Message-ID: <43593asstr$1059279003@assm.asstr-mirror.org> Return-Path: X-Original-Message-ID: <20030727023648.29639.qmail@web12205.mail.yahoo.com> From: Alexis Siefert MIME-Version: 1.0 X-ASSTR-Original-Date: Sat, 26 Jul 2003 19:36:48 -0700 (PDT) Subject: {ASSM} Lives Alone of Stone {MF} (Alexis S) Date: Sun, 27 Jul 2003 00:10:03 -0400 Path: assm.asstr-mirror.org!not-for-mail Approved: Newsgroups: alt.sex.stories.moderated,alt.sex.stories Followup-To: alt.sex.stories.d X-Archived-At: X-Moderator-Contact: ASSTR ASSM moderation X-Story-Submission: X-Moderator-ID: dennyw, hecate Lives Alone of Stone (MF) By Alexis Siefert (c) 2003 ealexissiefert@yahoo.com We've all had that feeling of danger. You wake up from a dead sleep with your heart pounding. But there's nothing there. Or was there? We are alone, ultimately, but there is someone out there. Watching. ~~~~~~~ I watched her as she entered the cathedral. She moved like the water under a bridge, with purpose but easily. My eyes followed her as she slipped into the protective shadows of the Saints, and my gaze fell upon her breast as she wiped away the droplets of glistening sweat from the hollow of her collar. I knew that my companion watchers saw her, but I could feel them dismiss her as she moved on. She fell short of their desires. She didn't meet their expectations, and she wasn't worthy of a second glance. But I saw something different. We are the gargoyles. They laugh at us now. We've been here since before their grandfather's grandfather. We've watched over them as children, running in the summer grass. In the spring, we've watched over them as friends throw rice to bless their marriage. We've smiled with them as they christen their children. We've guarded them in their grief as they say goodbye to loved ones. We've protected their sanctuary. We've kept away the evil doers who would violate the place they hold dear. But they do not love us for it. Generations ago their ancestors created us. They needed us. They knew that this building they were erecting would become a symbol of refuge and safety. They knew that it would also become a target for those who carry darkness in their hearts. So we were made. We were carved from the stone to last forever. We were given faces to frighten even the most evil wrongdoers. And for generations we were admired. People looked up to us for comfort. They knew that we were there to protect their wives and their children and their spouses. But then they stopped believing. The world around us became dark. No longer could we protect the people from evildoers. Evil no longer took its home in the hearts of men. It made its home in man's fingers and arms and hands. Evil took refuge in mankind's eyes and their teeth. Now that the wives and husbands and mothers could see evil, they stopped believing. They saw that evil was human, not spiritual. They saw the pain that humankind caused, and they thought that they were seeing evil. But they were wrong. They saw only the reflection of evil. What they were seeing was no more the true essence of evil than the reflection of a tree in a passing creek is the true essence of a tree. But since it comforted them, they choose to believe that they could see and touch and feel and control the bad things in the world. And then they stopped needing us. That's when they started laughing. They still come to Sunday morning mass. They pass under our watchful eyes and light their candles and pray their prayers and sing their songs. They think that they're safe again because they've locked their doors and barred their windows, and that will protect them from the evil they know. Their children look up at the clouds and see our monstrous faces and they laugh. They think that we're the evil ones. They think that we're the ones that they're supposed to fear. And since they don't fear us, they feel invincible. When they started to laugh, we began to lose our purpose. And a gargoyle without purpose is nothing more than a block of stone. So we found a purpose. Yes, we have conscious thought and intelligence, and we feel the need to find reason in our existence. We are not human, but being created by men for an enlightened reason, we were endowed with certain aspects of humanity. Through their loving touch, through the caress of chisel on stone and the loving stroke of finishing cloth on rough edges the need for affection and love was breathed into us. It became part of our essence. Perhaps that is why, under the laughter and scorn, we could hear the uncomfortable edge of uncertainty in the belittling jeers. Mankind knew that they created us, then abandoned us and left us to the cruel elements. Many of my companions turned hard and unyielding. They took comfort in their stone encasements and ignored the warmth inside that fought to escape. They could look upon the pain in the world and laugh. They considered it just retribution, an earned punishment for the people who could so carelessly fling aside that which they brought into this world. As they looked upon the dark acts played by man against man, by woman against child, and by child against animal, they laughed. But the others cried. We saw mankind as they truly are. Lost and lonely. Sad and unconnected. Where once men and women and children came together for safety and companionship, now they build walls around