In Stone: A Grotesque Faerie Tale Read online

  I heard it again. “Shhh…” It came from a darker shadow than the one I lay in. Astonishingly, the simple sound of air through lips had emotion. It was too warm for a sadist.

  Only my rescuer could produce a sound so loving, so full of concern. I felt the obligatory pangs of gratitude but still-unknown injuries kept me from running into the darkness and throwing my arms around him. “Who are you?” I asked though split lips.

  “It does not matter,” he said. His reply was almost too soft to register.

  “It does matter. You saved my life. Who are you?” He was silent. “Who are you?” I grunted. My voice echoed through the room. It was very empty and very large.

  “I am a Guardian.” His full voice grumbled with the deep resonance of timpani. It reverberated against my bones and made my hair stand on end.

  “Come out.”

  He ignored me. “I am glad you are safe. I will leave you now.”

  I heard him begin to shuffle away so I mustered some strength and forced a hand into my skinny jeans to retrieve my phone. “Wait!” I yelled as I tried to activate the screen. When its light was about to fill the space, his hand flew by and batted the device across the room. I was left just as blind as before.

  “What’d you do that for?” I yelled.

  “Guardians are not meant to be seen.”

  “Huh?”

  “Guardians are—”

  “I heard you.” He had used the title a few moments ago, but I’d failed to recognize it. “What the hell is a Guardian?”

  “Of the Immortal race.”

  Any easiness that I’d felt suddenly diminished. Panic spread. Immortal race? Was I in the presence of a crazy person? He was probably the same homeless man that sits on the subway platform drawing symbols sent to him from another planet. Next he’d get out his Magic Markers and start doodling over my major organs in preparation for a divinely inspired autopsy. I needed to get out of there. “Please! Someone! Help!” I pleaded to the ceiling as if it would scoop me up and take me away.

  “I am not going to hurt you,” he assured me.

  “Sure, sure. You’re just going to suck out my life force so you can stay Immortal, isn’t that right?”

  “I am afraid I do not know what you speak of…”

  “I’ve seen movies!” I screamed. I sounded loonier than him.

  He didn’t know how to respond. Hell, I wouldn’t know how to respond, either. Deep down I felt deserving of some mild overreacting, but I didn’t want to alienate him because he had all the answers. I’d spent the last God knows how long passed out and had little to no idea of my condition. My legs could have been replaced with mermaid fins for all I knew. For the first time since I was a child, I felt completely reliant on somebody else.

  “Am I going to be okay?” I asked.

  “Yes. You are injured but nowhere near death.”

  I tried to let that sink in. “I’m fine,” I kept repeating to myself. “I’m fine.” And then I asked, “Did you save me?” That sounded funny coming out. It’s a question people rarely have to ask.

  “I did.”

  I pictured him stumbling upon Twenty Sixth Street and seeing my pathetic self being tossed around like a Hacky Sack. What had sprung him into action? What sad whimper had alerted him that I was truly in danger? “Why did you help me?”

  I still couldn’t see him but I could feel the look on his face communicating the ridiculousness of my question. “They were hurting you,” he said. The silent coda to his response would have been, “So of course I helped you, you idiot.”

  “What were they doing to me when you got there?” I needed to know. I wanted him to recall every second of the attack, to draw all of the pages in the flipbook. Each word and strike were precious treasures I’d dropped, treasures that would help pay my way through the processing of the assault. The details of one’s fall are crucial in coming to terms with one’s new place on the ground. If I knew exactly what had happened I could replay the events over and over again in my head. I’d search for the moment I’d screwed up, the air between punches in which I could have reacted. If I could understand exactly why and how I ended up in that state, I could move past it. That’s what I thought, at least. My eyes fixed to where I imagined his would be.

  I never saw them but his voice communicated the desperation I’d probably find in them. It was a different sadness than mine, one that couldn’t bear to recount what had been witnessed. “I do not remember,” he said with a slight stutter. As much as I needed to know, he needed to forget.

  “What were they doing?” I knew he knew.

  “That does not matter. All that matters is that you are safe now,” he insisted.

  I threw my aching body in his direction. “It does matter. What did they do to me, Guardian?”

  “Do not move,” he said. “You are hurt. I will help.” His speech was accented with a myriad of languages that begged me to wonder which one was native. He was careful to stay in the darkest shadows of the room, but in my blurry periphery I saw an orange Home Depot bucket sit down beside me. His hand dipped a torn cloth into it. “You had fallen to the ground. They were kicking you. Two men.” His large, heavy fingers dabbed a wound on my face. The touch was too hard but I didn’t dare comment on the bruises he was probably inflicting. That was all of the information he could give me. Who’d have thought that the witness could be just as injured as the victim?

  I waited for another rush of emotion or jolt of pain to tear me from reality but I just stared up, dumbfounded and numb like an invalid plugged into life support. Even after closing my eyes and summoning myself awake, he was still there. I was still there. I wasn’t sleeping. A slight breeze rustled my hair and stirred up dust from the floor, temporarily attracting my thoughts elsewhere.

