Originally posted 8/24/07

I intended to write a horror story this week, but my narrator ended up being something that couldn’t experience the emotion of horror. So this is something else.

THE SLOW SHRUG OF STONES

Time moved differently for Parkin.

It was a large stone slab wedged against the underhang of a shallow cave where the sand met the cliffs north of Malibu. It experienced months as a slight tickle and decades as a gentle smoothing of edges. The ocean seemed frenetic, and most animal life was so quick it appeared as no more than a flicker at the edge of Parkin’s senses, if at all.

Parkin wasn’t its name, of course. Rocks have no names. But that was the name Trevor had given it, and it liked Trevor. It could actually focus on Trevor. He was a serious little boy who would visit every day after school. Not serious in the way that causes teachers and parents concern. Just steady. Even-keeled. Placid. Trevor wasn’t slow, but seemed more aware of the big picture than the other humans Parkin had witnessed. He resonated with an object like Parkin. As much as was possible across so great a divide of experience, they understood each other.

Trevor visited every day after school for about an hour. He would do his homework and a few pages of recreational reading, then leave. Always with his small back against Parkin’s face. Parkin didn’t have eyes, of course, but it took about a day for his sensory equivalent of a blink, so by the time he registered Trevor’s presence it would already be the next afternoon and Trevor would be there again. This created a strange strobe effect in Parkin’s perception, as if Trever was constantly present, though ethereal, his back ever stamped on Parkin’s surface.

Then the earth shivered.

So quickly. Quakes were too fast for Parkin to register, but it realized what had happened because its orientation had changed. It was now on its side. It would be some months before its senses realigned to the new gravity.

Trevor was gone, his afternoon zoetrope dissipated. It took Parkin several weeks to think the thought of wondering where the boy had gone. In that time the red-stained sand at the periphery of its awareness turned to brown.

And there was a school notebook. Partially covered in sand, soggy with ambient moisture. Parkin could perceive it because it never moved.

It remained until it turned to pulp.

There was a grinding somewhere in Parkin’s depths. It no longer had a name. It was only a stone.