The Knitting Circle Rapist Annihilation Squad Read online

  Zebadiah sits in the dimly lit, lonely basement office of MAWAR. He is confused. What used to be clear is now muddled. The Knitting Circle must be stopped, and the way to stop the Knitting Circle is to kidnap Jasmine and hold her hostage. But his feelings are getting in the way. It’s not that he particularly objects to snatching her; snatching her is necessary for the plan to succeed. He doesn’t even particularly object to snatching someone he likes. The problem is that now that he likes her, he finds himself too scared to even talk to her.

  He thinks on his predicament, and reflects on the wise words given by his wise leader, “Let Jesus be your strength.” So, what would Jesus do in these circumstances? What would Jesus do if he were planning to kidnap a woman in order to force her knitting circle to stop killing rapists? What would Jesus do if he met this woman in a nightclub called Xanadu, and if Jesus called the woman “fox-ay,” and this woman really was pretty hot, and if Jesus started to like her, but then found himself too scared and tongue-tied to pull off the kidnapping? What would Jesus do then?

  Zebadiah looks around the room, takes in the fusty drapes concealing a window that has been nailed shut, the Jesus-on-a-String Mountain Breeze cherry-kiwi air freshener, the desk, the computer, the telephone, the print on the wall of Jesus emerging from the grave, the twenty-five-year-old cheesecake calendar for a defunct tire company. What would Jesus do in this room?

  Zebadiah looks again around the room and thinks about his beloved Jesus. He pictures Jesus being reborn—pictures Jesus having lived not only two thousand years ago but getting a chance at a second life right now!—and imagines Jesus walking around the room in his flowing robe and sitting down at the desk (first running his hand over his bottom to smooth out his robe). All at once, Zebadiah knows exactly what he needs to do.

  Meanwhile the knitting circle continues to grow.

  Men are starting to join, too.

  On garlic cheddar day a man walks quietly into the knitting circle meeting, nods to the women, sits down, and begins knitting a very thin, long piece that doesn’t look like any item of clothing the other knitters have ever seen before. It is a gorgeous cerulean. He comes back the next week, and the week after, and the week after. Eventually, his knitted whatever-it-is trails down and coils in a pile on the floor. In all that time he does not say a word.

  Finally, Brigitte has to know. “What are you knitting? That’s too long and skinny even for a scarf.”

  The man holds up a knitted rope. He says, “In my case, it was my teacher.”

  Christine says, “I’m so sorry, dear.”

  Mary looks at the rope and says, “But it’s very nice knitting. Very even.”

  And Jasmine: “I adore that color.”

  Picture this: a man is in his library. An impressive selection of books lines the walls. They signify a fine intellectual mind, the mind of a learned man, the mind of someone worthy of passing his wisdom to the next generation. (He has not read most of them, but let’s ignore that—mentioning it would be uncharitable.) This man wears a tweed jacket. It has leather patches on the elbows. This style choice also signifies a fine, highly developed intellect. Everybody knows that all the best teachers wear this kind of jacket. He also wears a knitted rope. This rope weaves its way around his hands, binding them tightly together, and around his neck, and around the base of the chandelier in this man’s fine library. This rope is cerulean. The man’s feet do not touch the floor.

  People who aren’t direct victims are joining, too.

  A tall scrawny man wears a sleeveless leather jacket. From shoulder to wrist his arms are a writhing mass of tattoos. His hair is long and stringy, and his hairline is receding. He has a full beard and mustache and is missing an incisor and a canine. Though the day is overcast, he wears sunglasses. Beneath his leather jacket he wears a T-shirt that once was white. Around his neck is a braided leather thong, from which dangles a single bear claw.

  He strides into the room (which smells of Roquefort cheese), throws bloody knitting needles onto the table, and declares, “He did my little sister.”

  Gina hurriedly takes a pair of disposable rubber gloves from her purse, puts them on, picks up the knitting needles, sterilizes them and with alcohol (which she also happens to carry in her purse), and hands the needles back to him. She says, “Proper cleanliness prevents disease. Have a seat, hon.”

  The man takes the cleaned needles, sits down, and starts knitting expertly—red mittens, if you must know.

