The Knitting Needle

The woman sighs, sitting primly on the antique loveseat as she watches the rain drench the rosebuds in her garden. Her son leans against her shoulder, his eyes squeezed shut trying to prevent the tears from falling, but his mother can still feel his chest heave with every dry sob.

The sky grows darker, the rain falls harder, and a gust of wind shakes the walls of the house and whistles through the cracks in the floorboards. The lonely candle on the coffee table flickers, making shadows dance about the room like ghostly spirits from the afterlife.

The little boy’s guard is let down tonight. His father’s unexpected death has torn a hole in the heavy shroud of indifference he wears to conceal his emotions. He opens his eyes to watch the rain slide down the windowpane like the way a child’s feet move across the floor upon waking up early in the morning. A smack of thunder makes the boy jump, and with a sniffle, he closes his tired eyes again.

The young kitten awakens from its corner and stretches, arching its back and meowing. It meanders over to the couch and leaps into the boy’s lap. He lays his hand on the cat’s furry head and scratches it between the ears; it begins to purr with content. The woman stares at the window with unseeing eyes, thinking back to the horrors she committed that day.

She was sitting in her rocking chair, knitting a scarf for her son, when she heard the garage door squeaking and the puttering of a car engine. She stopped knitting abruptly and carefully pulled the yarn off of one of the needles. She rose from the chair and walked stiffly into the laundry room, carrying the pearly rod with her. The garage door screeched as it closed and the woman stood at the back door, staring at the doorknob as it began to turn. The door swung open, revealing her husband’s smiling face. His wife stared at him, unblinking. Then, without a second thought, she thrust the knitting needle upwards into his ribcage. His cry of pain echoed off the walls of the garage. She withdrew the needle and stabbed him in the neck with impossible strength. Warm blood gushed over her fingers and ran down her forearms. Again and again she shoved the needle into his chest and neck. She withdrew the needle for the last time and let it hang, exhausted, at her side, blood dripping from the tip. She stared with half-lidded eyes as he stumbled backward and fell on the hood of his black Mercedes with a dull thud. The body slid off the car and crumpled, lifeless, on the concrete floor of the garage. Silent, the woman closed the back door and strolled into the kitchen. She wiped her blood-stained hands on a dishtowel and ran the needle under cold water.

As she turned off the sink, she heard her son’s footsteps on the wood floor as he headed towards the kitchen. Snatching up the corded telephone as he walked in, she pretended to be ending a conversation with the city sheriff. The buzz of the dial tone echoed in her ear as she hung up the phone and broke the horrifying news to her son with no regret or sadness in her words: his father was in a car accident on his way home from work and died a painful death. She twiddled the knitting needle between her fingers as she walked back into the living room, leaving her son alone to cope with the news himself.

The thunder booms again, causing the kitten to flee from the couch and hide, trembling, under the armchair. Patting the boy’s knee, the woman leans to pick up the unfinished scarf from the coffee table. Replacing the yarn on the deadly knitting needle, she settles back into the sofa and continues to knit.