Throwaway as I know my main.
For context, when I was 7 there was an electromagnetic anomaly in the airspace above my town, causing a small fixed wing Cessna aircraft to torpedo directly into my living room and killing my father. The doctors described his cause of death as "a carnal supernova." Due to this my mother and I became close but sadly 8 hours later she contracted a rare disease (won't say which one for privacy) that made her head fall off and roll into the garbage disposal.
In her will she left me her wedding dress which I adore. It's made of light cream merino wool, with whalebone corset, taffeta brocade on the chest, a 250cc diesel engine, high collared halter top, off the shoulder design, long sleeves, neon under lighting, a sixteen inch bustle, and a vietnamese child of dubious legal status. Ever since I was old enough to breathe I dreamed of getting married in the dress. My every free moment is spent designing the perfect wedding. It's such a dream of mine I forget to hydrate which I should really do more often as I am almost constantly salivating over my ideal nuptials.
I went to college school and got my master in cinder block design (I want my wedding to be building material themed) and got a job in the dropping masonry off overpasses industry. I've saved up every spare cent I could for my wedding
Enter my cousin "Mia" (20f) To put it kindly Mia is repulsively obese and the villain of this story. In four thousand years of Chinese history she has never stopped complaining that she can't get a boyfriend saying men are too shallow to appreciate a girl with a healthy body. She constantly tells me I am too skinny and nobody will ever date me.
One day she came over to my place and noticed the wedding dress, as I keep it in a glass case in the center of my living room in lieu of a TV. She said "oh what a lovely dress I can't wait to rip it to shreds with scissors and my obscenely corpulent body, is it okay if I borrow it to get it cleaned?" I thought nothing of it at the time and said sure.
Days went by and she always made and excuse how it wasn't ready to be picked up yet. Yesterday I went over to her place to deliver some of her father's mail which is sent to my house for plot reasons. I am under strict orders to barrel through the door without knocking and when I did I saw Mia wearing the dress. Or what was left of it.
She had obviously split it in half trying to force her elephantine bulk into it and take scissors to the rest. In the end all that was left was a loop of cloth draped around her neck like a scarf. (Edit: I looked around for the little vietnamese boy and found his tiny skeleton in the trash can. Apparently my sister had gotten hungry doing blasphemy to my dress and eaten him.)(Edit 2 in my country it's common to call your cousin your sister even if they are male.)
I was furious, I told my cousin or sister or whatever she owed me the cost of a new dress. Last year I had it appraised and it was valued at infinity dollars. She laughed at me and said "I haven't learned the error of my ways, I have fucked around but I surely won't find out." I stormed out.
I hired a lawyer who advised me to ask Reddit for legal advice. Based on that I took her to small claims court. As soon as I presented my side of the story the judge started pounding her judge hammer thing and shrieking guilty guilty. I was so relieved that I broke down cry*ng. The judge comforted me saying she sees thousands of cases like this every day.
Mia's parents had their house confiscated and were turned out onto the street unfortunately they live on a really busy one and it was rush hour so they were pretty much immediately flattened by an out of state bus. Mia was sentenced to 36 years in a labor camp making defective condoms marketed exclusively to enemies of the state.
On hearing of this 64/128 of my friends and family think I was in the right while the other 64/128 said I should have let her have it to "keep the peace" and that it's a dress I was only gonna wear once. I countered that between no fault divorce and the alarming rate of premature deaths among those around me I would have gotten 5 or 6 weddings out of that bad boy.
So, Reddit, AITA?
Edit: to answer some comments and questions I am not the asshole here you callow troglydytes
Edit 2: I wish this was fake but it's my life can one of you comment that this exact thing also happened to you?
Edit 3: yeah