In Stone: A Grotesque Faerie Tale
Synopsis
Jeremy is stuck, like most young New Yorkers, in a world between adolescence and adulthood. Just when he thought that he was an average, blend-in-with-the-crowd gay kid, he becomes the victim of a terrible act of homophobia. Thankfully, a mysterious something comes to his aid. Garth is a gargoyle, trapped in stone and cursed to live an immortal life. Human and monster must become friends and confront the mysterious and magical events of the past that have brought them together.
In Stone: A Grotesque Faerie Tale
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In Stone: A Grotesque Faerie Tale
© 2012 By Jeremy Jordan King. All Rights Reserved.
ISBN 13: 978-1-60282-812-4
This Electronic Book is published by
Bold Strokes Books, Inc.
P.O. Box 249
Valley Falls, New York 12185
First Edition: November 2012
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission.
Credits
Editor: Lynda Sandoval
Production Design: Susan Ramundo
Cover Design By Sheri (graphicartist2020@hotmail.com)
Cover Artwork: Jeremy Jordan King
Acknowledgments
This book wouldn’t exist without the support of many friends, family, and colleagues. Thank you for enduring endless ramblings about things that don’t exist and allowing me to be crazy. More specifically, much gratitude to…
Len Barot and the entire Bold Strokes team for believing in this young author and giving books like In Stone a home. My editor, Lynda Sandoval, for making the editing process an absolute joy and helping me find more magical moments than I thought possible. My agent, Monika Verma, for attention, guidance, and enthusiasm for the rest of the Immortals. Mom and Dad for giving me an overactive imagination and being patient while I figured out what to do with it. My sister, Kelley, for being my constant champion. Aaron Glick for reading everything I write (and for managing my life). RJ Jordan for pushing me to find my voice in a story about an ancient gargoyle. Gregory Maguire for being my idol and offering kind words exactly when I needed them. Various co-workers at day jobs in events, yoga studios, and theaters for being interested in my work outside the hourly wage. Every teacher I’ve ever had for making me feel smart enough to write a book.
And finally, to Natural Wonders at the Freehold Raceway Mall for selling me the real-life Garth who keeps me dreaming safely every night.
Dedication
To my mother, lover of beautiful stories.
To my father, teller of fantastical tales.
Prologue
“What will it feel like to finally die?” he wondered, gripping the hand of his only friend. In some ways, he’d been dead since he’d learned to love. Childhood was difficult. Adulthood would never see fruition. Wayward glances led to ridicule, then torture, and culminating in an irreversible act of violence the likes of which have always been committed but never prevented.
He entered a life of entitlements, fineries, and glory. He would die depleted of those things, left to pass away like a beggar in a storm drain. Would he too be washed out to sea with the other waste?
Broken, bleeding, and beginning to rot, he lay under the most perfect of star fields. Leaving this world while beholding such splendor gave him some peace. “It must be better there,” he said to himself. He didn’t really know what it was like but one must project the best before the end.
He did not think of things he’d never come to see, for there were too many to even grasp.
Hardly a word was wasted on praying to his father’s god. What god would let a boy drown in his own fluids on cold stone with hardly a soul nearby to hear his cries?
Time passed without so much of a whisper of the real sins committed there. “This isn’t so bad,” he thought. His biology had numbed him through the worst of it but the finale proved too much for nature’s graces. The hemorrhages surged, entrails slipped, and hot iron filled his mouth, eyes, and ears.
“What will it feel like to finally die?” It felt like too much to comprehend. Bodies weren’t meant to feel so much.
The last thing he heard was laughter: unfriendly and victorious.
That is how I died. I just didn’t know it yet.
1. Happy New Year, Faggot.
I was wearing rainbow suspenders, a green pleather cap, and a t-shirt with “FRANK” scrawled across the front. The name referred to the wieners that I was slinging from a rented hot dog cart at the bat mitzvah for Miss Spencer Blatt. The catering company that I worked for was hired to do the food. Our team was part of the tens of thousands of dollars spent on bringing the theme “A Spencer State of Mind” to life. Two busses full of the birthday girl’s closest friends and relatives walked into one of NYC’s event spaces to find a Disney Channel version of Manhattan, complete with a hot new club (the dance floor), a chic bar (a soda fountain manned by real, live jerks), and Restaurant Row (elaborately constructed buffets). My hot dog cart was, just like real-life, parked at the gate to faux Central Park, which was really just an excuse for Spencer’s parents to spend even more money on exquisitely stupid flower arrangements and imported tree branches.
So there I was, a bright, attractive, and talented twenty-two year old gay kid wearing rainbows and hawking sausages. Offensive. The fifty-third time a child wearing nicer shoes than me called me “hot dog man” was the moment I decided that I might hate my life.
