In Stone: A Grotesque Faerie Tale

by Jeremy Jordan King

  I stared at the fire dancing at the end of her finger. Of her finger! Then I looked at a gargoyle. And a vampire. And a severed head still chewing on old lettuce. None of them even flinched at the sight. That kind of behavior was normal to them. “What has my life come to?” I asked in the quietest of whispers.

  That’s when the tears came.

  And the heaving.

  And the hyperventilating.

  The head went back in the box. I went onto the couch. My dreams retreated to the quiet place within me where the Prince slept. He had finally arrived…we just had to learn to live together.

  16. Wrestling

  Morning in Rita’s apartment was odd. The moth-eaten curtains were pulled, barely shrouding us from the bright world outside. My face found warmth in a puddle of sunlight as my legs stirred up dust on her couch. With each inhalation I smelled my grandparent’s house…open windows, childhood accidents, and out-of-date perfume. Most people would find it disgusting but I was comforted by the familiarity. I tried to flip over and steal a few more minutes of sleep but I stubbed my toe on what I assumed was an end table. When I sat up, I saw it was Garth hunched on the floor.

  I’d never seen him in his true statue form. He’d always gone to one of his secret spots to retire before daybreak. He was so still, I found it hard to believe he possessed the range of motion he did come sundown. My hand ran over his brow and pointed ears. His vulnerability in that state was scary. I imagined someone raising a hammer or throwing him over the side of a building like his friend, Francis. The thought made sick. “Thank you,” I whispered. “I’m sorry for being a terror recently.”

  Dust floated about the room in dense plankton clouds. It whirled around as I walked through to the kitchen.

  Rita sat at her small table drinking coffee the color of sin. “There’s some left in the pot,” she hummed. Her hand mechanically went from ashtray to mouth. She’d be able to milk a long five minutes out of that morning cigarette.

  “What are you reading?” I asked after glancing at papers that had nothing to do with news.

  “I inherited these after my teacher passed on. That witch has no head in a vault. That witch is in the dirt like everyone else,” she said before flipping the pages. The writing made no sense to my eyes.

  “They look very old.”

  She chuckled. “Oh, yes. These pages have lived through a lot. Wars. Famines. Great upheavals. Things you’ve never seen. Too young.” She reached over and patted the other end of the table, a motion presumably for me to sit with her. I did. She leaned in toward me. “You secretly smirk at the fact…that your way of life has never been threatened. Bombs never went off in your city. The great wars of men over the last hundred years, I lived through them. I lost family to them before I found my calling.”

  “I’m…I’m sorry.” I didn’t know how to respond. It wasn’t my fault I’d been lucky enough to be born in a relatively peaceful time. Well, from what I’d experienced, at least.

  “Life got better once I recognized my powers, my worth. The goings on of humans became no concern to me. I thought I’d always have my spells and my obligations to the Way of Things because they were unchanging.” She inhaled her cigarette and held the smoke inside of her for a moment. She smiled and blew it out her nose. “I secretly smirked at the fact that my way of life couldn’t be threatened.”

  “So the Way made your life better?”

  “Sure.” She shrugged. “But I’m realizing nothing is unchanging. At first, I hardly noticed the magic slipping through my fingers. Now, I see it. As if the world is crashing down around me, I see it.”

  So no matter what path I pursued, I’d be screwed. Good to know. “What are you seeing? How is it different?”

  “This,” she said as her knuckle knocked on the table. The same hand ran across its linoleum top, yellowed from smoke and decades of use. Her nails attempted to dig into the impenetrable plastic. “Witches used to have magnificent homes in the natural world. Mine is artificial—five levels too high and filled with memories of dead ages. Not just of witches and Immortals, but of humans.” She pointed her smoking fingers to one of the crowded walls. “There. See that picture?”

  There were a million photos haphazardly hung over one another. There was no way I could know what one she was referring to. I pretended. “Yes. I see.”

  “It was taken in the Twenties. We were carefree. I did my fair share of dancing and boozing. See that girl with the white cap and the saucer eyes? That was me, a young witch then. I was very beautiful.”

