by Elliot Crane
They always came out smooth, round, and white. Except when they didn’t. Chloe found it among the straw bedding and fluffy curved brown feathers. The strange egg was lumpy, soft, waxy, and yellow. She picked it up and ferried it into the house.
Chloe’s mother, still in her bathrobe and curlers and waiting on the coffee maker, called the egg a disgusting monstrosity and ordered her to dispose of it in the aluminum outside trashcan. Instead she took it to school to show to her teacher Mrs. Miller, nestled between her baloney and mayonnaise sandwich and a bumpy-skinned gherkin.
Mrs. Miller always wore a brooch pinned to her cardigan. That morning Mrs. Miller’s brooch was a basket of eggs because Easter wasn’t far off. When she showed Mrs. Miller the egg, her lips bowed downward into a frown. She said it was called a lash egg, which isn’t an egg at all but a great wad of pus and meant that one of their chickens had something called salpingitus. She insisted on throwing the lash egg away.
On the bus ride home from school, Chloe’s friend Charlotte plopped down beside her.
“I saw you, Chloe Lambert. I saw you go into Mrs. Miller’s room at recess and take something out of the garbage.”
“No you didn’t.”
“Did too. What is it?”
“I didn’t take anything out of the garbage. That’s gross.”
When she got home, Chloe went to her room and opened her closet, which was unusual because inside was another smaller door to a second smaller closet. She put the lash egg inside, hoping that Mrs. Miller was wrong and that one day she would open the tiny door and find a baby chick.
Each morning, she checked on the egg first thing and again when she got off the school bus in the afternoon. Days passed. The egg began to smell, a stench too powerful for air fresheners to subdue.
Chloe’s mother set to work banishing the mysterious odor with every household cleaner in her arsenal, scrubbing and scrubbing, until one afternoon Chloe found her passed out supine on the kitchen linoleum.
Chloe shook her mother until her eyes flickered open in a state of confusion. It was hard for Chloe to admit, but as she saw her mother’s limp body jerk awake, she knew. It was time to give up on the lash egg.
Elliot Crane lives in Richmond, Virginia with his wife and cat. He enjoys writing short stories, coding small video games with Pico-8, and a good deviled egg.