Scared Stiff
This is the third chapter of Stheno, a five-part urban fantasy novella.
Chapters One and Two may be read here: (I) (II)
The header image is by EliseEnchanted on DeviantArt.
There was a bus stop right on the other side of the train station parking lot. Kylie shuffled towards it like a cripple. Some nights she walked home; it was a straight shot up Bustleton, less than a mile, but it was all uphill and she knew she’d never make it in this condition. Or this humidity. Her clothes began to cling stickily to her skin mere moments after exiting the bar. At least you’re not cold anymore, she thought ruefully.
Thankfully there was a bench at the stop, and she slumped down onto it with a hefty sigh more befitting a woman thrice her age. Her stomach churned and the incessant tingling seemed to penetrate all the way to her bones. She chewed at the inside of her cheek impatiently and drummed her still-numb fingers on the bench like a frostbite victim as she sat there waiting, waiting. The first stars were just twinkling into being, while behind her the fuming red evening sank below the horizon.
Finally the bus came chugging up the little hill towards her. Its doors shuttered open and Kylie groaned to her feet to board whilst fumbling for a few bills in her wallet.
“Fare’s up to five now,” the driver said, surly, when Kylie handed him the money. She huffed and switched out her four ones for a five, parting with it jealously and thrusting it rudely at the driver. He turned to face her, ready to say something, but when he saw her he just stared in surprise. Then he shook his head and took the bill, muttering under his breath.
The bus was packed and Kylie shambled down the aisle, wanting a seat near the back so the other passengers couldn’t gawk at her. Though most of them paid her no mind the few quizzical sneers she did notice were enough to make her feel like they were all staring at her, wondering- what the hell is wrong with her?
The only empty spot was right behind the back door and she slumped down into it as the bus shifted into gear. She stared vacantly out the window at the streetscape racing by, buildings and parked cars standing still as stars while the bus sped up the hill.
She refused to think about her rent. Damn her rent. Damn her landlord. Damn whoever invented the first rental apartment and brought that infernal idea to America. She thought about her bed. Her warm bed and a warm shower, to soothe her aching… everything. She wasn’t yet sure if she’d go right to sleep or stay up for a bit watching a feel-better movie.
No matter what she chose, Tig would be happy to see her. He always was, but her coming home this early would be a real treat. Kylie’s head hurt, her chest and her arms and her shoulders and her legs but the thought of Tig was a soothing salve and she sighed contentedly at the mere idea of him. His soft silky fur. His deep amber eyes, warm as hearths. She soon lost herself in a memory of walking with him last autumn along the edge of a creek in the big park on the other side of the Boulevard. Letting him off leash and playing fetch on the gravel bank, watching him bolt after the ball, ears flopping in his wake. When he finally caught it he skidded to a stop and just stood there panting under the shimmering golden hemlocks, watching the leaves fall around him in wonderment. A ruined bridge the backdrop to their game, its stone arches yawning in darkness while all around the canopy susurrated in the breeze. The perfect day.
A cold chill shook her from the reverie. She looked out the window and saw her reflection against the blur of streetlights. Sickly. Ashen. Her eyes dull as cinders. Then she realized in a surge of panic that the bus was shuttling by Leo Mall and she’d missed her stop. She shot out of her seat and yanked the bell.
“Stop, stop, stop!” she pleaded, rushing to the front of the bus.
The bus lurched to a halt and Kylie reeled back, groping at the air for a handrail that was just out of reach. She stumbled forward and careened into the wheelhouse, finally catching herself and getting a grip on the pole. Not that her fingers wanted to uncurl anyhow. She blew a noticeably gray lock of hair out of her eyes and turned to the driver.
“Thank you,” she said breathlessly as the doors wheezed open. She stepped down gingerly onto the pavement. Her right side ached horribly after hitting the wheelhouse.
“Damn junkies,” the driver chuffed indignantly, slamming the doors in her face.
Her gratitude crumbled to dust and was carried away on the sultry breeze with the bus’s exhaust fumes. She wanted to cry. Just slump down on the sidewalk and pour her goddamn heart out to anyone who would listen. The pavement or the streetlights. It must have been what everyone on the bus was thinking. Maybe even Joe and Sarah. Just another junkie. Ignore it and maybe it’ll go away. Her skin, her stuttered gait, her vacant gaze… well, drugs did all of those things too.
She didn’t fall to tears. Knew that it would be pointless, would accomplish nothing. So she gathered herself up and looked around. The driver had discarded her at the corner of Bustleton and Hendrix. It was a mere two blocks back up to her missed stop, but to her aching body it seemed as far away as the stars. She could have tried walking home by way of Hendrix, but that was an even longer journey. So, with wet eyes and only least-bad options to choose from, she stuffed her hands in her pockets and started up the street.
The entire block was one long strip mall. Kin Wha Garden takeout. The Vatan halal market. Little Istanbul, a restaurant. A couple of beer distributors. Nothing that smelled even a little decent. Small groups of mostly men loitered in the parking lots and Kylie passed well abreast of them, a world unto herself as she trudged along. Her ankles protested each footfall, as if she had been transported to a planet with thrice the gravity of Earth, and her joints could only suffer under the burden of her own weight. Visions of her bed danced alluringly in her mind’s eye and kept her chugging along at a fair pace beneath the harsh fluorescent streetlights.