  “But we’re inside,” I slurred after the dust settled. “Why is it so windy?” Again, my delusions did somersaults. What wacky locale could I be in? Why were the elements free to harass me? As I moved my head, something within me snapped back into place, allowing me to sit up without screaming. He moved backward into another shadow. I ignored his coy game so that I could put an end to my wondering.

  Several stumbles later, I found myself in front of the glassless window of a construction site. The wind stole my breath before I could even manage a gasp. How did I get there? I was so small and helpless against the majestic city that sprawled before me.

  Who knows what could have happened down there. I’d always looked at that skyline with wonder but for the first time, I feared it. Mean spirited people lurked in those streets and inhabited those buildings. People who didn’t even know me felt hate for me. They should have at least let me grant them a reason to throw punches. I could have belittled their education or made fun of their clothes but I hadn’t even seen them. They peered at me from shadows with judgment and motives unnatural to man. Humans don’t hurt one another without cause. We don’t kill each other for fun.

  At least, I used to think that.

  But there were good people. I was in the presence of one. He’d recognized evil, torn me from it, and had given me shelter in—I glanced around to get my bearings—an incomplete luxury high rise? My evening had become some strange version of the knight in shining armor and castle in the clouds story.

  I could feel him lurking behind me. “You should not be alone in this city, especially so late at night,” he said.

  “What, I should have a Guardian, like you?” I asked in a combination of snark and fear. I turned around and he was gone.

  *

  Waking up the next day in my bed was confusing to say the least. Through barely open eyelids I was forced to question what had happened. Admitting the truth would hurt more than any wounds inflicted by homophobes. In order to stay in my place of denial, I had to lie perfectly still under my sheets. I thought if I stayed that way, I’d never feel my bruised ribs and be reminded of the horrors that greeted me on 2009’s doorstep. I tried to hold that sleeping position like I’d been cryogeni
cally frozen that way. Soon, playing mannequin became daunting and the morning after pains of nearly every part of my body, every part of my being, forced themselves out of the covers and into real life.

  Okay, so I knew I was sore. But a number of things could have caused it. I could have run laps or worked out really hard or climbed a long flight of stairs. Or I could have drunkenly stumbled into something, perhaps a medieval torture device someone had left lying around. Aches and pains did not a hate crime make, right? After several minutes of this mental trickery, I got out of bed and made it to the bathroom.

  I kept a low head as I entered, averting my gaze from the mirror that typically greeted me. My reflection was destined to be terrible enough to confirm my deepest fears, so I temporarily became a vampire and avoided the damn thing.

  The front door buzzer blared through the apartment and shattered my brain, which felt as if it was suddenly made of glass. Finally, in addition to my battle scars, I was feeling that inevitable hangover. One more thing to add to my list of hurts. “Wait a minute,” I yelled as if it were a real person. When I arrived at the intercom, Dan’s high-pitched voice greeted me.

  “Good morning, sunshine!” he sang. “The Gluttonfest Express is here to pick you up!” Then he hooted an irritating train sound that made me want to reach through the intercom and slap him across the face.

  Gluttonfest was our group’s official celebration of New Year’s Day. We spent all of January 1st lying around, eating junk food, and watching movies. Nothing else. Dan and I had always been the festival’s biggest proponents, so he was arriving early to discuss which trashy films we’d bring over to our friend, Asher’s, apartment. “Well are you going to let me in?” he added.

  “Um…Dan, I’m not feeling well. I think I’m going to skip this year.”

  Silence from his end.

  “Dan?”

  “You. Will. Not.” He was deadly serious.

  “I’m just not in good shape.”

  “Jeremy, we’re all hung over. The entire world is. Get over it and let me in!”

  A little coal started to burn within my heart—the beginnings of a panic attack. He couldn’t come in and see me like this. Even I couldn’t bring myself to evaluate my condition. For a second I contemplated climbing out the window and running down the street, or hiding under my bed until he left, or making vomit sounds into the speaker to convey how much I really couldn’t stand to have anyone near me. A loud knock on the front door beside me made me jump, and hurt, and wince.

  “Your neighbor let me in. Open the door.”

  Goddamnit. Why were the inhabitants of the building so trusting? He could have been a rapist. We were in Spanish Harlem, after all! You can’t just let anyone into your building in a neighborhood like this. He continued pounding and my anxiety rose to a level that threatened to make me either pass out or have diarrhea all over the living room. “Dan, I’m not kidding. You can’t come in!”

  “I will march myself down to Asher’s place and get your spare key, which I know he has, come back here and drag your gay ass to his couch and force you to watch movie musicals if it’s the last thing I do! I will, Jeremy King, I will.”

  I opened the door.

  He screamed at the sight of me.

  I screamed at his startling scream.

  “What happened to—”

  “I fell. After I left the bar, I fell into scaffolding on Twenty Sixth Street. I’m terribly embarrassed.” Technically, not a lie. I did end up there.

  “Did the scaffolding then proceed to roll you down a mountainside? You’re a mess.”

  “I know. Come in.” I stepped away from him and began collecting dirty dishes from the kitchen counter, as if I cared about tidying up. The more I could hide my face, the better. “So what movies do you have in mind?”

