Crossed Off

Sally’s room looked like any other seven-year-old’s.

Pink walls. A bookshelf crammed with dog-eared paperbacks and sticker-covered notebooks. A stuffed unicorn slumped at the foot of her bed. Glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling. A poster of a cartoon princess taped slightly crooked above her desk.

And the desk—well, that was the only thing a bit... off.

Because on the desk, stacked as high as the windowsill, were reams of paper. Thousands of sheets, covered front and back in pencil. Every page crammed with tidy, looping handwriting, neater than any seven-year-old should manage. Words filled the space edge to edge. Things. People. Concepts. Some she recognized—dog, door, disco ball. Some sounded like made-up gibberish. Orogeny? Episiotomy? Paresthesia?

She didn’t know what they meant. She didn’t need to. She had written them. All of them.

Every now and then, she found one that felt… unnecessary.

And those? She erased.

Sally sat cross-legged at her desk, chewing on the end of her pencil, flipping slowly through the most recent stack. Her mom had told her to clean up. Maybe she would. Maybe after just one more.

A word caught her eye halfway down the page:

Pants.

She frowned.

Pants. Jeans. Slacks. Chinos. Khakis. What a weird thing. The more she looked at the word, the more it seemed… awkward. Restrictive. Dull.

She squinted at it, lips puckered in mild distaste. "Pants are kinda boring," she muttered.

Then, without fanfare, she erased the word cleanly from the page. A small cloud of rubber shavings fluttered down like ashes.

She brushed them off her lap and stood up.

“There,” she said, satisfied.

And just like that, pants were gone.

The elevator doors dinged, and Sam Wimple stepped out into the fourth floor of the Central Library, his shoulders tense, his heart pounding. He had just come from the mall. Every men’s store. Panties. No briefs. No boxers. No explanation. He had to get out, to think.

He needed evidence. Real evidence. He’d gone to the fashion archives section. Microfilm. Paper records. Photographs nobody could secretly update in the night. Something had changed. And now he was going to prove it.

He stepped into the quiet room lined with tall filing cabinets and rows of bound magazines. There was a soft whoosh as the air conditioning kicked on. He crossed to a workstation and began flipping through a back issue of GQ from 1995.

The page he opened to featured a spread of summer looks: loose linen shirts, sandals, and—

Sam blinked.

Skirts.

Long, flowing, tasteful. Paired with jackets. Some short. Some pencil-tight. Not a pant leg in sight.

He turned the page. Another shoot—boardroom attire. Men in crisp button-downs tucked into high-waisted skirts, some pleated, some sleek. A sidebar on “choosing the right hemline for your build.”

Sam began flipping faster. His heart sped up.

Back issues of Men’s Health, Popular Mechanics, Sears catalogs—skirts, kilts, dresses, culottes. Everywhere. On everyone.

He stood abruptly, heart hammering. His own reflection in a display case caught his eye.

He was wearing a gray mid-calf skirt.

Not just now. His memory showed slacks. But the photo on his work ID badge—skirt. The group shot on his phone from last Christmas—everyone in skirts.

He scrambled to his email and searched “trousers.” No results. He searched “pants.” Results: diaper brands, yoga poses, dog breathing.

He typed: Men’s dress pants.

No matches.

Masculine formalwear.

A page loaded: “12 Must-Have Skirts for the Executive Man.” Below, a smiling CEO in a slate pinstripe A-line.

Sam sank into a chair.

His fingers curled into the fabric at his thighs. He hadn’t even realized. The thing swished when he moved. It clung when he crossed his legs. He suddenly felt bizarrely exposed, like something intimate had been stolen from him. Except no one else noticed.

He couldn’t breathe.

Pants were gone.

And he was the only one who remembered they had ever existed.