Fade to Black

“Last stitch, yeah?” Ella asked.

Mum nodded.

The fingers of her hands cramped as she looped her silver hook around and through the soft strand one last time. She handed the tiny technicolor coat over for inspection.

“Well, I’d say you did it!”

Ella’s forehead wrinkled a bit.

“It’s quite lovely,” Mum assured. “Let’s try it on, shall we?” Mum tucked the garment under her left arm and walked to where the puppies slept. “Darling, Ella’s made you the perfect winter coat. Let’s give it a go.” She reached into the whelping pen and lifted a tiny soft lump from its slumber.

The pup pushed its belly out, licked his pink lips, and opened two brown eyes—legs akimbo. Mum handed the coat to Ella, “You did the work, you get the glory!”

Ella tucked the pup’s head through the neck hole, forelegs into the leg straps. A perfect fit. A smile washed across her face, and it seemed across the pup’s too. The contrast was striking: every hue of frizzy yarn in Gemma’s General Store against the shiny jet-black and snow-white landscape of the pup’s body.

Born into the Grey family, Ella stood out. From birth, her eyes drifted always to color. It shouldn’t have been a surprise. In utero, Mum and Dad sung lullabies and read stories to “our rainbow baby.”

And oh, how she adored her daddy. Mum had taken to calling the pair DrewElla, as though they were one being. She scooped the colorfully clad pup from Mum’s arms and ran to show him. “Daddy, Daaaadddy! I finished a sweater, all on my own!”

“Ah he looks quite smart, don’t you think? What’s the next project, dear?”

Mum chimed in, “She’s mastered crochet. I think we graduate to knitting…”

Mum’s words hung in the air. A trip to Gemma’s! Ella had been eyeing the long wooden needles since Halloween, the slimmer smoother yarns since school began. There was a knitting yarn where each ply was a different color, with threads of glitter running throughout. Mum said it was too slick for crochet. She was smitten just thinking about it.

“…la….Ella? Earth to Ella…” like she was coming out of a dream… “ELLA. The puppy?!” She peered down, just as the sleeve of Dad’s uni sweater gave way to the razor sharp milk teeth in the tiny canine’s otherwise gummy jaws.

“Oh dear. I’ll have to mend it now. Ella, take the dogs out. We’ll fetch knitting supplies tomorrow on the way back from Crufts.”

“But I’ll be at school!” she protested.

“Precisely,” replied Mum.

“You don’t know what I like.” Ella frowned.

“The dullest yarn they carry, right?” Mum teased in return.

In the morning, Ella stepped into her rainbow skivvies. The Carter School for Girls demanded a crisp white blouse and a black corduroy jumper. Ella Grey’s hair was black as crude oil. Her skin a pale ivory. Under-garments were a secret one-gal joy retort: her wonder-pants.

The teachers were strict. Fellow students were rude. The classrooms, dark and musty. But Ella radiated color. As book reports droned on, Ella broke out in song. Lunchpails of porridge and toast lined the tables, punctuated at the head by Ella’s fruit salad. She dutifully transcribed arithmetic in her notebook, in azure ink of course. “BLUE, Ella?!” her nemesis wailed, prompting the teacher’s steely gaze.

“EL-LAH-GREY,” with a bony finger aimed at the chalkboard, Ms. Moira enunciated each consonant and vowel, “FIF-TY.”

The bell rang. Pupils scrambled. Ella’s chin sank to her chest. Her gaze on the floor. She approached and slipped her paper in the assignments bin. To the board, Ella retrieved a dusty excuse for chalk.

…I will use pencil. I will use pencil. I will use pencil…she wrote. Her hand began to cramp again. “Will I be too tired to knit?” she wondered. “Did Mum pick the right yarn? Daddy’s there. He knows…”

Just then, the door swung wide and in a single movement the secretary was whispering into cupped hands over Ms. Moira’s ear. “…ice…puppy…crash…”

The women’s faces drooped like melting candles. Their eyes met Ella’s. Three mouths agape, silent, but for the second hand on the clock: “tick, tick, tick, tick…”

Ms. Moira’s lips smacked shut, then opened again. “Ella.” Pause. “There’s a car for you.” A strained whisper now, faint as a draft beneath a doorway: “Go.”

The chalk hit the floor. Ms. Moira didn’t even yell. She only crouched to retrieve it.

Ella couldn’t feel her feet at all, but they carried her anyway.

Inside the waiting car was her aunt Tempest de Vil. Damp cigarette smoke hung in the air. Tempest looked straight ahead. Ella met her gaze in the rearview mirror.

“The wretched dog,” she snarled “got loose at Gemma’s. They couldn’t bear to let one go, could they?” Tempest’s lips pursed around the cigarette. Her cheeks jumped inward on inhale. On exhale:

The pup ran out from behind a dumpster…Drew hit the brakes…The car spun…There was a train…Mum didn’t make it.

The world went dark. Jade drained from Ella’s eyes. Mauve from her lips. Onyx from her locks. On the seat next to her sat the uni sweater—with Mum’s mending yarn on the sleeve. She drew it over her knees to cut the chill.

“Daddy is unconscious, Ella. I certainly cannot keep the mongrels. Except you, that is.”

Crimson filled her throat.

From the paper bag beneath her feet, rainbow shimmers danced on the ceiling. She couldn’t bring herself to look. She just knew. Her needles. Her yarn. Lovingly selected for “our rainbow baby.”

“Probably junk. They pulled it from the wreckage.”

Newly fallen snow crunched beneath the car tires. A crystalline tear ran down Ella’s cheek. Dusk gave way to the blackest night as they reached the de Vil mansion. Though Ella slept, she didn’t rest.

The sun rose red as the fire in the bedroom the following morn. She tossed the paper bag, the uni sweater, and the puppy’s coat into the flames. Pure black smoke rose from the multihued yarn. Joy, eternally interrupted. Ella stepped into grey unders.