It was a crisp autumn evening in Hartwick, one of those nights only the luckiest of people dress accordingly for. Johannes, the town’s prominent master sculptor, sat hunched over his workbench, staring at his reflection in the window painted with the dying embers of golden light, at his aching hands, then at the gargoyle patiently waiting to be finished, at the wall with the carcass of a dead fly, at his chisel and hammer, at his slightly shaking hands, and back at his reflection in the murky glass. “One more, just one more,” he whispered to the fading light.
Johannes moved around the workroom, lighting candles and oil lamps, then eventually settled down in the centre of the room where the magnificent man-sized gargoyle stood. Setting his glasses straight, the master scrutinised his creation with an exceptionally critical eye. The gargoyle had a classically handsome face, for a gargoyle, beautiful and sinister, with high cheekbones, hooded eyes, a slightly hooked nose, and a little smirk gracing his lips. Johannes was especially proud of the sharp, twisting horns and the little heart-shaped ears hidden behind them. The gargoyle’s body was equally perfect: heavy muscles and a towering height, framed by giant bat-like wings ending with extra-sharp claws. Perfection! Ten fingers, ten toes, twenty claws. Johannes couldn’t find a single flaw; it was the epitome of synergy between human and gargoyle beauty. True, it was a highly unorthodox design, breaking all the rigid aesthetic rules of the Gargoyle Sculptors’ Guild but fuck them. Well, to be fair, he did follow the no-exposing-private-parts rule and made the gargoyle somewhat delicate-looking, lace-trimmed knickers.
He sat down and started to polish his latest creation. “I’m so glad you’re the last one,” Johannes said, his voice warm with affection. “Gustav, mein Freund, you are-” he gasped, surprising himself mid-sentence, “Oh, my! Gustav! Yes, it suits you well, and I should name you. You know, I never named one of you big fellas, just the small ones.”
Gustav’s stone eyes seemed to gleam with a quiet understanding, or maybe with the fading light. One never knows with gargoyles.
“I still remember the first small one I made, Daisy, for Tessa, the florist girl,” Johannes paused and gave it some thought, “Well, the florist lady now. You’ll see her from your gate once we have you settled. She’s the one with the brightest smile and a kind word for everyone who comes to the market. Her gargoyle, that would be Daisy, is perched on a wall just above her stand, no bigger than a thumb, with little leaf-shaped ears. But she is a fierce one. Then there’s Cabbage, with wings that look... well, like cabbage leaves.” He chuckled. “Not one of my more original ideas, and, admittedly, he is a bit on the chubby side, but he does good work looking after Phillip the farmer. You’ll recognise him too. He always puts a couple of extra carrots and potatoes in the bag for those in need.”
Johannes wiped some dust off Gustav’s shoulders. “There are many of the small ones I left around the town to watch over the kind ones. But there are others too, the ones I made and gifted to my friends. Let’s see who you might meet. Oh, of course, Mrs Baker, who you would never guess, has a bakery. You can’t miss her, she’s a loud, somewhat rotund one with a heart of gold. I made Croquette for her, to watch over the ovens, making sure the bread crust is always extra crispy and the pastries extra flaky.” Johannes’s mind wandered off to his favourite strawberry and basil tarts.
Shaking his head of loose strawberry thoughts, he muttered, “Where was I? Right, right, Mrs Baker. Well, a short walk from the bakery is the town’s public library that Mr Brooks runs. Comely fellow, always meticulously dressed in a black three-piece suit and a tie, without the frillies, of course. He always takes time to teach anyone who wants to learn how to read and write. His gargoyle is a dapper little fiend who sports a monocle and a top hat, and makes sure there is no mischief in the library. I named him Wurm. You know, like a bookworm!” Johannes chuckled, “Again, maybe not the most original of puns. Let’s see… who else should I tell you about…”
As the night wore on, Johannes’s eyes grew heavy. He nodded off to sleep a few times between his recollections of many guardian gargoyles he had gifted to the townies. Eventually, he went to his bedroom above the workshop, and as he fell asleep, a smile stayed on his lips. He did good; Mama would be proud.
Shortly after the diabolical cuckoo from the Black Forest cuckoo clock announced to half the neighbourhood that midnight had passed, Gustav came to life with a deep sigh and itching ears. In a cosmic event of pure irony (also known as shit out of luck), the gargoyle’s first breath was its maker’s last.
The gargoyle was confused and disoriented, obviously. One moment he was an unmovable mass of cold stone contemplating what a tart might be, as there were conflicting definitions of it, and in the next moment, he was stretching his stiff muscles. Slowly making his way around the house, he found the lifeless Johannes, and a wave of sorrow washed over him. His maker, his mentor, was dead.