their souls and fortified their battlements with barbed tongues and sharp eyes. They allowed themselves to grow cold-not only to the inanimate stone surrounding them, but also to the people who could have enriched their lives. People live their lives like leaves in a galestorm. They flutter about, sure of their purpose and intent upon their destination, but they care nothing and notice nothing of those whom they brush against. No longer do they see the lonely eyes of the waif on the corner. No longer do they see the pain of the drunk in the alley. No more do they feel the cold of the forgotten ones. We discovered that we could separate. Separate from our stone bodies and our fixed positions high above the dirt and grime of the city below. Late at night, when clouds cover the moon and the shadows fall short on the pavement, when the cold wind blows and the few lost souls still wandering the street shiver and draw deeper into their chins and collars. It's not hard. It's painful at first-pulling away from the security of the stone fortress that is the cathedral. That became our purpose. We became not the hated and feared monsters, but the warm and comforting arms around the lost souls. Most couldn't see us. Most choose not to see the warmth that is surrounding them, especially when it is in a guise that is unreal and frightening. We were their dreams or their visions or their nightmares. We were the unseen hands guiding them away from the busy intersection or pushing them away from the predator in the shadowed corner. And that was enough. For most of us. For a while. We became the guardian angels. People were so willing to believe in angels. They feared us, so they choose not to believe in us, hoping to kill what frightened them. But in some ethereal, light and joyous vision of wings and halos, they were comforted. So they choose to make us their angels. Our good works, our loving touch, our unseen support was credited to the truly uncaring 'angels.' Mankind refused to believe that the angels of which they spoke could not care an iota less for their insignificant lives. Mankind was mere amusement for the heavenly hosts. They were pets. Lower than pets. Ants in a Plexiglas box. Fascinating to watch as they went about their insignificant lives almost as though they had purpose, but not worth second thought as they burned to charred remains under the magnifying glass held in a thoughtless playground game. No, the angels weren't mankind's protectors. We were. Mankind created us; then they attempted to make us less real. But it doesn't work like that. One would think that we would be too frightening to be seen by humans. But over the centuries I've discovered one certain thing about the human mind. It has unlimited power to create and redefine. When we allow ourselves to be seen, people don't see us as the fearsome creatures with gnarled faces and steel-cold wings and talons. We're not seen as monstrous beings of stone. The human mind protects itself. If they see us at all, they see strangers. Cold and fearsome, perhaps, but human. But usually they don't see us. They might glimpse from the corner of their vision a shadow on the wall, a spectral image quickly dismissed by their rational mind. So we travel amongst them. Observing. Listening. Following. Protecting. Occasionally we force ourselves into their vision. We spread our wings and rise to our full height. We turn their eyes towards us with the strength of our silent voices, heard deep in their souls. But only when we must. Only for those who are truly beyond salvation. For the unforgivable evil ones who travel amongst people, disguised as human. For the destroyers of innocence. Those who prey upon the good and delicate that resides in all people. There are those amongst you. Do not doubt it. There are those people born with such darkness in their soul that goodness and light becomes physically painful. There are those who are truly evil. Blights upon the world. When we find them, we destroy them. They gaze upon us and know that there is something more powerful than the hate that fuels their existence. And that knowledge destroys their mind. You've seen our work. You've seen them gibbering to themselves as they attempt to quiet their frightened souls with drink and drugs. They don't last long. The 'lucky' ones find their way to asylums, where they live the remainder of their lives in a haze of delirium and diagnoses of paranoid delusions. The unlucky ones live the remainder of their pitiful lives shunned and abandoned. They deserve no better. * I saw her first during the heat of summer. An early August evening, and the city was bound by the inhuman heat of the sun on sidewalk. Waves shimmered off of the pavement like ripples in the sand. She, like so many others, sought refuge from the blistering sun in the relative cool of the cathedral's pews. She walked like so many around her. Tucked in to her own being. Surrounded by people, yet cut off by choice. It was as though I could see the barrier she'd built, invisible to human eyes, but obvious to the human spirit. So many people walked as she did. They were one within a throng of bodies. Shoulder to shoulder with the people of the city. All but touching one another. But so apart. The walls they build around their souls are palpable to the world. They are felt by anyone