Sunday Short: Red In The Spool

The textile factory in Kedah never made the news.

There were whispers, of course—rumors passed between threadbare aunties at pasar pagi stalls, old workers who limped past the rusty gates and swore they heard crying in the walls. But like most things in the industry, what didn’t show in the final product was never discussed.

And no one ever talked about Ila.

Ila was a quiet woman.

She clocked in, worked her twelve hours, and kept her head down. At twenty-nine, she was already considered “old stock” by the younger girls on the line. She didn’t go for lunch with the others, didn’t join the jokes or the hushed gossip in the changing rooms, and never smiled at the factory manager—even when he smiled too long at her.

He started small: hands that lingered. A comment here. A stare there.

It escalated fast. Nobody helped her. HR looked away. One of the supervisors even laughed and said,

"Kalau tak nak, berhenti lah. Ramai lagi nak kerja."

And so, one sweltering Thursday, Ila made a choice.

She climbed to the second floor of the production warehouse, stood over the railing above the main spinning room, and faced the massive thread loom machine—a beast of tangled wires and moving needles.

Without a sound, she took a blade from her sewing kit and drew it across her throat.

Her blood hit the machine below in thick, wet strings—sinking into the very core of the spinning wheel where raw thread was fed.

No one saw her fall.

But everyone saw the thread.

It started as a deep crimson batch—“wine red,” the color supervisor called it. Nobody questioned how it got so vivid. The roll was tagged, processed, and distributed across Malaysia and Southern Thailand, used in countless garments—shirts, pants, skirts, even undergarments.

Then, the dying began.

In Ipoh, a tailor was found stabbed to death by his own scissors.

In Narathiwat, a fashion student went mad, cutting at her skin with a seam ripper while whispering, “Ila’s not finished yet.”

In Bangi, a woman caught her reflection moving out of sync—her blouse twitching on its own, tightening around her throat as she gasped for air.

No one connected the dots.

But if they had, they would’ve seen the common thread.

Literally.

The thread spun from that day—the one Ila bled into—was now part of the fabric in each case. Her rage had fused into the fibers. Her pain, twisted into every strand.

She had become more than a ghost.

She had become the material.

One night, the same factory received a returned shipment: a batch of clothes marked “defective.”

Inside the box, a single dress pulsed faintly. Its stitches glistened wet, like veins.

The packing staff heard a voice from the box.

"You made me part of this. Now wear me. Feel what I felt."

One by one, the staff began to disappear.

Across Southeast Asia, garments with untraceable origins are appearing at flea markets, thrift shops, online bundles. They carry a strange chill. Some are stitched in unfamiliar patterns, as if sewn by hands no longer human.

And those who wear them?

They dream of standing in a factory.

Covered in blood.

With a blade in hand.

Her name was Ila. Her voice was ignored. Her pain was buried in thread. Now, she speaks in stitches.