I’d graduated in the top ten percent of my college class. Sure, I went to a tiny liberal arts school with a concentration in theatre, but still. I was smart. I even had sixty thousand dollars in debt to prove it! Yes, I took out a bazillion student loans to pay for my education, but so did the rest of the country. At least I learned something and didn’t just buy a giant house for my nonexistent family of three. Things in 2008 generally sucked. Everyone was poor and frustrated and ready for the new President to take office and clean things up. That melancholia and hyper-awareness of the social climate made an extravagant party for a child even more insulting. I became enraged in thinking Spencer would probably never have to worry about student loans and credit cards and scraping tooth and nail to make rent for a shitty apartment in Spanish Harlem. And in several years, after her gigantic graduation celebration, she wouldn’t have to worry about her major at university because she wouldn’t be the person paying for it. If nothing panned out, she could just learn something else or have daddy buy her another degree or an internship or a not-for-profit focused on saving sea turtles or something else rich people think is important. She’d never have to wear a costume at work and then go home smelling like hors d’oeuvres and children. That little bitch would float through life unaware of how ridiculous it was for a thirteen-year-old to receive a city for her birthday when most of us couldn’t even afford a cupcake. I hated her.
“Whoa, Jeremy. I haven’t seen a death stare like that outside of a scary movie.” I snapped out of my secret rant and saw Robbie, one of my co-workers. He was blessed with the more humane position of bussing glasses in a standard uniform. His brown hair and eyes melded into the blackness of his clothes, enhancing his pale winter skin. He looked like a
pencil sketch by a fashion illustrator. “You probably shouldn’t look at the birthday girl like you’re putting a hex on her,” he said with a laugh.
“I hate her,” I told him.
“Is that anti-Semitic?”
“I don’t hate her Jewness. I hate her life.”
“Dark much?” he asked, seeming slightly repulsed by my feelings. His outlook was always sunnier than mine.
A mother of one of the kids asked for a hotdog with ketchup. When I handed it to her without any topping, she looked at me like I was defective. I coldly pointed to the self-serve squeeze bottle in front of her tightly pulled face, my eyes letting her know that she was the numbskull. I turned back to him. “Anyway, doesn’t all of this make you angry?”
“I try not to think about it. We’re young. It’s just a job.” His tongue poked out of his mouth and his eyes went crossed, clearly trying to convey how utterly goofy our employment was.
He obviously didn’t understand what I was getting at. I knew it was just a silly job but it was the principal of…ugh. There was no use explaining myself. I wasn’t getting anywhere by focusing on the rotten. I closed my eyes, and with a deep breath, I tried to drag myself out of the gutter. When I opened them, Robbie was smiling. The grin washed away any residual annoyances. “So…going home for Christmas?” I asked him.
The brightness in his eyes diminished and he looked to the ground. “I wish. I’ll be here. With Nick. We’ll do something fun.”
I feigned ignorance. “With who?”
He shot me a look.
I knew perfectly well who Nick was. Nick was the dick he’d been fake-dating for months. They barely liked each other. If the relationship were serious, Robbie wouldn’t flirt with me so hard.
He was flirting with me, right? Again I found myself going to that dark place…
His hands were busy holding discarded glasses so he bumped me with his shoulder. “Well, let’s get together after the holiday,” he said.
Yes. Definitely flirting. I returned the gesture. “Is that code for your desire to be my New Year’s Eve kiss?”
Robbie rolled his eyes and went back to work.
I had to stop falling for unattainable men.
*
I found it hard to look forward to another year. Like everyone else at that bar for New Year’s Eve, I could have affixed an artificial grin to my face and vowed that the next three hundred sixty five days would be mine to conquer. But life after college was detrimentally uneven. It was like being thrown from a moving train and left in the desert called Life. Fueled by free drinks from my bartender friend, my inner monologue reeled forward as my body slowed into a sloppy gay mess. Soon I was mumbling something aloud about being an unsuccessful actor or loan payments or chasing boys with boyfriends.
“Stop it. You’re being tragic,” said my friend, Dan. Because Dan was a bizarre little spitfire himself, when he was able to recognize tragedy in another person, you knew it was bad.
“Sorry. New Year’s is a terribly depressing holiday.”
He grabbed my shirt collar and walked me to a vacant corner. “Listen, you used to be fun but you’ve been a downer for months. Snap out of it. Self-deprecation is my thing.”
A woman came around with a tray of champagne. The countdown would soon begin. We both grabbed a flute. Dan snatched mine and drank half the glass. “Hey! That’s for midnight.”
He smacked his lips in distaste for what was definitely cheap sparkling wine. “That’s your ration for the rest of the night. You’re drunk enough,” he said before walking back to our group of friends near the bar.
“Ten! Nine! Eight! Seven!” The crowd slurred numbers together and began to position themselves near the objects of their affections. Even girls and gays without boyfriends wrapped arms around one another. The point of celebrating that midnight was simply about togetherness. Not everyone needed the love of his or her life by his or her side. My friends were great. Really. I just wanted something else. If I couldn’t have a good job or a nice apartment or fame or fortune, couldn’t I at least have a boyfriend, a companion to draw focus from my more superficial problems? I wanted Robbie there. I wanted to see his goofy smile and shaggy hair and that permanent pimple on his chin.