who comes close enough to feel the heat of the other's body. Then, confused, they refuse to understand why they are alone and lonely. I watched her move. She slid through the church doorway like a snake through desert sand. Finding the path of least resistance through the worshipers. She moved with purpose and with a quiet ignorance. As though those around her were mere shadows. She knelt, crossed her breast and shoulders and moved to light a candle. Her lips moved in prayer as the flame touched wick, sparked and crackled. I let myself drift closer until I could hear her whispered plea. As her flame touched each candle, her lips moved. "Gabriel, hear me. Take my prayer." Interesting. A prayer to Gabriel. To the patron saint of messengers. Another candle, another payer. "St. Francis de Sales, hear my prayer. Open my ears, bless my hands." Ah, of course. Her walls were not all self-imposed. She was deaf. Her world was silent not by choice, but by design. Another candle. A whispered prayer to Valentine and Jude. To lovers and desperate causes. The saints don't listen. They don't exist. But we do. * I followed her home that night. Through crowded streets and murky pathways through the park. She moved as one possessed with the knowledge that she is invisible to those around her. So many invisible people in this city! My stone heart aches to see them, alone by their own design. With my knowing eyes, I can see their souls crying out silently, "See me! Notice me!" But they move on alone. They fold their arms around their shoulders and hug themselves as protection. Even in the warmth of the summer sun they act as though they're freezing. I can see that the city has turned them cold from the inside outside. Upside down. Watching her, I realize something about these invisible people. They think, they believe that they're at peace with themselves. They've tricked their beings into believing that what they crave is the safety of solitude. Words come to me. Words overheard, spoken by the philosophy students passing from the afternoon coffeehouse to evening pub. "He makes a solitude, and calls it-peace!" This is what Byron meant. And I felt something else. A stirring in my stone cold center. A longing for something I'm yet to find a name for. I watched her back as she stepped lightly over the muddy puddles left by children playing in the illicitly opened fireplug. The way her hips moved beneath the thin cotton of her summer dress. There was a tug where my heart should be at the flash of pale skin as the hem of her skirt flipped up when she stepped from the curb to the concrete step of the brownstone house with the heavy wooden door. The curve of her forearm, melding delicately into the bird-like bones of her wrist as she pushed key into lock drew me up the steps behind her. I didn't know if she'd notice me or not. Most people don't. Most people know that we can't exist, therefore their minds dismiss us as imaginary. She was no different. I slipped in easily before she thought to turn and pull the door tightly closed. She went through the minutiae of life, which allowed me to watch her movements. Checking the mailbox, sifting through the circulars and "to occupant" envelops, tucking the few bills into her handbag and tossing the rest neatly into the foyer trash can before mounting the stairs. No doorman at her building. No security beyond the heavy double-bolt door facing the street. No elevator either. A long walk up in this heat to her fourth floor apartment. She walked quickly. No pausing at the landings. No stopping to catch her breath between floors. Keys out and ready. A woman trained for life in the city. No fumbling at the door, giving the thug down the hall a chance to attack. Keys out, key in the lock, turn, open, in, close, and lock. She was faster here than at the outside door. Interesting. I stood for a moment outside her apartment, imagining her inside. I could so easily move into her space. I could without effort find her bedroom window and watch her as she undressed. I realized that I longed to see her naked form as she slipped between her cool bed sheets. I imagined her frustrated body, craving the touch of a loving partner, finding brief release and solace instead in the knowing touch of her own fingers. I left her that night. But I knew I'd return. But there was something I didn't know. As I was watching her, they were watching me. * She came back to the church. They always come back to light their candles and say their prayers. I followed her, this night bird. She drew me. Something alone in her soul called to me. I could hear her coming. Her footsteps were as loud and distinct as the distant jackhammers of the street workers. Always at night she came. After work, perhaps. Always coming from somewhere. It told in her gait, in the set of her shoulders against the world. For weeks I watched, silently, from my perch above the entrance. And for weeks I followed her home, stopping only outside of her door, listening with my unnatural ears as she moved about her apartment. I imagined her living her life like those others I've seen. Moving from room to room. From living room to kitchen, pouring a drink from a vaguely marked bottle. Turning on the radio-no-not this one. No music for her deaf ears. Perhaps the television for companionship. The moving electronic lights