In Stone: A Grotesque Faerie Tale Read online

  *

  Like the ingénue’s lyric in that musical comedy about pen pals-turned-lovers, I didn’t know his name or what he looked like, so my imagination would be my guide. It told me exactly what he looked like inside. Basically, I couldn’t stop thinking about my rescuer. His appearance, personality, and history changed depending on what I found desirable or intriguing at any given moment. Sometimes he was an off-duty cop, other times a vigilante. My favorite version of him was that of a man scorned, prowling the night for fag bashers to avenge the death of his soul mate. His anger about the crime fueled him to do anything, everything to save the defenseless boys on the streets of New York. His sensitivity made him vulnerable enough to love.

  Of course romantic daydreams aren’t complete without eye candy. Even more enjoyable than constructing his character was the opportunity to create his form. The bass in his voice led me to believe he was a large man. Maybe even fat. But that wasn’t my style so I envisioned him more on the brawny side. Or he could have been really tall and fit, kind of like a pro basketball player. Their hands are also gigantic, which could account for the feeling of bricks being laid on my head when he was cleaning my wounds. Then again, he could have just been clumsy, with motor skills better suited for beating up gangsters than applying butterfly bandages. In my heart of hearts, all of his talk about being a “Guardian” had me hoping that he was a perfect, superheroesque specimen. After all, he did bring me to a safe haven high above the city. Obviously he had to have used a cape to fly there, right?

  I gravitated towards the superhero version of him because it made me feel the safest. The first several days of January are supposed to be a fresh start. Optimism should exude from every pore. That year however, my experience was far less peppy. Dark clouds of despair gloomed over me. The thunders of apprehension kept me uneasy. Each “next step” I took seemed destined to be my last. Each corner I rounded was an outpost for criminals. Every eye that looked upon me judged to the core. Imagining a superhuman in my wake was the only thing getting me through the day.

  My attack had detonated something fearful in my brain. The part that deals with reason and the way we’re meant to perceive the world was damaged. The dial on the evil saturation meter had been turned way up, causing me to see blood reds and putrid greens when most people saw sky blues and sunshine yellows. Screeching bats replaced chirping birds. Flowers became thorns. The descent into insanity was quick and I wasn’t far from the bottom. I forecasted I was only a matter of days from a complete mental crack.

  My first day back at work was for an event celebrating the twelfth day of Christmas. Unfortunately it was only five days after I’d had my face beaten in and I still hadn’t adjusted enough to work the floor.

  Unfortunately, I realized this fact in the middle of the party.

  A small concert of twelve drummers drumming on various trashcans, pots, and trunks was in progress on stage. I was bussing glasses from a nearby bar. As I walked into the kitchen area to dispose of them, the performer’s beats became more intense. Choreography ensued, which heightened the violence of their pounding. Two men clashed their hands together to recreate cymbals. Another rolled cans across the stage to make a snare. One guy even threw another into the wall, a unique way to achieve bass.

  As I watched them, I went into the kind of flashback mode usually reserved for war veterans. Memories of my assault that I thought I’d lost bubbled to the surface.

  The names they’d called me rang in my ears. The unabashed ferocity of their punches nailed me in places that had just begun to heal. Images I didn’t understand, like an abundance of blood and broken bones and guts, assailed me.

  Without considering the tray full of glasses in my hands, I grabbed my stomach to make sure my insides were still on the inside. A crash as loud as the ones coming from stage tore through the room. Thankfully it didn’t interrupt the performance. The audience believed it to be part of the show. However Robbie was standing nearby and saw the whole thing.

  He waved at somebody to clean up my mess and pulled me to the side. “What just happened?” he gently asked.

  I still wasn’t completely aware of myself. I did a cartoon shake of my head to try and put the pieces of my brain back in place.

  “It was as if you blacked out…but while standing up,” he continued. “I’ve never seen anything like it.”

