Patching Things Up

October 28th, 2023 | Tying Off Threads

5.8 Minute Read

I’ve started sewing a lot recently.

Not sewing like "oh yeah I made this shirt myself," nor "oh cool, a homemade teddy bear!" I’ve been sewing small things for utility. I noticed that a button was missing from one of my dress shirts the other day. I usually wear them open, with some cool t-shirt underneath with an ironic logo on it. "Bazooka Booger" or something like that, some really cool logo.

But I needed to wear my dress shirt as an actual dress shirt, and when I went to button it up (or down, depending where you’re from) I noticed the lack of button. So I got out my trusty needle and thread kit and started stitching it up.

It’s a very meditative act. The repetitive stitch stitch stitch of my shitty little needle, the thread getting all tangled up and it’s too damn thin to make sense of the knots, that quick electric heat of pain when the needle pokes one of your fingers. After 20 minutes of sewing a patch on the elbow of my favorite jacket, I feel like a brand new person.

Last week I decided to fix up the seams on one of my pairs of jeans. I spent a good amount of time deciding what type of yellow thread to use. I had two options, and the real issue was that neither matched the original color, so I was having a hard time deciding. As I sat there trying to make up my mind, the familiar artificial chime noise of my video doorbell went off.

I reached for my left pocket for my phone, but then I realized I wasn’t wearing pants. Oh, right. I was wearing the jeans before I decided to fix them. I patted the pocket of the jeans on the table but the phone wasn’t there.

"Fuck," I said aloud to myself. I looked up at my front door and a slight sense of panic swelled in my chest. I was half-naked and someone was at the door. What do you do in a situation like this, exactly? Do you calmly put your pants back on and then open the door? Do you yell something out to the person at the door, either telling them to hang on, or even to go away? Do you say nothing at all, and instead lie down on your floor and hide behind the couch?

In the microseconds of time I had to think of all this, my brain decided to go with yelling something out loud, and in that moment I said "Jeans!" very loudly at person behind my door.

Instantly feeling embarrassed I grabbed the jeans and started to put them on.

It didn’t matter, I was too late.

The front door exploded open into shards with a loud bang. I hit the ground in a state of shock, a high-pitch tone ringing in my ears. I immediately felt nauseous and my vision was blurred. Joseph Craig walked through the hole where my door was and smiled when he saw me.

"Been a while, ay Mikey?" he said to me, his teeth blackened in spots and his face covered in dirt and scars. I don’t know how he found me, I was so careful. I felt rage but I was still disoriented and everything mixed together into feeling like I needed to puke.

"How’d you find me, Craig," I said while shifting over to all fours to stabilize myself. Drool spilled out of my mouth and I was pretty sure that explosion had some kind of chemical agent in it designed to kill me.

"That’s the funny thing about losin’ everything," he said as he fiddled with something in his hands. "You have a lot of time to figure out how to find the person who took it all away," he continued. I started thinking about where I stashed all the weapons, the closest one was a small pocket knife under the stool. Surely he had the drop on me regardless.

"I never meant--for it to happen like that," I managed to sputter out in between deep breaths. I finally managed to see what Joe had been doing with his hands. He squatted down in front of me, holding my jeans.

"I fixed the seams on your old jeans," he said to me.

I woke up on my couch, my jeans on the coffee table in front of me. I looked up and saw the door was still in one piece. "A dream," I said aloud to myself. "A dream..."