casting their artificial images upon the walls. Dropping clothes to the floor as she moves from the kitchen to the bedroom. Stripping away the dirt and the grime collected simply by walking through the streets and the gray air of the city. Exposing bits of skin to the empty room as she drifts through her space. I could see the line of her shoulder, the dip of her waist, the curve of her thigh as she glides, naked, from bedroom to bathroom and steps into the steamy cover of a lateevening shower. But I saw this only in my imagination and all in an instant as I stood invisible outside her apartment door and listened to her body float quietly inside. It would have been an easy thing to find her apartment from outside. To watch through the clear pane glass of the window. Denizens of the city grow careless. Even as they double- and triple-lock their doors, they forget to draw their curtains. Fourth floor, twelfth floor, anything above the street and they feel safe from prying eyes. But they forget that there are eyes everywhere. Human and inhuman. There are creatures of the night who watch and wait. Lying in the shadows, preparing to strike. I see them. I was created to see them and to thwart them. When children thrash beneath their bedcovers and call to their mothers in fear; when women wake with a frightened cry upon their lips; when men sit up in bed, hearts pounding and pulse racing; those dreams come not from the subconscious. Those dreams are not byproducts of a bad dinner or a bad meeting or late night television. Those dreams are real. Those dreams are the creatures that inhabit the darkness. They come to the bedrooms through open curtains and opened closet doors. Human beings wake in time to survive. The night-beings are afraid. They approach only when their intended is asleep and vulnerable. When their victims have open minds and open hearts. But when they awake, the beings scuttle off, back into the shadows to lurk. They come to steal the breath, to inhale the life force of the weak ones. They thrive on the stolen essence of being. Cats, rats, mice, snakes. Those are the lowliest of the night creatures. Those are the ones that men know and that men suspect. There are others. There are those that have become the stuff of movies and of stories. Dark, slithering creatures in the floorboards and under the beds. Scritching creatures in attics and closets. Lurking eyes and glistening claws that reflect in the moonlit corners of darkened rooms. And if the pounding heart and beating pulse and stifled cry and thrashed bedcovers fail to wake the victims? What then? Then they fail to ever wake again. So we, the gargoyles, roam the darkness. We breathe our stone-cold breath through the same open curtains. We knock our hardened wings against rattling windowpanes, and we scream our silent cries into the sleeping ears of the intended victims. When we are not too late, we help to vanquish the embodiments of evil that inhabit the homes and bedrooms of the innocent. But when we are too late? Then we return to the church. We slink back through the streets and the shadows that are our homes as well. We crawl to our perches and resume our watch and feel the sinking stones in our artificial souls that tell us we have, again, failed. And we wait to stand guard over the processions as the living say their farewells to those passed. So I didn't find her window. I stood there like the solid creature I am and listened to her breath. I listened to her slide between her indulgent silk sheets and sigh deeply at the welcoming warmth of her bed. I listened to her curl her arms around her pillow and draw it between her knees for comfort. I stood outside her home and knew her in her bedroom. I knew, without seeing, that as she curled around her pillow, she curled her body around her hand between her thighs and she stroked the softness there. I could hear her fingers draw along the moisture, parting her lips, caressing softly. I imagined what I had watched, eons ago, of women and men. I stood, gargoyle-still, against her door and listened to her thumb scrape along the hardening nub above her parted cleft. I knew the change of pressure, the more insistent stroking, circling, hardness of her fingertips dipping, thrusting, stroking the soft inside of her sex. Her breathing changed, hardened. Peaked. And fell, satisfied, into the even rhythm of sleep. And I moved to leave. * I slid through the shadows of her building, safe from view in the blurring darkness that covers us. I wasn't invisible, but I wasn't visible either. Humans have to want to see us, or we have to want to see them. But they can see us. They know that we're locked in the eternal battle over territory. They who feast upon the goodness in the souls of man, and woman. I knew it was there. I felt it watch me as I left her building. I could feel its green glowing eyes hit me between my wings, high on my back. I kept walking. If I turned now I would succeed only in moving it away. If I waited, waited until it was stalking its victim, I could send it scurrying away for the rest of the night. Perhaps longer. It was a fine line we walked. So I moved away, in the direction of my church. They are evil, and they are stupid. No sooner had I turned the corner than he was scuttling off, up the building. I could hear sharp claws scritch on the