After awhile she left the bustling strip mall behind. Passing in front of the PNC bank, closed at this late hour, she stopped to lean against one of the lightpoles for just a moment to catch her breath. Leo Mall was right across the street, the drab beige walls of the Home Depot at the bottom of the brightly illuminated parking lot. Her gaze drifted over towards the ledge-path, the trees now reduced to stark black smears against the deep twilight sky. Despite the humidity a chill tickled her spine. She was suddenly stricken by the uncanny sense that she was being watched. The same feeling, to be sure, which had pervaded her the entire evening, only now that she was well and truly alone on the street it was crushing.
She took a deep breath and tried to tell herself she was being silly again, but on the lonely sidewalk the tension was insurmountable and she looked around warily. No one was walking towards her from either direction, nor was anyone behind her in the bank’s lot, but nevertheless she was troubled by the inescapable feeling that something was out there, watching her every move, carefully observing her from the shadows and held at bay only by its knowledge that she, too, was aware of its existence. Unable to bear it any longer, she shoved off from the light pole and trotted jag-legged away.
Finally she made it back to her intended stop and turned left onto Somerton Avenue, away from the hustle and bustle of Bustleton and back into her familiar residential area. The same streets she casually walked with Tig during the day took on a decidedly different character by night. The streetlights dim as salt lamps, those few that were even on. Tall oaks and spruces cast the unlit portions of the lane into inky blackness. Appropriately, Somerton Avenue was one of the oldest streets in Somerton, and Somerton was very, very old. Most of its buildings were new but the neighborhood was old, and on this street stood some of the last relics of a more ancient town. The houses sordid and musty. Moldering, ivy-festooned porches rearing out of the darkness like phantoms, as if the town itself were a ghost that groaned to life at the witching hour to mourn its gone-by glory days.
It was easy to feel haunted on such a lonely street, though if indeed the neighborhood were possessed of some genius loci which had been beaten into the ground by modernity, it would have found a kindred spirit in Kylie. Her chest felt leaden and she was tempted to stop and sit for a minute beneath one of the towering oaks shading the lawn of Saint Andrews in the Field. It was a pretty red-brick church with a green copper spire. Episcopal, but they also held Orthodox services for the neighborhood’s burgeoning Russian immigrant population. Services offered in Malayalam, too, whatever strange tongue that was.
She stared at the oak as longingly as if it were her own bed and sighed wearily. If she laid down against its trunk now, she would fall asleep and would not get back up again, and whatever supernatural force was pursuing her would find itself presented with a simple, undefended target. So she continued limping down the quiet street as quickly as she could, feeling a thousand unseen eyes boring into her from every shadowed corner as she hobbled along. Her heart throbbed dully in her chest, straining at the effort of what just last night would have been a quick, ten minute stroll.
Jesus, Kylie thought wryly, trying to soothe her frayed nerves, You really have become Nana. Remember how she used to have to stop and sit every fifty feet whenever she went with you on a walk?
Finally she turned onto Depue Street. A cool flush of relief washed over her at the sight of the apartments. Hers was near the bottom of the hill and she glanced back over her shoulder as she entered the lot, still unable to shake the inexplicable feeling of being watched. No. It wasn’t just being watched. She was used to that. Being looked at, the up-and-down gazes from men. This was different. Categorically different. It was an unbearable presence upon her. Like a tiger skulking in the shadows, watching her. Hunting her. Scrutinizing her every move and waiting for the right moment, for her to trip or stumble or become distracted for even an instant before pouncing upon her. She dearly wished for her gun but she’d left it on the nightstand while getting ready for work, and as she limped up the stairs to her apartment block raw pulses of primal dread raced up and down her nerves, intensifying to a terror-stricken crescendo as she neared the safety of the building.
When she arrived at her door she jabbed her hand into her purse and fumbled for her keys. A moment of blind panic as her fingers seized again. She looked wildly down into her purse, trying to will the treacherous digits to move. They curled sluggishly around the key, and once she had a halfway decent grip on it she jabbed it into the lock and shoved her way into the apartment.
Tig was right at the door. Must have come trotting over at the sound of the lock twisting. Not barking, just curious. Like- who could this be? He began whining excitedly when he saw Kylie, thumping his tail against the wall, and she was barely able to get in the door before he started jumping up on her.
“Tig, let me in,” Kylie protested sharply, the open door and empty hallway behind her seeming like so many fathoms of shark-infested water.
She slammed the door and quickly double-locked it. Trembling, she put one eye up to the peephole, certain there would be someone or something out in the hall, some nameless terror she had only just narrowly avoided.
Through the distorted fisheye lens she saw… nothing. Nobody was in the hallway.
Her nerves fell to pieces. She slumped down with her back to the door and cried. Buried her head in her knees and just sobbed. Sobbed because she was scared and didn’t know what the hell was happening to her. Sobbed because she’d been repeatedly humiliated throughout the day. By the bus driver. By Joe. She’d made a fool of herself in front of Sarah and Cedric and Stheno. She was dreadfully ill and she had no insurance and no car and no idea what was even wrong with her. And forget about rent. She could see the eviction notice in her head as clearly as if it had already been delivered.
