The Sweater by Jen Jones
2025 Flash Fiction Winner
First Place
Out of the dryer, I grabbed the woolly sweater my uncle had just bequeathed me in his will, along with a box of random items he’d collected during his travels—the bones of a human hand, which looked too real to really be real, surely, a shrunken head he’d told me was from Papua New Guinea, a couple of silver bullets, and some loose jewellery which looked old and expensive but was probably only costume.
It was so him, this grey fuzzy sweater, so dear Uncle Cecil. He’d worn it constantly as though it were a sartorial teddy bear, his comfort object. Daily. It had often made me wonder if Uncle Cecil was on the spectrum, his wearing the sweater everyday like a uniform, except that when the sweater had finally come to me through Cecil’s unctuous lawyer I had found it so scratchy and uncomfortable that I wasn’t sure how someone who had sensory issues could have stood having it on even for a minute. This was a sweater with history.
Upon receipt, I threw it in the washing machine with lots of Woolite in cold water to try to get the funky smell out of it: Uncle Cecil’s sweat which smelled sharp and earthy like adrenaline, a musty smell (he even wore the thick sweater when it was raining with no raincoat overtop—not necessary, he’d always say, stroking his wet curly beard as if waiting for someone to challenge him), and something else, something coppery and slightly fishy. Since the sweater was miles too big for me, after it was washed and smelling better, I put it in the dryer on low heat with a two dryer sheets to try to soften the wool. It shrank down perfectly to fit me, and what had felt like thorns and burrs embedded in the yarn were gone. There were a few pulls in the wool on the front of the sweater but I was able to pick at them and pull them back into place until the sweater looked like new. I had loved Uncle Cecil, the adventurer, the world traveller, dearly, and I was determined to wear his gift to honour him, to adopt it as my own special uniform. He’d always said, “I see something in you, kid. You’re going to be a big deal someday.” He was the only family I had who believed in me, the rest found me too rough and wild, they said, and one grandmother had actually had the nerve to call me bestial, when I was three and bit my cousin on the leg for taking too long on the swing I wanted to use. Bestial!
I pulled the sweater over my head. It was soft and fit like a glove, a second skin. I wanted to show it off, but it was near midnight. The only place open this late was the Piggly Wiggly store down the block. I went upstairs to leash the dogs to take them out with me, but at the sight of me in Cecil’s sweater, they started growling and crouched together in the corner of the sofa, shivering, as though they were seeing my uncle’s ghost instead of me, and refused to come to the door to put their harnesses on. Fine, I will go alone. It’s only a five-minute walk, and I was starting to have a hankering for some convenience store snacks. That late night hunger I always got right around midnight, since I was little. Sometimes my mother would cook me a little steak or a burger, telling me I was a pain in the ass, I was so ravenous, and I had always gobbled them down rare, unable to wait long enough for them to fully finish cooking.
Leaving the house and hitting the dark sidewalk, I looked back and the two dogs were standing in the window on the back of the couch, barking angrily at me as if I were a stranger. I headed towards the Piggly Wiggly, swinging my arms and getting the feel of the sweater. Then I felt the itching starting, under every part where the sweater was touching me, even though I had a t-shirt on underneath. It became unbearable as I walked under the light of the moon down the empty street, and I pulled up the sleeves to examine my forearms under the light of the full moon. My skin had become red and irritated., and my arms looked different, the way my almost invisible arm hair was laying looked strange, as though all the hairs were standing straight up and had gotten darker. Must be a trick of the light?
The itching became almost intolerable, and I was ready to take off the sweater entirely even though it was chilly out. And then the midnight hunger hit me for real and stopped me in my tracks,dropping me onto my knees. It had never been this strong before—how badly did I need a chocolate bar and some Doritos?
“Do you need some help, miss? Are you okay? Need Narcan?” The voice came from behind me as I held myself on the cement on all fours, panting and starting to drool copiously, making a small puddle under me. The hunger was agonizing. I needed something now. And not chocolate, something with iron in it, something meaty. I wanted blood, to feel it shooting from an artery down my waiting throat, I wanted to rip a neck open and feel all the blood run down my chin onto the clean sweater. My fingers hurt where they touched the sidewalk. I looked down and saw that I had grown what looked like dark claws, canine claws. I turned and looked behind me.
The man looked like he’d been sleeping rough. He held a Narcan dispenser in one hand. “I know how it is, babe. If you go flatline, I’ll use this to save you, okay?” He smelled of sweat and slept-in clothes, but that only seemed to increase my appetite, the sweat like a peppery spice.
Then suddenly, I leapt, on haunches which seemed larger and more muscular than my own, the claws on my toes inside my runners tearing through the mesh fabric and gaining purchase on the sidewalk, making scratching noises as I launched myself towards the man. “No one will miss you,” I thought as my teeth, which were suddenly long, pointy and sharp, and my snout which had grown painfully as I soared through the air towards him, made contact with the side of his pulsing neck.
He barely had time to squeak before I’d torn the side of his warm, aromatic neck open with my teeth and swallowed the gobbets of flesh I’d torn away and gulped down the hot coppery blood as though I was dying of thirst and had just found an oasis. I pulled him off the sidewalk with strength I didn’t know I had and laid him under a neighbour’s thick juniper hedge, out of sight, where I devoured his flesh once he’d stopped twitching.
It took an hour, but when I was done, all that remained were torn clothes and bones and the little cart he’d been wheeling around to collect bottles. I shoved it all under the bushes out of sight and, my hunger now sated, my belly bloated, the sweater soaked with blood and ichor.I looked up at the full moon and wanted to howl my victory to the world, but at the same time, wondered exactly what inheritance I had received from dear Uncle Cecil, who used to dandle me on his knee as a toddler and tell me stories of all the different countries he had travelled to, always bringing me a souvenir.
I skittered home in the shadows, and threw the befouled sweater back into the washing machine and turned it on. Looking in the bathroom mirror, I was bloody-chinned and -chested, but otherwise looked the same as I usually did, no long teeth, no claws, no snout. I looked as benign as Uncle Cecil did when he helped me colour in my colouring book when I was younger. I gave a practice howl, but sounded like a kitten and felt ridiculous.
Heading back upstairs, sans sweater, the dogs came and puddled around my feet for pats before I headed to the shower.