  I wanted to concoct an excuse but I was still too shaken. All I could do was say, “I don’t know,” in the most desperate tone imaginable. The concern in his eyes made me weak. I thought I was crying but my body couldn’t even manage that. All it could do was shudder and fall into his arms.

  “Hey, hey,” he whispered. “I think you should go home.”

  Robbie talked to our catering captain and convinced him to cut me. It probably wasn’t a hard decision. The thick layer of foundation to hide my bruises was already a scar on the perfect cosmology of the party, so any recommendation that I’d do better at home had my boss leaping for the sign out sheet.

  “I’m putting you in a cab,” Robbie said. “You have cash?”

  “Yeah. Of course.” That was a lie. I didn’t have funds for a cab all the way to Harlem, but I didn’t want him forking over money for me, which I knew he would have. My crush was already witnessing me at one of my lowest points. I couldn’t have him emptying his pockets as part of it.

  On the street he hailed one and opened the door. “Get some rest, mister. Call me tomorrow to let me know you’re well, okay?”

  I agreed. He kissed my cheek and helped me inside. The driver asked me where I needed to go.

  “Wait one second,” I told him. I watched Robbie run out of the cold and back inside the concert hall.

  “Hey, man. Where to?”

  “Nowhere,” I called out, as I slipped from the cab and ran toward the subway.

  I entered on Broadway and Eight Street. That particular entrance to the station only has a single turnstile onto to the train platform. During rush hour this set up is the bane of every New Yorker’s existence because it forces us to walk single file, like kindergarteners. God forbid a train arrives and the person in front of you has trouble with their Metrocard. I’m surprised commuters haven’t torn off one another’s heads for that offense. Luckily there wasn’t a line behind me because the scanner was having difficulty recognizing my fare. I kept swiping, entering the turnstile, and getting stopped by its irritating beeping. “SWIPE AGAIN” read the display. So I did. “SWIPE AGAIN” it repeated. I noticed a shadow cast over me. A tall, scruffy man in a tan suede coat waited behind me.

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Go ahead through,” I said as I stepped aside.

  “Thanks,” he said gruffly. He swiped his card and the turnstile approved. Just as he was about to walk in, he grabbed my arm and swung my body firmly against his. He pushed both of us through.

  We popped out the other side, and I didn’t know whether to thank him for his strangely forceful assistance or scream. When his rough grip tightened on my arm, I decided the latter would be the most appropriate reaction.

  “Hel—!”

  “Shut up,” he said through gritted teeth. He forcefully walked me to the left, behind a column to mask us from other riders. Before he whipped me around, I looked over my shoulder. We were alone. He was just being careful. “Get down there,” he commanded.

  “What?”

  “On the track. Go or I’ll throw you.”

  Somehow I gathered some bravery and asserted, “Absolutely not.”

  “Fine,” he said, delivering on his promise with a shove.

  I fell flat on my ass, in the big gap between rails. The splintering of my tailbone made me lurch. I rolled to my side and faced the infamous third rail. It hissed with one thousand volts of electricity. I swallowed my sick and backed away.

  A crash blast from around the corner, as if a taxi had backed into hot dog cart. A millisecond later, the turnstile flew through the air and knocked out the lighting fixture above the platform. The guy in the s
uede jacket ducked against the wall as it fell nearby. In the darkness I made out a figure coming upon him.

  “What th—?”

  The figure picked him up and threw him down onto the track with me, except the man who’d thrown him had better aim. He landed him right on target: the third rail.

  Heat radiated off his body as the supercharged rail cooked him through. Blood gushed from his eye sockets. I turned away.

  “Up here,” said the shadowy figure above me.

  I knew that voice.

  My superhero.

  “Hurry!”

  I struggled to my feet, clenching my teeth against the shooting pain in my tailbone.

  “There’s not time!” he insisted.

  “Give me your hand.” I reached up.

  He backed away.

  “I need help getting up. Give me your hand!” His reluctance confused me. Was I really supposed to climb up out of that hole myself? I was injured. If he were in such a hurry, a helpful hand certainly would have expedited the process. Once more I yelled, “Give me your hand!”

