make-up episode

Betcha thought this wouldn't happen until Moday, eh?

Remember, this is a rough draft.

Click on "Read More! Maybe." to read more. Enjoy!

The enchiladas were a mistake.

For 34 years, Thursday had been New Recipe Night. It was Peg’s way of livening things up a bit. However, tonight she had livened things up just a little too much.

Peg set down her knitting a crept off to the bathroom. It was some time before she returned to the living room to find Sal watching television, the foot of his easy chair kicked up and a beer in his hand. Trouble was curled up on his lap like a shaggy, calico throw pillow. All that had changed during her absence was the station, and -

“Did you move my knitting?”

“Nope,” Sal said, his eyes fixed inexorably on the television screen.

Peg stared at the couch. It was a worn chintz in rose and yellow, but it was so tarted up in granny square afghans that hardly anyone knew it. Peg herself probably wouldn’t be able to finger it in a lineup if it was disrobed.

“Are you sure?”

Sal thrust out his bottom lip and nodded.

Maybe it had fallen between the cushions? Peg wondered. She felt around the area where she usually sat, then moved on to the rest of the couch. Ten minutes, three quarters, five nickels, a five dollar bill, two 4 mm dpns, seventeen stitch markers, a bottle cap, and a desiccated stick of gum later peg had still not found the knitting she’d put down.

“I was knitting, wasn’t I?” Peg asked her husband. Her mother had gone senile at a fairly young age, so she was always on the lookout for signs in herself of mental deterioration. Perhaps this incident was the beginning of a long series of mislaid, forgotten, and half-finished projects. Peg didn’t so much mind the idea of rediscovering projects – especially if it turned out they were done – but believing she was working on a project that didn’t really exist was where she drew the line.

There was already too much of that going on as it was.

“It was that blue lacy thing,” Sal said, confirming that his wife had not lost her mind yet. Just her shawl project, the one in gossamer weight yarn that had taken months and months.

Peg felt under the couch. It was a furry jungle, which didn’t make it any easier. She was about to give up when she felt something hard and long, like a mechanical pencil or knitting needle, on the opposite end of the couch from where she sat, near the back. She pulled it out and stared at it disbelievingly.

It was the circular needles she had been using, and that was all. No shawl.

Peg sighed in exasperation and peered under the couch.

It was then that she saw it.

It wasn’t under the couch. It was moving rapidly across the carpet, toward her craft room like some kind of flightless, fiber homing pigeon.

Peg only hesitated a moment. Despite such irregular behavior, it was her knitting.

She caught it just as it was about to leap into the closet where she kept the majority of her stash.

It squirmed.

Peg dropped it. Something crawled out from under it and ran behind a bookshelf.

Peg stared at the bookshelf. Her experiences with hallucinations were limited to cough syrup side effects, and never, ever involved little men in green. She knew spicy food could sometimes cause vivid dreams, but while a person was still awake? She suspected this was something more clinical.

Peg sometimes found contemplating her stash en masse calming to the nerves at times, almost meditative. But seeing the little green man didn’t prepare her for what awaited her when she opened the closet door. Her stash was usually neatly organized into large, transparent zip-bags to ward off moths. The entire stash looked as if it had exploded out of the bags. What’s worse, the yarn was elaborately and intricately knotted.

Moths were now the least of her problems.

Peg had pixies.

To read the next episode, click here.
To read the previous episode, click here.
To go to the Index, click here.