Feast

There’s a salad on the table. It appears to be intricately composed. My aunt selects a portion of the salad and begins to pick at it with her fork. Portions fall away, revealing that underneath the leafy green lettuce skin flows a veritable river of pink tuna. I am hungry, so I begin to eat the tuna. I can tell that there is some white material beneath the tuna, but I’m not interested. It’s all about the flakey, salty and yet soft dead fish flavor.

Now the white material is clearly a human femur. Nobody’s appetite is diminished. We don’t even bother to try to rationalize what we’re doing. There’s not room for rationalization when you’ve got food this good in front of you.

I’m feeling full but I really want to keep eating. The other people at the table are ravenous. I have to compete to get my fill. Some of them are shitting right there so they don’t have to stop eating. One of them is masturbating with her hand down her pants while she chews up what used to be an eyeball. Her eyes are closed in extacy. There is blood dripping from somewhere. It’s getting on the good china. I’ve left now, and I’m watching from a corner of the room. The top left corner.

There’s a cabinet that houses the napkins and tea trays. I can see that it’s open. I crawl inside behind the backs of some of the orgiers. The door closes behind me and it’s dark. I’m still not scared or angry, just a little tired. I wish I had a book to read.

Growth

He watched the rock. He could have sworn it moved. It certainly had gotten bigger. That was just overnight.
He shuffled slowly over to it, tapped it with his cane. It didn’t react. It remained as inflexibly solid and brittle as any other flat grey rock might. He put a measuring tape next to it, marked out 8 inches wide, 7 inches across and 4 inches tall. And all mishapen. The word he was looking for, though he didn’t know it, was conchoidal fracture. Like quartz or glass, but not nearly as sharp or dangerous looking. Satisfied with his measurements and the notes in his little book, the man, who by now we can properly call Joshua, elected to visit the grocery store.
He strapped on his helmet, streched the band of his goggles into place, and positioned himself firmly aboard his motorscooter. Twenty minutes found him eating a tuna sandwich and drinking a box juice. Just perfect.
Another hour revealed his bonsai talents. The miniature trees grew every day and yet stayed the same size. Somehow we accept this as part of the natural order. We could examine the complexity of the reactions involved, but they are really rather tedious. There is precedent for accepting that such things happen, and there are techniques for examining and quantifying them.

Joshua had experienced the growth of a rock. That is, he had observed a discrepancy between the percieved size of the rock at one time and at another, later, time. He was understandably unprepared for such a revelation.
So he measured it and ate a sandwich.
It was still there, sitting in his front yard when he was done eating. He was half surprised it hadn’t started violating that whole ‘no action without reaction’ thing or something like that… and started walking. or floating. He went back out and measured it again. 9.5 inches wide, 8 across and 4.5 tall. he jotted it down in his book, putting the time in the margin. It looked like it was about the same shape, but it might have twisted a little or sprouted a new lump or two. You’d really need pictures to compare. Joshua thought about that, but he didn’t have a camera.
So he went and worked on his bonsai trees. He trimmed and watered and plucked and tweaked. More than two dozen small trees graced his yard, but a careful eye, and perhaps an aerial view would reveal that there was one in particular that might belong somewhere else. Joshua himself was surprised at it. The graceful form and perfect bark patterning seemed out of place among the other more conventional works. Joshua could scarcely believe he had himself grown it from a seed over 30 years.
After working in his tabletop garden for a couple hours, Joshua went to measure the rock again. 10.5 by 8.5 by 6. Time in the margin. Bedtime.

In the morning, Joshua arose and stepped onto his porch. He sat on his chair and watched the neighbors walk by, colors playing across them as the sun reflected from the bright crystals the rock had grown overnight. None of them looked at his yard though, which he thought was odd. He smiled at one fellow who lived down a couple blocks. The gentleman smiled back. Joshua gestured at his yard. The man’s gaze slid smoothly across the carefully trimmed lawn, along the pavestones leading to the door, up and over the hideous grey lump with giant spikey multicolored crystaline shards and over to the driveway with the scooter leaning against the side of the house. He smiled again and kept walking.
Joshua shook his head and went inside to get his tape measure. He grabbed his notebook too.
It was larger again. It’s growth had accelerated. And now these tendril/shard things were the primary feature of his yard. He examined one closely. He grabbed it firmly. It felt like he could break it off if he wanted to. His vision wavered slightly. He pulled. The shard snapped and his left eye shut down.
Joshua clutched at his head. There was a gentle numbness where his left eye had been. He poked it. He could feel the moisture of the surface, but nothing with his eye.
He looked around for the shard. He couldn’t find it.
What the hell?
He didn’t have a doctor to call… He was a goner. He grew angry at the lump. What the hell was it doing there? He struck out with his cane and smashed a small cluster of shards. His right arm fell dead to his side. He poked at the lump itself and colors flashed in his vision. He felt his heart skip a beat.