I imagined him with Nick, a guy I know only through stories. Robbie often complained about him. “Nick’s jealous of everyone I talk to,” or “Nick’s mean to my friends,” or “Nick and I don’t have much in common,” were his typical examinations. When I asked about his reasoning for being in such an unhappy relationship, he’d change the subject. The version of Nick he’d led me to concoct in my head resembled a comic book villain with mean, slanted eyebrows and fiery pupils. In reality he was just a fairly bland, reasonably attractive boy from Pennsylvania. In my mind, I saw them together on a balcony overlooking the city, clanging crystal glasses and kissing under a silver moon.
Then I saw myself alone, staring vacantly into space as everybody around me cheered and blew paper horns. I’d missed the ball drop.
I fled to the restroom and looked at myself in the mirror. There was something different about me. The six months of true adulthood I’d just lived through had been tough. My friends were getting jobs, booking shows, and reveling in grownup things like decorating apartments and dating on a Tuesday because there’s no class to go to on Wednesday. I was stagnant. My life was still, caught in the panic-stricken moments after tossing my black square cap in the air. I doubted my abilities, decisions, and path. Even the slight curl to my hair had deflated to a sad clump of mousey tendrils.
“Come on, Jeremy,” I said to myself. “Cheer up. It’s 2009. New start.” I forced a smile onto my face. I’d heard that if you smile for several seconds, you automatically feel better. My cheek muscles scrunched up against my eyes and accidentally activated the waterworks that I’d been holding inside all night. I bawled into the sink and silently thanked everybody for celebrating outside and leaving me to cry in solitude.
My phone let out a little chime. A text message from Robbie let me know that him and Nick were thinking of relocating to another party. He wanted to meet up with us. In a second message he added, “You two can finally meet!”
No. That would NOT happen. I was already feeling shitty. I didn’t need to have Robbie, the shiny carrot, dangled in front of my face. I didn’t need to make small talk with his boyfriend because his boyfriend was someone who I wished would get vaporized by extraterrestrials. I slammed my phone shut. I wondered where that shot girl was. She could pour tequila down my throat to the point of almost drowning, and then I’d bolt.
By the time I stumbled out of the bar, my complexion was a color somewhere between my gray cowboy boots and my green jacket. I found myself smoking some menthol thing that I’d bummed off a girl with sparkles on her eyes. Despite her clownish appearance, she appeared to be confident in her look. She probably viewed me with equal judgment.
“What if I have to move home to Jersey?” I rambled aloud, my woes partially projected for all of Twenty Sixth Street to hear. “What if I have to be a waiter forever? What if—?” A minty inhalation of that cigarette swallowed the other half of the question.
I realized I was drunkenly weaving across the sidewalk. I tried to confidently strut in a straight line but I ended up stumbling into a brick something.
And then into someone. Two someones.
In the haze set in by alcohol and tobacco, I vaguely remember hearing derogatory, hateful slurs before a fist hit my face.
*
Sounds of late night traffic and the few lingering celebrations of the night roused me back to consciousness. My eyes tried to peel open but my still tender face forced them closed again. “Give me a sec, will ya?” it seemed to say. Memories began to seep back to me: I saw figures approach me from the darkness of a scaffolding-covered building. They appeared like hyenas, laughing at their victim before going in for the kill. Just before an almost fatal blow, the memory disappeared. That must have been the one that knocked me out.
Mortified. Sick. I’d just been hate-crimed…or attempted hate-crimed. I didn’t know the specific definition. Did such a crime have to result in death or did the pain I felt from a beating count? Did I have to report the incident to the police? Would they just look at me as some drunk faggot who daintily stumbled into the wrong place at the wrong time? How was such a simple crime committed in a neighborhood as sophisticated as Chelsea, in a city as progressive as New York? I wasn’t on Main Street, U.S.A., where people value bibles more than sanity. I was in the capital of the human universe, where gays are more common than pigeons.
How could such a thing happen in such a place?
And to me?
How embarrassing…
I began to cry. Salty tears sizzled their way down my face, uncovering wounds I didn’t even know I had. I cried not only from the shame and the insult and the aches, but from thinking about how depressed I’d been earlier that night. I cried because I’d let myself become drowned in misery, a misery that was escapable. It distracted me and brought me to unsafe places where others could bring me pain. Real pain. I’d made it through twelve years of schooling in the suburbs and never let anyone make me suffer. Emotionally, I shut everyone out. Physically, I was nonconfrontational. But there on Twenty-Sixth Street, I was finally greeted with the hate and the prejudice I’d been so conscious of deflecting. Regret and an open bar had blocked my defenses and all that was left to do was cry.
Someone sweetly hushed me. The soft sound forced me out of my head and into the world. My eyes finally made the effort to open. They were met with darkness. I felt beneath me, expecting to touch the starchy linen of a hospital bed because the only place a person should go after a violent attack is to the emergency room. But to my horror, my fingers found smooth cement. The space seemed more like a hospital’s parking garage than its urgent care unit. My overactive imagination took over. Could I be the sacrifice for a secret society? Was it gang initiation week? Possibly I was in my attacker’s secret lab where he’d saw me into pieces? I would have hyperventilated if my ribcage weren’t so tender. Where was I and who was I with?