Faced with existential questions and a fair amount of dread, with a heavy heart and without any good ideas, Gustav did the only thing he could think of. The gargoyle braved the vast outdoors, armed with his wits, claws, and high hopes of finding his gate.
The rhythmic sound of distant horses’ hooves echoed in the silence of the eerily quiet town as the gargoyle roamed through the empty streets, peering at the stone houses with arched windows and sensual buttresses, slowly threading through the dim light of gas lanterns, shamelessly peeking through windows, and stepping into sticky water puddles. While Gustav frowned at a particularly unusual piece of headgear in the hat shop display, wondering how one could fit such things over horns and loving the giant pink bow, a man’s voice called out behind him, “Oi! You! Winged wanker!”
Gustav turned to spot what he assumed was a somewhat inebriated middle-aged gentleman in a white frilly shirt and a patterned waistcoat, swaying gently in the breeze.
“Ye! You…” the man pointed a finger at Gustav, hiccupped, and promptly fell backwards onto the cobblestone street, his finger now pointing to the stars for a spell before he (and the finger) slumped into unconsciousness. Gustav approached the snoring gentleman, looked around, gently shoved him with his foot, and with a deep sigh, concluded that he would need to figure a lot of shit out himself.
An irritated meow sounded from an alley to his right, and Gustav took it as a sign to improvise in the said direction. He carried the gentleman swayer into the alley and gently propped him against the wall. The respectful owner of the aforementioned meow, a sleek, inky black cat, stepped elegantly from the shadows, followed by her two smaller copies. She sniffed the drunkard, frowned, but ultimately decided that his silk-clad lap would suffice for a nap.
Gustav stood there with a big grin on his stony face, watching the cats purring in sync with their snoring human bed. He would have been purrfectly happy to spend the rest of the night there, but another irritated meow promptly dismissed him.
With great difficulty and a tiny speck of luck, the gargoyle found his gate, or what he assumed was his, given the distinct lack of gargoyle presence. The sun was rising over the quaint shingle rooftops, so the gate simply had to adapt to its new occupant, propriety be damned. Taking his post, Gustav took a regal pose (one he saw on a very imposing statue), extending his wings just enough for the extra-sharp claws to be fully visible, and tilting his head a bit upwards so he could better look down on the passers-by, and thus his silent vigil over the townies began.
As dawn broke, the town came alive, streets filling with cheerful chatter as townies opened their shops and went about their business. Gustav remained perched silently atop the Upper Town Gate. Though his stone form remained an imposing statue, his heart, imbued with the spirit of his late maker, pulsed with the desire to continue his maker’s work of guarding the kind ones. It was not as if he had anything better to do anyway, and he did like Johannes and was pretty sure he would love his wee cousins.
The news of Johannes’s death spread throughout the town. The master sculptor was praised for his exquisite creations by those who didn’t know him, and for his exquisite character by those who did. Gustav proudly listened to all of it, or at least, what he caught between his long naps.
As the suns and moons gently glided over the skies, and autumn surrendered to winter, which was obliterated by spring’s sudden arrival, the talk of Johannes shifted to the talk of his small gargoyles. As it was, those who had them, cherished them dearly, and those who didn’t, coveted them fiercely. Apparently, each gargoyle that Johannes had carefully crafted and placed in a loving home had a dash of magic, a fervent desire to better the lives of the ones they loved.
Around the time when winter became victorious again in the never-ending battle of seasons, the talk among the townies shifted once more. With each passer-by who mentioned Johannes and his gargoyles, Gustav’s heart cracked a bit, and then shuddered a bit more. The wee gargoyles were vanishing left and right. There was talk of them being stolen, kidnapped, or more accurately, gargoylenapped. There was talk of them being destroyed, smashed to bits and pieces by the heartless, well, cunts. Townies, at least those who could afford it (and some who couldn’t), hired armed guards and offered substantial rewards for the return of their stolen ones, while those had nothing of more worth than their gargoyles, came and shared their sorrow and bewilderment of such atrocities with Gustav.
On the anniversary of his maker’s death, as darkness and fog descended on the silent streets, Gustav leapt down from his perch, stretched his limbs, and cracked his neck. He fluffed his wings, wiggled his ears, and decided to put an end to these wicked deeds.
By his marble heart, he would handle this shit.
***
As Gustav spent another night prowling the streets for clues, he was thinking for the thousandth time that he truly did not have a handle on this shit. After months of searching, eavesdropping, and following every possible shady character he encountered, he still didn’t even know exactly how many of the small ones had vanished, who was stealing them, or why. Verily, he had ideas, but not even a clue as to where to go or whom to maim. He even considered talking with the respected owners of the missing gargoyles, but he was petrified; it’s one thing to care for the cute ones, but they would surely run screaming if he, in all of his menacing, muscular glory, approached them. The whole thing weighed heavily on his cracked heart, leaving it an aching cavern with randomly falling stalactites.
