Having lived in high places for so long, Garth had become moderately acrobatic. The forest was, in theory, a prefect place to use that skill. He could swing like a jungle animal from branch to branch, just as he’d done on the palace’s cornices.
Less like a lemur, more like a gorilla, Garth underestimated his weight on the fragile trees. The first one proved to be extremely dissimilar to stone pillars, sending him to the darkened forest floor with a great thud.
He lay in a heap of leaves and listened for another scream, another clue as to where to go next. He heard the snap of twigs and desperate panting behind him. A similar sound ricocheted passed his right ear. How many people were nearby? Before he could investigate, something barreled into him. His cumbrous body was lifted and tossed to the side as if it were nothing more than a branch blocking a trail.
Whatever-it-was had little interest in Garth.
Garth recovered and cannonballed through the trees to escape, feeling a pang of sadness for all that he was unwillingly decimating on his way. After what seemed like forever, the Ramble spat him out into the airy clearing beside the pond. Actually within it instead of above it, Garth understood why the Prince enjoyed it. It was a peaceful place, the kind of spot where he could easily lose an hour or two, were he not on the prowl for the source of the screams, dangerous or not.
Garth brushed himself off and marveled over the perfectly overgrown vines and the ornately laid slate floor. The purples, grays, and blues of the flat stones were stained an uncharacteristic red. Upon closer inspection of the crimson wash, Garth realized it was actually a river of dried blood. He followed its trail to the pink marble throne, which was somehow missing its Queen.
Half a gasp escaped him when the heard the humans approach. The prospect of being seen immediately drained the valor from his system. The King’s twin nephews ran onto the patio, gasping for breath. Before either party could be disclosed by the moon’s fresh light, Garth dove behind the throne to hide. He listened.
“I think we’re safe,” said one.
Garth heard the other’s teeth chatter before he spoke. “I don’t know, brother. What…what is that?”
“What?”
“Your mouth. It’s just…gushing blood.”
One of them coughed, followed by the sound of something wet splatter on the ground. “Oh, God. Oh, God!”
“Help!”
“Help us!”
Another seemingly bloody cough.
Garth couldn’t hear anymore. He had to step in, even if it meant exposing himself and his trespass into forbidden territory. He hurled his body over the back of the throne and into their view.
The twins screamed.
“Another!”
“The stories are true!”
“No, no,” said Garth. “I’m not going to hur—”
Before he could explain, another stone-being drove into the twins, tackling them to the ground. It was the marble Queen.
Garth leapt for her, but he wasn’t quite fast enough. She pinned one of the men to the floor and smashed his head like a vase full of wine.
The other twin hollered in terror as he watched his brother’s features drown in burgundy.
“You killed him!” Garth yelled. He wrestled her away. The living twin tried to hobble away, motivating her to emerge more forcefully from under Garth’s body.
She grabbed the man by the collar before he could escape. “Because they killed him,” said the Queen, bitterly. She tightened her hold on the shirt, forcing a choke from her captive’s throat.
Again, Garth tried to intercept, but she kicked him. He launched backwards into the throne. “Who did they kill?” he gasped.
Her eyes widened and lips quivered before releasing a growl. “You don’t know?” she asked.
“No. I heard screaming, I came to help, I saw blood, I—”
“The Prince!” she roared. “They murdered the Prince! Last night!” Her voice lapsed into an impassioned rasp. “I was there for the whole thing. I was his favorite. He came to me for comfort after they had their way with him.” Her speech took effort, as if the slightest inflection would send her into tears, even though as a statue like him, she was incapable of shedding any.
“I…I didn’t know.”
She looked at him in shock. “How? How do you, a Guardian, not know?”
“I wasn’t—”
“I’ve seen you, I’ve seen you watching us from your tower.” Her eyes narrowed on him. “Are you in on the plot to change succession?” She surged forward, restraining him once again on her former chair. Her face met his with only a few inches between them.
