Trigger Warning: The content may not be suitable for children or those with a fragile psyche

A Pebble In The Water

I had drawn the shortest stick, so I had to leave the apartment and walk the two blocks into the frozen sun and go to the grocery store. It was that time when a small layer of white covered the earth, and the heat turned cloudy in the air, and it was easy to imagine that all of this was new, that you had never seen it before.

We had managed to gather thirty dollars which I was going to use to acquire a half gallon of vodka, grapefruit juice, and that type of cough medicine which was sold over the counter and made you forget you were a person.

Thirty dollars was a lot of money and we had searched the corners of our beings to find it.

All grocery stores were the same. Objects were terrifyingly real in grocery stores, it was the kind of light they used, it was far too bright.

I gathered the things and left. I thought about going to a park and getting high by myself. My friends were all frightened and hollow and I didn’t want to look at them.

I walked back to the apartment.

The place didn't come furnished so it was all empty. The hard wood was beginning to rot, and the microwave clock was locked at 6:47, and we had never used the kitchen.

Lex and Reg looked like brothers not because of the similarity in their faces, or mannerisms, or voice, but because neither of them had ever learned to talk. All three were sitting on the floor and each man had a hand on Molly's leg and they were each caressing her thigh. I never saw the three of them apart because they were each other's lungs.

Molly had a dead flower in her hair. Her nails were covered in glitter and some of it had gotten on the hands of Lex and Reg, so their hands sparkled in the dim light.

She was laughing, her heart was full of twice as much love as any of us would ever know.

Zipp was sitting across from them and watching in silence. None of us can remember where Zipp came from. He was a kid, maybe thirteen years old. I think we were waiting for Zipp's mother to pick him up but that's impossible since Zipp never had any parents. He was born from an egg and raised by pigeons or carved from the trunk of a dying evergreen tree.

When I entered everyone came up to me because I was the most beautiful thing on earth. I handed out the supplies. We sat on the floor and began to drink. The three lovers finished the cough syrup, and Zipp and I worked on the vodka.

Soon the three of them had forgotten who they were. They stared at the ground with their eyes closed and did nothing. We drank and Zipp kept glancing over at Molly, who was asleep, at the way her chest moved up and down, her acne scars, her lips just beginning to chap at the corners, and I knew what he was thinking about.

“She looks good, doesn't she?" said Zipp.

She looked like everyone I had ever known.

“Sure,” I said.

“Can I put my hand on her leg?” asked Zipp.

"You can, you can do lots of things.”

"Should I?

"You have to decide for yourself.”

“How do I decide?"

“You make a positive and negative list.”

“How do I do that?"

"You start with the negative."

"What's the negative?"

"Putting your hand on her leg, it might scar her, she didn't let you do it, it might make her feel sick and weak inside. It might make her hate herself," I said.

"But she won't know, she's asleep." "

 “I won't tell her."

"Why?"

"Conversations are frightening and painful.”

“What's the positive?”

"You get to place your hand on her leg."

Zipp thought about it for a second.

"I'm going to put my hand on her leg."

"Alright."

The walls of the apartment were very thin, and I could hear a couple in the room adjacent arguing about love.

"Where did the love go?"

"It just fell away."

"It has to go somewhere."

“It’s not in the pantry."

 "What did I do?"

"Oh Jesus, it's nothing you did. Humans are terrible creatures, we’re brought together by lust and hope, and when that falls away the truth beneath our skin comes out and our days are numbered."

"So, I'm a terrible person then?"

"Oh Jesus Christ."

I drank vodka as Zipp moved his hand closer to Molly's leg, but the closer the hand got, the slower its movement became, until the hand was a temporary block of ice, motionless, unsure of what to do next.

I had not known at the time that our paths would be sewn together and we would walk in lines twisting parallel and on more than one night we would share the same dream.

Years later while walking over some stream on the straining boards of an old wooden bridge, I notice a pebble in the water. The pebble looks very familiar to me. I get off the bridge and wade into the water so that I might have a closer look. It is a gentle stream, not much more than a trickle, bathing the tops of rocks. As I approach the pebble, I see that it is Zipp. He has become a pebble.

Water rushes over his body

turning him smooth

and when the light hits his surface in the right way

you can almost see your face

reflected in his

END