Gargoyle

Red drops on hardwood floor…shadows cast in a flickering fire…pain and terror reign prevalent in these shards of memory. But that pales to what I feel when I see the window, and beyond it, no, in it, I see--

I see nothing. For a moment I almost had it all, but the visions are gone now, lost to the shadowy moors of my mind. In the unfurnished room, my form trembles upon the stone chair I sit in through timeless eternity, disrupted only when I am summoned to work. Roused from my sleepless trance, I can do nothing but wait.

Stasis. That’s the best word to describe the state I am in when I am not working. I’m not sleeping, but I’m not awake. I am sitting now, and staring at the walls of gray stone that surround me. I am trying to break the mists that cover both my mind and living chamber in a shroud. My memories, my life, lie just beyond my grasp, but soon I will have to complete my tasks in the world above, and forgo my pointless attempts at recalling a past I do not truly wish to remember.

I am a Harbinger, and as such should have no conception of form or individuality, and certainly no memories. I have only a scattered jigsaw puzzle of a conscious mind, and I don't think I am even supposed to have that. Something is changing gradually; I can sense the differences occurring in my awareness and memory. I am beginning to have a conception of the passing time, and recently the memories have started to come back. Soon, the veil of mists shrouding the secrets of my life will part.

The sound of a knell pulses through the heavy air, and a piece of paper flutters down the stairs to rest at the bottom, dispelling my contemplations. I briefly look up the roughly cut stone steps, and feel a strange and unfamiliar curiosity. I do not know what is past those stairs; I have never exited that way.

I slowly rise from the chair, the only piece of furniture in the chamber, and walk hesitantly toward the stairs where the list awaits. Leaning against the wall next to the list is my most hated enemy and dearest companion, reflecting murky gray light from the chamber off of its blade. The list and my scythe await me, foreshadowing my work to come. I pick up the list and scan it, then put my (finger?) over the pair of names that start the lengthy column. The world disappears; the room releases me with a reluctant sigh. It is time to work.

Always, it is a scene of strife and violence I am dropped into, never a scene of peaceful death. Battlefields, cities, prisons, all are my miserable playgrounds. The scenes neither disgust nor delight me; they are nothing more than the backdrop for my work. I guide the victims of violence towards the light and watch enviously, as is my sentence for my unknown crimes.

This time, it is a bedroom I find myself in. A man and woman lie dead, their shattered skulls turning the once white blanket into a deep burgundy. Behind me there is movement, as the murderer walks through the rooms cackling to the darkness, and stuffing objects into a bag. I walk unseen, with a graceful gliding motion over to the dead couple, and then I lift my scythe. The moon peers in through the open window, illuminating me in its level gaze. I briefly meet its disapproving stare, and then turn back to the work at hand. First, I bring the scythe down over the woman’s heart, striking it but leaving no physical mark, releasing her soul into the stuffy air. She looks at me, and then at her and her husband’s bodies. She cannot release the well of tears not shed, cannot free the emotions trapped inside like rats on a sinking vessel. The dead cannot cry. I release her husband from his broken body, and then point my scythe to the open air.

The ability of the scythe activates at my unspoken command, and I cut a glowing portal in the air, leading to a source of brilliant light. I motion with my (arm?) to them and to the hole in reality. For a moment their ethereal faces stare blankly at me, but then they begin to understand. They float through without a word, and my first job of the night is completed.

From there I am transported to a grisly suicide, a gangland massacre, and a convenience store robbery. Always, I guide the souls from their mutilated corpses to the portals I create, those gateways to the afterlife. Despite my supposed desensitization to the bloodshed I see with every name on the list, it begins to affect me. Certain sights are triggering a sequence in my mind, dimly registering a reaction in my conscious mind. The memories draw nearer with every new soul I send to the light; a twisted reward for far more deranged deeds.

About halfway through the names my list, and one unremarkable name transports me to a house lit by the flickering flames and glowing embers of a fireplace. Silhouetted by the flames a woman lies dying, gasping desperately for breath through her crushed throat. A man sits in darkness watching her die, his eyes nothing but red slits in the light of the fire, his face in complete shadow. As I move forward, she turns her face to me, unseeing, and tears trickle down it to dampen the shabby rug. The mists that have clouded my mind break, suddenly triggered by this sight, and I am lost in a torrent of memories.