“No.” He trembled. “I’m here to help. I was in the square last night with—”
She wouldn’t hear any more. She let out a great, guttural roar. The crisp night air allowed it to blast clearly through the garden like an alchemy explosion. Then she turned her attention to the surviving twin. “Where is his body?” She shook him. “Where is…my Prince’s body? Why are there no funerary flags? Were there no rites?” She furiously wept into his face.
The man’s eyeballs rolled around in his head before finding some semblance of focus on her. “He doesn’t deserve any,” he said. And then he spat blood at her.
Her crying ceased and her despair turned to a violent rage. She raised her arm and threw him into a nearby tree trunk. His fall was accompanied by several cracks and he was left groaning on the ground.
“Please,” said Garth. “You must stop.”
The wild Queen was deaf to his pleading. She picked up the dead twin and slung him over her shoulder dragging the other one by the leg across the stone floor, back toward the Ramble.
“No…you can’t!” pleaded Garth. He was stuck. He didn’t know what to do. He still sat jumbled on the throne because his feet couldn’t agree with his mind.
Before disappearing into shadow, she halted and found a thought. “I don’t believe the stories, you know.”
Was she really going to engage in conversation at a time like this? “What stories?”
She looked back at him. “They say the grotesques on the palace are demons. I know that’s untrue. The real demons are in my hands. And I will destroy them.”
Garth watched her vanish into the thicket. As he did, his body relaxed. If he moved quickly, he could have made it to her in time to save the remaining twin. But he didn’t want to. The reason wasn’t completely clear, but he sensed she was right. She had been modeled after Cleopatra, a legendary leader whose influence toppled even the mightiest of men. The stone version of the queen seemed to have the same abilities. He sat in her seat of power and hoped to absorb her aptitude. If only he could be so stalwart, so strong.
The cries coming from the Ramble weren’t of terror like the ones that lured Garth into the garden moments before; they were the savage, guttural screams of the dying. War had taught him the difference, and that time, he didn’t feel sorrow.
Those men deserve it.
Dawn came to find a garden of death. The blood of three men stained its grounds and the royal robes of the Queen, who sat happily on her throne. As Garth slept on his tower, two bodies were discovered at the bottom of a stairwell. The King ordered that funerary flags be flown. The kingdom was in mourning for its favorite twins.
5. Climate Change
I’ve managed to convince myself that the slightest variation on traditional weather is a result of Global Warming. Al Gore has told us time and again that Earth is going through hell, so my tolerance for cold is decreasing. Every January, I find myself asking the sky why it’s snowing. “This doesn’t feel like atmospheric depletion to me!” I say with a shaking fist. I yearn for an eighty-degree day in March. I want to praise fossil fuels for their warming effects and buy aerosol hair spray to continue their work. I prematurely reach for iced coffees and short shorts, booze-fueled nights and regrettable mornings. Ten hours later the warm front leaves and I’m left shivering in an unseasonably light coat. Winter is like the unbearable trailer bef
ore the movie I paid to see. If I had money, I’d escape those treacherous four minutes and run to the concession stand, but I just have to deal. I tried to explain the erratic weather to Garth because without humanity’s gluttonous ways, I wouldn’t be able to repeatedly stand on rooftops in the middle of winter.
Garth has told me my tendency to make light of tragic and/or scary things, like the destruction of our planet, helps me tear focus away from the true horror of most situations. He calls it a “mask for complacency.” Possibly, but the volume of our problems is almost too great to bother fixing. The general shittiness of the human species cancels out the compassion. There are too many of us and we’re all too selfish. Maybe we need a celestial Dr. Kevorkian to put us out of our misery.
I wondered if Urban Outfitters had a “misanthrope” T-shirt.
I’d look great in it.
“You don’t recognize the great opportunities you have,” Garth said. “This world belongs to you. It is yours to enjoy but it also yours to protect.”