She cried herself out. Rung herself dry like a rag. After awhile she was aware that she had curled up into a fetal position, hands draped limply over her knees. Her cheeks red hot from the burning cascade of tears. Tig was seated beside her, ears flat against his skull, and he started licking the salty runnels away. His tongue tickled and she laughed despite herself. A sad, amused sigh as she pushed him away. The apartment seemed silent as snow now that she had poured out all of her sorrows onto the floormat.
She wiped her nose ungracefully on her sleeve and rose shakily to her feet, hobbling towards her bedroom. Actually hobbling. Her knees didn’t want to bend fully, like her joints had solidified. She remembered a commercial she’d seen when she was younger, a Children’s Hospital ad raising awareness for multiple sclerosis. Children her age at the time hobbling around, legs bound up in braces like medieval knights, minus any of the honor or dignity. But still they smiled.
Kylie didn’t feel like smiling. She was tired and scared. She entered the bedroom and stripped out of her work clothes. Tossed her shoes into a corner, her purse onto the bed. She saw the gun sitting on her nightstand where she’d left it and she grabbed it and cradled it like it were her favorite stuffed animal. She checked that it was loaded, even knowing that it was, and then carried it with her into the bathroom. Never before had she felt the need to carry a loaded pistol with her around the house, but tonight she placed it on top of the toilet, muzzle facing the sink so she could lean out to grab it from the shower if necessary.
Her nude reflection stared back at her from the mirror like a daguerreotype but this time she didn’t startle. Her whole body was the same sickly shade of ashen gray, excepting a few darker patches. Her nipples, the veins of her arms. Only her hair still retained most of its natural, dark brown sheen, though it too had begun to take on an aged, silvery hue at the roots. A few errant locks of lead. She stepped into the shower and cranked the water piping hot. It felt damn good to wash away the salt-rime of tears and sweat, to soothe her tight, sore muscles under the warm cascade. As she cleaned herself, she rubbed every inch of her body with the coarse washcloth, trying to itch away the tingling sensation. After she had finished washing off all the suds she just stood under the jet of water and massaged her back and her shoulders.
When she got out she changed into a pair of pajama bottoms and a t-shirt. Her hair was still damp but she was too exhausted to blow-dry it, so when she went back out into the living room and slumped down on the sofa it slapped wetly against the upholstery. She set the gun down on the end-table beside her and tipped her head back towards the ceiling, staring into the constellations of stippled spackle without really seeing them because she was totally lost in thought. She’d already cried herself out, and now she tried to think seriously about what was happening to her.
She didn’t know much about medicine. No doctors in her family she could call. All she had was what she’d learned acquiring her biology major, and that wasn’t much. A good deal of animal physiology, some molecular biology. Nothing useful to her predicament. So she simply made a mental list of all her symptoms, to compare them to illnesses she knew about. Analytical, like a doctor ought to be. You want to be a vet? Fine, here’s patient zero, suffering from malady unknown. Species, Homo mckenna. Age 26. Symptoms…
Her fingers could be carpal tunnel syndrome. That wasn’t a lie, what she’d told Cedric. She really did have it, at least the early stages. Maybe it was progressing with shockingly abnormal quickness?
All of her internal aches- the fever, headache, lightheadedness, the cough and chest pains and weak limbs, all of it- matched with classic flu symptoms. The main difference was she didn’t feel her sinuses were congested at all, when every time she’d had the flu previously she’d gone through a box of tissues a day until it passed. So it would be a very aberrant flu.
But still, it was explicable as the flu. The heart issue- she was still reluctant to think of it as an attack- she’d suffered at the bar? Well, that was less easy to explain. She had zero prior history of heart problems. She was in peak physical condition, the prime of her life. She knew people who sometimes suffered severe chest pains with the flu, but they were all in their fifties or older. Not their twenties. So, put that in the “maybe” column- maybe it was related to the flu.
And the most anomalous symptom of all was her skin turning gray. And the tingling. She understood innately that they were causally connected, though she wasn’t sure how she knew this. Either the tingling caused her skin to turn gray, or her skin tingled because it was turning gray, but she knew they were inseparable. And that was where she ran out of explanations, and her subconscious dredged up the terrible idea- you’re turning to stone, genius.
She shook her head and sighed heavily, brushing the thought away like it were an annoyingly persistent fly. Another shiver rattled through her. The shower-warmth was fading and the room felt frigid again. Kylie rose from the couch, her joints making a sound like crunching snow, and went to check the thermostat. It read 72. Unprecedented. Ideally she liked the room at a cool 68, and couldn’t sleep a wink if the temperature rose half a degree above 70, but now her teeth were chattering. Damn flu, she thought as she turned the air conditioner off entirely. Just the flu. That’s all.
As she headed back to the couch, she glanced at the window and considered opening it, to let the sultry summer air pour in. Immediately she stamped out the idea. No way. Not with… whatever it was, out there. The intangible something that had followed her home. She could still feel it, as if it were standing just beyond the glass, leering in at her. It was impossible, of course. She was up on the third floor. No way for anyone- or anything- to enter. But still, her gut told her no, and she’d ignored it enough today to know better.
Instead, she returned to her room- gun reassuringly in hand- to retrieve a hoodie from the closet. When she opened the bedroom door it felt as if she’d opened a freezer and she half expected to see her own breath, even knowing the room was as warm as any other in her apartment. She thumbed through the hoodies on the rack and selected a gray zip-up one. Then she tipped her head back and looked at the fleece blankets she’d stored all the way up on the top shelf, folded neatly until she needed them again in the winter. Or tonight.
