I could feel God trying to stab me in the back with lightning as I ran through the storm. The rain was trying to catch hold of me, drag me down. The news hadn’t mentioned any storm warnings this morning, yet here I was, hauling ass through a freak thunder storm down my usual jogging path in the woods.
That was when I saw it. The cave. I had never noticed it along this stretch before, although I wasn’t a huge scenery guy, either. Still, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the cave was there just for me, the Earth opening its mouth to provide shelter from Nature’s violent rampage.
Hoping the storm would pass quickly, I crawled into the belly of the beast.

(OvO)

I must have taken a nap, because I blinked and the sun had returned, the mad torrents cast back to whatever Hell they had come rampaging out from.

(OvO)

“How was your jog?” My wife, Monica, asked as I came in the door. “I got so worried when that storm came through.”
“I was fine. I, uh, yeah.”
“That’s good.”

(OvO)

When I went for a jog the next day, I couldn’t find the cave, although with all the rain yesterday, I wasn’t completely sure where I had even seen it the first time.

(OvO)

The cave didn’t so much as cross my mind again for months.
“I’m pregnant, honey,” Monica told me.
“Holy crap! I’m going to be a father!”
We hugged and jumped for joy. As we spun with euphoria, I had the sudden sensation of a violent rain whipping across my face, wind whistling through my ears like it was Mother Nature’s birthday and my brains were the candles on her cake.

(OvO)

A few months later, my closet door creaks open in the middle of the night. I hadn’t even realized I was awake until the movement forced my senses to the forefront, leaving me then wondering just how long I had been lying there, semi-conscious and waiting for something to happen. I stared at the open closet, squinting at layers of darkness upon darkness, the black of the closet a mere blot on an already inky landscape. All outer space could be in the closet right now and I wouldn’t know.
The door hanging lazily open was reminding me of something, and it took me a minute to realize it looked like the cave from the woods, the way it had smiled open for me when I had needed it. So, by that logic, I found myself wondering, ‘Should I climb into the closet, too?’

(OvO)

Monica was not happy to find me sleeping in the closet this morning. She made it all about herself, as usual.

(OvO)

My baby was born today. I was there in the delivery room. It was the strangest thing, I couldn’t shake the idea that, rather than giving birth to a human baby, my wife was pushing out a large slab of rock. As I watched the baby’s head crowning her dilated cervix, I could have sworn it was a chunk of granite pushing through, the same kind that made up the cave I had taken shelter in that lone day in my past.
Then the child was out. My beautiful, gore-strewn daughter had entered existence. I realized that, like me, she had emerged from a cave. I cut the umbilical cord, freeing her from her Mother’s orbit, casting her into the world.
Monica issued another cry, giving a final push. Out came the afterbirth, the placental cave that our child had grown up in now looking like a plastic shopping bag that a homeless person had used as a makeshift restroom for a week. I was so fascinated that a Doctor had to stop me from picking it up. I wasn’t even aware I had reached for it.

(OvO)

We named our little girl Pearl, her being the gem of her mother’s mollusk.

(OvO)

Life only goes so long. Whether you get 2,000 weeks, days, months, or words, when you’re done, you’re done. I feel my end impending, an avalanche roaring down on me, a cave-in I can’t dig my way out of.

(OvO)

I was taking my daily jog when I heard a shriek come dancing through the trees towards me. I looked into the forest and, not only was my cave there, but I saw my wife standing beside it. She was holding our Pearl in her arms, staring down on her with perturbation. The baby was screaming.
The sun was baking the path I was on, heat visibly sizzling in the air around me.
Monica nonchalantly threw Pearl into the cave.
“No!” I screamed, running towards them.
When I got there, though, there was no sign of either the ladies or the cave.

(OvO)

When I got home, Pearl was napping while Monica watched a trashy daytime talk show. I imagined her taking me on the show she was watching, the host sitting me down and saying, “The paternity test is in, and you are not the father.”
“What?” I yell. “Then who is?”
The host smiles, his lips parting to reveal the answer to my question, for there, lurking in the dark behind his teeth, sat the cave, laughing.