  Franz Maihem, who looks like a jumping spider, except that jumping spiders have eight legs and are actually kind of cute (and also have far more interesting and egalitarian courtship patterns), stares into the television camera (with only two eyes, as opposed to the jumping spider’s eight; his eyes also see only three primary colors, as opposed to the four seen by jumping spiders, meaning their sensory color space is four-dimensional—but apart from that, and the fact that he can’t jump several times his body length, oh, and also the fact that jumping spiders are by nature inquisitive and courageous, he is just like a jumping spider), and says, “This is Franz Maihem with ultraurgent breaking news. We are linking you live to our FBI contact Chet Stirling for an emergency announcement. Chet, go ahead.”

  Chet stands at his desk for several awkward seconds, staring blankly at the camera as the audio delay ticks by. Then his voice crackles as he says, “We have received a communiqué from the so-called Ice Queen Killers, whom our agency has classified as the greatest terrorist threat facing America today. They are more dangerous than al-Qaeda, the Taliban, North Korea, or Iran. They are even more dangerous and ruthless than domestic environmentalists. They are our top priority and we pledge to eradicate them.”

  Franz asks, “What does the communiqué say, Chet?”

  “It says, ‘We will stop killing rapists when men stop raping.’”

  Franz asks, “That’s it?”

  “That’s it. The entire message.”

  Franz asks, “What the heck does it mean, Chet?”

  Chet responds with the uncertainty of a man standing waving his arms while he cries, “Where’s my ass?”: “Well, Franz, we’re baffled. We have no idea what this could possibly mean. It’s certainly shocking and depraved, but you know chicks, I mean women—they’re incomprehensible.”

  “What do women want? That’s the age-old question, isn’t it, Chet?”

  “Yes. We’ve done extensive research on this question, and experts concur that women are irrational, hysterical, and contradictory. They often say no when they mean yes. In fact, sometimes they’re saying no with their mouths at the exact moment their eyes, and often their tantalizing breasts, are saying yes. They are devious, manipulative, lying, cheating, slutty whores.”

  Franz clears his throat. “The message, Chet?”

  Chet regains his composure, such as it is, and says, “Cryptologists are urgently trying to decipher this message as we speak. As soon as we figure out its precise meaning, we’ll alert the public. Meanwhile, please remain vigilant and report any suspicious activity.”

  The chief summons the remaining police to the war room. The police find the walls lined with large cardboard boxes. The chief is sitting at a table spread with Captain Marvel comics.

  Flint points at the boxes. “What are these, Chief?”

  The chief says, “I can’t stop thinking about that message from the killers: ‘We will stop killing rapists when men stop raping.’ And I just can’t understand what it could possibly mean. My thirty-five years, six months, and two weeks’ experience as a police officer tells me this message is the key to stopping these murders.”

  “What does that have to do with these boxes?”

  “That’s where my extensive library of textbooks on different modes of detective theory and practices comes in so handy.” He waves his hand over his desk, asks, “What do you see?”

  “A bunch of comic books.”

  “That, Flint, is why I’m behind this desk and you are standing kind of off to the side at an angle.
How do you think I got to be chief?”

  “Because your father was chief, and also because both you and he gave lots of money to poll workers at the stations where you pulled in 175 percent of the vote.”

  “Besides that, how do you think I got to be chief?”

  “Was it the ‘get out of jail free’ cards you handed to your primary donors and supporters?”

  “Those are nice looking cards, aren’t they? But besides that.”

  “The death threats against opponents?”

  “Well, that, too, but besides all of those.”

  “I have no idea.”

  “Which is why you are there and I am here. I’ll tell you. It’s because I work my ass off to keep educated on both classic and modern practices of detection. Just last night I learned by reading Encyclopedia Brown how to consistently stop a bully named Bugs Meany. And then the night before I learned of the importance of always listening to Lassie. God knows how many times Timmy would have died if people hadn’t learned to listen.”

  “I’m not following, sir.”

  “I’ll make it clear: if this message is in code, we need to look at the techniques used by the world’s expert code-ologist. And who is that?” He points at the comics, and says, “It’s Captain Marvel, who at one time supplied the entire nation’s next generation of potential police chiefs with secret decoder rings.”