An ear shattering crash assaults my ears as he throws something else at her cowering form. Stepfather, leave my mother alone. But I know he won’t listen, and I am too afraid to actually say those words to that monster that towers over me, that casts his shadow in the flickering light of the fireplace. I cannot speak to him, and have never spoken to him. Brave words are only brave in a person’s mind, and when they reach the air they become meaningless, and painful. My words are nothing more than garbled nonsense, are nothing to his booming growls, his echoing roars that shake the room. I cringe in the corner under the dinner table, looking but not wanting to look, hating him but hating myself more.

Footsteps sound on the hardwood floor near me, and he looks down, face in shadow. If the light were to shine on his face, would it reveal human features? The thought flits through my mind as I try to quell my terror. His unseen eyes seem to probe my very soul, getting at the heart of my cowardice and concealed loathing. Light reflects off of his teeth as he smiles at me, and then he delivers a kick to my abdomen that has me coughing up blood on the scuffed wooden floor, spatters of red against the dirty wood. He punches something else, the table I am hiding under, and then walks away, his lust for violence temporarily sated. His footsteps echo cruelly on the grimy floor, the noise growing softer as he stalks away. My body shakes, and tears fall to join the spattered blood on the floor. The world dissolves in a blur, a cascade of liquid hatred that I feel for both him and myself.

I stand rooted to the spot, as the nameless woman who had sparked that memory continues to die by the fireplace, while the man looks on in cold, detached silence. Then I am lost again to another unwelcome memory, later in my past than the first.

He’s going to kill her. He is relentless, hitting and hitting without ceasing, feverish rage in his eyes. This time he'll go too far, this time she won't get up off the floor and sit at the table, and stain the worn varnish with tears and blood. He won't stop. With every blow he strikes I feel more and more nauseated, and every second my rage grows. It is beginning to eclipse my fear; finally, my terror is waning. I can’t take it any more; I have to do something.

I stand, and find I am just as tall as he is. There is something wrong with this; I am not supposed to be his size. It doesn’t matter at the moment, though. My movement grabs his attention, and my stepfather stops hitting my mother. I am still not completely over my fear, and he knows it. Fast and savage, he lurches over to where I am and knocks me down, making my head ring with the blow. He follows up with a kick to the ribs, and I curl up in the fetal position. He looks down at me, and laughs a harsh, primal laugh. With an expression of bestial satisfaction, he turns to go back to her. I find the strength to stand again, and this time it is I that knocks him down. He gets up, stunned, and his eyes are pools of smoldering fire, burning my courage away. But when he swings at me, I catch his fist in midair, snapping his wrist within supernatural strength. My other hand goes to his throat, gripping with strength I never knew I had. He tries to claw at my eyes but cannot reach. My arm is longer than his. Again, I feel that sense of disproportion, the feeling that this shouldn't be.

He falls to the floor next to the fireplace, sadistic features illuminated by the light of the orange flames. I notice now that his features are human after all. The heat from the flames tickles my jaw as I struggle. I am not killing a person; I am killing a beast in human form. Human appearance means nothing; actions display a person's true nature. I tell myself this as he slowly dies, and it is only after he has breathed his last breath that I realize my face is on fire.

Stunned, I put my (hands?) up to my (face?) trying to figure out what is there, preparing myself for the worst. But I can’t feel anything, I find that my (fingers?) can’t touch. I feel nothing; my shell of a body, more prison than vessel, yields no sensation. Only then does it hit me that I am not alive anymore, that I am actually dead. This revelation is lost on my irrepressible mind, spitting out memories like a broken television spitting out static. Another scene assaults my mind in rapid succession to the last.

I stare through a window, and there is a monster staring back at me. No…it isn’t a window, I am looking at a mirror, and the monster is I. The fire did not burn so much as melt my face, turning it into a surreal and horrible mask. I don’t know what I looked like before, I can’t remember. The melted flaps of flesh that droop and meld where they shouldn’t added with the scar tissue make me look like a...

My mind flashes mercilessly forward, no respite this time. I’m not in the present long enough to see the woman on the floor die with a final gasp, and see her killer sigh with satisfaction. I am launched unwillingly into the next scene in a schoolyard under an overcast sky.

“Hey Gargoyle! Why don’t you go hide your face in a corner? You’re scaring the little children.” Wordlessly, I turn to face him. I have trouble speaking since the incident, or maybe even before it. I can’t remember ever speaking to anyone before or after. My words come out slow and mangled now, so I usually don’t attempt to talk at all.

“Didn’t you hear me the first time? There isn’t a horror movie set around here. Get lost.” I try to say something, an insult of my own, but it comes out as meaningless gibberish. Another kid comes over, and stands with his friend.

