Haven Spec Magazine, January 2026
The narrator of this second-person story is a young woman scraping by as a waitress at a tacky Italian restaurant called Arrivedercheese, enduring daily harassment from customers and her boss, Pete — a predatory owner she privately calls “The Creep.” Her goal is simple and modest: save enough money to buy her uncle’s camper and escape to a lesbian-run kombucha bottling plant in the next county that offers actual health benefits. She gives herself a five-month countdown.
Everything changes when she finds a pair of dark-wash, bootcut jeans at Goodwill for $6.66. They fit perfectly, make her feel powerful, and seem to carry some uncanny energy. The first sign comes at work: when a customer gropes her, he yelps and pulls away bleeding — something sharp and unseen repelled him. Later that night, she finds a mysteriously sharpened key in the back pocket of the jeans, which she uses to slash Pete’s truck tires. The key leaves a worn impression in the denim, as though it had always been there.
The jeans begin to take on a life of their own. The narrator starts waking up already wearing them, despite having taken them off the night before. A spreading, unremovable stain appears on the denim. A new coworker, the sweet and vulnerable Sheila, is being terrorized by her controlling fiancé, who stalks the restaurant parking lot. One night, the narrator witnesses the Fiancé psychologically tormenting Sheila and herding her into his car. She tries to intervene but is too slow — he speeds off.
Then a bar on Davidson Boulevard burns down. The Fiancé ends up hospitalized. A silver matchbook from that bar turns up in the narrator’s jeans pocket, and burn blisters appear on her fingers. The jeans, it seems, are acting on her behalf — or through her — during blackout episodes she can’t fully account for. Sheila eventually disappears from town, presumably safe.
The climax arrives when the narrator wakes up in the middle of the night standing in the darkened restaurant, where she finds Pete assaulting the new hostess, Bambi, under coercive pretenses. Armed only with her hands and legs — the jeans breathing and contracting around her like a second skin — she physically overpowers Pete, straddling his throat as he chokes on his own blood. Bambi, stripped of her usual sweetness, watches with cold, knowing eyes.
The story ends on a suspended, menacing note. Pete splutters threats beneath her. The narrator leans close and whispers her reply. Bambi, who knows where the bleach and mop are kept, is waiting.
“Bootcut” is a darkly feminist fable about survival, complicity, and the violence that simmers beneath working-class women’s daily endurance. The magical jeans function as both armor and agent — externalizing a rage the narrator has been taught to suppress, and daring her to finally claim it as her own.
Allison Pottern is a writer and reader of all things speculative, with a background in publishing, event planning, publicity, and bookselling. Based in Massachusetts, she has taught craft and marketing workshops at Grub Street Inc., Maine Writers and Publishers Alliance, and the MetroWest Writers Guild. She is a 2023 Viable Paradise graduate and is currently working on a cli-fi novel, her pottery skills, and as a marketing coach for authors. Her writing can be found in The Rumpus, Trollbreath Magazine, The Personal Canons Cookbook, New Year, New You: A Speculative Anthology of Reinvention, and forthcoming in Strange Horizons. http://pottern.com