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Stone Heart Part 1

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Stone Heart

            Adela Westwood stomped angrily into the Balsom State Historical Cemetery, talking to herself, and glared at the blue jays cheerfully chattering in the massive conifer trees. “What’s the point of going to an early Thursday  morning discussion group if everyone is hungover, snoring or wouldn’t participate anyways? I’m going to talk in a normal volume in discussion group and I don’t care if you drank enough to kill a horse last night. What a waste of time.  And Professor Merrel’s breath always smells like stale coffee and death.”  She kicked a fir cone as hard as she could and ran her hands through her messy dark hair. She couldn’t even find a rubber band this morning.

            The events of the last few months ran through her mind in an unstoppable loop. The sudden death of her grandparents had knocked her world off its axis and just when she had caught her breath, everything wobbled sideways again. She ruminated, each nasty, neurotic thought leading to another. 

Her fiance, Jeremy, had decided that he’d much rather screw a random stream of babbling idiots than be with her. They had to be idiots to sleep with him. They couldn’t be any smarter  than she was. She glowered and sulked. 

The only reason she’d applied to Balsom in the first place was because of Jeremy and his insistence that they’d be blissfully happy together there. He had been recruited for the Balsom track team. When she was awarded a scholarship, nothing was stopping them from a gloriously idealized cotton candy fluff future. “We’ll be together forever baby. We’ll get married just as soon as I graduate. You’re the only one for me.” He looked deep into her eyes and smiled, over and over again.

She had walked in on his latest conquest that last night and confronted him.  Bile-black, venomous words dripped from his lips. “You’re so boring, Adela. And fat. I can do a lot better, I just didn’t know it back at home. You’re such a clingy downer and you’re horrible in bed. The only reason I didn’t dump you earlier is because I was sure you’d kill yourself.”  She didn’t regret throwing that lamp at him. She still felt stupid and blind for believing in him.  She was so far away from all her remaining family and friends. She rubbed her temples and kicked another pine cone.

One of these days, she’d get back at him and stop calling herself stupid and useless, she told herself. As the months went by she’d almost started believing that. It was so easy to sink back into the nky-black sludge of self-pity and doubt.

            She headed towards her refuge, the grandiose tomb of Miss Mildred Bannock, one of the last great industrial heiresses.  The massive marble mausoleum was built into the very mountain that loomed over the Balsom campus. A mass of Greek columns framed Gothic arches and a set of florid bronze doors engraved with nymphs and satyrs guarded Miss Bannock’s remains. It was horribly tacky and overblown, the result of too much new money trying to establish a link to the old country. Adela was charmed by its extravagance and sentimentality.

Her favorite feature was the massive winged gargoyle perched over a puddle of mossy, putrid water that was once intended to be a reflecting pool. The figure was part snarling lion sitting sphinx-like and part scaly dragon with a curling pointed tail and relaxed wings at its sides. It was finely carved in light silver grey marble, screaming with impotent rage. The creases and folds of fur and scales were deftly chiseled and the claws were polished to a soft gleam under the grime of years. 

Adela tossed down her patchwork backpack at the base of the gargoyle, kissed the stone figure on its rear haunch leaving a red lipstick print and climbed up on its broad marble back just as she had done every non-rainy day for the last year.  “Hello Gruesome baby, did you miss me? I know you’re not stepping out on me. I should date more statues. You’re awfully stable.”  She lay on her stomach on the twice-life size lion’s back, kicking off her scuffed thrift-store Mary-Janes.

 “What am I doing, Gruesome? I can’t be just another starving artist covered in charcoal and paint. What am I even doing here now? Did I even deserve that scholarship? Am I just wasting my time? Should I just be an accountant instead of whatever I’m going to do with this art thing?”  She twirled a lock of hair around her finger. “I’d probably end up losing some one's money with the way I do math. ‘Oops! Sorry Mister, I don’t know what happened to your money. Maybe I didn’t carry the tens column...’ God, that would be be a total disaster.” 