She had to stand on her tippy toes to reach them, and never before in her life had it been such an agonizing effort to do so. Her very bones crackled and groaned in protest as she stretched up.
“Oh, Jesus,” Kylie grunted, her gray fingers brushing against one of the blankets, the dark green one. Her favorite, even though they were all identical except for their colors. She got a tenuous grip on it and yanked it off the shelf, letting it fall to the floor. She heaved out a sigh of relief and fell back onto her heels with a creaking groan, like a house settling. Squatting to pick up up the blanket was just as painful, just as noisome. As she rose, blanket in hand, her whole body crackled ominously, like a crumbling scree-slope.
She felt it simultaneously throughout her entire being, as if she were indeed undergoing some dread metamorphosis. And if when she rose she was fresh out of Nana jokes, it was because of this- she knew now for a fact that the impossible had been made manifest, and she was, in fact, turning to stone.
There was no other explanation. No known medical condition that conformed to her symptoms. She was turning to stone, and that was all.
And as she walked stiffly back out to the sofa, holding her blanket limply under one arm and her gun in her other hand, she had but one bleak thought- What the hell do I do now?
She wasn’t hungry but wandered into the kitchen anyway after she set the blanket down. Grabbed some saltines and poured herself a ginger ale. Sick food, comfort food. All on mechanical impulse- this is what you’re supposed to do when you’re sick. Then she sat back down on the sofa- God it felt good- and covered herself in the blanket, staring blankly at the television. She barely registered Tig trotting over to her, nuzzling his face into her legs, the fabric of the blanket. She impulsively reached out her hand to rub his head, lightly because her fingers had seized up once more, and scratched at the spot between his eyes that he couldn’t reach.
He whined. Tig. She came back slowly, from the trance of despair. Looked into Tig’s wet, imploring eyes. He put his paw up on her leg. Urging her to… what? What was there to do? He whined again.
“What, Tig?”
He glanced at the door.
“No, Tig. Not now.” Kylie said glumly. She lifted her leg to nudge him away, but he sat stubbornly and kept looking from her to the door. “Not now, Tig!”
He flattened his ears apologetically and glanced at the door one more time. Then he slumped down solidly as an anchor beside her.
Kylie swallowed tightly on nothing, her mouth dry as a bone. She sipped weakly at her ginger ale, relishing the fizz as a sensation that finally wasn’t unpleasant or foreboding, and stared into the wall. Her rational mind still arguing against what she knew to be true in her heart-
You’re turning to stone.
No, I can’t be. That’s impossible.
It is. But it is happening anyway.
Should I go to a doctor? Would they even be able to help?
Well, it’s worth a shot.
But then I’m toast with rent. Sarah might still come through with those tips.
Maybe. But you need to be alive to pay your rent.
She hadn’t thought about it like that. Up to this point, she had simply been weighing the financial end of her predicament, trying to decide if a trip to ReadyCare was worthwhile against the certainty of being put out onto the street and having to beg Sarah to crash with her for a bit until she got sorted out, or maybe move back in with her parents upstate and try her luck out there. But she needed to be alive to do any of that. And for the first time she considered the possibility of this being a fatal illness.
Death. It wasn’t something that crossed her mind very often. She was young, and death only happened to other people, old people, or unfortunates who were killed in accidents or murdered. Not to her. Not at twenty-six. But here it was, slowly changing her living flesh into stone before her eyes. Death, and then… what?
She stared into the black abyss of the television screen and finally decided to turn it on. Banish such sepulchral thoughts to her subconscious and nail them back in their coffin under the sweet spell of some sappy romance or a Disney movie. She didn’t feel like she was dying and couldn’t believe she was. She just felt sick, and the best thing to do when you’re sick is to get comfy under a blanket, drink some ginger ale, and watch a Disney movie.
The television was tuned to Animal Planet. A documentary about Komodo dragons. Big, ugly lizards with gaping pink maws that, as a green computer graphic helpfully showed, concealed rows and rows of curved, serrated needleteeth. Kylie snuggled up under her blanket and watched in morbid fascination as one of the reptiles lunged at a deer, tearing a ragged gash into its thigh. Leaping and kicking and braying, the deer escaped, landing a wild blow on the dragon’s snout with its back hooves.
“But,” the very British narrator explained dramatically, “it’s already too late. The doe’s fate was sealed from the moment the dragon’s teeth pierced her flesh. Komodo dragons have a septic bite. Along with neurotoxin venom, which paralyze the victim’s nerves, and anticoagulant saliva, which prevents the blood from clotting, with one bite, a cocktail of deadly bacteria is transferred to the prey, infecting it. The doe has at best a week to live.”
Kylie shuddered watching the stricken deer limp away, craning its head back to lick its wound, while a few paces behind, safely out of kicking range, the giant lizard followed.
“The Komodo dragon will follow the doe’s blood-scent for days, until the infection finishes her off. Then, the dragon and its comrades feast.”
The camera lingered for a long moment on the deer’s face. The wide, brown eyes, the nostrils that flared with each precious breath. Then the scene changed abruptly to a ravenous buffet, a dozen dragons sloppily devouring a deer- the same deer, she knew- in a muddy pit. Ripping off pink chunks of flesh, uncaring of the filth and mire around them and unheeding of their fellows.
