The Shape of Things

The Shape of Things

By Angela R. Hunt 

Kelda never liked the rocks at the river. She always thought they looked too smooth, too perfectly rounded, to uniform in their gray color. She could have sworn their numbers grew every time she peeked over the side of the bridge it seemed they stretched closer and closer to where she stood. Sometimes she felt an irrational fear that they would grow and grow in number until they became a mountain tumbling on her and burying her in their dark, dusty depths. 

She noticed one of the round gray pebbles at the edge of the sidewalk one day. It seemed like a small thing that day. She had laughed and dismissed it, after all the rocks lined the ground on both sides of the river beneath the bridge. A small child could have carried it up as a secret treasure, only to drop it by the gray sidewalk. 

The next day there were two. Two perfectly gray and round pebbles sat next to the cement as if they were regulars waiting for the local bus line. It troubled her a little. She hesitated and stared at the rocks as if the intensity of her gaze could make them talk, dance, or perhaps retreat back down to the riverbed. They did not move. They did not speak. They were stone and they sat, cold and gray in her sight. She shook her head and hurried home. 

She came home with work swirling through her mind, distracting her for the next few days. The rocks sat unnoticed, unremarked, without unsettling anyone. 

It was friday and Kelda had gotten an official reprimand at work, she was going to take a pay cut to make up for an error she made on a costly sale. She walked home slowly, feeling defeated. She could hear the ocean crashing in her ears. She could feel the weight of the water bearing her down, the inevitability of her gray future. 

Kelda saw the stones before she saw the bridge. The stones had lined up as an honor guard to escort her to the bridge. They sounded trumpets loudly to announce her arrival to the multitudes below. She could see the bright vivid colors of captured spirits inside the plain, dull stones. She could hear them calling out in despair at the prisons their lives had become. Each one alone, each one unable to see their prison or break free. Thousands of them, surrounding her. Thousands of them, all cold and void of connection. Thousands of them, writhing in her mind and showing her her fate if she stayed. She would wake up one day a stone. Unable to move, unable to live, unable to feel anything but mad desperation and sickly sweet denial. She would be gray and smooth. 

Kelda shook her head, rain pouring off her as she stood on the bridge over the raging water. The water smashed into the round stones, breaking them and carrying them away. She could be shaped and slowly destroyed or she could be broken and truly released. 

She fell like a stone, her clothing shuttering and snapping like dead branches in a strong breeze. She broke with a wet wrenching sound, almost a groan as she was much softer than a stone; into a bright red blossom almost glowing on the bland gray rocks below. 

The round gray rocks pile up, uniform and smooth as silk; without a single flaw. They did not seem to notice what had transpired, they were stone.