The Boy in the Cable Knit Sweater

This is the story of the boy who only wore one cable knit sweater.

Once upon a time, a teenaged boy was in a terrifying car crash with his mother on the way to school. The boy sustained a mild concussion, as well as a thin scar down his right cheek that pooled in a larger one on his chin. He shattered his collarbone and broke his left wrist, along with three fingers on his right hand.

His mother died.

The boy was wearing a dusty gray cable knit sweater (I must mention it was the aforementioned one) on the day of the crash, and thus, he saw the sweater as the last surviving tie he had to his mother. Once medical help arrived and took him away from her, he visibly broke; the sweater seemed to be the only thing holding his broken body together. At the hospital, the boy fought the doctors who tried to take it off him; instead, he insisted that he take it off with the utmost care before delicately folding it, placing it on the chair next to his hospital bed, and proceeding to sob uncontrollably at the loss of his last parent.

The boy wordlessly decided to wear the sweater every day for his remaining two years at home; it is currently in debate as to whether he will continue to do so once he graduates. In any case, his grandmother moved into the house he and his mother had shared, but she just could not fill the void of his best friend. He lives inside of himself, sure; but really, he just lives inside that grey sweater. It has been rumored that if you pass him in the school hallways, he smells of gasoline and tears, and while I do not know what tears necessarily smell like, I can confirm he smells of gasoline and destruction.

And what does destruction smell like, you ask? It smells like the dust and sweat that has accumulated in the stitches of the sweater. It smells like a mix of salt and ash and the pavement just after it rains. Simply, it smells like the boy has not washed the goddamn sweater in two years.

The Twenty-Something Who Hated Endings

He never liked endings very much. The ending was the saddest part of any story, song, moment. He wanted to live in the seconds before the end, the sweetest times when everything felt settled in its place. He liked the feeling of feeling whole, of feeling complete without ever completing. He hadn’t finished a book in five years. He skipped every song once there were ten seconds left. He walked out of the movie theater once he felt the plot had hit its climax because he couldn’t stand the closure. He didn’t wait to see the denouement; he could live with the uncertainty by creating his own endings for the characters. This was probably better; his endings were probably better.

He didn’t go to his high school graduation. He was currently in the midst of switching his college major and focus for the third time, primarily because he did not know how to leave. His parents told him they were no longer helping him pay for his education until he made up his mind about his future. He asked if this was goodbye until then. His mother only got to say “I guess s-” before he hung up the phone. It was over. He had never broken up with anyone; rather, he was the douchebag that just never called back. If he did, he would be trapped in one of those goodbyes, with or without screaming. His relationships, should they not foreseeably end in marriage, were split ends. And so, he cut the connections by not continuing the connections.

He didn’t like to think about death because whenever he did, he worked himself into a knot. He wouldn’t leave his room for days because he was too busy fretting over the fact that his life was coming to one big, fat end and couldn’t escape it. Unless, of course, he became immortal… His Google search history was always quite peculiar after these episodes of his.

One day, he was walking down the street to get to class and he did not look both ways when he crossed. A car hit him and that was the end.

Amelia, Teddy, and the Holy Ghost

It was just there one day. Ella awoke to find an elephant looking back at her. It had pink ears with purple polka dots, and Ella had to rub her eyes to make sure she wasn’t still dreaming.

She wasn’t.

It really truly was Ella Elephant, her prehistoric imaginary friend- alter ego hybrid and it really truly was standing in her bedroom. Ella got up slowly, as not to disturb her guest. She began to reach out her hand as a peace offering when Ella Elephant blew confetti out of her trunk. For a moment, all Ella saw was broken light as the shimmering paper fell to cover her room.

Ella didn’t flinch.

Ella Elephant was not the first visitor from Ella’s past to make a revival. In the past week alone, Ella had seen her old teddy bear, Teddy Roosevelt, walking and talking as if he was the president reincarnated. She had made amends with the ghost who lived in the walls of her room (the ghost’s name was Pruella and she carried the loveliest lavender scent). Most notably, Ella had conversed with Amelia Earhart, her childhood hero, and got the low-down on what actually happened when the plane went down; she was, however, now under a blood oath with Ms. Earhart and could not even think of her new knowledge.

But Ella Elephant and her confetti trunk were different: Ella Elephant was Ella’s best friend; she was what Ella pretended to be as she fell asleep each night; hell, she was Ella’s favorite color! Ella paused for a moment as the confetti settled around her. How was she going to explain Ella Elephant to the rest of the family? Ella walked to the door and called out to her mother.

“Mom, I think we need to talk about the elephant in the room.”

“Ella! Ella, darling, can you hear me? It’s mom! I’m right here.” Ella was facing complete nothing. Black, horizonless eternity staring her back in the face. Where did the stairs go?

“Honey, you can wake up now. I know you can.”

When Ella opened her eyes, everything was white and contoured and shimmering. Teddy Roosevelt was snuggled under her arm; the nurse who smelled of lavender stood behind her parents; the TV overhead was running an Amelia Earhart documentary.

“She’s awake! She’s awake! I knew you could pull through Ella. I knew you could.”

As Ella hugged her parents and drifted through medical lectures and spoke words that felt foreign on her tongue, she was weighed down with an unbearable sense that she had become the elephant in the room.

An Oral History of Winston Churchill’s Boyband

“I’m going to rewrite history.”

“You can’t do that.”

“‘Whhaaaaaa you can’t do that whaaa!’ Watch me.”

“Why do you even want to do that anyway?”

“I’m bored. Give me something.”

“No! I’m not encouraging this. You’re ridiculous.”
“Maybe. Probably-”

“Definitely.”

“What if… Winston Churchill had started a band?”

“Please, not again with him.”

“No! No, listen so: You got Churchill leading the way. Like a Liam Payne sort of figure-”

“End this.”

“-Then FDR is his second, a nice Harry Styles. Pretty, popular… pleasant?”

“I need to get out of here-”

“And Stalin is there, but he’s like the Zayn. He’s solid and supportive, but then he suddenly leaves the group… or was that World War I? Hey! Did you know young Stalin looked like Zayn Malik? It’s perfect!-”

“-Almost like history repeating itself.”

“Exactly! Now we’re on the same page. I don’t know all the other Allied supporters, but our Niall and Louis are in there.”

“Great-”

“And now we need to act it out.”

“What? Why would we ever need to do that??”

“To make sure I have all the parts right! We’ll start with What Makes You Beautiful, obviously. And you’ll be FDR.”

“FDR? No, no way I’m being second place.”

“Oh? Do you want to be Churchill?”

“One hundred percent. I don’t know why you ever assumed otherwise.”