I rolled my eyes at what I’d heard so many times in yoga classes and documentaries. And given the conversation, our view was far from ideal. We stood on an abandoned factory off Eleventh Avenue overlooking the West Side Rail Yard. It was an almost anti-environmental site, a large ditch littered with skeletons of trains and trash. The gaping hole in the earth looked more like man’s first attempt to penetrate hell than a functional place to park out of service trains. “Don’t preach to me,” I said. “Tell the people ruining this island with things like that.”
“I’m not trying to preach to you, Jeremy. What I am saying is not only common sense; it is the Way of Things. This idea is written into the fabric of time. It is the meaning of your life.”
If it was so important why hadn’t an official announcement from Jesus-Easter Bunny-Mohammed-Allah been broadcast on the giant TV screens in Times Square? Call me crazy, but if there’s a meaning to life it should be public.
Then Garth rolled his eyes. “You have a house, you take care of it. Maybe humans are as simple as you claim they are if they can’t figure that out.”
“Please.” I snorted.
“What’s being done to the world is the equivalent of you pouring gasoline all over your apartment. You might not light a flame, but the potential for destruction is there. And it smells terrible in the meantime.”
I walked away from the edge, found a chimney to rest against, and kicked back for a lecture. “Well, enlighten me about the rules of the universe, Garth, since I, and a few billion others seem to be in the dark.”
“This is the only home you have. There are many, many worlds out there but this is the only one for you. Your relationship with the air, the water, the sunshine and moonlight are specific and unique to this planet and to this planet alone. You mortals are this world’s finest achievement.”
“True in my case,” I quipped.
He ignored me, true to form. “More than any creature, you humans hold the most promising capabilities for advancement, the greatest capacities for emotions, and the highest complexities of thought. These traits, these billions of years of perfecting and evolving from the tiniest speck of stardust have made you the guardians of this earthly plane.”
“It’s a lot of pressure, Garth.” I uncomfortably drummed my fingers against the metal roof beneath me.
“It’s truth. The human race’s sole purpose is that of a caretaker.” Garth paused, watching me to make sure that I was receiving his valuable information.
I rolled my hand like, “Go on.”
“Then there are the Immortals, like myself,” he said. “We are here to protect the mortals. We are forces of nature, manifested in various forms, or in my case, we are the products of those who know how to manipulate it.”
“Now that would be some skill.”
“Our order is beyond ancient, began by rogues from other worlds who have been enlightened by discoveries and destructions.” Garth came closer as if to guard his words from eavesdroppers, despite our hundred-foot advantage. “There is a third link in this chain, a very mysterious side of existence, the lack thereof: Death.”
“I thought we were all reincarnated into goats and bunnies, or whatever.” Again with masking my complacency. Truthfully, I wanted to know if I was going to come back with a fluffy white tail and bad karma.
“The souls of deceased mortals are indebted to my kind for protecting them in life. They observe from afar and assist when they need to. But being Immortals, we rarely need help. So the souls enjoy a relatively easy afterlife, hence your ideas of heaven. They aren’t far off.”
“That seems simple enough,” I said, not wanting to admit that I was impressed. Overwhelmed but impressed. “But why don’t we know this?”
“Some do, but as they say, ‘knowledge is power.’ It’s been twisted and corrupted over the centuries. Most people are left with variations on a theme.” He shrugged one massive shoulder. “This has made the Way of Things unbalanced. The mortals have become carried away with progress.”
“Isn’t progress a good thing? Are we supposed to stay dumb?”
“I did not say that. Progress is wonderful. Necessary. But progress is not without consequence. Your kind’s thoughtlessness is why we Immortals don’t interact as often as we used to. Some of us have lost the adoration that we once held for your kind.” I couldn’t help but feel insulted. It wasn’t my fault. “Do not think of this as a strictly modern problem, though. Back in my human days, the balance was breaking. This deterioration has taken thousands of years. Now the Way of Things and the Immortals are all but forgotten.”
