Stone
By Isaac Fox
At the edge of a 2 am highway, his girlfriend shoves him out of a taxi and a relationship. The cab blurs out of sight, leaving everything silent and gray.
Questions: How much did he drink? What would his parents think if they could see him here, right now? (And when did they last see him?) Where did that taxi go? Did he only ever date her because he was lonely? Did she choose him because she was lonely, too, or because she pitied him?
Eventually, the cold streetlights turn off, and soft early rays massage him. But then the light presses down on his neck and cars whoosh past, and then it’s soft again for just a few heart-eating moments before the cold light comes, and soft, heavy, soft, cold, soft, heavy, soft, cold—
When his parents find him, he’s still there, legs akimbo, slouched, dumbly gaping. He has also turned to stone.
His parents heave and huff and lift him into their car. They prop him up in the backseat, with one granite sneaker pressed against the window and the other sinking into the passenger seat’s plush shoulder. His mother belts him in, and his father cradles the steering wheel like an infant.
At the home where he grew up, they maneuver him through the doorframe and sit him down on the couch. His mother cooks dinner, and they carry him to the kitchen table, place an over-buttered grilled cheese and some carrots in front of him, and ask how his day was. They keep asking, keep leveling warm smiles at him, keep putting plates of food in front of his stone-frozen body, until their faces wrinkle. One day, they can’t lift him anymore, so they leave him in one of the hardwood kitchen chairs, arms drooping at his sides, one foot up on the table.
Soon, only his mother puts plates in front of him and smiles and asks how his day went. She murmurs constantly, “I am here, I am with you.”
But then she’s gone, too, and her son sits alone at the kitchen table as dust climbs like snow. Wood rots and fails: the chair under him, then the roof over him, then the walls around him. Moss carpets the crumbled wood, which soon disappears under layer after deepening layer of soil.
Soon, that soil will compact and harden, and he will be a stone locked in stone. But maybe before then, the world will freeze again, and glaciers will churn geology and bring him back up to gape at soft early light.
Isaac Fox is a student at Lebanon Valley College, where he majors in English and creative writing. When he’s not reading or writing something assigned, he’s probably reading or writing something unassigned. His work has previously appeared in Tiny Molecules, Rejection Letters, 50-Word Stories and several other publications. You can find him on Twitter at @isaac_k_fox.