  “I still don’t see what this has to do with the boxes, sir.”

  The chief sighs heavily. “It would be too much to expect that people in this room kept their old Captain Marvel secret decoder rings, which means we’ll have to work with what we’ve got.”

  “And what we’ve got …”

  “… Is about forty cases of Cracker Jacks bought with department money. We need to break this message. I want some decoder rings, and I want them now. Dig in, boys.”

  Flint asks, “Do we have to eat all the Cracker Jacks?”

  The chief responds, “Of course. Cracker Jacks, son, are one of the basic food groups.”

  Another cop says, “Uh, chief, I’ve bought these for my children. They don’t actually contain prizes anymore, but instead little riddles. It’s cheaper that way.”

  The chief, having already opened a box of Cracker Jacks, says, mouth full of caramel-covered popcorn and peanuts, “Well, shit. When will we ever get the break we need to solve these crimes?”

  CHAPTER 7

  Jasmine and Suzie are at Jasmine’s great-grandmother’s nursing home. It is the weekly Roller Derby Day, so they’ve brought bandages.

  Great-grandmother Ahn didn’t get off too bad this time: a couple of bruises on her arm and a bump on her forehead, “where that nasty piece of business Robin Banks hit me with a folding chair when I was about to lap her.”

  Jasmine gasps, “You need to get a new roommate, Grandma. That’s too much.”

  Grandma Ahn says, “She’s a nasty piece of business, all right. But all the other inmates are worse.”

  Jasmine and Suzie attend to her wounds, watch video highlights of that afternoon’s game, compliment Grandma Ahn on her ability to fend off blockers with her walker, and jeer at Ms. Bank’s perfidy. The three of them note with glee that Ms. Banks was sent off to do penalty time for the incident with the chair.

  After that Grandma Ahn gives them a play-by-play of yesterday’s bingo games, including detailed descriptions of the increasingly disgusted looks on Ms. Banks’s face each time Grandma Ahn shouted Bingo just as Ms. Banks was taking in her breath to do the same. Grandma Ahn lowers her voice: “I think that’s why she hit me with a chair.” She covers her mouth and giggles.

  Suddenly she stops giggling and asks without preamble, “Did you bring me any doughnut holes?”

  Suzie says, “Of course,” and begins rummaging in her backpack.

  Grandma Ahn hisses, “Hurry. Get them to me before she gets back. If she sees them she’ll want some, and if I don’t give her any she’ll take them as soon as I leave the room.”

  Suzie finds them and hands them over.

  Grandma Ahn pops a couple in her mouth, then carries the bag to her bed, where she lifts a corner of the mattress, slides the treasure beneath, and lets the mattress fall back down. She returns to her chair and asks, again without preamble, “You have a boyfriend?”

  Jasmine opens her mouth to speak.

  Before she can answer, Grandma Ahn asks, gently, “Girlfriend?”

  Jasmine inhales so she can say something.

  But before she gets the words out, her great-grandmother says, “Makes no matter to me what you prefer, so long as the other person’s not a nasty piece of business. That’s what I told your grandmother and that’s what I told your mother, and that’s what I’ll tell you, too, right now. Better to be alone than that.”

  Jasmine says, with meaning, “I’ve found someone very special.”

  “You have?” Suzie says.

  “I told you about him.”

  “Who?”

  “The One.”

  “Which one?”

  Grandma Ahn asks, “What are you girls talking about?”

  “The one I met at the Xanadu.”

  Suzie asks, “Months ago? The one with the text message?”

  Grandma Ahn asks, “What’s a Zandoo? And what’s a sex message?”

  “Text, Grandma. Text,” Jasmine says.

  Grandma Ahn continues, “Not that I have anything against sex, but when I was young we could send messages other ways, too.”

  Jasmine says, flustered, “We’re not having sex, Grandma.”

  Her great-grandmother looks at her a moment, then asks, sincerely, “Why not? Life’s a one-way trip and you’re not young for very long.” She pauses a moment, then says, “And sex is good. What I wouldn’t give ‘bout now for some quality naked time with a—”

  Jasmine reddens. “Grandma! Can we talk about something else, please?”