  “You’re really going to graze over what happened to you last night?”

  “Yep.”

  “Okay,” he agreed. “I found this little known Sarah Jessica Parker movie about a ghost. That could be fun and weird.” I was too preoccupied with old food to notice he’d snuck up behind me to examine yet another bruise on the back of my neck. His hand landed on my shoulder.

  That was the first time in my tender state that I’d been touched and it was startling at best. My skin seemed to twist under my shirt and send my body into an intense knee-jerk reaction that led me to whirl around and hit him straight upside the head with sandwich dish. It shattered on his square noggin.

  “What the hell?” His hand flew up to touch his temple.

  “Ohmygod, I’m sorry…”

  “Why did you do that?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know why you broke a dish over my head?” He pulled his fingertips away, checked for blood, and finding none, cupped his palm around his skull.

  “You scared me.”

  “I was trying to comfort you. You’re crying into the kitchen sink.”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Yes, you are. Tears are pouring from your eyes, you psycho!”

  I touched my face. He was right. I was weepy and didn’t even realize. My mental status was obviously more delicate than I imagined. “Dan, I’m so sorry. I don’t know what got into me.”

  He peered at me with caution. “Did you lose brain cells in that fall?”

  Aside from the lump on his forehead, he wasn’t too badly injured from the flying ceramics. He then mentioned the unwritten rule, that after trying to kill your best friend with dinnerware, one must go along with anything he asks. I had no choice but to accompany him to Gluttonfest. All I had to do was shower and then I’d be ready.

  Again, I gingerly entered the bathroom and successfully climbed into the tub without passing the mirror. The water couldn’t get warm enough. It was as if all of the blood had been drained from my system and been replaced with cold liquid fear. I shivered under the stream, occasionally jumping out of its range when a drop of water rolled down my body and into a still fresh scrape. Bathing was quickly turning into a jerky modern dance routine. Eventually my skin grew accustomed to wetness and I began to relax. I closed my eyes and pretended the water was a rainstorm. Those had always brought me peace.

  The serene world inside my head quickly grew ominous and I sensed a presence in the room. I’d never realized just how scary a shower could be. The curtain wasn’t clear, but an opaque white that formed a barrier between the rest of the room and myself. It might as well have been drywall. I was on one side of the divide, in the most vulnerable possible state. On the other was the unknown. Well, not the complete unknown, but it certainly wasn’t impossible for somebody to have planted themselves in the room while I was distracted by lathering up my loofah. I wouldn’t be able to hear the door open over the whoosh of water. Riffraff could have waltzed in from off the street, slaughtered Dan, and been waiting for me behind the towel rack without me ever realizing. Totally feasible.

  And then I looked at the small window next to me. On its ledge we kept our bath supplies. In warmer months we’d crack it open to let the steam escape. I stared at the foggy glass and began to think about how scary it’d be to suddenly see a face peering in at me. I pictured a little demon child pressing its pointy nose and claws against it, breathing hot breath and drawing a “666” with the end of its tongue. What would I do if I saw that? Would I scream? Would I make the sign of the cross and then jump out? No. No, I wouldn’t because there could be a murderer or another demon child waiting for me on the bathmat.

  Why was I thinking that?

  Even more distressing, why was the preposterous idea actually upsetting me?

  I looked away from the window and closed my eyes. “Rainstorms, rainstorms,” I chanted. “Peaceful jungle rainstorms. Rainstorms on a tin roof. And me, in bed. With Orlando Bloom.” But my mind couldn’t hold those images. It wanted something more disturbing. My dashing movie star turned into a scary man who punched and kicked and laughed as I bled on the cold, wet ground.

  Ho
ly crap.

  I had to break out of this steaming den of death. I took my chances with the imaginary crazy person on the other side of the shower curtain and ripped it open. Unfortunately I failed to exercise the same care with which I’d entered the room, and the mirror landed right in my line of vision.

  I gasped.

  What I saw was more terrifying than anything my mind had recently concocted. My left eye was the color of raw denim, the surrounding skin a pee-stained yellow. The rest of me was the color of my grandfather while in hospice. My lips were swollen and a gash accentuated what seemed suddenly to be very prominent cheekbones. The scariest injury, though, was the handprint of my aggressor stamped across my neck. It waved at me, reminding me of what he’d done. I collapsed to the floor and cried so hard I thought my tears would swallow me up like Alice’s had, but I didn’t want them to wash me away to another world, I wanted them to drown me and put an end to what was destined to be a life of traumatic visions and memories. When that obviously proved impossible, I pressed my head into the tile floor, trying to concentrate my pain to one place. Maybe if it gathered there it’d pop like a pimple and I’d be relieved.

  There against the grout, an unexpected sensation shivered through me. The cool, hard floor reminded me of heavy hands cleaning my wounds. My sobs vibrated in the hollows of my body like someone speaking from within a deep cave. The sound soothed me. For the first time since it’d happened, I recalled that someone had helped me.

  I’d been saved.

  I stopped crying, pulled myself up on the sink’s edge, and looked in the mirror.

  Momentarily, I felt safe.