Kylie watched one of the dragons flick its tongue at the camera, its mouth coated in blood. It seemed to make direct eye contact with her and she quickly changed the channel. She looked back over her shoulder, at the door. Checking to see that the lock was still twisted tight. Tig also looked up alertly and stared at the door, as if he could see right through it. He ruffed once.
“It’s okay, Tig,” Kylie said, her voice shaking, “It’s fine. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bother you.”
Tig ruffed once more and glanced sidelong at Kylie. As if to say- No, it isn’t fine. It isn’t fine at all. Then he laid back down and sighed heavily, still facing the door.
Kylie swallowed tightly and readjusted her position so she could keep an eye on the door while watching the TV. Sleeping Beauty was just starting on the Disney Channel. Good. Her favorite movie. She snuggled against the armrest, tucking herself in under the blanket and tossing and turning trying to get comfortable. As comfortable as she could, anyway. She was still freezing even under the blanket, and the tingling sensation remained incessant. While Maleficent placed her curse upon the infant Aurora, Kylie scratched at her face, raking her fingers down her cheeks, her neck. When she got down to her shirt collar she stopped and looked at her palms. Still gray as ashes. Grayer than before, if anything.
I don’t understand, she thought. She sat up and looked at Tig again. He perked his head up inquisitively and she decided to babble her stream of thought to him.
“It just doesn’t make sense. I don’t get it, Tig. I think I’m turning to stone, even though it sounds completely ridiculous to say it out loud. And it is ridiculous. It can’t be true. Like, it’s impossible in principle, right? You can’t transform a living thing into stone, into a statue. That only happens in myths and fairy tales. Not in real life. Okay, well maybe in a lab, but it doesn’t just happen! I didn’t do anything to cause something like that- I didn’t fall into toxic waste or walk in front of an X-ray machine or anything like that. All I did today was take you for a walk, and we talked to Stheno, and-”
She stopped. Her mouth suddenly felt quite dry again, and her heart and lungs and stomach all seemed to compress into one heavy lump.
“And I looked into her eyes.”
Her mind reeled back to the myths she had been so derisive of earlier. Medusa. Basilisks. The cockatrice. All turned their victims to stone via eye contact. She thought of Medusa. Tried to imagine a face so hideous it could turn a person to stone. Eyes so terrible they could fossilize living flesh as surely as heat curdles milk. Stheno’s were those sort of eyes. In the myths the transformation was instant, though. Not this slow, drawn-out affair she was experiencing.
Then she realized that she hadn’t seen Stheno’s whole face. She’d only seen it through the burqa. Her features all half-obscured in shadow. Her eyes had been visible- how could such searing blue rings not be?- but even they had been viewed through the thin filter of the burqa’s grille. She hadn’t ever received the full brunt of Stheno’s visage.
Wouldn’t it make sense for an eye-contact induced transformation to take longer, if she had only been subjected to Stheno’s gaze indirectly?
It required some suppositions. To put it mildly. One, gorgons actually exist. Two, Stheno was one. Three, when Kylie looked at Stheno, she began to turn to stone.
“Yeah, once you get past the whole ‘imaginary creature’ part, it makes perfect sense!” she fumed. She huffed heavily and saw that Tig was still looking at her curiously. “I’m losing my goddamn mind, Tig. I gotta put the bogeyman back under the bed.”
And, so saying, she pulled the blanket up to her chin and tried to snuggle up to enjoy the rest of the film. Her mood was quite ruined by her demented train of thought, and she mentally repeated the defiant mantra over and over again- It can’t be true…
Eventually, while Aurora sang about dancing with her true love once upon a dream, Kylie drifted off into a nightmare.
She stood in the blue predawn atop a hill, overlooking a vast battlefield. In the valley ahead of her, tanks and infantry were staggered out in a skirmish line, firing everything they had at a towering wall of stone that was slowly grinding towards them. The wall stood at least a mile high, its length extending from as far as Kylie could see to the left to as far as she could see to her right. It reminded her of the white cliffs of Dover. Continuously illuminated by pinpricks of light which she knew were the explosions of artillery rounds slamming into it, trying futilely to halt its advance.
Squinting, Kylie could see the trees and roads at the foot of the wall as it lumbered forward like some dreadfully fast tectonic plate. A perfectly idyllic rural scene of red maples and trim cottages. They weren’t pulverized by the impossible cliff. Instead, as it approached, the grass several yards ahead of it turned white. Then, from the ground up, the brown tree trunks and red brick walls rapidly began to pale as well, until they were all fully petrified, preserved as marble effigies which were absorbed seamlessly into the cliff-face.
The military line slowly retreated from the wall. The tanks and humvees backpedaling up the hillside until Kylie was standing right in the center of the frontline. The noise was deafening. A constant rattle of machine gun fire, punctuated by the earsplitting boom of cannons firing. Men screaming and shouting- HIT IT AGAIN! SABOT UP! ON THE WAY! Above it all, the sounds of the wall advancing up the valley, the groaning of its weight upon the land loud as an avalanche.
One tank lurched up the hill right beside Kylie and fired before it even settled into position. To her surprise, Sarah was seated in the turret, manning a machine gun. She’d traded her French twist for a green camouflage helmet, and fired with the gusto of any other soldier. Sarah peered down into the tank, yelling to the driver- NO EFFECT ON TARGET!
