Metal men and bloodsucking aliens would be preferable. There are hints of lavender in the sky among the oranges and pinks. Thomas likes lavender.

Thomas’s sweater is coming unraveled.

On this day, Thomas rises from his bed and begins to unravel himself from life, from responsibility, and from the oppressive gaze of the okapi skeleton he purchased on safari in Chad. The first few inches of his sweater pull away easily, and it is only after a moment or two of the cautious approach that, with reckless abandon, Thomas accelerates the disassembling of the final mystery of his life.

The sweater has purples and blues, but no orange. Or maybe there are oranges – Thomas cannot remember. Call it farcical expression of Wernicke-Korsakoff meant to excuse the obliviousness of his existence. There are no blues, though, regardless of what I may have indicated in the past few sentences.

Thomas wraps the remains of his sweater around his left hand and soon feels the bite of the cold January wind. Unlike the traditional sweater, the one he wears has been knit in a bizarre pattern. As he nears the end of the line, he notices, to his horror, that it terminates in a Kocher’s incision just below the right side of his ribcage.

Curious, Thomas pulls the string and the incision opens up, leaking a milky substance into his lap. With the incision open, the string comes easier and, undaunted, Thomas continues to unravel himself.

When he expects to see organs tied to the string in carrick bends, and lighterman and buntline hitches, he sees instead a series of small knots devoid of purpose. They cause him to hiccup each time a knot slips through the incision.

Suddenly, without any warning at all, Thomas’s own scruffy head breaches the incision, tearing it further, the string tied in a loop around his neck.

Shocked by his own actions, Thomas continues to pull at the string, removing his own full body from the incision, and notices that the other Thomas is knitting a sweater from string extending from a Kocher’s incision of his own.

Perhaps there was lavender, after all. And orange.