Brogan uttered a frustrated grunt and pressed Garth harder. “It is the devil at work,” he roared. If they could have, his eyes would have likely flared red and burnt holes into Garth’s head. A bird’s chirp interrupted his rigor. Brogan’s expression softened. He rose and composed himself. “It’s nearly morning. Forget everything that you have seen. The twins’ passing is tragic and should be acknowledged appropriately. You may spend your evening in mourning tomorrow, if you’d like.”
Garth was so disturbed by his leader’s erratic behavior, not a word escaped him.
“Get up!” bellowed the General. “The sun will rise shortly. To your post.” Garth scrambled to his feet. “And Garth, you will never refer to a block of marble as a Queen. There is only one Queen and she is sleeping in the palace below. May she be blessed.”
Garth made it back to his post just in time for the new day’s light to dissolve the moon. Francis perched nearby, already in his usual spot. He stretched before striking his final, frightening pose. He smiled at Garth then said, “I’m growing tired of this game. Let’s run away soon.” He chuckled, then peered below and bore his fangs.
Garth tried to do the same, and with the same level of humor, but he didn’t have it in him. What was the point of scaring off evil when it had already found its way inside? He hoped the Queen was safe. He had a bad feeling about what would happen if she were found out. There wasn’t anything he could do, though. The sun would soon rise and he’d be forced to sleep. He folded into himself, hugged his legs, and hoped to dream of something pleasant…
I asked Garth what he dreamt about that night.
“Francis. I dreamt of Francis. We didn’t get along when we first met back in the village. It took months but somehow we became the best of friends. Life is funny like that. You can grow to love just about anyone,” he said. His face was sadder than I’d ever seen it. I asked him to continue but he’d had enough reminiscing for one evening.
*
I couldn’t follow up with Robbie because I didn’t want to come across as desperate. Reaching out became off limits. I couldn’t reveal that our kiss meant as much as it did. For him it may have been just a kiss, but to me it was the crowning achievement of a ton of hard work. From the moment I met him, I obsessed over how I could let him know I liked him without explicitly saying anything. How could I look both cute and hot, but not look too done-up? Which compliment toed the line between a friendly admiration and a sex-fueled come-on? What clever quip implied that other men thought I was a catch without the implication of sounding like a whore? Secretly loving someone with a boyfriend was a tough job. Getting that someone to break up with his boyfriend was even tougher.
About a week passed and I hadn’t heard from him. At that point I basically started scratching notches into the wall like a prisoner as I counted the days until he contacted me. I even began to think Nick had brutally murdered Robbie after I passed him in the hallway. Why else would I be left in the dark?
Nine and a half days later (or about two hundred thirty five hours if you’re bonkers), I finally saw him at work. By that point I was borderline irate with how he’d handled the situation. I spent the entire subway ride to my shift practicing the ways in which I could show him how insulted I was. I contemplated giving him the cold shoulder, belittling him in front of our coworkers, or giving a lecture sprinkled with references he wouldn’t understand.
We were working a sit-down dinner at some bank’s corporate office. I got him alone in a hallway outside the handicapped bathroom and then proceeded to word-vomit all over him. “So this is how it’s going to be now?” I said. “It’s like you invited me into your house but you locked the screen door.”
“What?”
“You know I can still see through the screen door. And I can hear through it. I could also easily tear through a screen door and raid you of all your earthly possessions, but I’m not a crazy person. Instead, I’ve been waiting quietly outside for you to greet me…even though it’s rude for you to make me wait like that. When you invite someone over to your house, you should have all of the doors open and you should be waiting for them in the foyer. With food. And a drink.”
He looked at me queerly, like I was an escapee from Bellevue Hospital’s mental ward. I don’t blame him. I was wearing an ill-fitting catering tuxedo and yelling about screen doors.
“What movie is that from?” he asked.
“Huh?”
“It’s from like a romantic comedy or something, right?”
“What?”
