The Signal

The intruder squeezed the chain of the locket around Jayce’s neck, leaving a heart-shaped imprint. She flailed for anything that would help, and her hand came in contact with the knitting needle that had defined most of her adult life. She thrust it backward, heard the crunch, and felt the warm blood splatter on her skin. She turned around to see a man in a grey suit holding his neck while his life force gushed from his body.

The man toppled face down onto an almost finished hand-knit blanket with Barack Obama’s likeness stitched into the fabric. She turned to the phone that had been recording the entire incident and yanked it from the tripod. With trembling hands, she dialed the video back to right before the attack. What should have been the last few seconds of her time-lapsed project completion was now evidence of her assault.

She deleted the video.

The body dissolved into an orange goo pooling near Obama’s left eye socket. She swiped out of her camera app and dialed her childhood friend and producer. Kieran’s radiant smile and golden-red hair filled the screen when she greeted Jayce with a, “It’s the Knit Bitch herself. You got the new video for me?”

“About that,” Jayce said and swiveled the view on her camera. The deflated body had almost entirely drained away.

“How in the—your viewership is coming back. Easily top 20 in Home and Garden.”

“I don’t suppose you’d tell him that?” Jayce nodded to the clothes that were now turning to dust.

“Just stay right there. The rideshare is on its way. I’ll be there in 30, tops.”

Kieran clicked away. On the screen was the live feed of the puddle that was left of the man who had given her a heart-shaped scar on her neck and an orange stain on Obama’s smiling face. Jayce flipped the camera back around and switched over to the video app.

She hit record and smiled, “Hey. It’s the Knit Bitch here. I know you want a cozy little Obama to go with your Bruce Springsteen, but Meowlor Swift got into the yarn again…”

She lost the smile and said, “And edit in some epic fight music to the video of Meowlor and the yarn… thanks, Kieran.”

The big grin came back. “You can even see the scar when her claw got stuck in my locket, and she tried to run away.”

She displayed her neck. “Yep, it was CATastrophe. But don’t let that stop you from taking a look at my CATalogue. What’s that? Stop punning? I CAT hear you. Ugg… edit that last one out. Lots of love…”

She held her grin long enough for Kieran to pop in a few promos and cut the recording. A few taps later, and it was up in the cloud awaiting post-production. Admittedly, not her best work since she started her rise to craft stardom five years ago, but she needed to take care of the evidence.

Jayce wrapped up the blanket that was now entirely dry and stuffed it in a trash bag. The water marks and orange stain rendered it unusable as quaint Obama wrap for a night of streaming the latest Dancing with the Stars episode aside from the detail that it was far more dangerous to have it in her house.

She contemplated her options. Burn it? She didn’t have a fireplace. Bury it in the woods? That’s just asking for a dog to come around and dig it up. Toss it into the ocean or a river? Yarn floats. Put it in the dumpster of that coffee shop with the creeper barista who told her that she looks even more beautiful in person and that he had knit a blanket of her likeness. Let the Attenuators dig through that guy’s apartment because he was bound to have some secrets.

Jayce slumped down on her signature blue knitting chair and buried her hands in her face.

Twenty minutes later, there was a pounding at her door. She checked her doorbell cam and saw Kieran outside. She unlocked the front door, and her producer was in the knitting studio moments later. Kieran reached for the trash bag and said. “Is that…”

“No,” Jayce said and jumped up to stop her friend. “You can deny that you saw anything.”

“Jay, they tried to kill you.”

“The Home and Garden chan is ruthless, Kay. I’m surprised it hasn’t happened earlier.”

“But you could have died!”

“I knew the risks when I uploaded my first video.”

“But isn’t there something we can do? Call the Attenuators?”

“What? And go back down to tier 4? Tier 5? You were working three jobs!”

Kieran fought back a tear, sank to the floor, and croaked. “I believed in you.”

Jayce plopped down and wrapped her arms around her friend. “So believe in me now.”

The two women sat for a moment. Kieran sniffled and said, “What do we do?”

Three hours later, with the Obama blanket safely stowed in the barista creeper’s dumpster, Jayce bid Kieran goodbye, and they parted their separate ways. Another two hours after that, she was inundated with notifications about her new BuzzTube video. It was the usual array: sad face emojis, a gif of a weeping Obama, comments about the cat video never getting old, along with the “get some new material” trolls.

Later that night, after she was showered and wanted nothing more than to watch the 50th-anniversary episode of her favorite show, there was a ring at her doorbell. The visitor confused her because Kieran was a morning person, whereas AM hours were Jayce’s bedtime. She pulled out her phone from under Meowlor, who used it as a tummy warmer. She swiped over to her doorbell cam and flipped on the outdoor light.

A man in a black government-issue suit stood outside her door, an Attenuator.

“Crap, crap,” She said and tossed off her snuggly Bruce Springsteen. She was in her pajamas.

After a fluff of her hair and donning her purple hand-knit “Bitch Queen” robe, she answered the door.

“It’s 3 in the morning. You’re lucky I didn’t sleep through you ringing.”

The man let himself into the apartment and said in a dry voice, “50 Years of Dancing with the Stars from earlier tonight is paused three-quarters of the way through. You lack any telltale signs of sleep like pillow indentations on your face or matted hair, and you have made references to both enjoying the sunrise and not being able to even think until the afternoon on your channel. My condolences about your cat-related scar.”

“You’re a fan of my show then?” Jayce said as she unconsciously touched her neck.

“No, mam, I only pay attention to the signal, which is why I’m here tonight. Have you noticed anything unusual today?”

“Yeah, I have. There is a troll who always posts about his favorite moments to pause my videos. Sends shivers down my spine. I keep blocking him, but he always reappears with a new account. Is there something you can do about that?”

“No, mam, we are only concerned with the signal.”

“You’re always ‘defending the public interest.’ I’m a public figure. Seems like you should be able to do something?”

“Tell me,” The Attenuator began and swiped a picture from his phone to Jayce’s big-screen TV. It was a still frame from her latest video. He zoomed in on her shoulder, and right around the base of her neck was an orange splotch. “What do you think this is?”

“Orange drink,” Jayce said. “You must have never been poor. We got orange and purple.”

“If I were to look through your fridge, would I find this orange drink?”

“You never heard of a bodega? There’s a great one around the block, but it’s closed.”

“That won’t be necessary. Your viewership is slipping.”

“I’m still top 20 in Home and Garden. Number 5 in Knitwear.”

“It’s not about you. It’s about the signal.”

The man brushed perspiration from his forehead that had turned into orange goo. He lurched forward, and Jayce screamed.

Three months later, Zed, a barista at a coffee shop who liked to knit, enjoyed a smoke in the alleyway. He pulled out his phone and hit the BuzzTube app. He tapped on his subscriptions and hit Knit Bitch. Kieran popped up on the screen with a big grin and said, “Sweaters? The Christmas gift you’d burn every year from Aunt Gertrude or a new clothing trend that’s making all the schoolgirls scream like it was a Beatles concert? Vintage references for vintage clothing. You know you love it. Stick with me while I knit something that is stylish and will have Aunt Gertrude smiling down on you from heaven. But before we start, here are some obligatory fireworks followed by an old-timey video of a guy singing opera for making top 5 in Home and Garden. I couldn’t do it without you guys!”

Zed chuckled and leaned against the dumpster. The garbage truck must not have lowered the bin down properly because his weight caused it to slip off its perch. He glanced at his feet and saw something was stuck underneath. He pulled on it until he was able to free the object from the underside of the dumpster. It was a hand-knit blanket of Obama with an orange stain.