  Her detail helped me find it. She was a gorgeous woman, with an expression that was the textbook definition of happiness. I wondered if someone were to take a photo of me, if I would be able to look that elated by my newfound relationship with the Way of Things. Probably not. As she said, it was different then. I tried to compare the bright eyes in the picture to the ones in front of me, but they wee hidden. She never looked at the portrait. Her cigarette lingered in its direction as she tried to save herself from a teary state. Her hand withdrew and met her shriveled lips for one last puff before the filter burned.

  “Rita, do you think Garth’s disappointed in me?” I asked.

  “How so, dear?” she asked, sweetly.

  “I mean…I don’t know what he expects now that I’m…back. Am I much like I was in that past life?”

  “I wasn’t here then. But the old one in the box, I saw a glimmer in those dying eyes. I see the same one in Garth’s. You’re in there, all right. Nothing to worry about. As for him, I can’t say what he expects. The two of you never met on the same plane. But love is love and it endures. It endures time, form, death, and rebirth. It isn’t always the same and it isn’t always attainable in a traditional sense, but it’s there. I’m sure he is thrilled.”

  *

  He’d promised Helena they would return to the birches. She was sure magic could be found there. It was a border place, where the worlds of men and spirits collide, but Garth didn’t have much hope. Still, he had all of eternity to get where he needed to go. A stop at the trees surely wouldn’t hurt. Forever was filled with possibilities and there was plenty of time to figure out the details.

  The trip to the stair had been arduous but backtracking was even more so. The land was in the thick of winter hibernation. Ice in their porous skin made them heavy. The whitewash in the air made them clumsy. Garth supposed they were lucky to be made of stone, for humans would have perished in such conditions. When the sun rose, they huddled together and hoped to be mistaken for a boulder or a snowdrift by unfortunate travelers who were destined for sickness or starvation.

  They spent nights mostly in silent reflection. Helena’s usual optimistic attitude was wearing thin as reality set in. The idea of living an Immortal life was hard on her. At the fountain, she’d heard men speak of love as the greatest of human emotions. She thought she experienced it with Francis but he was gone. His absence burrowed a deep hole in her center. She wanted to fill it with him, to experience the whole gamut of sensations the hag had promised months ago when she poured that vial of tears over her head. The thought of going back to that fountain as people lived around her conjured impulses of flying off a cliff and smashing into a million pieces. At least, then, she’d be at ease. There’d be no soul to go anywhere. She’d cease to exist and rid the world, Heaven, and Hell of her sadness.

  Garth had always thought of himself as cursed, not special. But being Immortal was extremely remarkable. He hadn’t realized it until the end, but it was. “Immortal,” he kept murmuring under his breath, unaware of his doing so. Helena would ask if he was all right and he’d just shake his head and keep walking. So together they traveled and longed for humanity but settled for their assigned lots.

  He still felt it, though. That brief rendezvous with mortality invigorated senses he thought he’d lost. Unfortunately those feelings were quick to leave him, scattered along the path behind them, lost in the heaps of white. Should he have let them go so easily? Forget al
l humanity and give himself completely to the Way of Things? Was the Way good or bad? Did it provide structure or keep them confined?

  He looked at Helena and saw the terror in her eyes. “Don’t let them go,” she seemed to say. At least for her sake, he wouldn’t. He strove to remember…

  He loved his mother, always happy even in the saddest of times. He tried to recall how her eyes would gloss with a smile when she looked at him.

  He loved his sister, Evie. She looked up to him even though he’d done nothing in his lifetime worth looking up to. He hoped she still thought of him. He would think of her often.

  He loved his father. Their time together was brief but it was happy. He tried to hear his cackling laugh.

  He loved Francis, his oldest and truest friend.

  He loved Helena, who reminded him to remind himself of happy times.

  And he supposed he loved the Prince. But it was a new kind of love. A kind he’d never felt before. It was emergent. Foreign. Scary. Painful. Ridiculous. Breathtaking. Easy. Natural. Perfect. Aching. Desirable. Missed….

