Safe and Warm
Elisabeth Ring
Elisabeth Ring (she/her) is a writer and reader of eclectic things. Her fiction has appeared in several publications including Apex and Cast of Wonders. She spends most of her time trying to wear out her energetic dog and keep her cats away from the houseplants. When she has time, she makes progress on her unwieldy TBR pile, and writes reviews on some of those books. You can read them at ringreads.com.
I'm cutting through an old parking lot between school and home when I see it. A rock, smooth and just a little too rounded to be good for skipping across water. When I pick it up, I can wrap my finger and thumb all the way around it and then some. It's got these dark cracks running through it like veins. I roll it in my cold-stiff fingers as I go to drop it, which is when I realize it feels warm. I'm imagining the warmth, I know, but it feels good anyway. Kevin, you’re always bringing junk home, I can practically hear Mom say, but it feels wrong to drop something so perfect on the ground now. I clutch it tight as I rush home.
*
I wake up with it in my hands, unaware I fell asleep holding it. It's still warm, but I've been holding it all night so it would be weirder if it were cold. I set it on my nightstand by my keys and lip balm, then shuffle to the bathroom to get ready so I won't be late. It's not until I get to school and stick my hand in my pocket to grab my lip balm that I realize I've taken the rock with me, too. I roll it between my fingers, feeling the cracks with the pad of my thumb.
*
The TV is on but I keep zoning out. There's a pokey edge on the rock where I spin it against my fingers, turning it around and around. I swear those cracks are bigger now, and the surface of it is rougher than I remember it being yesterday. I put it in the hollow of my finger and thumb again. This time, my fingertips only almost touch.
There’s a whisper at the back of my mind, a memory of that time at my uncle’s house when I picked dandelions and touched them to the line running around the horse’s pen. That big animal being held at bay by such a thin string? There had to be more to it. Don’t go messing with things you don’t understand, my uncle had said, but he'd watched me tire of dandelions and grab it barehanded anyway. And then he’d laughed as I’d pissed myself from the shock of the electric fence.
Rocks don’t change, but I’m sure this one has since yesterday. But what’s more likely, that this rock is not a rock, or that I’m remembering wrong? I spin it between my fingers again, replacing my faulty memory of the small, smooth thing with the reality that I’m holding now.
*
I'm going to be late for school and I know I'm going to be late for school, but I can't find the rock and for some reason this makes me panic. It's not on my nightstand, it's not in my pockets, it's not in my bed. I mutter things Mom would ground me for if she heard as I toss my room to pieces. Clothes fly; the lamp falls and probably cracks, which I’ll catch hell for, too, but it doesn’t matter. When I finally find the rock, fallen to the side of my bed, I hold it so tight the rough edges around the wide cracks leave imprints on my palms. It's safe now.
*
In fifth period, it starts shaking. I think it’s an earthquake at first, but no one else seems to notice and the pencil on my desk is still. When I pull it out of my pocket and steal a look at it under my desk, I see the cracks aren't just widening—it's splitting apart. At the front of the class, Mr. Larsen is going over—I don’t know, triangles, it looks like—but he’s a notorious stickler about hall passes so I don’t think I can run for the bathroom to figure out what’s happening with the rock. I cover it with my hands as pieces of the rock fall to the ground. When I look again, what I have now is dark and segmented and coiled tight. It straightens and sinks tiny fangs into my wrist. In the time it takes me to gasp and clutch at the spot, it's gone, a dark vein in my arm.
“Is there a problem, Kevin?” Mr. Larsen asks. “Kevin, are you all right?”
“Fine,” we say.
*
We huddle deep in the covers, a safe, warm place to grow stronger. The sun rises, then falls. When it hides, we lay our eggs, letting them roll up our throat and up our tongue and land, cool and smooth and perfectly round, in our hands. By the time it shines again, we hold a full clutch, almost twenty. We are proud of our eggs, proud of their number and that they are ready to spread across this planet for more hosts to find. To incubate. To bring to life.
*
I wake up with it in my hands, unaware I fell asleep holding it. It's still warm, but I've been holding it all night so it would be weirder if it were cold. I set it on my nightstand by my keys and lip balm, then shuffle to the bathroom to get ready so I won't be late. It's not until I get to school and stick my hand in my pocket to grab my lip balm that I realize I've taken the rock with me, too. I roll it between my fingers, feeling the cracks with the pad of my thumb.
*
The TV is on but I keep zoning out. There's a pokey edge on the rock where I spin it against my fingers, turning it around and around. I swear those cracks are bigger now, and the surface of it is rougher than I remember it being yesterday. I put it in the hollow of my finger and thumb again. This time, my fingertips only almost touch.
There’s a whisper at the back of my mind, a memory of that time at my uncle’s house when I picked dandelions and touched them to the line running around the horse’s pen. That big animal being held at bay by such a thin string? There had to be more to it. Don’t go messing with things you don’t understand, my uncle had said, but he'd watched me tire of dandelions and grab it barehanded anyway. And then he’d laughed as I’d pissed myself from the shock of the electric fence.
Rocks don’t change, but I’m sure this one has since yesterday. But what’s more likely, that this rock is not a rock, or that I’m remembering wrong? I spin it between my fingers again, replacing my faulty memory of the small, smooth thing with the reality that I’m holding now.
*
I'm going to be late for school and I know I'm going to be late for school, but I can't find the rock and for some reason this makes me panic. It's not on my nightstand, it's not in my pockets, it's not in my bed. I mutter things Mom would ground me for if she heard as I toss my room to pieces. Clothes fly; the lamp falls and probably cracks, which I’ll catch hell for, too, but it doesn’t matter. When I finally find the rock, fallen to the side of my bed, I hold it so tight the rough edges around the wide cracks leave imprints on my palms. It's safe now.
*
In fifth period, it starts shaking. I think it’s an earthquake at first, but no one else seems to notice and the pencil on my desk is still. When I pull it out of my pocket and steal a look at it under my desk, I see the cracks aren't just widening—it's splitting apart. At the front of the class, Mr. Larsen is going over—I don’t know, triangles, it looks like—but he’s a notorious stickler about hall passes so I don’t think I can run for the bathroom to figure out what’s happening with the rock. I cover it with my hands as pieces of the rock fall to the ground. When I look again, what I have now is dark and segmented and coiled tight. It straightens and sinks tiny fangs into my wrist. In the time it takes me to gasp and clutch at the spot, it's gone, a dark vein in my arm.
“Is there a problem, Kevin?” Mr. Larsen asks. “Kevin, are you all right?”
“Fine,” we say.
*
We huddle deep in the covers, a safe, warm place to grow stronger. The sun rises, then falls. When it hides, we lay our eggs, letting them roll up our throat and up our tongue and land, cool and smooth and perfectly round, in our hands. By the time it shines again, we hold a full clutch, almost twenty. We are proud of our eggs, proud of their number and that they are ready to spread across this planet for more hosts to find. To incubate. To bring to life.