The third (and most likely last) of three sprints telling the same story.
–
The one thing aside from her that was still changing with time. Her body woke up the same, to the same broadcast, every day, but her mind might have been growing, mutating, trapped inside the solid eggshell of her skull. If it was May 28th for too much longer, her body might wake up on May 29th, but what would be stuck screaming inside of it?
That had to be why she had loved and hated the egg on sight. It had to be responsible, after all. It was the only thing out of place. Maybe whatever had laid it there had set time to repeat that way because May 28th was a safe day for its spawn to incubate.
But it was also the one and only thing still changing along with her. The one bit of proof – less of a little ‘bit’ with each repeating day – that she wasn’t imagining it all. So she gave up on a routine that didn’t matter. She stopped cooking for herself – it wasn’t a waste of money to just grab takeaway on her way to the alley, not when the cash would be back in her wallet the next morning.
She spent her days with the egg instead. She started out just bringing a book, then a blanket to snug around the base of the egg, in case a little extra warmth would help it grow faster. Then a camp chair that had been gathering cobwebs in the front closet, a scented candle to burn off that alley stink, a measuring tape, so she could keep closer track of just how the egg grew.
She could have tried to smash it instead. Even just cutting it open might have been enough, might have been easier, to buy a hunting knife instead of takeaway and carve a slit through that leathery surface. But something must have left it there. Something large and weird enough to lay an egg like that in a nest of time – something that might not take kindly to coming back and finding its egg broken.
So she just kept watch. As long as she could wake up in the morning knowing something had changed, it wasn’t so bad. Just looking forward to seeing how much bigger it was, how much farther she would have to set up her camp chair along the brick wall, she could go on living. It really didn’t take much, in the end.
To make it worth getting up in the morning. Besides, she wanted to see just what might crawl out of an egg like that, or what might come back to mother it. She could wait just as long as it took to finally see what had done this to her.