Adela chewed on her ragged charcoal-stained cuticles and bitten-to-the-quick fingernails, worrying a hangnail back and forth until it bled. It was a terrible habit, especially when she was deep in thought. Adela flicked a bead of blood off her finger and it landed on the shoulder of the gargoyle, a dark red splotch on the weathered stone. She felt compelled to squeeze a bit more out of the stinging wound and doodled her initials lazily.  “There’s got to be more to life than this... maybe I should travel, apply for one of those study abroad options. I’m never going back there, it’s not home without Gran and Papa. There’s nothing to do there now, except be the girl who got dumped by her golden-boy prick of a fiance.   I don’t know Gruesome, I’m glad you listen to me. Not that you have any choice in the matter, I suppose. ”

She rolled over, looked at the vapor trails crisscrossing the clear blue sky and sighed, “I guess I just wish I had a destiny, a sense of purpose. Or just some excitement!  Whine, whine, moan, bitch and bellyache. I suppose there’s always the next chapter. Shut up Adela and just do your work. I know, I know.”  She put in her ear buds and listened to music more dreary than her mood, not noticing that her bloody mark was glowing faintly orange and warming gently to the touch.

Chapter Two

Friday afternoon was relentlessly sunny and the melodramatic bronze doors gleamed softly under their patina of tree pitch, grime and time. Energetic squirrels scampered and scrabbled about the the forest floor looking for food.

“Hello Gruesome!” Adela dropped her backpack in the usual place and climbed carefully into her perch, balancing a paper cup full of hot tea. “I’m so glad that class is over. I am SO tired from studio. Is it a bad thing when you can’t smell the solvents anymore? I’m probably brain damaged already.  As usual I was the only person talking in our Art History group, and I had a really great discussion today with the GTF about chapel mosaics and the idea that they were really early forms of royal propaganda to educate the masses about the link between the ruling classes, God and what the holy hell is that!?”  

            She had almost set her cup on what looked like a patch of skin, complete with tiny downy hairs and a few freckles, exactly where she had dotted her bloody initials the previous morning. Adela reached out a cautious, curious hand and gently touched the odd patch of flesh, pressing harder as it yielded. It was warm, slightly damp and the cracked stone glowed faintly orange.  “What the hell? Gruesome?... What are you?” she whispered and drew back her hand in shock as a ridge of stone crumbled, revealing more skin. Adela’s heart beat so hard it felt like it would leap out of her chest and she dropped her cup with a splash on the ground. 

            “Oh god, is there a person trapped in there? Can you hear me? HELLO?  Or something... bad?” She rapped on the stone with her knuckles. “I have to know! Oh crap. What should I do? Who would even believe me? Oh! This is so EXCITING! Okay Gruesome, I’ll be right back, I’ve got to go get my camera! And a witness!”  Adela clapped her hands in excitement and bounced in place, her hair flying.  She rushed off to her apartment, then had to double back for her backpack. “I’ll be right back Gruesome! I promise!” She leaped over brambles, gravestones and tattered floral tributes, laughing in hysterical exhilaration, headed to her nearby apartment as fast as she could run.

            Adela returned with her backpack and her panting roommate Marie in tow. Marie’s long hair was dripping wet and sudsy. Adela was shouting about magical gargoyles and cemeteries, only pausing for gasps of air. “Look! Look! There’s almost a whole arm now! Oh my god! Marie! Look!”

            Marie indulged her frantic roommate and took a close look where Adela was pointing. She crossed her arms and glared. “Are you on drugs? Look, you can’t just get wasted and drag me out here. I still have shampoo in my hair, you jerk.” 

            “But right here! Can’t you see the stone chipping off? And there’s SKIN underneath it! Here!” Adela poked at the patch of skin. “It’s even soft and warm and I think that’s a freckle!” She poked at it again, even getting close enough to sniff it curiously. 

“There’s nothing there. NOTHING. It’s just a dirty old piece of rock.” Marie tromped off, muttering about mushrooms and moving in with her boyfriend next year.

            “I’m not crazy Marie! I’m not on drugs! This really is happening!” Adela called after her roommate and poked the well-formed bicep emerging from the stone. “I’m not crazy, I’m really not. Well even if I am crazy then I’m going to see this through anyways. I’ve got my pepper spray and I’m sticking this out tonight.” More stone fell off, revealing a portion of a neck, tendons taut.