“Isn’t that something that one girl says in that movie?”
“That’s the vaguest thing I’ve ever heard.”
He smiled and shrugged his shoulders. He was trying to be cute. I couldn’t let him.
“No. It was an original metaphor, thank you.” I said.
“Well then, it was the most convoluted thing I’ve ever heard.”
“I just want to know what’s going on between us,” I snapped. Anger had raised my volume. I’m sure that I had a crazy Jack Nicholson in The Shining look in my eye too. All of the care I’d taken in not letting him know how much he meant to me had flown out the window and landed fifty-seven floors below on Park Avenue.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’ve just been letting this whole Nick thing settle.”
“Settle? You either want to be with him or you don’t. You either want to be with me or you don’t.”
“I really like you. You know that, Jerm. I’m just concerned that I’m rushing into this.”
I should have known. The dumbest thing a person can do is break up with one partner and then immediately jump into a relationship with another. There’s a grieving process that needs to take place. Ugh. If Robbie started dating me, I’d be his rebound. I had too many feelings invested in him to be that. But I also didn’t want him running around with every other cater waiter in NYC until he was ready.
An outsider would be quick to point out that I was being led on. Robbie was keeping me on a short string that he could easily yank in his direction when he decided he was ready for love. I didn’t deserve that. Unfortunately I was on the inside of the situation, up to my eyeballs in mixed feelings. Nothing was clear. I was fine being on-call for when he changed his tune.
6. No Turning Back
Upon moving to the city, most people reconsider their must-haves in a living space. Suburbanites yearn for corner bedrooms; we just ask for a simple hole in the wall for an air conditioner. They want back yards large enough for a swing set and a swimming pool; we want a fire escape. Oh, the hours I’ve spent precariously perched on a rickety iron structure while looking at the stars. Okay, pretending to look at stars. I swear they exist somewhere beyond the light pollution.
Unfortunately, paranoia forces many windows leading to fire escapes to be dressed in metal gates, like the ones used to keep the steerage folks below when the Titanic split in two and subsequently sank. My window had such a gate. One time, Meg closed the gate while I was out there. When I rattled it to get back in, she shouted, “Stay back…or I’ll shoot you all like dogs!” Now typically I applaud any use of Titanic quotes inserted into pedestrian conversation, but that particular scene prompted me to have the gate removed and accept the risk of having someone from steerage crawl in and steal my computer while I was at work.
I shouldn’t give Spanish Harlem a bad rap. While it wasn’t the safest neighborhood in the world, it wasn’t the most dangerous either. I’m not dumb. I wouldn’t have moved there if I thought I’d have my face scarred by a gang member. The Upper East Side was crawling further north by the minute. Soon I would be arguing with rich Jewish women at a smoothie bar.
Then a certain economic downturn caused the gentrification to change from a rapid fire to a flickering flame. Everyone stopped caring about the neighborhood and crime had a slight upturn. Mystery men began breaking into the buildings on my block. Thankfully, nobody had been hurt. Oddly, nothing had been stolen. The police blamed it on “bored kids.”
That may have been true because who would go through the trouble of breaking into an apartment without raping the place of its Macs and Toshibas? Even with their semi-valuable possessions still intact, the renters of the neighborhood were scared shitless.
My little boy nightmares made a reprisal, followed by anxiety about sleeping. The moment I pulled up the covers, my legs began twitching and my stomach twisted into knots. Falling asleep required me to be either dead-tired or inebriated. So one night, I may or may not have borrowed some sleeping pills from a spinning-out-of-control coworker to help me pass out. He instructed me to take them at the end of my shift so I’d be ready to pass out by the time I got home. Bad idea. I don’t even remember the twenty block walk home, let alone finding my bed. Miraculously, I ended up there.
I think dreams have a surreal quality to prevent us from tweaking out (i.e., wetting the bed, sleepwalking, really murdering your boss). When they get too crazy, we’re usually aware that we’re dreaming and wake up. The same goes for when they get too good. That’s why I never end up making out with Leonardo DiCaprio.
