The Watcher

A response to CDominiqueG's challenge on #storycraft to write from the point of view of an inanimate object.

I'm not a Hindu, and I don't get around so if you hope I'll answer your questions about reincarnation, forget it. All I know is one day I had cancer, and the next day I'm dead and reborn as a rock. Can you believe it? I know, weren't all rocks created millions of years ago. All those igneous, sedentary, and metamorphic rocks couldn't compete with Jesse back in seventh grade geology. What? Sedentary -- sedimentary. What's the difference, I'm a rock. Don't expect intelligence from me.

Anyway, you're sidetracking me, don't do that. Jesse, the one I married and who gave birth to little Minnie and Mav. One day, cancer eating me up, I closed my eyes and the next moment Jesse mourns in a black dress carrying Mav and tripped over me while walking to the porch. It doesn't hurt or anything, I like to be noticed. I missed her, I wished she knew I was embedded in our front yard.

Summer became fall. And then winter's frozen fingers covered my eyes. That first winter took forever, and it made me look inside. And when spring came, the snow melted from my face, I knew what I wanted. I wanted Jesse to find someone. Someone to hold her in his arms unlike me who was only good for tripping.

Summer, fall, winter, spring, summer, winter, winter. The years sped by, Minnie and Mav grew like weeds. It felt good to trip Derek the first time he walked Jesse home, but I saw her laugh and knew that jealousy was from my old life, inappropriate in the new me, the rock me.

Beside me, the real estate agent pounded a for sale sign, the white garish post and squeaking -- incessant, can't they hear it -- sign. She's going to leave me. I don't want to part. If you find this, help me speak to Jesse. She must bring me with her, Derek, and the kids. I don't want anyone else.