Rock Show

A Flash Fiction

I’d been dating Rob for a few months. Off and on—the nature of meeting on Tinder. A buffet of options. Not enough hours in the week.

So when he asked if I wanted to go to a Rock Show with him, I was excited. I pictured strobe lights, a bass guitar vibrating in my ribs, maybe a small but enthusiastic mosh pit.

I dressed for the occasion. Heavy eyeliner. A midriff-baring black halter. A skirt just a bit too short. Fishnets. Chunky boots.

Rob arrived in a forest green button-down and slacks.

Kinda square, but handsome in that clean-cut way.

“Whoa,” he breathed, looking me up and down hungrily. “You look incredible. We could just stay in, you know.”

His eyebrow quirked suggestively.

I grinned wickedly.

“Nope. We’ve gotta get going. Can’t be late to the Rock Show.”

I expected an outdoor festival. A moody dance club.

What I did not expect was a bustling events center in suburban Michigan.

A vinyl banner fluttered gently in the breeze of the half-full parking lot:

WELCOME TO THE MICHIGAN GEOLOGICAL AND MINERALOGICAL SOCIETY.

I blinked.

“Rob.”

He beamed. “You said you liked quartz.”

I stared at the banner again.

“Rock show,” I repeated slowly.

Rob nodded. “Lapidary demonstrations start at five. There’s a fluorite raffle.”

I should have left.

Instead, I followed him inside.

Folding tables stretched wall to wall, covered in white cloth, many of them displaying signs.

"Genuine Michigan Petoskey Stones—Hand Polished,” "Lake Superior Agates: Raw and Tumbled,” “Wire-Wrapped Pendants: Your Choice of Stone,” and even, “Sulphur: Do Not Touch (Smells Like Eggs!)”

Rows and rows of polished stones glittered in tiny, clear, circular boxes. Raw agates stood, sliced open like lumpy cross-sections of planets. Ammonite fossils coiled in eternal spirals. Geodes cracked and glistened.

Mostly retirees wandered the aisles.

Mostly.

A few children in “Petoskey Junior Rock Hounds” hats practiced polishing at a station.

I admired the stones. My disappointment at the “Rock Show” gave way to chagrined amazement. This was incredible.

Rob bought me a necklace with a chunk of raw amethyst wrapped in leather cord. It was beautiful.

Then, my breath caught.

In the center of the room stood a glass case lit from beneath.

Inside lay a ruby the size of a plum.

Not polished. Not cut.

Raw and deep crimson.

It was the color of arterial blood. And it looked like an anatomical heart.

I stopped walking.

“Is that part of the raffle?” I asked.

Rob’s smile tightened.

“No,” he said softly. “But we can go check it out.”

We stepped closer.

The glass case hummed faintly—not mechanical. Not electric. A low, internal vibration.

A small brass placard sat at its base:

SPECIMEN: CORUNDUM VAR. RUBY

ORIGIN: MRM MOZAMBIQUE

I leaned in.

The light beneath seeped through the gem, illuminating its internal striations. The light wasn’t steady. It pulsed, slowly. Mesmerizingly.

I couldn't take my eyes off it.

“An exceptional sample,” he whispered reverently. “I doubt it's even for sale. Or it will go to a museum, perhaps. The Field Museum might even be interested in this one.”

But I wasn't listening. The deep, internal thrum from the stone reverberated through my ribs like a timpani.

The ruby pulsed again.

Not like a heartbeat.

Like a fault line.

Something in my inner ear shifted. A pressure change. The kind you feel before a major storm—or an earthquake.

The striations inside the stone seemed to deepen. Not lines. Not cracks.

Layers.

Bands of compressed time.

The fluorescent lights thinned into something cosmic and distant. The space between me and the ruby stretched and then snapped—like a rubber band.

I was inside it.

Not physically.

Spatially.

Temporally.

I saw heat.

I saw mantle.

Continents collided and tore. Magma cooled. It was loud now, louder than sound.

Something vast and mineral coiled in the planet’s molten dark, patient as stone.

It did not have edges. Not truly. But where the currents of magma curved, something like a spine surfaced—then slipped beneath the flame and dissolved.

It had been here long before trees.

Before oceans.

Before names.

The ruby flared once—bright enough to bleach the world of color.

My mind split from the vastness. The ineffable fullness. A supernova that consumed everything that it meant to be human.

Somewhere deep beneath Michigan, something shifted.

And I realized I had not been looking at it.

It had been looking through me.

---

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