But that night my dream was absolutely real. There was no sense of fantasy, no third-person P.O.V., no animals in human clothes, and no melting clocks. My bedroom was as normal as ever. The light coming in from the window was as bright as the streetlights had always made it. It poured in and splashed all over my face because I was too stoned to close the curtain. I groggily turned over in bed to remedy the situation, but froze. The silhouette of a figure on the fire escape outside watched me sleep. I was so terrified, my body locked up. All I could do was watch it watch me. After peering at me for several minutes, the figure opened the window and stepped in.
I woke up, gasping and sweating.
I reached for my glasses and found the room appropriately dim. The real version of Jeremy had managed to pull the curtain closed before hitting the pillow. All was well. I shook off the dream and curled up with a blanket over my head, the proper post-nightmare position. Still shaken, my blood rushed and my breath shallowed. I waited for sleep to take me away but my body resisted.
The draft coming from my leaky window wasn’t helping, either. I often tucked a pillow into the corner to provide insulation, so I reached over and pulled back the curtain enough to throw one into place. I tossed it without looking, my head still covered. I waited for the soft thud that should have followed but I didn’t hear anything. The pillow had flown right out the window, which was half open.
Fear paralyzed me. I do a lot of stupid things but I would never sleep next to an open window in cool weather. Someone else had opened it. Meg had no reason to come in my room. Who was it? If there was an intruder, my sheets surely weren’t going to provide any real protection. I had to venture out. I uncovered my head and saw my room in a kind of darkness I’d never seen before. The bright lights outside my window had been blown out. As my eyes adjusted, all I could make out were shadows. My bookshelf stood tall in front of me. The dresser drawers were pulled open and messy, just like I’d left them. A pile of laundry stacked high on my desk chair, waiting to be put away.
Then the laundry loomed forward, in a most un-laundry-like way.
Terrors confirmed. Someone was in my room and he was coming at me.
I tried to scream but nothing came out. My eyes closed and I waited to feel pain.
Suddenly, the window blew in as if I’d been living next door to a landmine. Something flew by me like a boulder from a Roman catapult. My cowardly instincts were activated and I once again threw the covers over my head, protecting myself from the rain of glass and broken wall. The energy vacated my room as the intruders rumbled down the hall. When I finally poked my head out of its cocoon, the place looked more like a war zone than the bedroom of a homosexual with good taste.
I gathered some courage and bolted into the living room to investigate, ignoring the pain underneath as debris pierced the soles of my feet. I left a trail of blood from one end of the apartment to the other. My run came to an abrupt stop when I reached the end of the hall. I discovered a pile of undecipherable body parts and pieces of demolished furniture. The puddle of blood underneath it snaked its way to the one under mine, re-staining the hardwood a deep red.
Only one thing could have done that kind of damage. Garth. And he was huddled in a dark corner, covered in the same mess that I stood in.
I took a step toward him. My bare foot landed on something chunky that wasn’t once part of my now destroyed coffee table. It was organic and slimy. That made the violence real—the death of a person where I usually watch TV was real. Vomit hurled into my throat but I coughed it down. The floor had seen enough splatters.
“What…what happened?” I whispered, somehow thinking that I could prevent waking Meg.
“Are you alright?” he asked.
What kind of question…NO, I wasn’t alright. There were pieces of a stranger strewn around my living room like freaking puzzle pieces. I erupted. “I’m…” I pointed to the chunks of drywall behind me. “What did…?” I pointed to the chunks of human below me. “Who was that?”
He rushed forward. “Are you alright?” He reached for me.
“No,” I said as I backed away, stepping on another squishy thing that I didn’t dare think about. Still, I yelped.
I heard poor Meg tear open her door and stomp down the hall. “Jerm?” she cried with a tired voice.
