[dropcap]I[/dropcap] was making my boyfriend a knitted cap for his birthday when I ran out of the right colour of yarn. So I went to a supply store downtown to find more — they didn’t have any. So the proprietor, a woman named Lisa, told me she’d order it in.
A few days later she called, said it had arrived. I went in, but turns out she’d ordered the wrong colour. This just wouldn’t do. It would mean the cap would have a strange stripe on the top half, just a slightly lighter coral than the bottom. Not right.
We were in her backroom, making the call for the second time. It was all very black-market, the rotary phone sitting in the middle of the otherwise empty table, a single light swinging from above. She spoke in hushed tones, using yarn jargon I’d never heard before.
She ordered the yarn again, this time the right shade of salmon that I needed. She was pretty good about it, really. She even ordered it with expedited shipping so it would arrive in two days time.
I’d decided to wander around the city that day and I came upon a yarn shop I’d never seen before. When I went inside, I discovered the exact shade of yarn I was yearning for. When Lisa called me the next day to say the bundle had arrived, I told her, regretfully, that I’d been in a rush and had to look elsewhere for it. She was furious. She began yelling at me, explaining how the yarn cost her more than it was worth, especially with the additional price of the courier. She lost a lot of money on it, she said, and it was all my fault.
Of course I felt terrible, but it was cutthroat, the yarn trade, and I had to do what I had to do. I needed the yarn, so I had to find someone else who could supply it to me.
I hung up, and convinced myself I’d done the right thing. She called back again. She told me I was forbidden to ever enter her store again. Her voice was level but deep. I felt embarrassed and also a little insulted; I certainly wouldn’t be paying her a visit anytime soon, I decided.
That evening I woke in the middle of the night to a loud crash in the dining room. I padded across the floor to find that the window had been smashed. Bits of glass covered the floor like a mosaic reflecting the moonlight. I tiptoed around the shards, trying to find the cause. Blood pooled around the crevices of my toes, left footprints behind me.
At last I found the culprit under the table. It had an odd, unexpected weight to it, and I figured it must be a brick wrapped in yarn, but as I unraveled it I discovered that the yarn never ended; it just continued all the way through, until I was left with a long trail of thin wool behind me. Peculiar, I thought. I cleaned my foot and went back to bed, resolving to have the window fixed tomorrow. Must have been kids fooling around.
The next morning I awoke to find something heavy at my feet. That’s strange, I thought, I don’t have a dog. I pulled the sheets back to find a large crocheted horse’s head at the foot of the bed, next to my legs. It was immaculately crafted; clearly the creator knew what he or she was doing. There were long red and pink loops hanging from what was the horse’s neck, woolen arteries and muscles. This, I thought, was no work by the neighbourhood children. This must be a sign. Someone is trying to tell me something, and they’re using wool to do it.
. . .
I decided to venture over to Lisa’s shop despite her warning for me to stay away. I felt she could be the only person behind this yarn, and I decided it best I just confront her, maybe pay her for the bundle she’d ordered for me in order to remove this bad blood between us. I was just walking up to the front of the shop when I felt someone grab me from behind and slip a knitted sack over my head. Next thing I knew, I was in the back of a black town car surrounded by muffled gruff voices. Throw her into the river, I heard a deep female voice say. I tried to speak, talk myself out of the situation and maybe reach into my pocket for money, but I felt threads wrap around my wrists and my eyes felt heavy. They must have chloroformed the wool sack. Everything went black.
I awoke to cold water rushing around me, and something was carrying me down – fast. I struggled to get out of my crocheted cuffs, twisting my wrists viciously until my hands came free. Fools, I thought, such sloppy knots. I pulled the sack off my head and, quickly running out of breath, began fumbling with whatever was weighing me down. More yarn bricks. I plummeted deeper into the cold dark. Finally, I was able to undo a few of the knots around my feet, freeing the soggy bricks and swimming back up to the surface.
. . .
I never actually found out why Lisa had decided to off me. Maybe I knew too much. Maybe I was collateral for the money she’d lost with my order. Whatever it was, her and her cronies had already high tailed it out of there by the time I broke the surface. Needless to say, I avoided her store-front from then on, making a yarn shop on the other side of town my home. This one was owned by a sweet little retired lady named Martha who called me dear and offered me tea and biscuits while I browsed. She was no killer.
One afternoon I was walking to Martha’s shop, on the hunt for some mint-coloured imported threads I knew she carried, when I noticed there was a sort of sidewalk sale going on. There were a few tables set up with fabrics and needles and baskets of colourful balls of yarn. I began sifting through the wares when I heard a familiar voice. I looked up and saw Lisa standing there, only a few feet away, talking to Martha. I froze in place, unsure if she’d seen me or not. Lisa came over and asked me if I needed help finding anything. Luckily my large-brimmed sun hat and dark glasses shielded most of my face, and I shook my head fiercely and robotically, leaving the table and walking away as fast as I could.
That was when I decided to ditch the whole knitting thing and pick up pickling instead.
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