“I guess you really are retarded, then.” He turns to his friend. “You owe me ten bucks.” He turns back to me. “So does your mother look like that? I guess your father had to bag her face when they made you.” The two of them laugh, and I feel something inside me react. I can’t specifically remember other, similar occasions, but I know this isn’t the first time I have been humiliated and insulted.

All of it is built up inside, unknown depths of vile hatred reacting to this final humiliation, possessing me. But possession isn’t the right word, because it feels good to hate and to become enraged, all my doubts and fears are washed away in a torrent of fury. I won’t take it; I won’t let them insult my mother or I. I delivered justice to my stepfather, and I can do the same now, to these creatures. They want to use words instead of fists, but it's all the same to me. I have strength, and intelligence, and I will prove it.

I grab the kid who had just spoken and throw him to the ground. The other kid is stunned, and I hit him as hard as I can, feeling bones crack and his face twist into an entirely new form under the weight of my arm. Divine light glimmers off of the slick crimson on my fist, as the sun shows its fiery face through the clouds. The one I threw is lying there, cowering in fear. I see myself as he sees me, looking up at the monster that is me. Then, instead of myself from another's perspective I see my stepfather, kicking me while I cowered under the kitchen table. That vision enrages me more, and I grab the kid and throw him down again and begin to batter his writhing form as random memories of pain flash before my eyes. I want to stop, but I’m not in control anymore.

No, that’s just a worthless excuse. I can't deny the truth. I am in control, and I do want to kill him. I don’t want to stop, I want smear his face into the ground, transform my anger into retribution. His body isn’t moving, and the places I am striking aren’t solid anymore. My nightmare face is awash in a veil of red, a mask of dripping scarlet, hiding my features from the world but showing my true face all the same.

“That’s enough! Stop!” The words echo in my mind, and I can’t tell if I spoke those words, or someone else did. Everything is jumbled in my mind for a moment. The sun is out in full force now, hurling its heat on the back of my neck. As I look up I see a glimmering object coming at me, a shining weapon blinding me with its light. Only as it reaches my skull do I realize it is a metal baseball bat. I feel a moment of agony and a sickening noise as my face crumples and my neck snaps in half a second, rending my soul from its body. There is nothing but blackness, deep and cold. There is no more emotion, and no more pain.

I snap out of it, looking around the fire-lit room that brought my hateful memories back. I feel hollow, dead inside, my soul eaten away by my acidic past. Was that who I really was?

There is another figure leaning over the now completely dead woman by the fireplace, but it is only a smudge of darkness against the fire. The man sits staring at this invisible scene, not seeing anything that is happening, just the woman that he killed. Flickering light is still shooting sparks from his eyes as he glares at the fire and his victim, unseeing. The figure leaning over the woman snaps its (head?) around to stare at me, but I catch only a glimpse of its disturbingly human features before the world dissolves around me.

I have been transported to a room, an ordinary office without windows, grimly clutching my scythe as if it is the only anchor of my sanity. At the moment, it is. For a second, the office seems different, as if there was something more behind the featureless walls, but now there is nothing out of the ordinary. A man sits at a desk, glaring at me over his spectacles. The strange, source-less light illuminates the hard scowl on his face. He seems to have a nervous tic, or something like it. His face moves of its own accord. He begins to speak.

“You’re a rebellious one. I can’t particularly recall your exact name, but I believe they called you Gargoyle when you were alive? That will suffice.” He smiles slightly, as if enjoying a not-so-private joke. I hate him immediately, for that display of contempt alone. “Gargoyle, I am the Overseer. I am in charge of ones such as yourself, Harbingers of the dead, but you already know what you are. You just saw one of your fellow employees finishing the job you decided not to complete. The mortals running around down there, they think of the lot of you as a single entity, called many things like Grim Reaper, or Charon, the Ferryman of Styx, foolish nonsense like that.” He laughs a choking, almost humorous laugh. There is a strange tone to his voice, a quality that isn’t normal. The timbre is off; it has a strange grinding quality to it, as if he has too many teeth that move against each other as he speaks. For just a second, his eyes change and become pits of blackness, but then they are back to being blue. The room seems to move again. There is something behind those shifting, unstable walls.

Even special cases like yours are no exception to the rules. If you kill, you must atone by serving as a Harbinger. Only you can decide whether you were justified in your actions, but it does not matter either way. Were the deformities and handicaps you were born with reason for you to take one’s life?” He sees my try to interject, but continues. “Yes, you were physically deformed and unable to speak since birth. Can you remember a time when you could look into a mirror without cringing, or when you could transform the thoughts in your mind to words in the air?” No, I can’t remember. I try to talk again but find I can't. My throat is choked with what feels like sawdust, and it won’t work properly. Maybe it never did.

