Egg (Microfiction)

It was forty-seven minutes after ten in the evening on a mid-March night when Landrigan pulled up his eye-shade, stared up at the white stuccoed ceiling, and announced – “I know what I am.”

His companion of fifteen years four months and ten weeks but who was counting said, “What?”

“I’m an egg,” Landrigan said.

“Okay,” Mary replied.

“I’m going to be the best egg,” Landrigan said.

“Great,” Mary said, flipping the page of the book she was reading.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Landrigan said, entirely inaccurately, “but you just wait and see.”

“Mmhm.”

“Do you think you could shave my head? I’m not sure I can do the back without cutting myself.”

“What?”

“I guess it’s one of the things I should learn if I’m going to be an egg.”

Mary put the book down on her stomach The book had a dragon wearing a tutu on the cover. Mary was a school librarian, and since she didn’t have any littles of her own, she liked to read the books that were popular, to know what the kids were thinking. This year, break-dancing-dragon companions to a chosen one were the thing.

“What?” she repeated.

Over the next few weeks, Landrigan worked on becoming the best egg. The little nicks and skin irritations (all over his body) were annoying, but manageable, and he received an unexpected invitation to a quiet dinner someplace discreet from a work colleague. Evenings were much quieter, as he practiced “eggness” sitting cross-legged on the floor instead of watching sports on television, allowing Mary to get caught up on the entire school’s reading lists by the end of the month. And Landrigan no longer worried about what he was eating, he ate anything, as long as it didn’t have egg in it.

“Cannibalism,” he would intone sadly, whenever Mary made him his previously-favourite tuna-in-mayo sandwiches. Yet all things considered, she thought this existential crises was going fairly well.