Chapter Three

           

Night fell and Adela’s normally limited patience was running razor thin. She was exhausted from her adrenaline rush. A hint of a strong stubbly jaw was peeking out in the moonlight as well as a span of broad work-hardened shoulders.  She gnawed on a granola bar that tasted like sweet cardboard and put on her jacket. “Gruesome, can you get ON with it?” She reached up and prodded his skin, ran her fingertips along the stubble and probed for a pulse. Her eyes widened as she felt a pulse throb beneath her touch. She shivered with anticipation of the unknown. “Whoa... you are alive, really alive in there!”

Adela hesitantly scraped at the edge of the marble to expose more of Gruesome’s face. “Screw it.” She grabbed a stone from the putrid reflecting pool’s edge and began tapping gently on the gargoyle’s head with her makeshift mallet. The stone began crumbling quicker as she tapped, soon exposing a set of curved human lips flushed with the pale rose of life and framed by a brown short stubbly beard.  Adela brushed her dirty fingers off on her shirt and pressed on the lips, and pried them open to see what was inside.  She was vaguely disappointed to find only human teeth, ordinary pearly stones set in pink gums. The jaw closed with a snap. She yanked back her fingers and squawked in surprise.

            “Water...” came a whisper, dry as desert sands. Adela scrambled for her water bottle and squirted a small amount on his lips. He licked the moisture off and whispered, “More...”  Adela put the nozzle between his lips and he suckled at the water, dribbles cascading down his chin. “My thanks, Adela.” 

            Adela dropped the water bottle on her foot in shock. “Wait a minute? How do you know my name?!” She picked up the bottle and dug in her backpack, and pulled out an old bandanna. She dampened it with water and began to clean off the grey dust that clung to his skin, hands trembling.

            His lips curled in a small smile while she daubed at them like a mother cleaning off an infant’s messy face, “You’ve nested on my back and spoken to me often. Mostly about your hopes, dreams and a certain Professor Merrel that you wish to have gutted.” His voice was slowly growing in strength, the accent unrecognizable to her ears.

            Adela flushed a deep red and sputtered, “You heard me? You heard… everything?”

            “You are the first person to speak to me since my transformation, Adela. Your presence has been a salve to my mind and I have looked forward to your visits. I counted the moments until you returned and hated the rains that kept you from breaking my endless, monotonous existence. Now,” He paused and Adela gave him another draught of water. ”I thank you for my freedom.”

            “I didn’t do anything.” She continued cleaning his body of the dust, taking her time over his broad and well-defined shoulders, occupying her nervous and trembling hands with the task.

            “Not so. You anointed me with a sacrifice of your own blood.  Your life-fluid broke my curse. I am returning to my true form and I owe my life, my freedom and my eternal gratitude to you, my lady.”

           

Adela’s jaw hung open and she sputtered, “No freaking way. That was just a hangnail, not a blood sacrifice. I didn’t open a vein!”

            He smiled wryly, “Well, my transformation is indeed taking a very long time in exchange for your small sacrifice. Still, I can speak, I can taste and I think I can smell... oh yes, oh yes... If my eyes were free then I would weep! So I thank you again, sincerely. We are bound together now and I shall devote myself to you and all those dreams you whispered in my stone ears. I fear the world has changed more than I know.”

            Adela stepped back, “Okay, that’s just nuts, crazy talk. You’re not my anything.  But I have questions, a LOT of questions actually. Like why can’t my roommate see you? Can anyone see you but me, because that means you’re a hallucination. Oh god...what if I really am going crazy?” She rubbed her temples.

“I do not know. I do not know much of anything, I’m afraid. I can remember floating particles of memory like motes of dust. I think my name was Gideon. I was a stonemason living on the southern coast of Albion. It was a very rocky country, studded with boulders and quarries. A country made of stones, built from the bones of the earth.” More of the crust fell from his face exposing an ear and locks of dusty grey-shot brown hair. “I remember the smell of the sea, the salt in my pores.” 

Adela crouched close beside him and listened attentively while gently prying off more of the stone. “Did you have a family, Grueso... I mean Gideon?”