  It was a memory striving to be retained.

  *

  There was an awkward hour and a half between my two part-time jobs. Back when I pretended to have money, I would have gone shopping…or at least pretended to go shopping with my pretend money and I’d have just ended up buying a pair of underwear to gain a sense of accomplishment after wasting an hour and a half of my life doing nothing but pretending. But it was a crisp fall day and I decided to be outside. The weather was perfect for meandering. It was so prefect that five minutes indoors to buy a simple cup of regular coffee made me feel ashamed. I’d finally acknowledged that I couldn’t afford lattes, hence the multiple careers.

  New York was making its best efforts at being green, resulting in a welcome bombardment of fruit carts and farmers markets. I found a quaint, five-stand market not far from Rita’s lair and ventured in, feigning interest in newly harvested vegetables I never order when I’m out. I had no intention of buying anything but I did like to imagine myself purchasing organic spinach and making a splendid salad for dinner. That’s what real adults did. I always saw them strolling through the booths, commenting on how gorgeous the week’s offerings were. They had real jobs with real incomes and real apartments with real lovers. When would my life become real? Would I ever grow up? I kept thinking about what Garth had said. What the hell was the point to me? Was I supposed to start a lecture series on the Way of Things? Train with Night Creatures and become a vigilante? I had to find my purpose.

  The usual suspects, half-crazy/half-brilliant individuals, stood behind folding tables advising on recipes and bestowing their farmland knowledge on the trying-to-be-so-progressive-they-have-to-regress-into-having-an-interest-in-farming city folk. I turned my name brand coffee cup around so the logo branded my palm with the love of consumerism. I couldn’t be judged by the anti-consumers. I contemplated, for a moment, throwing it away and opting for the hot cider at one of the tables. Then I remembered cider could do nothing for keeping me lucid though my next shift. I’d also read somewhere that people who drink coffee are less likely to commit suicide. While I wasn’t particularly suicidal (in the traditional sense), I was having thoughts of giving my mortal soul to a Hell creature (fairly untraditional). Technically suicide. To make sure I made the right choice, I drank coffee like mother’s milk.

  “Jeremy!” called a voice. I was growing tired of people beckoning me, as they usually had something way too interesting to divulge. The culprit was Robbie. He stood behind a stand piled high with wholesome goodness. The heather grey hoodie I’d always loved on him peeked out from behind a forest green apron. His face was flushed from either the cold or excitement. I assumed both.

  I’d learned that after he broke up with Nick, he decided to take some time to himself. There are only a few options available to accomplish time to oneself. Some go to a religious or spiritual center surrounded by deserts, jungles, mountaintops, or civil unrest. Some get back in touch with the land. Since Robbie was an atheist who read Richard Dawkins like the words of Jesus Christ, a farm just outside of the city was the most sensible option.

  “I’ve been involving too many people in my life instead of involving my life in other people’s. For good. To help. It’s been nice getting away from everyone and everything. Learn how the world works. All you need to live is food and water. Everything else, the Earth provides,” he said with a small smile. He could have sounded like a vegan, environmentalist drone but he didn’t.

  “You seem happy,” I said.

  “I am. I really am.” He picked up a crate of green things and arranged them neatly on the table. “What about you? It’s been a while. Since summer, right?”

  “Yeah. I’m well. I’m just…thinking about stuff. I’m not on a farm. I manage to think pretty well here in the city. All this bullshit is inspiring, I suppose.”

  He laughed. “That’s good. At least you still have that sense of humor.” And he still had that crooked smile and big brown eyes. For the first time I saw him without a veil of muddled thoughts and secret lovers. I doubted he could see the same thing when looking back at me. I’d always been muddled and felt especially muddled that autumn as I waited to seal my fate in one world or the other. Could he see that? Could anyone see the ghosts and ghouls and vampires and witches and magic in my eyes or did I just look like a regulation schizophrenic?

  “What did you say?” he asked. Apparently I was talking to myself.

