The Parable of the Pebbles
by Ben Loory


A man stands throwing pebbles into the Grand Canyon. He stands there and throws every one he can find. He pictures the Grand Canyon filling up with stones. He figures it shouldn’t take very long.

And the canyon does begin to fill-- after many, many years. Actually, it doesn’t fill much at all. And-- at the same time-- the pebbles grow scarcer, until finally every pebble is gone.

The man stands at the edge, staring down into the canyon.

It hardly looks like I made a dent, he says.

With a sigh, he steps forward and gets ready to go the way that all the pebbles went.


But just at that moment, a strange force grabs him, and hurls him up into the air. And he flies through the sky, and off into space; he completely leaves this world.

The man sails on, past all the planets-- into the starry depths, way beyond far. Until finally he sees-- as it lies all around him-- the truth:

it is space that makes stars.


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Ben Loory lives in Los Angeles, in a house on the top of a hill. His work has appeared in Wigleaf, Dogzplot, PANK, Apparatus, decomP, Word Riot, and more. His book Stories for Nighttime and Some for the Day is currently seeking a home.