I sat down on the bench across from the prone figure and smiled. The township had made the area a city park shortly after she appeared ten years ago. I was young and impressionable then at fifteen. Thus, to protect mine and other’s sensibilities, until the vegetation took over, the city fathers kept a tarp over her being she was anatomically correct. It appeared as though a naked giant had strolled by and laid down for a nap and petrified.
University professors and scientist from all over the world came to view and test the woman. They x-rayed and ultra-sounded her with results that gave them nothing, no more information than if they had tested a lime stone cliff. Scrapings were okay, but when some overzealous investigator carved a softball chunk from her shoulder, the city shut down further studies. They set up a bench along a bark trail so people could come and reflect on her purpose. After a few years, her novelty wore off for few came by. Now and then tourists came by and sat on her cheek for a picture and then go on their way.
I assumed my usual stance by leaning over with my elbows on my knees. “You know I saw you peek.”
She didn’t move. I didn’t expect her too. She hadn’t moved since the time I was here a couple of years ago when an eye lid opened briefly and snapped shut again. A flake of moss slide to the ground from next to her nose from the action. I pried my finger in the crease of her eye lid but found no purchase that I could use as leverage and gave up.
I got up and walked around her. The chunk taken from the shoulder was little more than a divot now as the weather had smoothed out the ragged edges. “Did that hurt? When they took that piece?” Silence. I caressed the spot. Moving along admiring the figure, I decided the ivy made a fine garment for her. I wondered if she were to stand to her full thirty-five-foot height would her other side would be covered in grubs and worms and roly-poly bugs embedded in the clingy black clotted soil that would be stuck to her side? I wondered a lot of things about her. Did she peek at anyone else besides me?
I, for a time, accepted the notion that some artist had slipped into the forest and carved her out of a boulder. Then when she peeked at me, I knew she was alive. I knew she was in there, somewhere, a consciousness hiding. But, why hid? What happened that put her in this spot?
I had questioned her over and over. Never any response. I put her to my back and returned to the bench and sat again.
The ground began to tremble, then shake. It sounded like a train coming down the tracks. Trees started to sway, and some limbs broke and crashed to the ground. As I tried to stand, the bench lurched and pitched over rolling onto its back taking me with it. I pulled myself up on the seat and looked over at her as I heard a crack like lightning and a fissure opened up beneath the prone figure.
Her feet slipped into the newly formed crevice up righting her slowly. As she began to sink, both her eyes opened. I could see the shock in her aquamarine eyes as she disappeared below the ground. Crawling frantically, I pulled my way along the trembling earth to reach where she had laid for all this time as the ground closed up.
The shaking stopped. She was gone.
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