The second of (at least) three sprints telling the same story.
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A cat, skinny black stray all bones and hackles, standing at the mouth of an alley. Staring into it, arched into a perfect question mark, and hissing, yowling, endless hardly-feline sounds strafing up and down between fear and fury.
Clutching the paper grocery bag to her chest, pinning her heartbeat against spices she’d never used and vegetables she’d never tried to cook, she had crept towards the alley. The moment she had stepped up to the cat’s side, it had startled, swatted once at the hem of her jeans, and bolted down the sidewalk, disappearing into the much smaller gap between the Indian grocery and the laundromat next door.
Leaving her alone, standing there, wondering whether she would wake up just the same ‘tomorrow’ morning if she died that day. Everyone else seemed to. But none of them, as far as she’d been able to tell, seemed to realize they were doing it. Was she different enough that it was a horrible idea for her to be edging her feet – sideways, one at a time, like moving through the dark – into that alley?
Maybe. But it hadn’t seemed to matter, when no good idea had set her free yet. She had crept into shadows that smelled of the cat’s terrified piss and the rain that had fallen, so long ago, the real night before, and, stretching on tiptoes to peer behind a dumpster, she had finally seen it.
That had been nine May 28ths ago. Now, she came by every day, to visit the only thing that kept changing.
It had been the size of a basketball then. Now, it was maybe half again that. Almost too big for the brickwork corner of the alley where it lay tucked away – a leathery sphere that had seemed black until she’d brought a flashlight for a better look at it. Under that, its shell had swum with an oily turquoise gloss.
Smooth between its regular vertical ridges, and warm to the touch. An egg – that was the only explanation she could think of, for it, for everything. Hidden in that grimy corner, larger than life and growing with every repeated day, she had found an egg.
