‘Embroidery’ by Ray Bradbury

Embroidery by Ray Bradbury, 1951

The magic trick:

Finding horror in the seemingly calmest of human activities

“Embroidery” takes one of the calmest, most peaceful activities you can imagine – old friends sewing and talking together on the porch – and connects it with pure horror.

And that’s quite a trick on Bradbury’s part.

The selection:

And suddenly they were crying. The tears rolled softly down their faces and fell into the material upon which the fingers twitched.

“This won’t help things,” said the first lady at last, putting the back of her thumb to each under-eyelid. She looked at her thumb and it was wet.

“Now look what I’ve done!” cried the second lady exasperated. The others stopped and peered over. The second lady held out her embroidery. There was the scene, perfect except that while the embroidered yellow sun shone down upon the embroidered green field, and the embroidered brown road curved toward an embroidered pink house, the man standing on the road had something wrong with his face.

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