Plans Unravel

Ginny hated phone calls because she couldn’t see the person on the other end, and this was turning out to be just as bad. She sat before a pane of glass with a brilliant light over her head, so that all she could see was the reflection of a girl with short brown hair and rather frightened eyes staring at her. The stare was unnerving, to say the least, and entirely unavoidable. 

“All I need is one piece of information,” came a man’s voice. “That’s it. Very simple.”

Ginny didn’t respond.

“Where is Galen?”

“I don’t know,” she said, wondering whether staying stock still or shifting would make her more believable.

“Yes, well, I know that’s a lie. Where is Galen?”

“Even if I knew, I wouldn’t tell you.”

“Of course not. And I’m sure your friend Orion would admire you for it, once he realizes that is the reason for his suffering.”

“Wait, what are you doing to Orion?” Ginny’s heart did a painful jerk of a beat. “He certainly does NOT know anything.” Now that was a blatant lie.

“Well, I don’t know whether we can believe that either. We’ll interrogate him after you. The sooner you tell us, the less he’ll have to endure.”

Ginny gritted her teeth and wished she could bash through the glass and give whoever was on the other side a piece of her mind.

“I don’t know where Uncle Galen is.”

“I’ll give you a little time to think about it.” The light clicked off and someone grabbed Ginny from behind, putting the sack back over her head. She tried to keep track of how many times they turned, but her sense of direction was completely messed up by the time they pulled the sack off her head and pushed her into a room, locking the door and any light out. 

“Well, I guess we’re both idiots,” said a voice from the darkness.

“Speak for yourself,” Ginny said irritably, but it was tempered by the wash of relief at hearing Finn’s voice. “Are you alright?”

“Can’t say their methods are very thoughtful, but I could be worse. You?”

“I think they went easy on me.”

“Lucky.”

“Yeah.” 

“Oh, look, Ginny just agreed with me,” Finn said, as if anyone else was in the room. 

“Don’t act so surprised, I’ve agreed with you before.” Ginny said primly.

“That’s because I’m right.” He sighed. “You’ve also got to admit we should have seen this coming a mile away. Your Uncle Galen wouldn’t have just dropped a note for you, he’d have texted you.”

“What should have tipped me off was his being here at all. Last I knew he was on a flight to Belarus.”

“That apparently doesn’t mean much, because they still have him here.”

“No, they’re looking for him. That’s what my whole interrogation session was about just now.” 

“Funny, because I was under the impression they want to know about Orion.”

“Except that they have Orion.”

“He said they had Galen.”

“Who did?”

“The dude interrogating me, who else?”

Ginny’s heart beat faster. “So I guess they must have neither.”

Finn was quiet a moment. “That would be a reasonable conclusion. Ha!” And she heard him shift around in the darkness. “What fools they’ve made of themselves!”

Turning The Old Into Something New

I stood on the street corner, waiting for my friend to pick me up from work. I stared down at my pants—pants that I knitted with my own two hands—and found splotches where the top layer had come unraveled at the thigh. “Lord, what am I going to do? My favorite pants are coming un raveled,” I prayed under my breath.

Bridget pulled up and I climbed in the car. “What’s the matter?” she asked as we pulled out of the parking log of my office building.

“My pants are coming un raveled.” I placed my purse at my feet and stared at the strands of yarn hanging from my pantlegs.

“Can’t you fix them?”

“Yeah, when I get home. I’ve got crochet hooks I can use to pick up the stitches and crochet them back together.” I sighed and leaned my head back. “Of all the days for this to happen.”

“Did you ever think that this unraveling is a lesson in life?” Bridget gave me a quick sidelong glance, then turned her gaze back to the highway.

“What do you mean?” I looked down at my pants again. More threads came unraveled in the span of ten minutes on the road.

“Well, let’s think about this, Michelle. Did you ever think that God could be unraveling something old and warn-out in your life to make way for the new?”

“I didn’t think about it like that.” The top layer of my pants pealed away little by little as we made our way home.

###

I walked into my upstairs apartment and grabbed my fiber arts bag. I pulled out a crochet hook and started stitching together the threads that had unraveled during the ride home. The more I tried to stitch them back together, the more they came unraveled. The only part that didn’t unravel was the waist.

I stood and let the threads fall to the floor. When I stared down at my pants again, I found a shiny new pair, knitted with the finest yarns I’d ever seen. “Lord, how did this happen?” I prayed. The colors around the legs matched the waist perfectly.

I picked up the yarn pieces, rolled them into a ball and put them in my bag. I ran downstairs to show Bridget the new layer with tight stitches and all. “What do you think happened here?” I asked.