The white cliff came closer and closer until finally it was a mere half mile from the hillside. Kylie clasped her hands over her ears, unable to bear the din anymore. Three tanks fired all at once to her left, their rounds smashing into the wall, and Kylie could see as they hit that even the smoke plumes left by the impacts were converted into a white crystal powder that fell soundlessly onto the valley floor.
The wall was right in front of her now. She craned her head back and couldn’t see the top of it. Taller than any skyscraper, any mountain on Earth. Then she cringed and held her hands over her head as an explosion sent a hail of rock fragments raining down on her.
The tank beside her, Sarah’s tank, roared, revving its engine and lurching forward. It and the other vehicles throwing themselves at the inexorable cliff in a desperate, final charge, knowing full well that their destiny was to be callously converted into just another block of the unstoppable enemy.
Kylie jolted awake. Panting, looking around wildly make sure the terrible cliff hadn’t followed her back to waking reality. Tig was already on his feet by the time she noticed him, looking at her in wide-eyed concern, begging for directions- What’s going on? Where’s the problem? How can I help?
“It’s okay,” she panted. “It’s okay.”
She was very thirsty and reached over for her ginger ale, chugging it wolfishly. It had gone flat and she wondered how long she’d been asleep; she certainly didn’t feel rested. She glanced at the television. The kingdom had just been put to sleep by the three good faeries, and Kylie realized that her right arm was still sleeping too. No, not asleep. She could feel it just fine. The warmth of her sleeve and the blanket covering it. Her fingers brushing against the cushions. It no longer tingled, like the rest of her body. But it felt heavy and cold. A shiver tickled the back of her neck, and she pulled the blanket aside and rolled up her sleeve.
Acid fear splashed over her.
Her arm was completely, uniformly gray. More ominously, it shined, casting back a dull reflection of the TV glare. When she gingerly poked it with her left hand, it was hard and cold and smooth to the touch.
Stone.
Her arm had turned to stone.
She rolled out from under the blanket like a creature ensnared and scrabbled to her feet. Her legs were sluggish to respond, and the lag made her panic even more. She leaned on her left arm, in slightly better shape than her right though it too felt hard and was rapidly taking on a polished stone sheen. When she sat up her back cracked like a calving iceberg. Looking down into her shirt, she could see veins of smoky marble engulfing her breasts.
“Fuck, fuck, fuck,” she stammered, over and over again, “Fuck this. Fuck this.”
She lunged up, throwing the blanket to the floor and startling Tig, who shot upright and darted out of Kylie’s way as she rose. All worries about her rent were forgotten. She could only think- Hospital. Now. You need to go to the hospital now right now.
Her plan coalesced in mere seconds out of vague, half-formed ideas she’d had before, about what to do in an emergency. Call 911. Then Sarah, to ask if she could look after Tig. Then wait for the ambulance. And figure out how in the hell to pay for it all later. Simple.
She’d left her phone on the counter when she’d come in, with her wallet and keys. She stumbled, her legs as heavy as if they’d been weighed down with ball and chain. She took one big step towards the counter. Pivoting her leg forward at the hip, because her knee had locked up and she knew it too must have become solid stone beneath her pajama bottoms. Her thighs creaked like the wooden hull of a ship straining under heavy seas. She swung her other leg forward. Her foot landed on the hardwood floor, and she heard an ominous crackling sound emanating from somewhere in her lower back. Then, despite her most frantic efforts, neither leg would move any further. She stood rooted to the parlor floor.
Her mouth fell open. For a moment, she actually found it amusing. Trying to jolt herself forward, as if she’d gotten stuck in quicksand. But this quickly passed into the blind panic of a snared animal.
“No, no, no-no-no…” she stammered, over and over again, shaking her head. Flatly denying the reality of what she was experiencing.
She reached down with her still-good left hand to her waistband and tugged it out to inspect herself. Her navel and thighs were rigid stone. Casting back a dull pewter sheen. Before she could reach in to touch herself and confirm the dread reality, her left hand seized up and she released her waistband like it was a hot pan. She held her hand up towards her face, to cup her mouth, but the paralysis quickly extended up the whole length of her arm and it was halted as her fingers brushed against her throat.
She wept openly. The racking, terror-stricken sobs of the condemned. Tears of panic and grief wetting the hardwood floor below her. She’d waited too long, had denied the obvious. And now… now she was stuck as firmly as if she’d grown roots, and all she could do was wait for the end.
“No, no, no no no no!” she pleaded, over and over, as if her terror-chants had the power to reverse the petrifying tide sweeping across her body. She shook her head until her stony hair became a whipping froth of grayish brown.
Tig was barking frantically. She turned slowly, slowly, to face him, and then her entire torso made a sound like gravel crunching underfoot, and she realized with fresh despair that she could no longer move anything below her neck. She was stuck forever twisting her upper body to the left, one stone leg trailing on tip-toe behind the other, like a ballerina frozen mid-performance. The sounds her body made as it continued to petrify were like an avalanche or rockslide in progress. Every muscle and tendon groaning in protest at its impending permineralization.
Tig trotted over to her side and whined piteously. Rubbing his head against her legs with enough force that, if they were still flesh, Kylie would have stumbled back, maybe even fallen over. She realized in a lightning bolt of terror that if she toppled in her current state she would simply shatter into a million pieces, and suddenly preventing such a dreadful fate became the most important thing in the world to her.
