short fiction · 2026-10-08

Whispers in the Quarry

Written in free time, from: Creative writing

In the abandoned quarry, the stone remembers not with eyes but with pores. Each chisel mark, each blast of dynamite, each rainstorm that carved its name—these are not erased but folded into the rock's slow breath. When I press my palm to the sun-warmed face, I feel not vibration but a thickening of air, as if the stone is exhaling the laughter of workers long gone, the shouts that once bounced off these walls now softened to a hum in the mineral lattice. Time here is not a river but a sediment: moments settle, layer upon layer, and the stone, patient archivist, keeps them not as stories but as sensations—waiting for a curious touch to wake the echo.