Gargoyle

GARGOYLE

He was fast asleep when the stiff, hard silence of New York City managed to rouse him. It was a palpable thing. The noise of the city was, simply, gone. The hush of the late night traffic, the random voices, the sirens of the city’s screams? Dead.
     Raymond Bell was born and raised on the isle of Manhattan, his parents were first-gen Americans, their parents off the boat from Ireland, the Bell and MacGillicutty clans were names that went back into the soil upon which the megaliths of Manhattan Island were built. He was of the city, so, when he woke, he knew the air was wrong. His clock radio was dark, its familiar red glow gone from his usual waking-in-the-middle-of-the-night sort of episode. His apartment was black. The constant wattage of the sparkling buildings that looked so beautiful from the Brooklyn shore, that filled the streets like dusklight through until dawn, that illuminated his apartment on the most moonless of nights was gone too. This was pitch black, like his visits to the country, where it was so very dark at night.
     He leaned over his half-full double bed to grab his cigarettes. He lit up, went to the window, his dork hanging in full view of the black world. He made okay money as a bartender, but he’d stolen this apartment.
     Not a single light was on -- not a streetlamp, not the Empire State Building, not a God damned thing.
     The first thing he heard was laughter. A throaty, large snicker, not like something funny. . .at all. Like a reptile, more, some thing. And it was close. Raymond backed away from his window. It would slide open from right to left. He heard a scuttling noise from what could have only been at his back on the outside wall of his building, a scrapey graspy noise that brought the image of the building’s surface crumbling under the mighty claw of some gargoyle that unloosed itself from the rooftop, that made its way to his apartment to kill him, and to eat him.
     “What the fuck. . . .“ His heart pounded in his chest. It was deep into August, and the air was hot like mid-day, but either sun or moon would be consumed by the thick, bruise-colored clouds that now haunted the New York Skyline. The buildings were like shadows. The noise came again, Raymond was certain he was correct in his assumption. In a moment, the window would shatter and some lumbering thing would enter his life and then take that from him. It would nestle its snout in his abdomen while it fed, and he would be alive because this thing would have killed a thousand times before Raymond Bell.
     A scrape against the window pane, a skreeing noise that was like diamonds in glass. Again, scratching some strange symbol into the inch thick panel with a hooked talon that was four inches long. . . .
     Raymond cursed his imagination. He’d always been like that. His mind ran right to the thing under his bed. He never raised a question, he was certain the dark hid some secret world of terror and, now, tonight, that world’s emissary was coming to feed from the converted.
     His window was cut, and a wider pane of glass then he imagined fell forward onto the ground. He saw the claws fold over the edge of his windowsill, large, gecko-like pads at the tips, huge, hooked nails, like a panther’s paw, and then its head, a dragon’s head, a neck that rippled with muscle, like one of those horrible chicken-eaters from the Komodo Islands, a long, angular head with a lower jaw that extended just to the snout, large, black eyes to the sides of that snout, a brow that was like the bony helmet of some creature long forgotten, and the jagged fishhooks of its teeth that lined the split of the dragon’s powerful mouth. With the knee-jerk strike of a snake, the head turned toward Raymond and a forked tongue tasted his mortal sweat on the air.
     “Now you’re sorry,” spoke the dragon.
     Raymond pissed himself. He whimpered. He moved, slowly, toward the corner of his bedroom as the dragon pulled the rest of its muscular body into Raymond’s large one bedroom apartment. Upon its haunches, it had to look at him from the side.
     "Weren't expecting me? Why would you." Its body was frozen as it gazed upon mortal flesh.
     "What are you?" Raymond could not believe his question. It came on the thud of his heart. What. Are. You? It was a fair question, an honest question.
     "What I am to you is terror." It sidestepped toward Raymond, its powerful tail made a graceful S-shape across the ground. Raymond stepped backward. He stumbled and the dragon was upon him. Its powerful claws pushed his shoulders to the floor. Any more force, and the thing would have crushed the bones of Raymond's joints. It kept its head cocked to meet Raymond's wide-eyed gaze into the creature's own wide, black eyes. "What I am to you is death." It licked Raymond's face with its strange, wet tongue. . .like a connoisseur who breathes in the wine before it taints his palate, its breath hot like the swamp.
     "Don't kill me."
     "You're already dead." Its smile glistened, its teeth a hundred daggers that would split and split Raymond's flesh. Its weight on his chest was unbearable. He could only exhale and hitch.
     It stood up. It picked Raymond up by his arm. It dragged him toward the window. It smashed the thick glass with its powerful forearm and dragged Raymond over the shards still caught in the frame. The glass dragged under Raymond's hip, splitting his skin to his bone. The dragon held Raymond, by one arm, from his seventeenth story window. When Raymond turned to look at the dragon, its snarl pulled back to something snide as it stared at him in that cocked, reptilian way. Then the dragon released Raymond Bell.
     Raymond's eyes locked on the window. His stomach shot into his chest, then into his throat, and he could not have screamed if he wanted to as the air pressure of his descent and the general sensations of shock overwhelmed him. His body began to pitch, and Raymond turned toward the ground. . .toward the black, black ground.
     As swiftly as Raymond was released, he was caught again. Swept up by his intruder on muscled arms. With power, the dragon pulled Raymond to its body and beat its leathery wings. Raymond was disoriented, and realized a street level scene was speeding by him as the creature sailed over the avenue about twenty feet off the ground. They were headed downtown, and the Upper East Side whizzed by in the shadows as they sped the wrong way down Third.
     The dragon cut into the sky, a shortcut over the rooftops toward Lexington. There was a fire atop one of the buildings. There were misshapen figures in the firelight, but Raymond could not discern more than that. Well, just their laughter as Raymond passed through the smoke of their camp.
     Like an aerial rendition of Kay Lawrence being carried into the Black Lagoon by The Creature, they arced into the darkened sky, back toward Lex. The creature did not pretend to land, but, rather, tucked itself into a ball and tumbled onto the street with Raymond tucked into its chest. It dropped him and stood over him. Lightning crackled behind the dragon, and Raymond stared, naked, dumbstricken, crumpled on the floor.
     "Look around," it commanded him.
     Raymond's eyes were better. He'd adjusted to the dark some. He gazed into the inky black. Dim, luminous shapes moved about back there on the sidewalk. Maybe one shape that moved in many places. Raymond could not see it, but he could see enough in their dark green hue. A cephalopoid mass, layers of flesh, perverse in their twists, undulating but to have no other purpose. It was a wet noise along with it, the sounds of flesh and a scent. . .a scent that was vaginal.
     "What is it?"
     "It's you."
     "What does that mean?"
     "You were await of horsemen. Your imagination was unequal to the truth. Welcome to the truth." The dragon smashed Raymond in the face with a balled fist. Raymond felt his teeth crack. He slumped to the ground. "Your kind will be hunted." The dragon shuffled backward.
     The wet sound continued. It was slow, but Raymond knew it was coming toward him. He glanced in its direction. He was right. The mass twisted its shapes over the curb. It rolled, it seemed. A wave of flesh pushed forward then over the top, like a mudslide, sloped to the ground and it moved again. It covered a good distance with its sublime effort. Raymond got to his knees. The ruined flesh of his hip would prevent any of his desired sudden movements.
     "What did I do to deserve this?"
     He did not expect an answer. His S's were soft through his broken teeth. He strained to one foot. He tried to back away from the wet, horrible mass. He was locked out of his apartment, naked as the day he was born. And the world was dead.