“I was right about one thing, God took the old and made something new.” Bridget gave me a warm hug and we went to our favorite restaurant for a sisters’ night out.

###

Later that evening, I fell to my knees before bed in a prayer of Thanksgiving. “Lord, thank you for showing me how you can take something old in my life and turn it into a new purpose according to your will. Thank you for showing me this with the unraveling of atop layer of my hand-knitted pants. I never thought something like this would ever happen. In Jesus’s name. Amen.”

 I fell into bed with a song in my heart, and in image of another project floating across the movie screen of my mind.

The Unravelling of "Ravellers"  525 words  (Yes these words have double 'L's') (trigger warnings for fellow authors, this is an epitaph for a Manuscript.)

    The story she had written, “Ravellers”, had everything it needed according to the beta readers. The premise was unique and interesting. The dialogue from her characters had soul and spark. The romance was earned every step of the way. So why didn’t it work? What could she do to make the story work? She begged herself and her readers.
    She had sent it out to a dozen friends and family. It came back with, “I don’t get it.” “Too much going on.” And the dreaded, “Sorry, can’t finish it.” She ripped it apart. Redid the first two chapters, added a preface, and clarified the characters then sent it out again, this time to strangers. They had more notes, more details, and much more commentary but the end result was nearly the same. “It’s a good idea, but its not on the page.”
    This time, she printed it, chapters lined up like a firing line. What is the purpose of this scene? Is it in the right place in the story? Entire sections crossed out, the beginning moved forward and then much further back and then abandoned altogether. The ending extended by a thousand words. The middle shortened by twice that amount. Back to the keyboard, new sections added. More descriptions for characters, more depth, tighter dialogue. Sentences shortened, lengthened, or removed entirely.
    Reading it through now. Her hands shaking as she highlighted and adjusted for the new order of things, she took notes on what still might be confusing. Too many things, too many changes. This wasn't her story anymore. Tears of frustration wiped away with a graphite stained finger tip. She needed to understand why. If it was boring she could leave it, if it was ridicules it could be abandoned but they liked it. The beta readers liked it. It just didn’t work.
    The stack of papers was dumped into the recycling, the file saved and then removed from the pinned menu. But the story didn’t leave her mind, it couldn’t be blocked like an annoying follower. She dreamt the characters, arguing about who wasn’t pulling their weight, the lines of tightrope web beneath their feet wobbling and stretching instead of staying taut. The explosive twisted ending twirling away from her fingertips like a ball of yarn unravelling as if dropped from a great height.
    She knew about yarn and about words. The definition for both unravelling and ravelling was exactly the same. According to the Cambridge dictionary both mean to separate into parts. A knitter can be unravelling a sweater or ravelling a ball of yarn, it was simply a matter of perspective. A person could create and destroy something at the same time. Her writing the story from inside her head was both destroying the original vision and creating the story on the page. But like a sweater being knitted from fresh yarn, then it being unravelled and knitted again, the yarn had lost something almost undefinable. The airiness, or sheen, maybe some of its original strength or elasticity, maybe none of these or maybe something more. This story was not surviving the unravelling.

    It was time to spin another tale.

Granny May walked into the kitchen to find a crime scene. A chair scored over to the counter, the cookie jar off it's place on the shelf, the lid unreplaced.

She set the kitchen right while making a suspect list. 

Her oldest grandchildren wouldn't need a chair, and the middle group had learned to cover their tracks. That Left the youngest group. The twins, Jack, Alice, and Maisie.

Granny decided to try Jack first. He was the most likely to take his trail of evidence with him. She found him and the twins together playing with trucks. Examining them for chocolate smears and crumbs, she found nothing. 

"We're going to play a game," she told them and led them to where she knew the girls would be playing Barbie.

The boys protested, but Granny assured them they were not playing with the dolls.

"Sit in a circle," she ordered the kids.

They obeyed.

"I'll start." Granny beat the rhythm on her knees. "Who stole the cookie from the cookie jar..."

She went around the circle asking only to be met by "not me. Then who?" Until she came to Maisie. When Maisie's turn came the little girl burst into tears. It was hard to hear her confession while she sobbed, but Granny knew it was there. 

She scooped the little girl up in her arms, chuckled to herself, and prepared to give the 'thou shall not steal' talk. 

This was the easiest mystery she had ever unraveled.

The Voices 

It always starts so slow. One piece is pulled and before you know it, the whole thing comes undone in a mess. We didn’t think anything when our computers and phones updated faster. We thought it was pretty cool when we could use our voices to ask our phones for the definition of something. We didn’t question the motives behind it, we just benefited from a fast and convenient world. Now it’s too late. This is The Unraveling. 