“We’ve taken your jobs away,” I said.
“In some cases.”
I stood and ran to the center of the roof, raising my hands to the sky like a Baptist. “Maybe you should become a prophet. Go tell everyone about this,” I said, half-joking. “Or maybe I should. After all, I can stay up past 6 a.m. You’ll be the superpower that sends visions and I’ll be the mouthpiece. We could make a great living, you know.”
He shook his head and chuckled. “No. Prophets and Gods are too often just distractions from the truth. Tell whom you please. If you end up dying from a heat wave or a nuclear bomb, you will at least die knowing the truth.”
For someone who was part of a dying race, he sure had a good sense of humor about it all.
*
That evening I was revisited by the nightmares I thought I’d buried with Dedo.
I was walking through Union Square on my favorite day of the year—the day spring finally shows its face. Smiling people debuted light jackets, bounces in their steps, and the trees revealed neon buds from their seemingly dead branches. The leaves created a pointillist painting above me. Thousands of chartreuse dots caused my eyes to cross, blending the world into a beautiful blur. I closed them and opened my other senses to the weather. Notes of wet dirt and pollen filled my sinuses. I couldn’t get enough of the childlike memories they evoked, so I stole another inhalation.
The second whiff sizzled capillaries and invaded my lungs with the dry fumes of a bonfire. Through teary eyes I looked up to see violent orange flames consume all that was green.
Fire poured onto the people below the canopy. I narrowly escaped the blaze before it began chasing me uptown, its heat threatening to melt my backside along the way. I didn’t dare turn around for fear my eyes would boil out of their sockets from the inferno at my heels. The rancid tang of burning flesh accompanied me on my panicked sprint up Broadway.
Manhattan transformed into a dream world. Avenues twisted under my feet and skyscrapers stretched hundreds of floors beyond their roofs. Every time I tried to turn down a side street, dense hedges would sprout to block my way. I became lost in the Queen of Heart’s maze. No choice was given between this way or that, because the devastation had followed me in, forcing me deeper and deeper into the labyrinth. When I reached its center, a twisted sign for Twenty Sixth Street greeted me. But this version of that infamous road didn’t end at the
West Side Highway, it dead-ended in a chain link fence like a frame from a comic book. Two futures awaited me: imminent death or an unexpected rescue. I waited for Garth to come for me. I closed my eyes and listened for the thump of his stone feet against the asphalt.
Silence. Even the roaring flames came to a halt. From the shadows of the nearby buildings, I heard footsteps. Two ghastly figures emerged. They were patchwork humans, with broken limbs re-sewn to the places they’d been torn. I tried to show courage by facing my enemies with a confident scowl and a puffed out chest, but meeting their eyes crumbled my nerves. They were my eyes attached to my face and my body. Zombie versions of myself approached with smirks that reveled in the trouble they were about to create.
After weeks of asking for the details of my attack, they were shown to me in a twisted snuff version of The Parent Trap. I became the voyeur of my almost-death. I sat in a torture device with my eyes pinned open, forced to watch. The camera moved from shot A to B to C, crossing the line and ignoring the rules of Filmmaking 101.
Based on my height and weight, I posses about four quarts of blood. That four quarts looked more like four gallons as it cartoonishly spewed from my body. I was beat so quickly, so violently, that I could actually see it race from blue to red as it escaped my arms, legs, face, torso…
*
Garth awoke to pandemonium among the Guardians. The air was thick with theories about what had happened in the garden. The two murders had been so gruesome, they surely must have been the work of a madman.
“They put up a fight, that is for sure,” said one of the grotesques. “I heard they were beaten beyond recognition.”
“The twins. Why would anyone go after them? They are of little use. Third and fourth in line, if I remember correctly,” said another.
“Whoever did it should have started at the top with the King. That would have been the smart thing to do.”
In Stone: A Grotesque Faerie Tale Page 8