“No, no no no, Tig! Down! Off!” she pleaded, choking on her tears and terror alike as he nuzzled her, pawing at her pantleg. Trying futilely to help her move. Finally he heeded her desperate, panicked cries and gave up, and simply laid down at her feet. His continued whining wrenched her soul.
“Okay, okay,” she said to herself, trying to get a grip. Panic would not save her. She needed to think. She looked around the room. Her phone was on the counter. Too far away to reach. Too high for Tig to get at, even if she could somehow impress the idea upon him to fetch it. Could try shouting. At least one of her neighbors might be sufficiently annoyed to call the police. She took a deep, rattling breath, as deep a breath as her mineralizing lungs could manage, and heaved out a scream- “HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELP!!! ANYONE!!! PLEASE, HELP ME!!!”
No response. Well, be specific, Kylie. They might think it’s the damn TV. She sucked in another racking breath.
“HEEEEEEEEEEEELP!!! MY NAME IS KYLIE MCKENNA, I’M IN APARTMENT 3B AND I NEED AN AMBULANCE!!!!”
This time she received a reply. An undefinable banging below her, probably the tenant hitting the ceiling with a broomstick handle. An acknowledgment, at least. Her hopes were dashed when she strained her ears to hear a muffled shout from her neighbor below- “SHUT THAT DOG UP LADY!”
She sucked in another breath, meaning to renew her efforts, to scream for help down at the person below her, since at least he was able to hear her. But when she inhaled, her neck crackled and stiffened, and her next attempt to scream came out as a strangled wheeze. The tide of stone finally beginning to crystallize her vocal cords.
There was nothing more she could do. She was fixed facing the counter, her phone taunting her just out of reach. And even if it had been in reach, or if she were holding it in her hand, it still wouldn’t have helped. She couldn’t dial 911 with stone fingers.
All she could do was tilt her chin down so she could look to where Tig was faithfully curled up at her stone feet. He sighed mournfully. She could still feel his warmth despite her feet and legs being entirely stone, and she wondered how the nerves were still working, still transmitting the sensation of heat through what she assumed was solid marble.
“You knew, didn’t you Tig?” Kylie said. Her voice scarcely a whisper. Each breath was slow and shuddering, and she knew it wouldn’t be long now until her lungs were also solid stone. “You tried to warn me, and I didn’t listen.”
At the sound of her voice Tig looked up at her. His eyes so wide, so wet. The same forlorn look he’d had when she first met him at the shelter. She hoped her parents would take him in. Couldn’t bear the thought of him going back to another pound, surrounded by vicious bully-dogs seven times his size.
There was nothing to be done for it. She didn’t have a last will and testament. Didn’t even think to write one yet, not at her tender age. But as far as final moments went, she supposed this was okay. If she was to die tonight, to have her body left behind as a concrete cadaver, then let her final act be to gaze into the eyes of her one steadfast friend and tell him how she loved him.
The realization of what she was doing, what this really was, hit her like a gunshot and she started to cry again. Hot tears flowing down her gray cheeks. Senseless, she thought. Now that the cold fingers of the Reaper were dancing upon her flesh, all she wanted was more time. A few more precious seconds of life. Isn’t that all any living thing ever wants?
“I’m sorry, Tig. I’m so, so sorry,” she sobbed, even as she felt the muscles of her face slowly immobilizing. The crackling sound her flesh made as it changed to stone was deafening, like the groaning of a glacier. Not much longer to go. “You’re a good boy. I’m so, so sorry. I love you, Tig. I hope you know how much I love you. I… I loved you from the minute I first saw you. I love you more than I love anyone.”
She sucked in a deep, rattling breath and knew it would be her last. Her chest felt tight again. Not painfully so. It was just. Solid. Each beat of her heart slower than the one that came before. As she listened to her body slowly petrify, a wave of calmness washed over her. Acceptance? Not quite. But. Something close. Close enough that she stopped crying, and let her face relax as the transformation subsumed her.
“I love you like the Moon loves the stars,” she said. A moment later her lips were sealed in stone, and she could speak no more.
She tried to close her eyes, as the dying do, but found that she could no longer blink. So she accepted that her last sight would be of Tig, and hoped that the love in her eyes would still mean something to him after she had gone.
The crackling began to quiet down and the tingling sensation dissipated as the transformation completed. She heard her heartbeat slow… slow… stop…
Death did not come.
A tsunami of raw, acid terror flooded over Kylie. She tried to move. Her arms. Her legs. Any part of her body. But she couldn’t. She couldn’t fidget. Couldn’t blink. Couldn’t even breathe. All she could do was stare straight ahead at the floor.
Oh Jesus God, I’m a statue! her mind screamed. I’m a LIVING statue!
Panic devoured her. She tried to gasp, to hyperventilate. She needed to breathe, but her throat and lungs were solid stone. Her mouth, her nostrils- just sculpted details of her delicate marble face.
All she wanted to do was run. Not just to the phone but out of the building entirely. Away, away back to her mother’s arms. She tried desperately to flee, to budge even an inch, but it was pointless. Her limbs were solid stone, the envy of any sculptor. No snared animal had ever been so thoroughly trapped as she, and Kylie’s mind was electrified by stark, primal terror as she writhed within herself.
God, God, please please please help me, please don’t leave me like this. This can’t be real. Please just let me die, please! I don’t wanna be a statue forever!