“Just shake your head yes or no.” He demonstrates as he says this, and his face slips slightly off for a second, revealing a flash of something a dark, primordial green, a color that brings to mind ancient things, and prehistoric swamps. I shudder at the sight, and numbly shake my head in a negative answer to his question.

"You were the catalyst of all the problems, though. Every time your stepfather looked at you, he hated both of you. Your mother did trick him, to an extent. He didn’t know about you until after they were married. She kept you from the world until you killed your stepfather. He hated himself for allowing himself to be tricked, he hated you, and most of all he hated her for bringing it all onto him. If you hadn't been born, he might not have been so violent; in fact he might have even been a loving husband. You were a curse on their lives, but it wasn’t your fault for existing, was it?” Those thin, humorless lips curl in expression of cold, ironic amusement.

He is trying to make his voice sympathetic, but his face is not complying. He is only giving the imitation of sympathy, and a poor one at that. This man is not human; it is an important fact to remember. Whatever he is, I am certain that he is dangerous. Not in a physical way, but in a psychological sense. I can sense him trying to twist my perception, to make me view everything the way he wants me to view it. It is all I can do to defy the words he spews like so much drivel.

“So tell me, Gargoyle. You were a brutal, twisted giant with incredible strength, far more powerful than any of your victims. Were you justified in your murderous ways? Did those children deserve to die for being ignorant brats?” I feel something strange within me, as I struggle to figure out an answer. He leans closer, his mask of a face enlarged tenfold in my vision. He seems to hiss his next words. “Did your stepfather deserve to die?” Had I killed a demon, or just a pathetic human? Had I truly been the cause of my mother’s pain? He’s twisting my consciousness, I can’t think right. Everything I held onto in life and death is caving in upon itself as I try to rationalize my actions, try to bring everything into focus and dispel the distortion his words create. The memories are rushing in now, almost overwhelming me, drowning me in a sea of my own life and filling in the unknown gaps.

The thing in human guise at the desk is speaking again, bringing me back to the present. “You were finally killed when a panicked older kid crushed your skull with a baseball bat.” He smiles coldly at me, displaying far too many teeth. “That kid was given a medal, did you know? He was treated as a hero for slaying the demon.” The Overseer grins again, and one of his sharp teeth cuts his lip. He doesn’t appear to notice as blood runs down his chin, as he continues in a mechanical, lilting voice. “Were you really just misunderstood? Decide Gargoyle. Decide who you are. The sooner you do, the sooner you will realize that you are a Harbinger, whether you like it or not.” He pauses, and stares into my (eyes?), penetrating every mental barrier I try to put up. He sees who I am so easily, why can’t I?

“Poor Gargoyle, never really understood by anyone. Even your mother never really loved you. She hated you after what you did. Your stepfather may have beaten her, but he was all she had. You took away every joy in her life, Gargoyle. You fit in much better here, as a Harbinger. Your work has been flawless until now.” For the past minute I had been frantically but vainly trying to speak, trying to work an unfamiliar, almost alien part of my own unknown face to combat his final deceit. It works, finally, and I speak for the first time, in either life or afterlife.

“Silence! You lie. Stop twisting my life, stop twisting me to your will. You know damn well that isn’t what happened.” My words aren’t garbled: they are clear and cold. The Overseer looks up, surprised and startled. I continue, hiding my own shock, and struggle to remember a certain part of my past. Everything is coming back, and I have little trouble remembering it now. “I remember everything now, and I remember what happened when I killed my stepfather.” I pause, carefully choosing my next words, not sure how to express what I want to say. For the first time I truly understand why the dead try vainly to shed their tears, to express their feelings even in their futile situation. “After my face was bandaged, after the mess was cleaned up, she came and held me, like I was just a normal child, even though I was much bigger than her. It didn’t matter what I was, what I looked like, it didn’t matter! She loved me despite all that; she loved me for who I was. She said that he was the monster, not I.” I glare defiantly at the pseudo-man, who is rapidly losing composure. “Your lies, your tricks won’t work on me anymore. You’re just trying to turn me back into a mindless Harbinger like all the rest.”

His human guise slides off with a slick, wet sound, and falls on the desk. I look at it in horror, and then at him. The blind, festering thing behind the desk howls, hundreds of teeth dully gleaming in the light. It sounds like rusty pieces of metal being rubbed together.

