The Egg

By Nicholas Schorn

The way I see it, you find a giant egg in the forest, you have two options. You break it open or you don’t.

The lodge we’d passed through was easy to see from the edge of the crater. Stand atop a fallen tree and there it was—civilization. Like children in sight of home, this bolstered us. The day was early and we hadn’t yet set up camp. So when Ali suggested we explore off the path, we didn’t think twice. Whether she intended it or not, her suggestion led us directly to the barren stretch of stone, to the nine-foot-tall anomaly sunken into it. To the egg.

Its shell wasn’t just white. It was sensory-deprivation white. Blank space you could paste anything against. It didn’t shine or reflect but acted black. It absorbed. Besides the size and color, besides the classic crater-and-egg conundrum it posed—which came first?—it wasn’t otherwise remarkable. We took turns approaching and retreating. Only once Claire touched the shell did the thought cross my mind.

Something laid this.

To touch the egg was to question its existence. It was textureless—yet at the same time it seemed to contain all textures—just as its whiteness surely contained all colors. It numbed our hands. It felt good.

The egg was huge, and it must have been laid by something even larger, something with maternal instincts. I looked to the trees, heard nothing, shared my concern and was dismissed. We spent a lot of time rubbing it. Noon came and went. We set up camp—right there, right beside it. Over dinner we talked of idle things and made furtive looks to it. When the sun departed, Dave shared his intention to break the egg.

It didn’t take long to overpower him. To tie his hands behind his back. Sure, we were all curious what was inside. But did it want to come out? It was safe and warm, and we weren’t monsters.

We took our eggs unbroken.

I volunteered to share Dave’s tent. Hours after the fire had died, he still struggled at his bonds. I don’t remember any dreams. Even my waking memories of what came next are hazy. What I do remember, from early in the night, were my thoughts on that whiteness, how it reminded me of putting my face straight into the hot water of a running shower. How that made me see things that weren’t there.

I awoke to cold air. Dave was gone. The tent flap billowed, noiseless in a ghost wind. Whispers scuttled on spider legs.

I knew that to climb through the flap was to leave safety and sanity behind. Then I saw the long, thin hairs. The trail of them that led from outside the tent right up to my feet. I wet myself. Fear gave way to a need to know. I stumbled outside.

Dave lay beside the broken egg. Hairs and eggshell fragments were scattered about, in all the tents whose zippered doors gaped. I found the others lying on cold exposed stone. Moonlight reflected off their wet skin. I had to shout to wake them. Their disorientation slowed us, and while they scrambled to put themselves back together, I felt it again, that need. I stole a look inside the half-shattered shell.

No whites. No liquid. No placenta.

Just those little hairs packed tight.

We untied Dave’s hands. His face was bleeding but we didn’t talk about it. It was a blind, flapping dash of two kilometers until we got cell service. The trail we left was palpable, though there was no sign of us being followed.

Two hours of waiting for a helicopter could have been twenty-four. Dave was basically catatonic—eyes of empty saucers. He frightened me more than the dark forest, but still we huddled together, with Dave lying by our feet.

Then we were back at the lodge. Ali said something vague to the rescue team, and they couldn’t legally hold us, so we split.

All we wanted was the safety of home.

A week later it became clear we needed to talk. I arranged a time at the mall. Dave never answered my calls.

We had been friends for three decades, yet we spoke like it was our first time meeting. Worse, our recollection of events differed. We agreed that Dave must have broken the egg in a midnight fit but disagreed why. My theory was rejected, even though I was the only one asking logical questions. Why did we camp beside it? Why weren’t we more afraid? Afraid of what must have come before?

They said, It’s inconceivable anything laid it, so why feel fear?

I asked why we rubbed it. They answered, How could we not have?

I asked why Ali dragged us off the path in the first place.

They said we felt confident.

Like foolish, confident children we’d fled for the safety of our homes. If such a concept ever existed, we’d tarnished it.

I get it, now. I’ve thought about it. They want good news and to know that it’s over. To know that Dave’s going to be okay.

He isn’t.

I’m hated for being the only one to wake inside their own tent. I’m told I don’t understand what it’s like to wake up naked on cold exposed stone and not remember what I’d done. So they won’t listen. They don’t feel that need like I do.

I’m shaving hairs from the tips of my fingers. They won’t tell me if they are, too. They won’t tell me if they’re building nests at night.

And they won’t listen to my theory on how a motherless creature, in need of nurturing, might find itself a mother by other means.

The way I see it, you find a giant egg in the forest, you have two options. You break it open or you don’t. If you don’t, it will find a way to break itself.

We call that hatching.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Nicholas Schorn lives and works in Vancouver, Canada. He spends his time composing music for piano, drawing clouds for kicks, and writing stories for anyone who would like to read them. He is fascinated by underground places, camels, the smell of books, and the coins left over from dried-up fountains.