Florence Garcia stands in front of the wide, cracking doors of the Maritime Heritage Museum, clutching her thin resume in her trembling hands. The wind bites at her cheeks, tugging wisps of dark brown hair from her loose braid, as if conspiring with the universe to remind her that everything, lately, is out of her control. Almost everything that could go wrong has gone wrong. She takes a deep breath, the air lodging like a blade in her chest, and steps inside.
The museum feels… odd. Dim lighting stretches yellowed beams across aged wood floors, and faintly in the background, there’s the crackling sound of a phonograph playing old sea shanties. It smells faintly of saltwater and charred wood—artificial, like someone sprayed “Cursed Shipwreck” from a can. A receptionist barely glances at her. Florence feels as invisible here as she has felt everywhere else in the past month.
Her thoughts spiral while she waits for the interview. What will they think of her? Who is she kidding—how could she possibly land this job? The man she's supposed to impress is intimidating with his square jaw and neat, steely-gray beard, his sharp eyes like they’ve seen something tragic and can smell failure on her. She stumbles through her answers, and halfway through discussing her “strong work ethic,” she feels her last shred of composure snap and collapses into tears. She doesn’t mean to—she didn’t intend to seem so broken in front of a stranger—but the weeks of betrayal, eviction, shame, and her mother’s unrelenting judgments catch up all at once.
This tale has been pilfered from Royal Road. If found on Amazon, kindly file a report.
There’s a razor edge of silence after her tears, and Florence stares at the clock, as if by pure will she could turn back time to the moment before this disaster of an interview. But something changes in her interviewer’s expression. It softens—not drastically, but just enough to suggest pity wrapped in some vague sense of understanding.
To her shock, she’s offered the job. Or maybe "shock" isn’t the right word—more like numb disbelief. She stammers out a thank you as the man absently hands over her schedule and new uniform.
The uniform. Florence retreats to the employee dressing room in the back and pulls the fabric over her head. The coarse cotton fits snug, pulling across the shoulders and brushing the tops of her calves. The uniform—a crisp black skirt and starched white apron—is unmistakably from another time. A maid’s uniform. Her reflection in the rickety mirror stares back with wide, exhausted eyes, framed by hair too stubborn to fit neatly within the confines of the bonnet. It makes her look less like a proper museum tour guide and more like she’s been teleported from some Downton Abbey knockoff.
Disheartened, she lingers outside the dressing room and takes stock of her surroundings. She notices the others weaving their way through the museum’s main exhibit—a dimly lit set-piece of the ship’s interior. The women, clad in identical uniforms, scuttle like ghosts through fabricated hallways, and the men wear crew uniforms—brass buttons glinting faintly as they stride about with mock importance. There’s something inherently lopsided about the gendered hierarchy even in this theatrical recreation, but Florence shoves the thought away. She needs this job, even if it means playing servant to history.
