The square nail polish bottle sat ominously on Miss Havisham’s vanity, its contents an unnatural shade of crimson that seemed to pulse in the candlelight. She had purchased it that morning from Madame Rouge’s Peculiarities, a questionable establishment tucked away in London’s seediest district.
“A most particular shade,” Madame Rouge had whispered, her heavily painted lips curling into a knowing smile. “Guaranteed to make quite an impression at tonight’s gala.”
Miss Havisham, a seamstress barely scraping by in the cruel machinery of Victorian society, had spent her last shilling on the polish. The invitation to Lord Blackwood’s annual gala was her one chance at securing wealthy clients - and perhaps catching the eye of the Lord himself.
“You look possessed, girl,” her landlady Mrs. Higgins remarked as Miss Havisham descended the creaking stairs that evening. “That color ain’t natural.”
Indeed, her nails gleamed like fresh blood against her borrowed white gloves. But Miss Havisham paid no mind to the warning. She had greater concerns - like the whispers that followed her entrance into the ballroom.
“Who invited the seamstress?” “How dare she wear last season’s dress!” “Those ghastly red nails - how common!”
Lord Blackwood himself approached, his aristocratic features twisted in disgust. “My dear, you seem to have injured yourself. Your nails…”
Miss Havisham looked down in horror. The polish had begun to spread, seeping through her gloves, staining her fingers a deep crimson. She fought rising panic as the color crept up her arms like crawling veins.
“I must leave,” she gasped, fleeing into the garden. But the spreading stain wouldn’t stop. Soon her whole body would be consumed by that unnatural red.
“Help will cost you,” came Madame Rouge’s voice from the shadows. “Your soul, perhaps? Or would you prefer to remain a curiosity for these vultures to mock?”
“Neither,” Miss Havisham declared, suddenly understanding. She peeled off her gloves and held her stained hands up to the moonlight. “This is what they see when they look at me - a stain on their precious society. But I am not the one who is truly stained.”
The crimson began to recede, dropping from her skin like petals. Where it fell, blood-red roses bloomed, their thorny stems wrapping around the garden’s iron fence.
The next day, Madame Rouge’s shop had vanished. But Miss Havisham’s reputation was made - she became known as the seamstress whose work brought out one’s true colors, her waiting list filled with society’s elite desperate to prove themselves unfettered by prejudice.
And on her vanity sat a square bottle, now filled with clear polish - a reminder that sometimes the most horrifying monsters are the ones who wear the finest clothes and speak with the most refined accents.
“The true test of character,” she would tell her clients as she worked, “is not the color of one’s nails, but the color of one’s heart.”