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Taken for Granite

  "Umm, excuse me," came the voice from directly underneath her. Bailey leapt nearly to her feet, stumbling a few overbalanced steps forward before she righted herself. She looked around, but couldn't see who had spoken.

  "Right here," the voice said. Bailey took in the trees, the flowers, the narrow bench and the dappled light of the park, but saw no one.

  Slowly, the bench raised a stone armrest. "Here," it said.

  She turned her head over each shoulder, checked the trees for hidden cameramen and squinted at the bench. "Did you just say something?" she said.

  "Three things," said the bench. Slowly the back of the seat peeled away from the bottom and turned, stone legs in front of a suddenly-much-wider base. "That's better, I was starting to cramp up."

  She blinked. Now that the upper-half of the bench moved, it was backless, and armless as well. "Cramp up?" she said.

  "Not easy staying in one position that long," it said, and she could see a mouth and a change of coloration around where the eyes would be. "And then you were leaning against my face, it makes it tough to breathe."

  "Cement doesn't breathe."

  "I'm not cement," the stone said, its tone a little on the edgy side.

  "Granite, then, whatever."

  "Common misconception. No, I'm gneiss, actually."

  "Who said you weren't nice?"

  "No, it's a kind of rock," it said too patiently.

  "Great," she said.

  "Right," it said.

  "So that means you're--"

  "Made of stone, yes." It nodded its head, but slowly.

  "If you don't mind me asking," she took a step closer, "why?"

  "My, you really dig right into the personal, don't you? You sit on someone--"

  "Someone? And I didn't sit on you, I may have leaned against you a little, but in my defense, you're a bench."

  "I'm not a bench," it said.

  "You look like a bench."

  "Well, I'm not."

  "See, if you'd answered my question we wouldn't be going around like this."

  "If you hadn't sat on me, we wouldn't be going around like this."

  "I said I didn't sit on you. Besides, why make yourself look like a bench if you aren't a bench? That doesn't make any sense at all."

  "I thought this park was pretty empty."

  "It is, that's why I like to come here."

  "And you never noticed the bench didn't have a back?"

  "Who notices these things?"

  "Try being the back, and then you'd notice. Oh crap," it said, and rapidly spun itself so that it was lying horizontally again.

  "What?" she said. Two men approached on the winding path, their voices travelling ahead of them.

  "How far can a person made of stone get?" said the one who looked like pulled taffy.

  "Apparently pretty far," said the other, scanning as he walked. "You don't see anything out of place?"

  "No," said the first. They reached Bailey and stopped. "Have you seen a guy made out of stone?" he asked her.

  "Now that's subtle," said the other one. He shook his head and tapped his fingers against the two days' growth on his cheeks. "Honestly, I have no idea how you got promoted ahead of me--"

  "Do you think it might have something to do with lab experiments ending with people turned into granite?"

  "Gneiss," said the beardy one and Bailey at the same time. From each side, the men pivoted inward to stare at her.

  "What did you say?" said the tall one.

  "How did you know that?" said the one with the beard.

  Bailey snuck a glance over at the bench. At one end, the back shifted and flexed in a definite "no."

  "Know what?" she said, drawing from her depths a sound of the innocent.

  "Gneiss," the tall one said.

  She shrugged. "Common misconception. People tend to confuse granite for gneiss." She attempted to keep the twinge of pride out of her voice, but did not succeed.

  "Uh-huh," said the bearded one, his small eyes ever-more-narrowed. "Well, if you happen to see said person, he's property of Montraps Labs."

  "You said a person," she said.

  "Yes."

  "Made of stone," she squared her shoulders and thrust her head back to get a better look at the tall one.

  "It does sound unusual, sure."

  "That, my kind sirs--" she turned her head and glared eye to eye with the bearded one, adopting her highest and mightiest tone, "I hope you'll note my sarcasm--is not my problem. A person is not the property of anyone or anything," she said. "Now, if you'll go on your way..."

  "Look lady," the tall one said, red spreading from the base of his long neck upward and deepening as it went, "we're kind of in a lot of trouble for letting him out and all, and we might lose our jobs."

  "You should have thought of that sooner," she said, nose and chin skyward. "Now on your way."

  "But--"

  "On your way," she said again.

  "Sheesh," said the shorter one as they trudged off. "What did we say?"

