The Egg
A city stays as loud as its judgmental prospects, a crowding society that stands quiet amongst one another, sleepily dreaming for the next sensation.
I sailed by, a woman, victimized by the fall term of the year when the evergreen wrapped around my neck tightly. There was no escape from the effervescent glow of car attorney billboards and old men grumbling down my blouse. There's no station designated to weeping around these a-gape human halves, only motorized with capability. I ripped my insect tights on a bus-commute to the office, embracing the heaping cold that captured my thigh. I don't get bothered when passengers don't see my shuddering, as they can’t help the position I’ve put myself in, but my slip of coat isn’t enough to hold me over.
Over the emotional swell, I lay an egg. Picking it up to coddle it in my arms like the beast it was, I let instinct override fear. The pruned lady beside me, engaged in a love affair with her cigarette bud, scoots a seat away.
My coworkers advised me to participate in some form of counseling. I believe it came down to the fact that I have been in rotation of gnawing fingernails and referencing the receptionist as my toad on a lilypad of grief. But Dr. Norman was a bit more interested in my newest endeavors.
“Can I see it?” He asked. It was strange to me that he would need to tilt his spectacles to get a clearer review. Nonetheless, I let myself drift into the prodding of prior ballet teachers and the pudge of their eyes. Instantly, I felt the mucus dripping down from my flowy business- professional. I laid an egg, purple like the fleet of the sun.
Apparently when a human can bend genetic compounds for the fury of it all, patient confidentiality isn’t all too prioritized. A week of desperate reporters scrape through the dissociative barriers I often commute with. They are pleased with the polka dots and stripes they manage to get out of me. I am fired for my new found absurdities, but work colleagues send me mail with lovable accents and messaging like they were the first to know about my little secret, an insulting break and entering they do as if they have the key to my configuration, while a few weeks prior my cubical was an intentional dodge for their eyes. Cheers pant out my window and I know all of this city must starve. I tore apart the coffee table and wooden accents around the apartment, nailing them to all creaks of sunshine, waiting for cacophony to dwindle. Eggs slept in congested hills as their patterns grew more furious with neons and jagged codes, all in the suffocation of being a city spectacle.
Once I'm old news I’m not graced with face plasterings calling me a freak, no it’s a metallic alley of looks that will splinter the bones and unravel the skin until human is discarded from coherency. All a quiet process…
Back home from a much needed grocery replenish, I come to greet a room, a room somehow empty, eggless. Outside roars lead me to the balcony, where my post-apocalyptic barriers have man-made rampage to blame for its demolition. Children handle my frightened eggs, and all in a stomp, spit, chew, until my beautiful grotesques’ entrails were spit out against the chilling street.
I weep while sweeping the fragments into my arms, consolidating the shreds in my crinkled wings as I carve out a lullaby. I was all too two seconds wise to let my rage twist, knowing this had to be the last of my exhibition. To my surprise a final egg rocks behind me, purple like the fleet of sun. It cracks and it cracks, and just like that, it’s become a face Identifiable to mine, licking its lips. I feed it my shell offerings, and once those are gone I peel myself apart, ember by ember, picking at the skin before my eyes so I’m allowed to watch its own body grow. It has a shade of blue icing over with a twine smile crying out harsher with each nibble of me. Any remains left lying on the lime extend adoration towards the warming entity. It was peace that devoured.
I’m a 16 year old OSA student from the Bay Area who hopes to not come off to pretentious as I play around with man made words in my works of psychedelic fiction. My accolades include winning fiction prize in the 2024 Bay Area Creative Youth Awards and my own work in the fresh comic company Dream Comics. I take value in my own womanhood and find those coming of age experiences to fuel my own stories.