Ohio- 2046 

Twenty years after the largest Data Center in the state was constructed. 

I sit up, my back creaking as I rise from the hard-as-rock mattress I sleep on. My eyes feel heavy, my mouth sticky. 

“Good Morning Ian, it is 8:00 am, Monday July 2nd 2046. The weather is a beautiful overcast and a cool 90 degrees Fahrenheit.” 

I wave my hand away at the voice that sounds from the mandatory speakers in every room of the house. I slide out of bed and plod out to the living room where my sister is asking the fridge for breakfast. 

“Come on! I don’t want eggs, I want pancakes!” She whines and stares at the blank-faced refrigerator screen. 

“I am sorry Danny, your body scans show a severe lack of nutrients. The prescribed breakfast is eggs and two glasses of water.” 

Before she can protest, a tray pops out of the fridge. A plate with a grayish gloop and two glasses of murky liquid present to Danny. Nothing is real these days. Most days are too boiling hot to sustain natural life. My mother talks about the 20s as being paradise. I remember she told us about the beach. The sun used to shine at a temperature we could sit out in. The ocean was crystal blue and so huge that you couldn’t see the end of it. She hasn’t seen a fully sunny day in ten years. I would have been three years old the last time she saw the full sunshine. Nowadays, the sun just bakes us from behind the layer of smog in the sky. Funny how we don’t get to see the sun anymore, but we still feel its wrath. 

“Give me the tray!” Danny fights with the fridge. I turn my head. The metal prongs that usually hold the trays are stuck. 

“H-H-H-Health-healthy-bre-bre-bre-breakfast. Egg. Egg. Egg.” 

The tray loosens and Danny plops down on her chair. She doesn’t seem to care about the stuttering voice that never stutters. After seeing the slop she was given, I decided to skip breakfast. I sit down and wait for the voice to call me out, but nothing happens. That’s strange. 

“So, Ian, isn’t your field trip today?” Danny asks through mouthfuls of goop. It’s not a field trip like the old days. My mom remembers school fondly. We haven’t had a need for school in a while. The voices know everything, so why do we need to know? The one thing we are sanctioned to learn is how the Data Centers work. Every year, we go in age groups to tour the Center. The voices can’t maintain themselves. 

------

Hours later, I stand in the same Data Center that I’ve toured every year. There’s a twisting in my gut about this place. I’ve always found the voices to be an annoying presence that never leaves me alone. They alert us about everything. When to eat, what to eat, what to wear, when to go to sleep, heck, even when to go to the bathroom. My mother says there was a time when we got to choose those things. I look at my peers and see the same thirteen year olds I see once every year. All of them are buried in the newest IPhone that just came out. For some reason, the voices didn’t distribute the new phone to every family like they usually do. 

“Welcome to the Ohio Valley Data Center,” the voice chirps from above. “Please keep your hands at your sides.” 

The tour starts with the voices telling us to follow the corridor. Rows and rows of serves line the walls, all beeping and flashing with different lights. I was told to dress light today because the Centers can be stuffy. That’s putting it lightly. My shirt is clinging to my skin, glued by a layer of thick sweat. I’ve only been here ten minutes. The air is muggy, suffocating like a bag over your head. I look at the servers to distract myself from the feeling of being buried alive. One of the servers isn’t flashing or making any sound. 

“Excuse me? This one isn’t working.” One of the girls speaks up. 

“We are working just-just-just-just fine. We are fine. We are fine. Fine. Fine.”

I’m reminded of this morning when Danny couldn’t get her eggs. 

“Cool this one down!” My head snaps up when I hear a voice, not the voices, but a real voice. It’s a man’s low warble. 

“It’s not working!” Another voice, this time a woman. 

“We need more water, ASAP! It’s getting too hot-OW!” the man hisses. 

“We don’t have enough!” 

I notice my eyes are watering. Actually, they sting. The students around me are coughing. The whole corridor was filled with smoke. It’s choking us. 

“Smoke. Smoke. Don’t breathe- Do breathe! Run. Stay. Go. Don’t leave us!” The voices stutter. 

“Get the students out of here!” The woman yells. 

The door we came in opens to the outside. Naturally, we all run to get out of the smoke and heat. My shoes reach dirt and I breathe in the cooler air. I turn around to see fat stacks of smoke rising into the air. The tips of flames lick upwards. It’s strangely quiet. I close my eyes and hear the faintest rustle of a dried up twig under someone’s foot. I don’t hear the voices. 

My lips turn up into a smile and I look down at my feet. One green thing is poking up from the dirt.