“No, I was alone, far too busy with my craft to court a wife. Perhaps it was a blessing that I was used to solitude in life and kept my own company.” He sighed ruefully. “I surely regret taking my last job. The last commission that I was hired for was for a very rich man who decided to cheat me out of my wages. I recall shouting at him that he mated with the shepherd’s flock and that he was wearing very stupid red shoes and he raised his fingers up and chanted a nonsense phrase at me. All my muscles seized up and my hair stood on end. My vision dimmed and the vile man rapped his knuckles upon my forehead and laughed.

‘You did do lovely work Gideon, but your rates are far too expensive for my tastes. I can’t have you threatening me with those huge dirty hands. You’ll make a wonderful addition to my ever growing collection of statuary, you’re utterly bestial. Oh don’t worry, you’ll still be able to see, hear and feel to a degree, but you will be trapped in there for all eternity. Well maybe not all eternity, but I doubt you’ll be able to convince a virtuous woman to love you and anoint you with her blood of her own free will, especially when you’re hoisted atop the roof of my new chapel, far out of reach. So farewell Gideon, I’m sure I will forget your name eventually.’  I never saw him again. I cursed his memory daily, until I forgot his name and my anger dulled to acceptance.”

“I overlooked the chapel garden for what must have been decades. I watched the kitchen boy dump rubbish into a heap until he was a grown man, then he was replaced by a new child. I watched that child grow up again.”

“I slept. I slept for years at a time, not noticing whether it was summer or winter. My only companions were the dastardly pigeons with their sharp skittering claws, cooing in my ears, nesting in my mouth, slathering my body with their fetid excrement!  Damnable pigeons! They could sense somehow that I was not all stone and they flocked me, to torment me in my imprisonment. How I wish to wring their feathered little necks. I do not lie when I tell you that when I am free that no pigeon shall be safe within my grasp!” His lips curled in a wicked sneer. “Fluffy beady-eyed rats of the sky!” Adela stifled a snort of laughter.

 “When I opened my eyes after another very long sleep to escape those vile birds, I was surprised to see that the garden was now a city street, paved with cobblestones rutted by wagon wheels. Over the decades I watched those streets change from markets to slums and back again. I slumbered until the horses changed into curious smoke belching carriages and the air grew murky with smoke and soot.”

Adela continued to listen while prying off more stone crumbles from Gideon’s face, cleaning dust gently away. “How did you get to Balsom all the way from Albion?”

“One day I was awoken by my face smashing into the street below. There was fire in the sky and people panicked in the street. It was very exciting and I had a new vantage point, right at knee level! I had the dim hope that someone might actually speak to me or touch me or even acknowledge my existence. That was not yet to be and my flickering hope died with the fire consuming the city.”

“After the explosions ceased there was a very grand party with dancing, flowers and bits of paper flying. The people laughed until tears flowed and climbed under the table clothes to sneak affection. Knee level was quite fun that day!” He grinned and the motion shattered more stone. She could now see long eyelashes poking through the dust.

“A few weeks or months or years after, I lose track of time so easily, I was startled awake by ropes winching me up into a transport truck. There was a curiously dumpy woman with bright red lipstick, a fur coat that dusted the ground and a tiny hat with an enormous white feather.  “That gargoyle thing shall go over my reflecting pool at the mausoleum. What a beastly creature! Horrid really, but they do call it a masterpiece, so careful! Careful! Don’t chip off that ear! Get it up on the truck and then I have to go to see a dirty little man about some fantastic mosaic for my butler’s bathroom floor.”

Adela laughed at his imitation of Miss Mildred Bannock’s haughty voice. ‘So you met the heiress. I was wondering how you made it all the way here.”

“Yes, she was a very shrill woman. It was a relief to be in the hold of the transport ship with the rats and away from her dulcet tones. They installed me here at the cemetery to watch over that nasty pond for all eternity. Not a single person aside from the minister and the gravediggers came to her funeral, did you know that? Not a single person, not even the butler with the mosaic covered bathroom floors. They slammed those bronze doors shut with a clang and that was the end of Miss Mildred Bannock. “

“This was a pleasant new prison. There were squirrels to watch and those fantastic swooping and screeching blue birds chased off all pigeons. And there was you, Adela. You were the first person to speak to me since my transformation. You have no idea how much of a salve you were to my sanity, someone who would speak to me. Touch me, kiss me, laugh and cry on my back. ”

Adela blushed very red and wrung the wet bandana in her fingers, “Oh god. This is really awkward. I am just about ready to die of embarrassment!” She stammered, ”I - I - I didn’t really touch you, not like that. Okay I did kiss you. I kissed you a lot.  But I didn’t know that you were in there. Otherwise I certainly wouldn’t have been kissing your ass everyday! I just wanted to see if my lipstick would stay on the marble or not.” She buried her burning face in her hands.

