundel ’s taught me was that Laura was a prolific seamstress in her teenage years. She had to be; our town was recovering from the Second World War at the time and there was not enough cloth around to make new clothes so if you could not patch up what you had, you would have to do without.

Over the years, however, Laura lost interest in sewing. Materials and ready-made clothes became more and more abundant and the town’s children were losing interest in the toys she made in favour of playing video games, so she turned her talents to other fields.

Looking back I know how ridiculous this sounds, but hearing Matthew tell me that Laura stopped sewing because of video games made me think the whole thing was my fault. I felt so guilty for taking one of the nicest people I knew and robbing her of the thing she loved the most, so I did what any child in my position would do: I prayed. I prayed that she would find the inspiration to start sewing again and that she would find someone, anyone, who would appreciate her work.

Imagine my surprise, then, when I went to her house a few days later and found her with a needle in one hand and a pair of trousers in the other. Apparently there had been a rip in the knee for quite some time; she just had not felt like fixing it until now. She was still sewing when I went home a few hours later, patching up shirts, blouses and dresses that had apparently been torn for years.

The next day, when my dad took me to school, I overheard him talking to Matthew. Apparently Laura had been sewing almost non-stop since she started the day before, fixing clothes he had forgotten he owned and even going so far as to patch up his old army uniform.

Later that day, when I got home from school, I went to Laura’s house again. Matthew answered the door and told me I had come at a bad time. He told me that, while Laura had finished repairing their clothes, she had not stopped sewing and was now stitching name tags into everything they owned. He told me to come back in a few days when he had had a chance to talk to her and have her cut down on the sewing obsession.

I did as I was told and went home. I spent the night playing some game or other and went to bed wondering when I would be able to see Grandma Laura again. I got my answer that same night when a loud scream rang out from the Blundel house.

Dad told me to put my coat on him and follow him to the house. Quite what he thought a seven year old could do to help an elderly woman I do not know, but he insisted I come along nonetheless. I wish he had not.

The source of the scream was Matthew Blundel . I found him tied him across the table in his dining room. From the look of things his wife had tied and gagged him before proceeding to stitch “Property of Laura M. Bl” along his spine.

I wanted to call out for help, but I could not. I was paralysed with fear. Then, just when I thought it could not get any worse, I saw her. Laura was coming out of the kitchen with a pair of scissors and a freshly darned needle in her hand. She saw me and smiled the warm, friendly smile I had seen her smile a thousand times before. To make it even more terrifying she spoke, using the same lullaby voice that used to sing me to sleep, “Hello there, young man. I’m afraid it’s not quite finished yet, so come back in a couple of hours, hm?”

Thankfully, something inside me snapped and I screamed. Dad found me and dragged me out of the house before calling the police. He and I waited outside her house, just in case she tried to run, but she did not. She stayed and kept working. I know because I could hear her inside, merrily humming to herself over her husbands muffled cries.

She never got to finish her task since the police arrived fairly quickly and carted her away. Feeling that they could not throw an elderly lady in jail they instead had her transferred to the Frieda Reagan Memorial building, hoping she would be able to receive treatment for whatever had gone wrong with her. When Matthew died while the surgeons attempted to remove the stitches it was decided that, rather than trying to cure Laura, she should simply be left in the Hexagon as a sort of unofficial jail time.

Her psychiatrist commented on her insatiable desire to sew. He said that while he tried his best to keep materials away from her, she kept finding, stealing or making them in order to work on some secret project. The project turned out to be a stuffed bear, which she presented to her psychiatrist, calling it a gift for the people around her.

The bear came to be known as Stitches, after his creator’s transgressions, and became very popular with the other people incarcerated within the Hexagon’s walls. In fact, he became so popular that looking after Stitches made its way onto the list of rewards for good behaviour.

He was a foul smelling, ugly little thing. But the people in the Hexagon loved him.