A short story for Nov. 6, 2024

Did you know there’s a place you can visit that’s run by rocks? It’s true! The rocks are in charge of everything. If you have a letter to mail, you go up to a rock and ask, “Where do I go to mail a letter?” and the rock looks at you and says nothing.

If you trip and fall, and hit your head on a rock, you can say, “Ow. That hurt.” And the rock will look at you and not care. Not even if there’s blood. And if you ask, “Do you know where I can find someone who can fix my head?” you get the same answer.

The rocks themselves are quite interesting. You can find all sorts — The smooth ones, the rough ones, the ones with the different colored lines going across. Or the ones with the sparkly flecks. Or the crystals inside. Some of them are very big and others are quite small. You might even go so far as to call them boulders and pebbles, rather than just rocks.

It’s a nice place. I often visit and camp out among the rocks — some of whom, I have come to know, and grown to admire.

One morning, during a visit, I was awoken by a few rocks tumbling around next to me, making an annoying clunking sound. As they tumbled, they bumped into other rocks, convincing them to roll along with them.

By lunchtime, quite a few of the rocks were in motion, including some of the pebbles and boulders. They seemed to be having a good time, for the most part, but the dust was bothering me — not just because it hurt my eyes and was making me sneeze, but because I knew the dust was actually just smaller rocks getting ground up by all the commotion.

“What’s all this ruckus?” I asked. The rocks gave no answer, as was their custom.

I poured some soup from my thermos and sat down on one of my favorite rocks to wait for the activity to die down.

While sitting there, sipping my soup, I performed a close analysis of the situation, trying to identify the source of all this movement. Were they dancing to some sort of internal music? Were they preparing to stack together to build something? Like a castle or a pyramid? Some kind of monument?

I began to wonder if perhaps I was the one who started it. I have been known to sometimes kick my legs in my sleep, like a dog who dreams of running free. Had my kicking agitated a few nearby rocks, setting this whole thing in motion?

By the afternoon, the movement of the rocks was so tumultuous that it completely knocked my sitting rock out from under me.

Soon after, the rumbling rocks went so far as to crush my tent, along with all the expensive camping gear inside.

“Do you even realize how important that gear is to my survival?” I asked the rocks. “Do you know how many hours I had to work to get that hand-braided hammock? Or how many coupons I saved to get that brass lantern?” As usual, the rocks had nothing to say for themselves.

Fed up, I decided to abandon my campsite. The dust was everywhere now, making it difficult to locate the trail I usually followed to get back home, so I began to walk in the same general direction that the rocks seemed to be heading.

Off in the distance, I could see the rocks ahead of me, wreaking havok on the once peaceful countryside, knocking over trees, damming the little streams, and demolishing the meadows.

By the evening, I found myself in a wasteland covered by rocks of all sizes, still shaking and rumbling, to the point that I could no longer maintain my balance.

With my footing out from under me, I was quickly overtaken by a particularly unruly group of moving rocks. As they banded together to cover my head, and block my view of the action, I was able to take notice of one interesting thing: The rocks seemed to be moving in a more-or-less consistent direction, from areas of higher elevation to areas of lower elevation.

I’m not sure how long I was lying there, buried in the darkness, contemplating this revelation, but I was relieved when the rocks finally came to rest.

“What was that all about?” I asked the rocks that were covering my face, and they answered with the same non-commital indifference which I had once found so endearing.

I began to carefully move the rocks off my body, attempting to make my way back to the surface without upsetting them, unsure of how deeply I had been buried.

That’s when I felt something moving above me, digging through the rubble, helping to clear a path to the surface.

Soon, I was able to see the light of the sky shining through the spaces between the rocks, until the opening above me was large enough for me to see the eyes of my helper: A dirty, exhausted dog, looking down at me through the matted hair that partially covered its eyes, with an expression of empathetic confusion, as though it were asking, “What were you doing on the side of that mountain to begin with?”