"Rule number 1!
All the girls are to be carefully strapped so that the workers can work efficiently on the tables formed. Water is to be placed before them once only and that is AFTER each shift commences.
Rule number 2!
All mouths are to be sewn tightly shut so that workers cannot engage in meaningless conversation.
Rule number 3!
All body parts sewn together are to be placed in the freezer after each shift and must be removed from the freezer at least 5 hours before each fitting.
Rule number 4!
Table-girls are to be placed in their cage-houses before mopping the the floor so as it can be meticulously cleaned!
Rule number 5!
No sex change operations can take place in my house without my permission.
Rule number 6!
Mr Clark's brains must be stirred ONLY by using the stick I inserted in his head and NOT any random tool.
Is that clear Mrs Mullany? I will not tolerate any more of this....of this....discomfort!" Mrs Delphine said pointing at the bright cloak hanging gracefully in front of the window.
"But the bones were perfectly used Madame, you see here...the seams are...perfect!" Mrs Mullany said without managing to tear her eyes off the cloak.
( made of slices of human bone, by Jan Fabre at http://www.deweergallery.com/exhibitions/23)
Madame Delphine took great pride in her walking stick, the only heirloom of her mad mother who used to smooth its pale ivory handle on her small back. With the same slow and careful movement its handle was smoothed once more only this time on Mrs Mullany's leathery face.
Mrs Mullany's eye-lock on the cloak was temporarily broken only to be re-established with greater force.
You see Mrs Mullany did not care much about Madame Dephine's walking stick. For her, Madame was nothing less than a saint for she has given her a place to work her art; the art of Skin-adapting clothing for people with particular tastes and desires.
People from all around the world came to see and choose their raw materials from Madame Delphine's personal collection of live flesh samples and see their dream come to life in Mrs Mullany's capable hands. She was given the opportunity to travel to the fartherst edges of the world to collect the finest materials for her art. She had only just returned from the mystic island of Socotra in Yemen where she picked up some fine women with the aroma of frankincense embalmed on their skin and hair, finest specimens indeed still waiting in the basement for the right customer who will be willing to pay handsomely for something as special as that.
Not that Madame Delphine had a real eye for art, no..no, she was interested in the process, in the mechanics of the skin and bone, of the human limitations, of blood and pain; she wanted to experiment, to gut, cut and slice, she never cared about the final product, which was always one of a kind.
And so life went on for the two women though we can't say the same for the dozens of people the 'materials[ locked in the basement and attic. Their life was literally stripped off their bodies and placed on wooden mannequins for final adjustments.
The fire started from that same fitting room just before Madame Delphine came in for the final inspection at sundown.
The door was bolted behind her by a woman whose ribs were reassembled to look like a crab. Bolting that door was her final act and a torture, she knew, but did it wholeheartedly nonetheless.
That door was never opened again.
The whole house on Hare street was burnt to the ground as well as the two adjoining houses on either side. The fire spread too quickly and too eagerly to surrender to the people's feeble attempts to put it out.
The findings were in the newspapers for weeks; the burned corpses of the disfigured were placed in the churchyard for public display, the tools in the local museum with a large portrait of the Madame at the entrance.
She filled children's imaginations and the local hotels for the following years, which was good; fortunate and good for the whole community.
But what of Mrs Mullany you might ask?
She wasn't at home when the fire started nor was she in time to save her precious artwork. But time is a healer among other things.
Eventually, she sailed overseas and opened her own sweatshop somewhere in the South.