God did not answer her, and as the seconds dragged out into minutes, she realized that He wasn’t coming. She would be trapped as a stone statue, a conscious, living statue, for the rest of time. Her mind eternally entombed in the prison of her own rigid stone body.
Tig looked up into the blank, stone orbs of Kylie’s eyes and loosed a long, mournful howl that echoed through the apartment like he were beseeching Heaven to come to the aid of his lady. Just as with Kylie’s own silent pleas, it went unanswered.
I should have known, Kylie thought miserably, All the pieces were there. I just… I didn’t believe it was possible. How could I have? This… this is the kind of thing that only happens in myths. In fairy tales. In nightmares.
She stood frozen while Tig lay at her feet. She could still feel his weight, his warmth. He shuffled occasionally, trying to curl even closer to her. So close she thought he might knock her over. He whined pitifully and Kylie would have cried had she still been able to. Her eyes were now completely dry, refusing to release her cataracts of sorrow from behind their smooth marble dams, and so the grief simply swirled within her, gray and desolate as any winter storm.
The minutes dragged out and as her initial terror began to subside, an even worse malignancy started to eat at her- boredom. Her field of view presently was composed chiefly of the hardwood floor in front of her. She had a full view of her own stone body, and Tig curled up at her feet. In her upper peripheral vision she could make out the countertop, her phone and wallet and keys just out of reach. The TV was still on, though completely outside of her view, and she listened to it for awhile like it were a radio drama. The ending of Sleeping Beauty, Prince Philip riding to the rescue of Aurora. She’d seen it so many times she could picture it perfectly in her head- Philip slashing his way through the thicket of thorns, battling Maleficent after she’d transformed into a dragon. Through it all Aurora slept dreamily, and now Kylie only wished she could join her. Even a permanent, dreamless slumber would be better than the living, immobile hell she had been consigned to for all eternity.
The movie ended with its triumphal reprise of “Once Upon A Dream” but Kylie remained frozen in her waking nightmare. The floor creaked beneath her and she realized she must have put on several hundred pounds of weight in a matter of minutes. She wondered how long it would take for someone to find her. She didn’t call her parents often, so a week or two without contact wouldn’t be anomalous to them. Her coworkers would notice when she didn’t show up to work after several days. Sarah would try to call or text her, might stop by and knock and receive no response. Maybe a week until a missing persons report was filed. Or even sooner. Rent was due tomorrow, after all, so she at least expected her landlord to come knocking at some point in the day. Won’t that be something, she thought wryly, Coming to collect rent and finding nothing but a dog and a stone statue in residence. Congratulations, Kylie. You’ve pulled off the most creative way to getting out of paying rent ever conceived.
The joke consoled her, just a little. She was trapped within herself, but at least her sense of humor hadn’t been turned to stone too. And she realized that was how she would have to survive, from this point on. She had to keep her humor. Fall into despair and madness isn’t far behind. So joke about it, have an inward laugh at the absurdity. Don’t forget- you’ve got all eternity.
She wasn’t sure how long she stood there. Tig was still curled at her feet. She could tell from his deep, slow breathing that he’d fallen asleep against her, and she wondered if he too was hoping to escape from what could only be described as a waking nightmare.
The television was still on, now airing a rerun of Hannah Montana, but Kylie paid no attention to it. She wasn’t the slightest bit bored anymore. She heard footsteps out in the hallway.
With nothing to do but listen, Kylie could tell that every one of the individual’s steps was carefully weighed and measured. Each coming two or three seconds after the one before, as if the stranger were stalking ahead on tiptoe, trying to approach as silently as possible. Approaching her apartment, she knew. If he’d wanted to visit her neighbor, the stranger would have turned right. But the footsteps were in her hall, drawing ever closer to her door, and a primitive terror welled up within Kylie’s motionless stone body. The same terror, she thought, that a snared fox must feel at the sound of a trapper’s boots crunching on nearby snow.
The door was at her back. Her gaze was locked ahead on the floor. She couldn’t see the door, couldn’t look behind her to check for the telltale shadows of feet in the gap between the door and the floor. Her petrified gut twisted round and round and she could only stare at the floor and listen to the sound of the footsteps ringing in the stony folds of her ears. A mere second’s glance would have cured her. Just one glimpse to confirm that the door was still shut, still locked, that she and Tig were safe and the intruder was at bay. But she couldn’t see it. She couldn’t do anything. All she could do was stand in rigid, unmoving terror and wait.
And she knew then, knew on a deep, primal level, that the intruder was the same malign presence which had been harrying her all night. It was ancient, and evil, and… familiar. Some quivering, superstitious instinct whispered from the murky depths of her subconscious- You know who is on the other side of that door.
Kylie waited breathlessly- quite literally- as the footsteps approached, and then ceased in front of her door. For a minute the room and the hall were silent.
Tig awoke suddenly with a little ruff. Before he had even finished blinking the sleep from his eyes he was on his feet, hemming close to Kylie’s stone legs and staring at the door behind her. His body held straight and taut as a strung arrow. His hackles bristled in a way that made it hard to believe he was the same dog who played keep-away with his own leash. But deep in the heart of every dog, no matter his size, a wolf still howls quaveringly into the night.
The knob started to turn.
Click here to read Chapter Four.
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This isn't urban fantasy, this is horror.