In the unkempt and abandoned field in front of my house, there sits a strange rock. Like a giant’s severed and half-rotten head turned to stone. Deep dents carve out its eye sockets and nostrils, and a larger dent still carves out its mouth. It sits alone on that empty field with a malformed and sorrowful expression. I try my best not to look at it, yet it draws the eye. And every time I look into those deep empty eye sockets, it feels as if something is looking right back. I’m not exactly sure when it got there, yet I am almost sure it wasn’t there when we first bought the house.
I’ve tried all sorts of things to get the stone removed, yet nothing works out. I don’t own the field on which the stone lays. Besides, they tell me it’d cost quite a bit to get that large of a stone removed. I was told there was nothing much I could do about it, except maybe obstruct it from the view of my house. And so I tried planting trees along the lawn of my yard. The hedge did well for a couple of days, but about a week after planting them, I came outside to see them gray and dead, some snapped and fallen over. In the distance the miserable rock stayed observing me.
As the time went on, my life only worsened. I was already at a low, and the expression on that rock only worsened my misery. Eventually, I didn’t even get a break from that rock when going to work. The miserable rotten expression plagued my mind each moment of the day. That damn face. I didn’t care about the rock itself anymore. Just… if that face would be gone. It would be enough. These thoughts brought forth an idea, and I stopped by a hardware store after work. I bought a pickaxe.
I stood with my new tool in hand on my driveway. The great boulder sat in the very same spot as always, staring at me as I approached. The cloudy sky was a lurid gray color, almost the same as the rock. Acres of open land and tall yellowish grass surrounded me as I stood in front of it. It looked down at me, radiating agony and warmth. My skin crawled as I saw the swarm of flies reveling on the surface of the stone.
The clang of metal rang through the open field, and the flies swarmed me like an angry swarm of wasps. I yelled in effort and kept swinging harder. The flies crawled on me now. I swung and I swung more. My arms tired. I started kicking it, yelling manically. I slumped down, and the flies dispersed. The stone didn’t even have a dent from the effort. I collapsed and looked up at its face and heard a low hum from it that pierced into my very bones.
The following night I could hardly sleep due to the flies buzzing around, and the little sleep that I did get was filled with nightmares. Nightmares about the other side, about my wife. My alarm rang, and I forced myself to my dead-end job. Getting there, I was swiftly laid off due to my “recent underperformance at the company." It took a lot of restraint not to attack the smug bastard right there, but I managed to hold on to my anger until I got to my car.
Feeling hopeless and purposeless, I sat in my car. In my misery the face on that rock came to mind again, then my wife. I decided to head to the graveyard, hoping she’d bring me some comfort. The streets were empty, and a steady wind was picking up. The sky was still that horrible gray color. Just a few yards from the graveyard a bird flew into my windshield, leaving a red stain with it and a crack in the glass. Absurd. I almost felt a laugh forming in my chest, which disappeared after I took the turn to the graveyard.
In the cold autumn, the graveyard seemed as dead as the corpses lying in the soil. Dull, hueless trees stood against the dark sky, and orange leaves swung about, being carried by the storm winds. The bell tolled as I saw the defiled grave from a distance. In disbelief, I ran to the grave. Standing in front of it, I saw the gravestone cracked and strewn about. I read from the pieces of stone her name once and then again. Flies walked the soil above from where her corpse lay, and the flowers, which I had brought just two days ago, were already withered and rotten.
I stood there looking at the scene blank-faced, getting lost in some deep part of my mind. That same hum from yesterday filled my consciousness, and I came to as I swatted a fly off of my face subconsciously. A candle lay on its side on the grave. The flame flickered in the wind as I shielded it with my palms and placed the candle upright. Instantly, the wind picked up and blew the candle out, as if to vanquish any hope I’d had of giving her some sort of peace.
The first drop of rain fell, and quickly the trees were being flung violently in the wind. The car shook while driving through the muddy road back home. In the distance the rock sat somber in the storm, getting belted by water. Inside, the power had gone off. I set up a seat in front of the window and sat staring at the rock. Unblinking I kept my eyes on it, trying to discern what it knew. I felt nauseous as its stony face moved. Its mouth slowly began to whisper.
It stared into my soul with hollow eyes, whispering. All around me I heard its low voice. Its ramblings were full of madness, and I hardly could comprehend all that it told me. The room spun around me. Memories came to me. Countless memories, which turned into waking nightmares. Memories of other people’s suffering. Eventually my vision faded, and I slumped down in my chair, hearing countless heavy thuds. The surroundings shook in cadence. And as I woke, it wasn’t there anymore. Only a hole in the ground where it once was.