  Bailey waited until they were completely gone. "I think the coast's clear," she said.

  "Thanks," the stone turned himself upright again.

  "Are you still not going to tell me what happened?"

  "I don't want to," he said. "My name's Ricky, by the way."

  "Oh," she said, trying to hold in giggle, which escaped anyway as a snort, "I thought it would be Rocky."

  "Hilarious," he said, watching her laugh at her own joke.

  "Come on, it's funny," she said, still giggling.

  "Not if you're the stone guy."

  "So you were telling me what happened."

  "I very much was not."

  "After all I did for you?"

  "Yeah, those stupid jerks."

  "What did they do? Kidnap you? Hold you prisoner and force you into medical experiments? That tall one looks like a mad scientist. I mean, you can really spot them in a crowd."

  "Not exactly," he said, shifting down the bench with a scrape so that she could sit.

  "Worse? Is it worse than that?"

  "It depends on how you look at it, I guess," he said, angling his body away, with the effect of an averagely-carved sculpture.

  "So?"

  "It's embarrassing," he said.

  "Try me," said Bailey, patting what she thought was probably a shoulder.

  Ricky sighed, a strange echo-y sound resonating from his stone diaphragm. "I lost a bet," he said.

  "You lost a bet and turned to stone?"

  "I lost a bet and had to try out our new compound."

  "OK."

  "Which turned me to stone."

  "Well, talk about your rock-hard abs," Bailey said before she could stop herself, and immediately started snort-laughing again. Ricky looked at her balefully. "Sorry," she said, trying to stop, "I couldn't help myself."

  "No, that's what it was for," he said quietly.

  "A little on the literal side, don't you think?"

  "I didn't," he said, "until this."

  "So what was the bet?"

  "I'm not telling you."

  "You said you wouldn't tell me how it happened, and you did already."

  "And then you laughed at me. Twice."

  "In all fairness, I laughed at you the first time before you told me."

  "True," Ricky said. "They bet me I couldn't sit still for thirty minutes."

  "And you lost?" Bailey said. "How do you lose that?"

  "I'm pretty energetic," he said. "And fidgety."

  "So you're going to pretend to be a bench for the rest of your life?"

  "Nope," he said proudly, pulling a vial from a stony pocket, "I made a compound that should reverse the effects pretty quickly."

  "Then why haven't you taken it?" she said.

  He eyed his two coworkers returning up the path toward them and got himself back into bench position. "Revenge," he said, and the top-end of the bench smiled, wrinkles forming in his forehead as he raised his eyebrow
s.

  "Scientists," she said, rolling her eyes and leaning back.

  A Hole in the Clouds

  Of course I went through it. Wouldn't you go though it? A hole appears in the clouds out of nowhere, what would you do?

  Exactly what I did.

  Although I didn't completely have a choice, I felt this pull, a tugging, a lifting.

  But I didn't fight it.

  And I'm not sorry I didn't. You wouldn't believe it here. It's amazing. The sun is, well, different, and so is everything else, brighter, sharper, not like it was.

  I've been here for a while now, days at least, I'm not sure how long. There's plenty to eat, don't worry about that, they've fed me, they keep feeding me.

  Who?

  I'm not sure, but they look like us. Sort of, they look like us. There's something a little bit different, it's hard to explain, you'll see, but it's around the eyes, the way they hold their lips when they talk. They've told me they don't really look like that, that that's how they make themselves look, you know, so it's not weird.

  I've asked them how to get back. They said they have to take me, I can't go back on my own, and so I walked around some, wandered, tried to get back to the spot where I was when I came through. I couldn't find, though.

  Not, that I wanted to, you know, it was more out of curiosity. The geography's strange over here, it's hilly, but not only up and down, it's hilly sideways, if you know what I mean.

  You probably don't.

  But it's a kick to see, sideways hills. Some of the trees--at least, I think they're trees--grow straight outward, just like that. You can pick the fruit right off of them, off of a hundred-foot tree, because sideways, it's no higher than your waist.

  I wouldn't eat the fruit, though.

  I tried it once, it's not for us. They told me that, later, but it would have been nice to know before I tasted it, it's a taste that's like ashes and old meat with little needles inside (they told me those were seeds, but they were the sharpest seeds I've ever eaten). They're not with me all the time, so I don't always know what's what. They let me wander, but they always show up before I've gone too far. Before I can't find my way