  He reached out to me. Without really looking, I grabbed hold.

  You know that feeling when you plop down in a subway seat without really looking, and the shock of finding it’s wet? That horrifying moment of realization, then panic, then revulsion, and finally resignation as you take an investigative look as your rear end? That’s what happened to me when I took his hand. Our skin touched, but his wasn’t soft or even warm.

  My heart dropped to my ankles.

  It was shaped like a hand, but it definitely wasn’t any hand that I was used to. Did he have a prosthetic? Was he using a prop? Eighteen possible explanations shuffled through my mind and I was disturbed by at least ten of them. I worked up the nerve to pull myself closer and get a look at our entwined fingers. Most people would have considered me pale, but my skin was bright pink compared to the pallor of his complexion. His hands were so rough they didn’t seem to be made of human skin at all. In fact, they felt exactly like…stone.

  I jerked away, scraping myself on his “fingers.” It felt like road rash.

  A cacophony of footsteps and urgency arose from the other end of the platform. “Is everyone alright down there?”

  I glanced over. MTA employees and several delayed riders ran toward us.

  “Come,” my hero demanded, his deformed hand still extended in my direction.

  I looked from him to the approaching crowd, and back. “What are you?”

  “It does not matter.”

  “Yes, it does!”

  “Do you want my help or not?”

  “But you’re a…a—”

  “Grotesque,” he said with an equal mixture of sadness and anger.

  The swinging beam of a flashlight illuminated my face. I could tell its next movement would be toward the object of my attention who felt like…a monster.

  Part of me wanted to wait for the light to reveal his self-declared grotesque figure, but another part of me knew he’d done everything to conceal his deformities. How ungrateful of me to destroy all his efforts due to my own selfish fear? Thanks to his assistance twice in one week, I was alive. Injured, but strong. Certainly strong enough, brave enough, to take his stony hand.

  So I did.

  *

  He swung me out of the track and onto his back. In a flash, he dashed down the platform and onto the narrow walkway workmen use to enter the subway tunnels. The little iron staircase at its end is always tempting, but anyone with a brain realizes the world beyond is treacherous. Charged wires. Moving tracks that can sever a human in half. If we were spotted entering that zone, extraordinary trespassing fines awaited us. So needless to say, I screamed the entire way through.

  Once we were a decent way into the network of tunnels, he veered onto a detour and clanged up a ladder. I dangled off his neck as he ascended. Miraculously he seemed unaffected by a grip that would have crushed most people’s windpipes. “I’m sorry. Am I hurting you?”

  “No,” he replied without a hint of strain. We reached the top of the ladder and entered what appeared to be a dark passageway under the sidewalk. He put me down. “Surely you can walk this yourself.”

  The only light came through metal grates overhead, and he avoided the glow. “Thank you,” I said, after a moment of stunned muteness.

  Without a word, he headed in the other direction.

  “Wait! Please don’t go. I don’t know the way out.”

  “Just follow this path. The grate at the end can be pushed up. You will be in Washington Square Park.”

  “Wait! Why is this happening? Twice now.” My voice cracked. “Is someone trying to kill me?”

  “Bad luck,” he grunted and took another step toward the ladder.

  “You can’t do this,” I yelled. “You can’t just show up out of nowhere and be all…made of stone and expect me to be fine. This is anything but fine.”

  He stood quiet for several seconds before adjusting his weight. His feet pounded the floor like dropped cinder blocks, and I flinched.

  “Are you—?” I stopped, realizing that there wasn’t a complete thought behind my words. The pieces were still too jumbled.

  “I told you. I am a Guardian.”

  “Five minutes ago…you said ‘grotesque.’ What does that mean?”

  “It matters not.”

  “No, it matters yes.” That didn’t make any sense but I was flustered. “Come into the light.”

  “I cannot.”

