Sandy Supposes....

Corset to Freedom

PROMPT: Creation Saturday! Create a backstory from the strangest thing you've seen at a garage sale.

         Ah, yes 'tis the season of yard, and garage sales. Already, I've noticed hand-lettered signs popping up on town corners, and front lawns. The strangest thing I ever saw offered at a garage sale was a corset. It was so unexpected, and out of place stretched across a picnic table. At first glance, it resembled a cloth accordion. I had to pick it up, and 'see' with my hands. Sure enough, it was a cloth and bone woman's torture under garment. The stays, or laces in the back were quite long and criss-crossed. It looked uncomfortable. How had it travelled to its current location?

         Hmm. I'd be willing to bet it was smuggled across the border and into Canada on the back of a slave fleeing oppression in the deep South. Yep, it had been a silent passenger of The Underground Railroad.. Just imagine its wearer barely able to breathe due to the tightness of this corset, and the stifling, suffocating weight of the loose straw piled over her head in a horse-drawn wagon. She'd be perspiring, and her heart would be pounding in her ears.

         Originally, this corset had belonged to her mistress. It had been the job of this young woman to act as a lady's maid. Every morning, she had tugged and tied this, and similar corsets. Her mistress had tossed this particular corset aside in favour of a newer one. This maid had aspired to be ladylike, so she adopted the wearing of a corset. It was fashionable to project an hour glass figure. She learned beauty had a painful price.

         Once safely across the U.S.-Canada border, this brave young woman celebrated her new found freedom by shucking the bonds of her corset. She really could breathe easier.