The fire in the hearth was dying, reducing the logs to little more than grey, skeletal ash. The shadows in the room had grown long, stretching across the floorboards like grasping fingers, eager to touch the boots of the men and women huddled in the circle. Outside, the wind howled—a lonely, desperate sound that rattled the windowpanes in their rot-swollen frames.
Arthur sat at the center of the attention, his back straight, his eyes wide and burning with a feverish intensity. He was a thin man, his skin the color of old parchment, and his hands trembled slightly as he smoothed the fabric of his trousers.
"You think you know fear," Arthur whispered, his voice scratching against the silence of the room. "You think fear is the wolf in the woods, or the specter in the graveyard. But those are honest fears. They hunt because they are hungry, or they haunt because they are sad. No... true fear is a transaction. True fear is a craftsman."
The group leaned in. There was old Tobey, clutching his blanket; heavy-set Martha, whose eyes were always darting to the door; and young, weary, breathless Simon, who looked as though he hadn’t slept in a week.
"Tell us, Arthur," Simon breathed. "Tell us about the Gentleman."
Arthur smiled. It was not a kind smile. It was the smile of a man who knows a secret that is slowly eating him alive.
"Not a Gentleman, Simon. No. He is an artisan. They call him the Tailor of Solace."
Arthur held up a hand, pinching the air as if holding a fine needle.
"Legend says he doesn't have a shop you can find on a map. You don't walk down a street and see his sign swinging in the breeze. You find him only when you are broken. When the fabric of your life has frayed so badly that you cannot stitch it back together yourself. When you hate the shape of your own soul."
He lowered his voice, dropping it into a register that vibrated in the floorboards.
"They say he wears a coat of velvet, blacker than the space between stars, cut so sharply it could draw blood if you brushed against the lapel. And his eyes... his eyes are like polished silver buttons. They don't look at you; they measure you. They calculate the inseam of your misery."
Arthur stood up, pacing the small circle of light provided by the dying fire. He moved with a jerky, frantic energy.
"Let me tell you of a man named... let’s call him Julian. Julian was a man of appetites, but he was ugly inside. He felt small. He felt weak. He wanted to be a giant among men. He wanted respect. And one night, amidst the fog of the London docks, he found the door. A red door, with a brass knocker shaped like a pair of shears."
Arthur mimed knocking. Three heavy raps.
"The Tailor opened it. He didn't speak. He never speaks at first. He just ushered Julian inside. The shop smelled of formaldehyde and lavender. Rolls of fabric lined the walls—but not silk, not wool. The textures were wrong. Some looked like skin. Some looked like shadow. The Tailor took out his tape measure. It was cold, yellow, and marked with symbols no church-going man would recognize."
Arthur stopped behind Martha, leaning down to whisper near her ear. She shivered, pulling her shawl tighter.
"He measured Julian’s chest," Arthur whispered. "But he wasn't measuring for a suit. He was measuring Julian’s pride. He wrapped the tape around Julian’s head, measuring his intellect. He measured the length of Julian’s greed. And then... he nodded. He offered a trade. He would remake Julian. He would cut away the weakness, hem the anxiety, stitch up the confidence."
"And the price?" Tobey croaked, his voice thick with phlegm.
Arthur’s eyes widened. "The price? The price is the scraps, Tobey. When you tailor a suit, there are always scraps left on the floor. When the Tailor works on a man, he cuts away the parts he deems unnecessary. Empathy. Memory. Love. He snips them off like loose threads."
Arthur resumed his pacing, his voice rising in tempo, mimicking the manic rhythm of a sewing machine.
"Julian agreed. Oh, they always agree. They want the pain to stop. They want to be grand. So the Tailor went to work. He didn't use a needle and thread, though. He used tools of silver and chrome. He used quiet words that slipped under the skin like sedatives. Snip, snip, snip."
Arthur made a scissor motion with his fingers, snapping them close to Simon’s nose. Simon flinched violently.
"Julian emerged three days later. He was tall. He was imposing. He spoke with a voice like thunder. Men feared him; women adored him. He was perfect. A masterpiece of the Tailor’s art."
Arthur paused, letting the silence hang heavy and suffocating in the room.
"But... Julian was cold. He tried to hold his wife, but he couldn't remember why he loved her. He looked at his children, and he saw only noisy biology. The Tailor had cut too deep. He had taken the warmth to make room for the strength. Julian was a suit of armor with a ghost trapped inside, screaming in a tin can."