 “Right now, I really hope you’re just a hallucination,” she muttered.

“Oh and the crying, oh dear.  I was a wet sobbing mess, I’m sorry. Um, that was a very bad breakup for me. I didn’t know that you could hear me...” She chewed on her finger, then crossed her arms.

“Oh I could hear you and I hung on on your every word! I shall always listen to you, Adela. We are bound together forever by your kindness.” He dismissively sniffed, ”That boy was like an untrained cur rutting with random bitches in heat! You are nothing like those wantons.”

“You are far too lovely of a young lady to have your affections toyed with so rudely. His betrayal was unforgivable! I vow that if that young Jeremy ever dares to make you cry again, I shall speak darkly to him about the perils of dark nights and treacherous paths.” He almost growled, low in his throat.

Adela stopped cleansing Gideon’s face and said very sternly, “Okay, STOP.  That is not cool. You don’t know Jeremy. You don’t really know me that well and you’re NOT my parent or my boyfriend. You’re not my devoted anything either! I’m not even sure if you’re a hallucination or not, honestly.” She snorted,  “I might be passed out on the floor of my apartment with a head injury for all I know. Besides, I’m over him. Really. I am.” If she repeated that enough times, it might become true. “Now hold still, I’m taking the last bit off your eyes.” She very gently wiped his eyelids clean. “Open your eyes.”

Gideon slowly, achingly slowly, cracked open his eyes. They were very pale silver grey, almost the shade of the marble which encased the rest of his body. He squinted in pain and grimaced at the moonlight. Adela scrambled for her rhinestone flecked sunglasses. “It has been a very long time since my eyes have seen, truly seen anything. Thank you.” The pink sparkly sunglasses looked comical against his face. Adela laughed nervously.

“So if I bleed on you a little more, just a little, will it speed up this molting process? I’ve got issues with patience.”  The idea of chipping off the rest of the stone was interminable.

“I do not know. I would rather you not harm yourself to free me. You’ve done so much already.”

Adela raised an eyebrow, chewed on her fingernail and paced back and forth, thinking hard. She stopped, smiled wickedly and picked up her smooth stone from the pool’s edge. “What if I just hit a little harder with this? We’re past all the delicate bits.”

Gideon sputtered, “But, what, what if I shatter? Not all of the delicate bits are out yet!” Adela raised her stone above her head. “Wait, wait, I don’t think that’s such a good idea!” He squeezed his eyes shut as she whacked the statue’s haunch with her stone. A large crack splintered out  from the impact and then a second. Soon the gargoyle's haunches were spider webbed with large and small cracks and Adela grinned, satisfied. “Did that hurt?”  Gideon whimpered, “No.”

Gideon winced in anticipation of each further impact as Adela continued to pound her stone down on the silvery-grey marble. Sweat beaded on her forehead and ran down into her eyebrows. Her mascara ran as her eyes watered from the dust cloud. She delivered one final blow and the marble shell groaned, shook and collapsed outwards like the petals of a flower blooming. Adela shrieked and jumped out of the way of the marble chunks, landing in a pile on the cemetery floor. “Are you okay Gideon!?” she called out breathlessly.

Gideon gasped, weakly trying to prop himself up but falling prone on his back. “I never thought I’d forget the feeling of the wind on my skin. This is GLORIOUS!” Tears streamed down the sides of his face, tracing muddy trails on his cheeks. His hands fluttered over the pedestal and himself, touching everything to verify that it was real and not a dream. “I am ALIVE!” He whooped with joy. “I am BREATHING! I am MOVING!”

Adela took off her jacket and draped it over his moonlit loins. “You are also butt-naked.” 

A broken young woman and an ancient cursed gargoyle rediscover love and humanity.

Pardon my paragraphing, Stash doesn't like me.
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