Dresses

Inside the box there are a variety of old dresses, from the 1910s to 20s. There's a number of stiff, high-collared dresses, a racy red flapper dress. Strange. You set aside the dresses and find a notebook in the bottom. The handwriting is small and fancy and hard to read, the pages yellow with age and at parts stained.

It's some kind of... diary? Is that just a girl's book? What do guys get, a journal? Whatever. It tells the story of a man named Francis, an immigrant to America in 1908, It seems he fled the old country after exposing a witch who was defrauding his village, overcharging for herbs and fake remedies. She swore ****, terrible curse of some kind, and the village wouldn't have anything to do with him. So Francis left.

You read of his excitement at arriving in New York, followed by his confusion as he was unable to get a job. Though he had been considered stronger than average, here every employer insisted he was too dainty for "man's work." Maybe, Francis confided, they were right. Men on this side of the sea seemed so much bigger and stronger and... appealing? Finally he found a job sewing, something he had often had to do around the farm.

With a jolt you realize it is dark out, you have read away much of the day. You do your daily hygiene, microwave some food and go to bed.