My Microcosmos

The Stone Demon

⁎❈⁎

➺ Fantastic short-story of Gothic inspiration, story of a metamorphosis

⁎❈⁎

          It all began on August 25, 1886, in London.

The air was particularly heavy that evening and a storm was about to break out. I had opened all the windows to cool the interior of the house but there was no wind. Edmund, my husband, accompanied the man in a suit on the doorstep and joked with him. I came in his personal office to ventilate the room that smelled like cigar smoke. The evening had gone well and Edmund whistled happily as he undressed and put on a nightgown. His negotiation with the representative of the competing textile company was clearly a success.

I kiss him tenderly then turned off my oil lamp and tried to fall asleep despite the heavy heat in our room. I drowsed when suddenly, a noise resounded in the living room on the ground floor. I pulled the sheets up just below my chin and looked at Edmund in terror. He stood up silently and fetched the rifle hidden under a parquet floor slat then went down to the tiptoes. A leaden silence fell on the house, the minutes went slowly and tirelessly. I heard fighting noises and screams and then there was a gunshot. I rushed into the living room and saw Edmund lying in a pool of blood whereas his killer threw the gun on the ground and fled in the distance.

Three months passed and no one found my husband's killer. I gave up research and locked myself in my loneliness. Since I came from the upper middle class, I had never had to work to live and I spent my days in my sculptor's studio, but now this simple hobby had become obsessive. I slept during the day and worked at night, in the light of about ten oil lamps. I carved Edmund's murderer's face out of granite, driven by a desire for revenge and hoping that he would feel every chisel blow I inflicted on him.

But the more I cut, filed, sanded the sculpture, the less it looked like a criminal. Two horns adorned his forehead and his features were distorted by hatred and madness. His sharp claws were ready to tear everything within their reach and his sharp teeth seemed to glow in the light of the lamps. Two powerful wings were spread in his back, and the only beating of these was able to uproot trees. From the top of its nine feet, the gargoyle was terribly frightening.

However, what I feared and most wanted happened on December 2 of the same year. I heard that my front door was being broken down as I was polishing the horns of my finished statue. I knew the killer had returned, but I wasn't going to be killed as easily as Edmund. I turned off the lamps, grabbed my chisel and leaned against the stone torso of my sculpture. The man soon showed up. As I was about to avenge my husband, the sky was revealed and the white moonlight flooded into my art gallery. The murderer approached me with a shiny knife, but I could no longer get away from the statue. My skin fused with the stone and I was sucked into the monstrous gargoyle. I ended up being one with this one.

The man runs away with horror. I spread my powerful wings and flew away through the gallery's canopy. The icy night air gave me a new strength and I enjoyed this sudden power. My fine hearing allowed me to hear the regular breath of the Londoners who were sleeping peacefully. It was thanks to my sharp, nocturnal vision that I quickly found the murderer in an alley nearby. I carried him away with my claws and as he screamed in horror, I rose higher and higher in the sky and then headed for the Thames where I dropped him in the middle of the river. I landed on one of the two towers of Westminster Abbey, contemplating my reflection in one of the stained glass windows. The dawn finally rose and under the first rays of the sun, I became again the young widow, Jane Whiteson.

So I promised myself that order and justice would prevail. By day, I discreetly pursued the unpunished criminals in the form of Jane Whiteson and by night, I became a stone gargoyle and punished those murderers who populated London's dark alleys.

I had not become a monster, I had become "The Rock Demon" as the Londoners liked to call me.