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Rock Rorschach

by Lydia Ship

We all began work at the same time, hired by an agency for a store tucked in the back corner of a sparse and remote mall. The store stretched the size of a gym and, besides the growing rocks, displayed piles of expensive innovations that never caught on—perfume that came in balm form, which customers always accidentally rubbed on their lips (it burned); piles of unisex jeans, each pair of which bore a stain of a certain type: purplish blobbed wine, darkly circled cigarette burns, streaked grass, smeared blood; and on racks, sheer shirts with patterns or pictures meant to layer to form different types of tableaus. We sold unusual clothing customers would wear only once, if that, yet we pushed it, along with the other useless trinkets, because we worked on commission and the owner of the store made a lot of jokes about being the devil. But the most popular things we sold, the growing rocks, sold themselves, and the rocks were why we never went looking for other jobs.

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