Our uncle is obsessed with rock. One day, we found him stratifying facts and dubious opinions, burbling ripostes when no one else had spoken. Frustrated, he flowed molten, flamed red. The following afternoon he yawned a cave and swallowed himself. Stalagmites and stalactites chomped like dragon teeth.
The day he was diagnosed, the rain stopped and flowers stretched open. Hummingbirds and bees flitted everywhere. His doctor stared out the window at a circling biplane. He crinkled his eyes. “What a beautiful day.” My uncle heard, “We can’t patch the fault line.” He grinned. He would quit shaving. He would eat pineapple pie with a knife. He considered proffering noble gestures, perhaps letting others win at Scrabble.
The next day, Uncle finds four sheep to flank him in his sleep, the kind of slumber one has when one is still animate, when waking up is required. They pile into his RV, spelunk a spell, snack on brioche, and swim with the blind fish. When a storm storms and the water rises, filling the crawlways, Uncle sets the wooly critters free. He gathers GPS, brush, chisel and hammer, scrambles up a limestone escarpment, picking and chipping his way to the top. “Home,” he says.
work appears in 100 word story, Atlas and Alice, Bending Genres, Gone Lawn, HAD, jmww, New World Writing, MacQueen’s Quinterly, Milk Candy Review, Mslexia, The Citron Review, The Disappointed Housewife, The Dribble Drabble Review, The Offing, Tiny Molecules, trampset, and elsewhere. She’s received nominations for the Pushcart Prize, Best of the Net, Best Small Fictions, Best American Short Stories, and Best Microfiction.