Arthur grabbed his own head, his fingers digging into his scalp.
"And do you know the worst part? The Tailor isn't finished. He never finishes. He keeps the patterns. He knows exactly how you are put together. And sometimes... sometimes he decides the fit isn't quite right anymore. Sometimes, he decides the style has changed."
Arthur spun around, pointing a trembling finger at the darkness beyond the firelight.
"He comes back! He comes back with his silver shears! He says you're too loose at the seams! He says your mind is fraying at the edges and it needs to be taken in!"
The listeners were terrified now. Martha was weeping silently. Simon was rocking back and forth.
"He’s coming!" Arthur hissed, his eyes darting to the heavy oak door of the room. "I can hear the click of his tools. I can smell the lavender and the rot. He wants to open us up. He wants to see the stuffing. He wants to rearrange the furniture inside our skulls until we don't know who we are anymore!"
Arthur dropped to his knees, clutching Tobey’s arm.
"Don't let him take me, Tobey! He said I have too much imagination! He said my stories are a chaotic weave! He wants to cut them out! He wants to make me plain! He wants to make me smooth!"
The sound of a heavy latch lifting echoed through the room.
The atmosphere shattered. The mystical terror Arthur had woven didn't break—it curdled into something sharper, colder, and far more real.
The heavy oak door swung open.
It wasn't a foggy London street outside. It was a brightly lit corridor with linoleum floors that smelled of bleach and industrial cleaner.
A woman stood in the doorway. She was large, formidable, and dressed in a starched white uniform that crinkled as she moved. She held a clipboard against her chest like a shield.
"Arthur," she said. Her voice wasn't magical or demonic. It was tired. It was the voice of a woman who had worked a twelve-hour shift and just wanted to go home. "You’re upsetting the other residents again."
The "tavern" melted away. The "hearth" was just a radiator rattling against the wall of the dayroom. The "logs" were just shadows cast by the security cage over the window.
Tobey wasn't a weary traveler; he was an old man in a hospital gown with soup stains on the front. Martha wasn't a peasant woman; she was a patient clutching a throw pillow.
Arthur looked up at the woman, the manic energy draining from his face, replaced by a childlike vulnerability.
"I was just... warning them, Matron Halloway. About the Tailor."
Matron Halloway sighed, stepping into the room. She didn't look like a monster, which somehow made it worse. She looked efficient.
"We’ve talked about this, Arthur. There is no Tailor. There are no silver shears." She gestured to the hallway. Two large orderlies appeared behind her. They wore soft-soled shoes that made no sound—predatory and silent.
Arthur scrambled backward, crab-walking across the linoleum, pressing his back against the radiator.
"No... no, don't you see? That's his trick! He wears white now! He changed his coat!"
Arthur pointed a shaking finger past the Matron, down the long, sterile hallway. At the very end, standing under the buzzing fluorescent light, was a man.
He was tall, thin, and wore a long white coat. He was adjusting his cuffs. He held a silver chart in his hands. He looked up, and his glasses caught the light, turning his eyes into blank, shining discs.
"Dr. Kaine is ready for you, Arthur," Matron Halloway said, her voice softening with a terrifying kind of pity. "It's time for your treatment."
Arthur’s breath hitched. He looked at the Matron, then at the "audience" who were now staring at him not with camaraderie, but with the vacant, drugged indifference of the heavily medicated.
"The fitting," Arthur whispered, tears spilling down his parchment cheeks. "He’s going to make me fit."
"It’s just a transorbital lobotomy, Arthur," the Matron said, as if she were recommending a cup of tea. "It will help with the stories. It will quiet the noise. You’ll feel much better. You’ll fit in just fine."
The orderlies moved in. They didn't run. They didn't shout. They just reached out with hands that were strong and practiced.
As they lifted Arthur to his feet, he didn't scream. He just went limp, his eyes locking onto the man at the end of the hall—Dr. Kaine, the Tailor of Solace.
Dr. Kaine watched them approach. He reached into his pocket and pulled out not a tape measure, but a long, thin metal instrument that caught the light like a needle. He tapped it against his palm, a rhythmic, metallic sound.
Snip. Snip. Snip.
"Please," Arthur whispered to the empty air as they dragged him across the threshold. "Just leave me a little thread. Just a little thread of me."
The Matron closed the door to the dayroom, shutting off the light, leaving the others in the dark to wait for their turn to be measured.