  “Come into the light!” My voice hurled its echo down the hall, escaping the tunnel clear enough for the train passengers to hear.

  We stood, neither of us moving, until the last of the echo stilled.

  Very slowly, he walked forward, stopping just outside my field of vision. Wan light from the street poured through a grate above and speckled the floor with little white squares.

  I held my breath.

  He stepped onto them…and revealed himself. Through the plaid shadows cast on his body, I just barely made him out. My superhero wasn’t a man at all, but some humanoid monster thing, hunched over and ancient.

  I muffled a gasp in my hands, then said, “You’re a…a gargoyle?”

  He sighed. “We are called grotesques. Gargoyles are drain pipes.”

  I would have laughed had it been the least bit funny. Or sane. This had to be my imagination, a psychedelic chemical reaction to getting bashed. Mind you, it was common for my family to hallucinate in order to get through difficult times. My elderly Nana used to see her dead little brother, Tommy, strolling around the house or sitting beside somebody at the dinner table. Once she swore the little African girl she had donated money to was hiding in the china cabinet. So, in this moment, when my hero stepped into the light, I realized I’d clearly inherited Nana’s crazy gene.

  I backed away and pressed my palms into my eyes. “This isn’t real. You’re not real.”

  “That belief would do you well. For years I have tried to convince myself of the same thing. But here I am. Real.” He hobbled backwards and hopped onto the ladder. “Keep telling yourself I am not, though. Hopefully one day you will convince yourself.”

  “I don’t want to convince myself,” I yelled after him, panicked that he’d disappear. Panicked that I’d never see him again, grotesque or not.

  He paused.

  “This…this might sound weird, but knowing that you exist has been the only thing getting me through the day.”

  His hands gripped the metal rungs. “I doubt that someone like me could be that important to someone like you.”

  “We don’t even know each other. Don’t make broad generalizations like that.” The remark barreled aggressively out of me, as if my speech had been holding onto my tongue for dear life before entering the room with a monster. When it landed, I turned red.

  I looked at him looking at me. Even though his eyes lacked depth, color, and gloss, I could see into them. True kindness shone in those eyes. They searched my face until he seem
ed to realize he’d been staring. Then his glances bounced from the tunnel below him, to his shoulder, up to the grates, and then back in my direction. His stone body clearly wanted to leave but those eyes forced it to stay. What was behind them? Before I could contemplate them further, the ladder he hung from began to groan. Bolts tore from the wall as the steel buckled under his weight.

  Just as he was about to fall out of sight, he hurled himself up and back into the corridor with me. His rusty escape route landed in a twisted pile fifteen feet below.

  “Most objects cannot support me,” he huffed. “I try not to stay in one place for very long. You distracted me.” He looked at me with blame, as if it was my fault he weighed hundreds of pounds more than a refrigerator.

  Seconds ago he was a monster, but his awkward reaction had transformed him into a big baby before my eyes. I couldn’t help but chuckle at his embarrassment.

  He cowered at the sound of my voice. When he realized I was laughing instead of screaming, his jaw dropped with astonishment. “You are not frightened of me?” he asked.

  “A little. Maybe. At first. Now I’m just…intrigued. You know they fly on the TV show.”

  “Who? What show?”

  “Gargoyles.”

  He scowled.

  “Sorry. Grotesques. On The Disney Afternoon they perch on the top of buildings during the day and fly around at night.”

  “I do not have wings.”

  “I see that.”

  “If I did, I would be too heavy to go anywhere. I am stone.”

  “We’ve established that.”

  He pushed out a frustrated breath. “You talk a lot.”

  It was my turn to feel self-conscious.

  A funny little chortle escaped him.

  “So now you’re laughing at me?” I tried to sound indignant.

  “I apologize,” he said through an expression that was trying to be a grin. “Yes. Like the drain pipes, I am made immobile by the sun’s light. I often spend my days above the city. When the moon rises, I am free to roam.”

  “And be a Guardian, did you say?”

  “Yes. We are appointed to aid you.”