stone walls of the building. His breathing was wet, sloppy, and lecherous in its desire. I turned, silent in the night, and watched. I saw the amorphous shadow slither through the infinitesimal cracks between her cross-barred window and its frame. And I knew where it was going. It had seen me, and it was going to Her. It was a blink, less than that moment between awake and sleep, that it took me to be at her window. But it was enough. Long enough for it to be on her. On silent feet, almost-cat-paw feet, it had crawled to her bed, and in her dreaming sleep she had rolled to her back, exposing perfect breasts to the being's leering gaze. I watched, helpless, as It nosed aside the deep 'v' of her gown to bare her pink nipple to the cold air. It reached, one claw extended, to scrape across that nub, the button hardening in the cool air of the room. I did what I do. Wings of stone unfurled as though they were mere silk to beat against the night air. Cold granite feathers struck the windowpane, clinking against the cold steel of the security bars, rapping incessant to disturb her slumber. I threw my head back and wailed a gargoyle's cry, high pitched, anguish-filled. The call of the crow, the call of a thousand crows, directed to her ears, aimed to interrupt the dreams locking her in sleep. Then I realized. She didn't hear me. I couldn't wake her. I beat my wings in frustration and I felt stone from the wall crumble under the strikes. She didn't hear me, but It did. And It knew. It knew that I couldn't interrupt the nighttime ravaging of my night bird. Shadow took form and light from the moon glinted off the new fang as it lowered to taste her flesh. My hands balled into fists, and before I could think I struck the delicate pane, shattering it easily. She couldn't hear the jagged crack of the glass as it shattered, but she could feel the shards as they struck her skin, flung the length of the room from window to bed. She started, her eyes flying open, bright and frightened in the pale light of the moon. It sprung into the darkness. Off of her bed, away from her goodness. Hissing in frustration and anger, glaring at me with iced-whiskey eyes. I had broken a rule. I flew. As much as I desired her, seeing me would bring her only pain fear and loathing. I knew she watched, and I knew she saw something, but I didn't know how her mind would choose to interpret what she saw. A bird, perhaps. A shadow cast by a cloud across the moon. But somewhere, in her heart, she'd know. She bore the marks. Before I flew I saw the thin line drawn over the swell of her breast. The scrape left by the wicked fang of the night being. I knew it would fade quickly, and I knew that she'd feel it much longer. Forever perhaps. At night, when she was frightened, when she was hyperaware and afraid of something surrounding her, she'd feel it. It would burn lightly, a reminder of what she almost lost. I flew. Down the sidewalk, paying no attention to the shadows. Passing under the street lamps and hideous neon store signs with abandon. Back to my church. Back to my sanctuary. Back to my perch. * She came the next morning. To the church. Undoubtedly drawn there by a need to thank the non-existent saints in whom she placed her misguided faith. As she passed under my watchful gaze she stopped. Looked up. Met my unflinching gaze with hers. And she knew. Yes. Somehow. In some part of her. She knew. It was enough. * "It won't work." I was sitting atop my perch, scowling down in a vain attempt to decipher the illiterate graffiti sprayed in orange paint on the sidewalk below. The voice surprised me. "What?" We don't talk much. I haven't had a conversation in years, decades maybe. There are only so many things to be said, and then you're just rehashing old ground. "It won't work. I've seen you. You're still following her. You're attached to her. Nothing can happen. Let it go." I tried to deny it. I played dumb, but we both knew that he was right. It wasn't the first time that one of us had been drawn to a human. It doesn't happen often. Time moves too quickly for us. We see someone, we see them grow and age and the seasons pass in a night. "You have nothing to offer her. She has nothing to give you. You're drawn to her because she's lonely. But you're not. Not really. You just think you are. You think you should be. It will pass. Let her go. Stop following her before she sees you." He was right. I wasn't lonely. I wanted to be lonely, but I couldn't. There's nothing inside stone capable of feeling lonely. At least, that's what I could tell myself. For now. * __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! SiteBuilder - Free, easy-to-use web site design software http://sitebuilder.yahoo.com ------- ASSM Moderation System Notice-------- This post has been reformatted by the ASSM Moderation Team due to inadequate formatting. -- Pursuant to the Berne Convention, this work is copyright with all rights reserved by its author unless explicitly indicated. +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | alt.sex.stories.moderated ----- send stories to: | | FAQ: Moderator: | +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+ |Discuss this story and others in alt.sex.stories.d, look for subject {ASSD}| |Archive at Hosted by | +---------------------------------------------------------------------------+