Stone Elephant by Grace Kennedy

“Their tusks are actually teeth, you know.”

I turn around frantically, having been startled by the sound. I thought I was totally alone in the corner of the antique shop, yet, suddenly I look over my right shoulder to find that a greasy old man has appeared next to me. He’s wearing a tattered blue flannel and jeans, accessorized most notably by the trail of small, dark-red chunks tangled in his wiry gray beard.

“I’m sorry?” I ask the man, though I heard him perfectly well the first time.

“Elephants,” he grunts, gesturing to the stone carved figurine I’ve been holding in my hands. “Elephants’ tusks are actually just teeth. Never stop growing” He noisily mashes one of the raspberries in his hand between his teeth, spilling juice all the way down the front of his shirt.

“Huh!” I reply emphatically enough to show apparent interest, in the same voice I use when my daughter shows me her mud pies. “I never knew that, thank you for the fun fact.”

I turn away and hope the stranger gets the message that I like to browse alone, and suddenly feel a little ache in my incisor. Damn if it hasn’t been a while since I’ve seen a dentist.

“Oh yeah, they’ve got some pretty thick skin, too. Thicker than ours. All those little folds keep moisture in,” the old man panted at me while leaning on a silver cane “keeps ‘em cool.”

“You really know a lot about elephants, huh man?” I return with a mirthless chuckle.

The old man licks his lips, next circling his tongue around his teeth in his closed mouth. He fingers the ivory handle of the cane with wide knobby fingers. His clouded cataract gaze drifts before centering on me with laser focus. I can practically feel a hole boring into my skull.

“Oh, well, I didn’t always know all that much about elephants,” he laughed hoarsely at me. “I suppose someone just had to teach me,” his gaze softened again. “Or something sure did.”

I turn back to browsing through some dusty antique books, each one with its own particular perfume. Old books have a perfect sort of smell to them, I’ve always thought. I flip through the pages of a wiry copy of The African Queen wistfully before being met with a familiar, unpleasant sting.

“Aw, ow fuck!” escapes from my lips without grace. But to my surprise, I can’t find the source of the papercut I have just received. The slice didn’t manage to break the skin.

“Did something getcha?” the old man asks hoarsely, his hot, rancid breath making its way to my ear.

“I thought so but . . .” I hold my hand closer for inspection. There’s nothing.

“I guess you must have some pretty thick skin then, boy,” he chuckles with glee before falling languidly against his teetering cane.

I affirm the old man’s observation with a nod, but all the same, I start slowly walking back to the front counter to pay. I shake away the discomfort settling itself in my empty stomach. My daughter loves elephants. She will love a stone figure of one too. I hope.

“They’re constantly eating!” the old man calls after me as I dart past store counters and shelves to quicken my pace. “Leaves and shrubs and the like, even fruit!”

I get to the counter a little out of breath and begin fishing my wallet from my back pocket. A leathery, gray visage greets me on the other side of the counter. The old man with a cane has made it past me amazingly fast and quiet. His teeth are sinking deep into the edges of his lips.

“I don’t think you’re gonna be able to manage taking that home,” he warns in a slowly deepening voice. “I tried to take it home once, too, when I was your age,” he whispers lowly, walking closer. The old man’s figure begins bending, crumpling over until he is walking on all fours. His skin wrinkles severely except around his dark, shining eyes. His raspberry-tainted incisors practically burst out of his mouth while he looks up at me from the dusty carpet.

“I held onto th-that a liit-tle too lo-lo-long,” he stutters into a deeper, gargled voice.

“Man are you alright? I think you need some help,” I try not to scream in the man’s face.

His nose lengthens and points, his feet become wider and flatter, all parts covered in gray, drying skin. The ivory handled cane finally clatters to the floor.

“I’ve been alone for nearly forty years now, in the savannah.”

I’m twisted up against the next shelf over trying to make a path towards the door.

“I picked that thing up, but there was nothing I knew. Nothing I could say I knew about elephants at all. Just that they were big,” his figure rises above me, “that they were strong,” a bookshelf that must weigh hundreds of pounds clatters to the ground like a tinker toy.

“Come on man, there’s got to be something I can help you wi-t-th,” I plead with something I can’t even tell is real before pleading to every deity I half-know the name of.

The old man-creature walks on all four legs in a slow and deliberate fashion towards me. Red juice splatters down his lips and tusks as he corners me. “And I learned, oh I learned after all these years of not knowing a damn thing that mattered. I learned that an elephant never forgets.”

Grace Kennedy likes to write about place, time, and cats in equal measure. She’s heavily invested in the weird and wonderful, but mainly writes for the purpose of laughing at her own jokes. She is currently finishing her last semester of a creative writing bachelor’s degree from the University of Arizona and hopes to spend more time reading and talking too much about kids’ books, like she does as the assistant director for the children’s literary magazine, Pine Reads Review.