  Grandma Ahn says, “Where’s my doughnut holes? Did Ms. Banks take them already?”

  “They’re under your mattress, Grandma, and Ms. Banks isn’t back from rugby practice yet,” Jasmine says.

  “So, what’s your boyfriend look like?” Grandma Ahn asks.

  Jasmine answers, “Well, at first he looked like Brad Pitt. Then later he looked like George Clooney. More recently he usually looks like a dragon. And sometimes he looks like the cutest little wombat. Then I just want to squeeze him.”

  Suzie says, “Jaz, are you all right?”

  Grandma Ahn turns to Suzie and asks, “Does this make any more sense to you than it does to me?” Suzie responds, “Not at all.”

  Grandma Ahn says to Suzie, “Thank God. For a moment there I thought I was getting old and losing my mind.” She thinks a second, then says, also to Suzie, now conspiratorially, “Sometimes I wonder about her father’s side of the family. Oh, the stories I could tell about the Maias …”

  Both Jasmine’s and Suzie’s eyes open wide as they try to think of something to say. They love Grandma Ahn, but once the family stories start….

  Instead, Grandma Ahn takes the subject back to The One. She turns to Jasmine and says, “I’ve heard of two-faced before, but this guy has four. It sounds to me like he’s a nas—”

  Jasmine says, “Look at the time! Gotta go, Grandma Ahn!”

  After Suzie drops off Jasmine at her apartment, she calls Brigitte and asks if she can come over. Brigitte says yes, and soon the two are talking while listening to the soothing sounds of the multi-artist album In Praise of the Trung Sisters.

  Suzie tells Brigitte of the conversation at the nursing home, leaving out references to roller derby, bingo, doughnut holes, Robin Banks, and Grandma Ahn’s desire for quality naked time. She asks Brigitte what she thinks.

  “He sounds like a nasty piece of business,” Brigitte says.

  “I’m really worried,” Suzie says,

  “Do you think he’s abusing her?”

  “It’s not that,” Suzie says. “I don’t think he even exists.”

  “What
do you mean?”

  “I think,” Suzie continues, “that Jasmine has an imaginary boyfriend.”

  Brigitte thinks a moment, then says, “I’ve had a few of those. And frankly some of them have been preferable to—”

  Suzie cuts her off: “But you knew they were imaginary, right? You didn’t tell your friends you’d met someone special, did you?”

  “Houston,” Brigitte says, “I think we have a problem.”

  Although the news media, the FBI, and the police all have a difficult time deciphering the meaning of the knitting circle’s message—”We will stop killing rapists when men stop raping”—many other people seem to understand it very well.

  Knitting circles begin springing up all around the country.

  Picture women walking together down a side street (or rather, the side street) in Horn Hill, Alabama, trailing long knitted scarves behind them. Picture other women (and a few men) doing the same in Central Park. Picture women on beaches in Hawaii wearing knitted bikinis and matching scarves. Picture women deer hunting near Beaver Creek, Montana, wearing bright orange vests and caps knitted from the finest angora. Picture college students carrying knitted backpacks, and businesswomen carrying knitted briefcases. Picture knitted helmet covers and footie boot covers worn by biker gangs. Picture pirates flying knitted flags with a skull and crossed needles instead of bones. Picture knitted flowerpot covers, knitted toilet seat covers (and I guarantee the seat gets raised and lowered properly in these households). Picture a group of women sneaking into the Lincoln Memorial to lay a knitted scarf around The Great Emancipator’s neck.

  Picture people giving their loved ones gifts of sweaters. Picture a high school boyfriend and girlfriend sharing a sweater made for two. Picture knitted sweaters keeping dogs warm, keeping cats warm, keeping horses and cows and pigs and chickens warm. Picture a field of sheep wearing brightly colored sweaters.

  Or picture this. A man ambles down a dusty deserted country road. He is carrying a fishing pole and whistling the Mayberry Theme. Suddenly four women brandishing knitting needles step out from behind trees. The man stops. You can see the terror in his eyes. He stutters, “W-w-who sent you? Was it Becky?”