Garth looked at me sorrowfully and mouthed the words, “I’m sorry.” Then leapt from the crime scene and through the window.
The following moments were a blur. I think Meg screamed when she entered the room. That scream turned into hysterics. I recall trying to cry, to have a normal reaction like she’d had, but I was numb. I looked back at the hole in my wall where the window had once been. My life was just as gaping, as vulnerable. Anyone was capable of breaking in and trampling on me. The feeling was too horrifying to process. Of course I couldn’t cry about it.
Meg and I were left in our ramshackle apartment with the remnants of a person neither of us knew.
*
Garth was stirring under the newly-nighted sky. The Guardians began to mill about, readying themselves for another evening patrol. In the early moments of darkness, it was polite to keep the noise down. The humans were still awake. Only the shuffling of stone feet on stone floor could be heard.
But a voice quivered through the archways of the tower, “No…” The General stood behind Garth with his eyes digging into his back. “This can’t be. It was supposed to be you,” he hissed.
Garth jolted to attention. “Sir?”
“He got it wrong. It was supposed to be you,” the General said. His shaking finger pointed to the empty space near Garth.
Garth’s eyes followed to the spot. It was where Francis had perched just hours before. Where could he have gone? Possibly to Helena’s fountain, but Francis would never wander off without first telling Garth. Did someone steal him away during the day, while they were immobile? That wasn’t fair. They were defenseless in that state. Garth let out a growl. “Where is he?” he asked.
The General was unable to say.
“Where is Francis?”
“Look down, Garth.”
He did. It was difficult to see at first, but soon his eyes attuned to a pile of rubble at the base of the palace. Garth’s hand slid over to the empty space. He patted the spot as if his friend would materialize from underneath the massive bricks. “Francis,” he whispered, his eyes still on the ground. Then he called down, “Francis! Francis!”
No answer.
His hysterical voice echoed down the streets and through the cavernous palace, attracting the attention of the other Guardians. One grabbed his arm in an attempt to calm him, but Garth threw him back towards the General, who crept wide-eyed into a shadow.
Garth met the General’s gaze before he could escape. “You pushed him.”
“I didn’t…I—”
“You didn’t even give him the chance to fight, you coward.”
&n
bsp; “Don’t be a fool,” barked Brogan. “I was asleep just like him. Just like you. I didn’t do anything.”
Garth rushed toward his cowering superior and cornered him between two massive pillars. “You are the demon, not that old decoration in the garden!” The other Guardians watched silently. They had never seen Garth filled with so much rage.
“It was a mistake. We can discuss this in private,” said Brogan, trying to appease the monster in front of him.
“It was supposed to be me. You were trying to silence me.”
“I wasn’t trying to do anything, my boy. I told the King. I had to. What he did next was his prerogative.”
“But you knew what he’d do. You set this up, which is just as bad.”
Garth had seen men do extraordinary things on the battlefield. Soldiers would come at each other in fits of rage so intense that when they finally met, the earth itself seemed to shudder. That same power came over him as he went for Brogan’s neck and threw the General’s massive body to the ground. The General looked to his soldiers for mercy but found none. Maybe they were finally tired of their servitude or maybe they sensed the King’s wickedness seeping into their now submissive leader. Whatever the reason, they turned their backs. He struggled, but Garth’s hold was pointed and strong.
It was over just as quickly as it began. Garth hurled the General towards the street to meet the same fate as Francis.
Garth roared like the monster he was trying not to become. The soulless pile of rubble on the ground was just a pile of rubble on the ground. Francis’ death was permanent and Garth was responsible. Finally, he felt as ugly on the inside as he was on the outside.
*
Police lines were drawn, photographs were taken, and evidence was catalogued. Meg and I tried to answer the detective’s questions but we were both too shaken to think coherently. Discovering a room full of human remains wasn’t an easy event to process. Normal folks like us shouldn’t encounter such grisly scenes.
In Stone: A Grotesque Faerie Tale Page 10