“You’re not supposed to be able to talk. You couldn’t talk in life, and no Harbinger is allowed to talk after death. Ironic, isn't it, that you were one of the few that couldn't speak in life, and now in the afterlife you are the only one of your kind that can speak?” His voice is once again chilled and composed, although his nightmare face doesn’t match that demeanor. “It would seem that if a Harbinger gains his or her memories back, that Harbinger gains the ability to speak as well. We will have to fix that little glitch with the bodies we issue to your kind when they die.” He continues, surrendering to his true nature, unable to contain his rage anymore.

“Things would have gone a lot better for you if you had just played along, freak-mortal!” His voice had been unmasked fully as well, and is now a harsh, unearthly sound, like decayed gears grinding in an organic factory.

“Who are you, really?”

“I am just who I say I am!” His words end with a bizarre, gleeful shriek. “I am the Overseer; I oversee the ones held back. I see that the Harbingers properly atone for their crimes before they move on. And you have not atoned!” His monstrous, bulbous face twists with the force of his words. Now the room has changed as well, the false surroundings are now revealed. The walls are roughly cut stone, oozing with a bilious substance. There is no ceiling; a whirling, chaotic cosmos of lights, sounds, and unworldly sights soar above. “Look around, Gargoyle! This is the afterlife you wanted!” The walls fall away as if they are nothing but stage props, and reveal the secret they had been keeping.

Beyond the raised room-turned-platform, on all sides is a labyrinth of cracked, ancient stone under the lunatic sky. Walls and open rooms stretch to the endless, insane horizons. The sky is a swirling mass of light and darkness, clashing and combining, contrasting and complementing, dancing to eternity in a void of nothingness. Demented, impossible shapes, fathomless, shattering concepts, all are clearly defined by that horrible cosmos. And between the walls of ebon and gray, lurking in the shadows, are the denizens of this realm that the Overseer calls the afterlife.

I glimpse sights only briefly revealed in a split second of clear, unhindered vision before I turn away in horror. I see grotesqueries that pulse, abominations that wriggle, and incomprehensible creatures, things, that sound their incomprehensible cries to the dancing of the sky in an unearthly, mad display of hideous beauty and melodic cacophony. In revulsion I turn back toward the only slightly less repulsive creature sitting across from me. In a pleading, hopeless voice, I speak to it.

“I want to go towards the light that I lead the others to. The portals I create don’t lead here. You lie again, this isn’t the afterlife.” I hesitate, and then go on as I have an epiphany, my voice hardening. “I can guide myself toward the light, I don’t need you or anyone else. I couldn’t before, but you can’t control me any more. I know who I am, and it isn’t who you want me to be. That knowledge, that individuality, will keep you from enslaving me like all the rest.” I chuckle quietly, something I have never been able to do. It feels oddly satisfying; to patronize and demean this thing that styles itself a god. “You gave us Harbingers everything we need to move on.” The bulbous green thing, multiple mouths filled with hundreds of razor teeth gnashing in fury, screeches at me in desperation. He can’t do anything to stop me, and he knows it.

“You cannot! I forbid it, and I condemn you…” The blade of my scythe does not gleam in the light of the terrible room and soaring entropy as I gaze at its blade, but that doesn't matter now. I focus my will into activating the ability of the scythe and cut a hole in reality, a portal to the light. As the creature behind the desk howls his unearthly howl, and gibbers his false declarations, I bring the blade up, and then thrust it into my own heart, freeing my soul from its dead husk of a body. As my spirit soars above, I do not look down at the corpse that is mine, but also isn't mine. I was issued a uniform body to complete my work in; a body that my fettered mind could not comprehend as its own. My real corpse is festering in the mortal world, obscene features gradually obliterated by time immortal.

The creature grasps the air with its talons, and tries fruitlessly to grab the intangible spirit that I now am in an attempt to stop me from escaping. I float through the portal toward that immaculate light, its glow shedding me of my memories and crimes, washing me clean. Salvation waits. Reaching out, I bathe in it, immerse myself in it, become one with it as finally I attain my goal. Then it is gone, leaving me in solid, opaque darkness.

Stasis. That’s the best way to describe the state I am in now. I am nothing yet, a sightless and formless being enclosed in organic darkness, nurturing and pulsing. I am not afraid, because I know. The Overseer is nothing but a false god, harvesting and enslaving the souls of killers, in that ancient, timeless realm. The rest, the fortunate ones, get recycled back to the only world they know and will ever know, and the Harbingers keep the cycle going for eternity. I know now what that light is, what I searched for through life and death: a second chance. What lay beyond my portal was the light of birth, not death. I am Gargoyle no longer; I have been cleansed of that identity, that life. My memories are fading, and I will build new memories in my life to come. Soon, there will be light again, the light of a new world to embrace my new form, a world that I have yet to be born into.