  “Um…nothing. I was just thinking. Out loud. It’s my new thing.” I felt compelled to tell him everything. It would have been nice to have someone outside of the Midnight Society knowing my troubles. Instead I asked, “Do you believe in magic?” Ugh. Who asks that? Life was suddenly a scene from a made for TV Christmas movie. I waited for a lousy C.G.I. star to shoot across the sky.

  He looked at me like one would look at something being pulled out of thin air. “Ah, I believe in science,” he said. Typical answer. “Why?”

  My mouth became taffy. “I’m just wondering if anyone really does. Anymore. We know a lot about things…the world. It’s hard to find people who believe in magic. Not the bible magic. Not the magic of science. Magic magic. Do people really believe in it?”

  “Well, I’m sure there are some.”

  “Like when we talk about religion. We all secretly know what we’re talking about didn’t happen. Noah’s Ark didn’t happen. But we pretend it did.”

  His head tilted at an extreme angle. “What are you getting at?”

  I didn’t know, really. I mean, I did. I wanted to find someone who believed in genuine magic. Someone who wouldn’t look at me like I was crazy when I told them I’d spent the last nine months listening to a gargoyle spin tales of wonder. And, oh yeah, that I’m a reincarnated prince from the year 500. That’s what I think I was trying to get at.

  “You don’t look well,” he said, coming around from the other side of the table. “You realize you’ve been muttering to yourself, right?”

  “No. Yes…probably so.” A great rumble tore through the sky. The haze of incoming storm clouds darkened it to green and then back again. Something wasn’t right. “I need to go,” I said as I turned and began to bolt towards Rita’s. Robbie called something after me but I continued my zoom in her direction.

  I had reached the end of the block when the rain began. In seconds, drizzle turned to pummeling drops the size of avocados. The storm covered the sun. Evening looked like it was upon me but I couldn’t be sure. The downpour became so intense, seeing my own hands in front of me became difficult. I stopped on a corner so as not to get hit by oncoming cars. Traffic had exercised the same caution. A hand came from behind and grabbed my shoulder. Robbie pulled me into him so closely, our faces were the only things visible.

  “What’s happened to you?” he said loudly over the roar of nature’s fury. “Where are you going?”

  “You wouldn’t understand,” I said. What could I do, take him with
me to Rita’s? To him, she’d just look like an old show queen. He followed me despite my manic pleas to get off my back. When we arrived at her building the doors were appropriately locked. I rang up. Nothing. I rang again.

  “Whose place is this?” Robbie asked.

  “Robbie, please go. I’ll talk to you later.”

  “Yes?” hissed a voice from the intercom. It wasn’t Rita.

  “Where’s Rita?” I blasted into the speaker.

  “She’s unavailable at the moment,” said the voice. “Goodbye.”

  “Wait a second,” said Robbie. “Was that Nick?”

  The mention of that name sent imaginary knives into my side. My face turned momentarily white. I braced myself against the doorframe just in case I passed out. It was Nick, but not the Nick I’d known. The hag-head was right. The cousin my former self killed five hundred years ago had definitely crept his way inside of him. “No, no, no…it can’t be…he’s just angry, not a ghost…no, no…” I mumbled to myself.

  “Is this some kind of joke? Are you seeing Nick now?”

  “Just shut up,” I roared. “I’m going around back.” I ran to the condemned building next door. The landlord had carefully blocked all entries to avoid squatters. New York’s finest may be those in public service but its second finest are its homeless. They can find a way into practically anything. Thanks to them, the front door had become perfectly accessible. Robbie ranted behind me. He was convinced Nick and I were in cahoots to get back at him.

  “This is crazy. You can’t go in there by yourself,” he said as I slipped inside. He followed. My autopilot took me to the back alley that connected all of the buildings on that block. The rain still poured but the high walls around us diffused its violence. Hundreds of waterfalls cascaded down the bricks and ran towards drains. I pointed to the fire escape five stories up. Robbie tried to say something but I forcefully put a finger over his lips.