By Justin Mynheir
Blue light flashed from the open door of the basement. Karen set the coupons section of the newspaper down on the kitchen table, lowered her head, and sighed. She followed the fading glare. Such strange experiences with the color spectrum were common for her husband’s work, but it wouldn’t hurt to check on him.
“This can’t be any worse than his dung fiasco,” she muttered. The Rotterdam zoo still refused them entry.
She descended the stairs. Shelves of tomes, textbooks, and research notes crowded the basement and turned the spacious workspace into a cramped maze of supernatural studies.
“Dave,” she called, “Are you still in one piece?”
“Narrowly!” His relieved cry resembled that of a man catching himself before tumbling off of a ledge.
Karen closed her eyes, familiar enough with that tone. Her husband had spent the previous three weeks toying with dimensional portals. “I’ll be there soon, so be patient.”
She squeezed past two rows of overflowing shelves, hopped across a Swahili to English dictionary, and tip-toed through stray leaflets of a notebook on sentient radishes. Her husband lay atop his worktable, his left cheek pressed against the beautiful, slightly off-kilter mahogany and his thinning black hairs brushing the keyboard of an old desktop. He stared blankly to Karen’s right. She searched for what kept his attention. The only item there was a possessed golden amulet from Kabul, nothing of profound interest.
“Are you okay?” Karen leaned over the desk to make eye contact with him.
“Please look at me, not my body.” Dave’s voice came from behind her, rather than his open, motionless mouth.
She turned back towards the amulet. Two googly eyes glued to a fist-sized rock stared back at her. Karen squinted. She gave the rock a tight smile.
“You look different, honey.”
“Please do not patronize me,” Dave said, the words echoing. “I am a pet rock. Joy has left me for stone-cold misery.”
“You made yourself into that. Does this really seem like a good use of your research time and our bank account?”
“Well,” Dave began sheepishly, “Kevin—by all means do not tell him what I have done—emailed me some research on making inanimate objects sentient. Naturally, I had to try. Plus, I wanted to find a new use for my pet rock.”
Karen placed her palm on her forehead. “And knowing Kevin, he named the email something like: how to turn yourself into a pet rock?”
“’How to create a real-life pet rock,’ but yes.”
“Honey, did you really think this would go well? I remember what happened with the Yeti finger, the bee queen, and that impossibly short man from Shanghai.”
“We don’t speak of that. Also, I may or may not have placed a bet on this one.” Dave coughed, impressive for a rock. “Due to its strange nature, I thought the original script for the spells would be something from Japanese Shamanism or Neo-American Technomancy, but this was an old Norse spell for the animation of elements. Specifically, this was about how to make a rock servant, which I tragically botched on poor old Rocky here.”
“This sort of playing around has gotten you into incidents like this before.” Karen laughed once then shuddered to distract herself from the sour memories of failed experiments. “How does it feel to be inside a rock?”
“It is sort of like when you wake up in bed and need to get up but your body rejects movement. Also, I feel fat.”
“You mean heavy, like density.”
“No, trust me. I feel fat.”
“Well that’s nothing new,” Karen mumbled. “Is your body going to be okay like that?”
She pointed back to Dave himself. His body had not moved in the slightest since she began speaking to his reused pet rock, but saliva leaked from his open mouth onto the inclined mahogany surface. The rock remained silent, immobile googly eyes seeming to regard her question for a few moments.
“I should be fine,” Dave finally said.
“How mad would you be if I drew a mustache on you?” Karen plucked a sharpie out of a crystal pencil cup.
“Quite mad. Smooth-lipped Dave is a happy Dave.”
“I meant on the pet rock.”
“Oh…” The googly eyes rose up shakily to meet Karen’s. “For my darling, anything.”
“I can’t take you seriously when you’re talking to me from a rock.” Karen set the sharpie on the mahogany. “Do you know how to get back into your body?”
The saliva pooling beneath human Dave’s mouth began to run in the direction of pet rock Dave.
“I have been pondering the solution to that problem.”
“And?”
“I’m working on it.”
Karen watched the obscene amount of saliva flow towards the pet rock at a steadily quickening pace. Dave noticed it too. The googly eyes shook desperately as if the Supernatural Scientist was trying to move himself to safety by sheer force of will.
“Umm, Karen dear, will you please pick me up and move me?”
“You seem okay to me.” Karen crossed her arms and shrugged.
“My god Karen, the spit is coming for me! Please move my rock.” The black of the googly eyes darted between Karen and the approaching flash flood.
“Okay.” She picked up the pet rock up and set it on a metal lunchbox. “I’m going to call up Kevin and see what he can do.”
“Please, I have everything one hundred percent under control.” Authority tinged Dave’s voice. “This will be over quickly if I am given time to think of a solution.”
Another flash blinded Karen. When she opened her eyes, blue flames cloaked Pet Rock Dave. The googly eyes melted and slid down the stone surface. Karen took out her cell phone and pointed it screen-first at the rock.
“Okay,” he sighed. “You should probably, definitely call Kevin.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Ha! I laughed out loud at the ending. Love this take on the prompt!
Thank you!
Yep, definitely my favorite story this year so far. I tip my hat to you, sir! Hahaha!
Thank you so much! I accept the hat tip.
Funny. His poor long-suffering wife.
You should do a series of shorts with these characters for Havok.
Thanks! I thought about that, and maybe I will. Who knows?
I’m still chuckling at this story today.
HILARIOUS! Makes me wanna know all the details of the other scrapes poor Dave has gotten into with his experiments. (Or maybe it’s better that I didn’t know… XD)
Thank you. Dave has done many things in many places, and I’m sure he would love for all of them to be recorded for comedic posterity.
Note: I tried to change my visible name, but that system is still down. Oh well!
“I had to try…” The famous last words of any respectable mad scientist! LOL
What a fun read. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for reading!
Hahaha, that was great! Every time you described the googly eyes it was like comedic gold.
Thank you! Rocky the pet rock is the real hero.
That ending was precious.
Oh, that was funny!
“Does this really seem like a good use of your research time and our bank account?”
Really enjoyed the interplay between the married couple, and I’m still grinning just imagining what sort of life they’ve had that would make Karen take such a situation so calmly. Great job, Justin!
This is sooo funny! What a great take on the prompt. Very creative and certainly wacky