DON'T TOUCH IT

"Hey, what's goin' on?" Dan asked as he flopped down on the couch not really caring or even slightly in the mood for another of Denis' stories about something he thought he saw, heard, or read. Yet, he knew it was coming.

"Hey... um, I'm glad your home," Denis began as he, with back turned, continued fiddling with something just out of view, "I-I think you might want to see this..."

Dan rolled his eyes. "Look, I'm really fucking tire-"

"No. You REALLY need to see this."

"Denis, c'mon man... I just got home fro-"

Denis snapped his neck around with a total shroud of surprise coupled with the whitest complexion Dan had personally ever seen a person have short of being a corpse. Dan stood up without another moment's hesitation and slid over to where Denis sat, crouching, in front of something still as yet revealed.

"Sweet shit on toast," Dan began, himself turning several different shades of pale, "What the FUCK is that thing?"

Denis just shook his head languidly and licked his lips, "No idea. I found it under the 9th Street bridge earlier this morning."

Dan squatted himself to get a better view of just what it was he still wasn't convinced he was looking at. It was a beige color, slightly bigger than a bowling ball yet oblong; egg-shaped, in fact, and it didn't look rough or petrified like those dinosaur types he'd seen in books and movies. No, from what he could discern from his vantage point, the thing was as fresh as the dozen in his fridge.

"Tell me you didn't touch it..." Dan knew right after asking that it was a stupid statement; how else could he have gotten it over here?"

"Actually, I didn't," Denis admitted with a grin, " I managed to find an old milk crate down there, too, and I kind of just prodded it in there with my foot."

Dan was impressed; most times Denis would have gone on to describe the myriad ways he'd messed with it, rubbed it all over, or manhandled it somehow. Much like the ways he'd talked about in the numerous bullshit stories he'd spouted on about in the past.

"Huh," Dan said, still quite flabbergasted by what he was looking at, and not once deviating his glance from, "Smart thinking... for a dumb ass."

"I know, right? So... you think we ought to touch it?" Denis asked a little too slyly for Dan's liking.

"Are you fucking nuts? Hell no I don't think we ought to touch it! I think we ought to... I don't know: call someone?"

Denis shrugged, "Any suggestions on who?"

"I don't know, those animal guys who rescue injured pets and shit... you know, the..."

"Animal Rescue Center?" Denis said full of wanton sarcasm, "Look, dude, I don't thing that's such a great idea, I mean what if what we've got here is something brand new? Like a new species or something. Can you imagine how quickly that coolness will be snatched away if we start calling people willy nilly?"

Dan, still stinging a bit from Denis' sour retort had to admit, however annoyingly, that he was right. "OK. Let's touch it."

Denis did a double take, "Seriously? Did you just agree to get our hands on this thing?"

"I know, it left a pretty shitty taste in my mouth saying it... so let's just do it and get it over with."

They backed away together, looked at one another's hands as if to verify that they were still currently on the ends of each other's arms, and steadily reached in.
At first the shell felt tepid to the touch; nothing more than room temperature. Then, almost at once, as if it felt their combined presence, the warmth began to build. It was soothing, relaxing, and it followed with a calming hum that vibrated with slow pulses up their arms. Slowly, the shell changed hue to a more dull pink, and finally to a rose. Dan and Denis held fast even as the thrumming vibrato increased its frequency and added a high-pitched whine to the mix. As it seemed, holding fast wasn't the problem, it was letting go. Neither could remove their hands from the surface, and neither wanted to. Finally, after what seemed like hours, but was only mere minutes, a fissure burst across the face of the egg erupting forth gusts of sulfuric air and heated plumes. The egg yawned, a yolky appendage snaked from the cavernous maw, and laced itself around the men's feet and arms. With a slight tug, the pair were lifted to their feet and calmly eased into the now much larger egg. The increase in size had never occurred the them as they were left to the enjoy the intoxicating massages of the shell itself. And now, as the thick albumen sheathed itself around the stupefied men, the egg slowly closed, and the seam resealed to once again wait for someone to touch it.