(OvO)

Today I noticed that Pearl’s breathing has taken on a jagged tone, like tumbling boulders. I used a flashlight to peer down her throat. I fell in, getting lost in the various tubes that led from one majestic organ interior to another, the insane cavernous maze of her insides leaving me fearing I’d never see the light of day again. Well, I’m here now, so it must have worked out in the end.

(OvO)

A news report about a child who fell down a well. She was dead before rescuers could get her free. Monica cried when the local station ran the story. I felt an odd tug of childhood nostalgia, jealous of the girl for getting to have her adventure down the well in spite of the poor outcome, feeling sure I could have weathered the situation if I had been the one granted the gift of falling down a well.

(OvO)

The dentist leans over me, his bright work light assaulting my eyes.
“Open wide,” he says.
With the white smock covering his face, the lack of a visible mouth on this man disconcerts me.

(OvO)

I think I’m still in the cave. I mean, this looks like my bedroom, but it doesn’t feel like it’s mine anymore. I wonder, if I took my hammer and cracked through these plaster walls, would I find wood beneath, or would it reveal the cold boulder slabs of the cavern hiding there?
Similarly, if I took my hammer to my wife, would I find blood and bone beneath the surface, or would my hammer merely ricochet off the thick rock concealed beneath her disguise?
Only one way to find out.

(OvO)

Well, you can’t be right every time. Unless rocks have gotten a lot bloodier than they were when I was a child.
Or, maybe my wife was human, and it’s just our child who is made of rock…

(OvO)

Apparently not.

(OvO)

I know I should be more upset that my wife and daughter are dead. But don’t worry. This is all just the cave. I’m still in it, sleeping through that storm. Eventually, that madness will pass and I will wake back up, everything in its right place. Someday, when I emerge from the cave, this will all be a bad dream tucked away in my past.

(OvO)

Now, what magazine or website will publish this story? I killed a kid so I’m obviously going to be famous now, so maybe TMZ would be interested.

Five years later...

I never went to jail and I’m rich now. Praise the cave!

(OvO)

Hello. I’m your humble narrator.
I know we had some fun today with dead babies and dead wives, but don’t let that detract from the real message of this story. Next time you suspect one of your loved ones has been replaced with a rock person, there’s no need to bash their brains in. I mean, you could just take a knife and slice their palm. Learn from my mistakes, kids, don’t take things to extremes. Not that I suffered any consequences for my actions. Just, you know, because it’s not cool to do.
RIP Pearl. Daddy loves you.

Twenty years later…

“I’m telling you, I was abducted by aliens!” I yell at my agent.
“And I would never imply that I didn’t believe you, sir. It’s just...”
“That you don’t believe me?”
“Meep,” he squealed.
“I’m telling you, I was out in my backyard, smoking a joint and drinking a beer beside the pool, enjoying the summer night. I was staring up at the sky, marveling at the majesty of of it all, the vastness of reality, when the stars… parted. A great darkness swam into view, blotting out the stars, some twisted abyss yawning itself into existence across the universe. Almost like our whole planet was getting sucked into a...”
That’s when it hits me. My agent is right, I wasn’t abducted by aliens.
“A what, sir?” he implores me.
“A cave. Oh, God, I wasn’t in a UFO. I was back in the cave!”

(OvO)

I always thought I fell asleep that day in the cave. Sometimes, the human brain blocks out memories that it wasn’t built to comprehend, cauterizing a wound that would otherwise infect the entire organ. It actually does this every second of every day in a desperate bid to save our sanity from the truth of our surroundings.
We are all in the cave, reality just the shadows cast by our tiny fires as they dance across the walls. But now that I am aware that I am in the cave, I think I can finally do something about it.
Let’s see… This is going to be like trying to move a limb I never even knew I had, never could have guessed existed. I’m mentally reaching for some kind of psychic leg to stand on out there in the expanse that lurks behind us all.
And.
Oh, hello.