An irritated, yet familiar meow interrupted the gargoyle’s brooding roam. The elegant black feline, this time sans the young, was sitting in the middle of a shadow-filled alley, aptly illuminated by the spotlight of a gas lamp. When he met her yellow eyes, she let out another meow that, while it sounded just as any other irritated meow would, implied that he was a complete incompetent twat. He truly couldn’t find fault with that statement and shared the sentiment.
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As he neared the cat, the soft-pawed one pivoted, lifted her tail in a manner akin to saying, follow me, you loopy nincompoop, and proceeded down the alley. With the patience of a saint, so often found in felines, she guided him across town towards the dodgy part, of course. Each time he got distracted by a shop window or tried to take a shortcut in the direction he assumed they were going, she started yodelling her little derrière noir off.
Eventually, and with disapproving difficulty, she led him to the roof overlooking a not-so-well-hidden black market. With another rather pissed-off meow, she took her leave to leave Gustav to his stalking. Interrupting her diva exit, he whispered, “Thank you for your most generous help, fluffy one. I am truly in your debt,” and lowered his head into a little bow. The look she gave him might have been a slightly less irritated one, but that was probably his imagination.
***
After a few nights of what was surely a prime example of meticulous surveillance, Gustav got a decent grasp of the Hartwick’s underground dealings. All he knew about the world was from that one night he spent listening to Johannes’ tales and what he overheard the townies talking about. Apparently, there was a lot more going on than he thought. The sex thing he kept hearing about sounded especially intriguing. But back to the job at hand.
The not-so-well-hidden black market was a bustling hive of nocturnal activity, offering to any and all everything they could, and probably shouldn’t, desire, sometimes at a nice discount. Officially, there was only one way in and out of the market, which occupied the round square. Unofficially, all the houses protecting the market had a well-hidden back door. Just in case.
Gustav stayed on the rooftops, tiptoeing around the crooked chimneys, occasionally sending a well-meaning shingle to a less-than-lucky passer-by, watching the square and milling townies in the flickering gaslight. A chorus of sizzling oil, shouted bargains, and hissed threats wove a captivating laissez-faire symphony. It was a macabre version of the market near his gate. There, Phillip the farmer sold dusty potatoes, and here, Phillipa the fawn hawked cursed carrots. Same song, different tune.
Of the housed proprietors at the market, Mother Mayhem’s Meats and Deli, which offered homemade comfort food like satyr ham and cheese sandwiches or pickled butterfly rolls, drew the most crowds. All the food came with a complimentary Mother Says: Eat Your Vegetables Salad and Mother Says: Drink Your Cucumber Water. Only the exceptionally brave would visit the market without letting Mother Mary Mayhem feed them, and even then, only if they were rather suicidal that day.
The Drooling Doll, a few doors down from the Deli, lured the townies in with the rich smell of dark chocolate. Their Smiling Brownies were as dark and velvety as the night, and the Trippin’ Tarts shimmered in every colour the mind could imagine, and a few it probably shouldn’t. Most nights, a wizened saxophone player sat on the rail of the first-storey balcony, playing slow, smooth tunes for guests who danced the night away in molasses-coated moves.
Next to the Doll was the Stranger Teas shop, though its distinct spicy smell wafted in from twenty paces away. Some of the tea blends on offer could be consumed on site, like the ice-cold Not a Mother Material Tea, served in a tall red glass with a heart-shaped cherry floating on top, or the piping hot Deep Deconstipation Tea, ladled into a daintily decorated chamber pot-shaped mugs. Others, like Oleander Tea for Wandering Spouses, were to be taken elsewhere and, on the recommendation of Shi Yang, the proprietor, consumed by someone else entirely.
While the housed cafés and shops were a permanent part of the market, the stalls, carts, and wagons gathered in the centre were forever changing with the tides of supply and demand. Some peddlers came a few times a week, others a few times a month, and a few came only once or twice a year (or a century).
Gustav mostly focused his observations on the Bold & Beautiful Books, a vendor who offered rare manuscripts and novels from faraway places and smutty books by local authors, the Haunted Objects and Desires that sold antique jewellery and trinkets with a Cursed Certificate, and the Practical Portraits Society, which sold blank canvases that promised eternal youth. The portraits seemed especially suspicious.
Among all the oddities on offer, Gustav mostly got distracted by the artists. The old fellow who made delicate silhouette portraits with a curved razor, a wide-eyed young one who made daguerreotypes, and a purple-haired woman who made magical tattoos. The tattoos, frisky buggers that they were, always waved or winked at the gargoyle.
After carefully cataloguing the town’s nefarious ones, Gustav settled on the most promising lead: a dubious thief and art dealer called Finn, sometimes referred to as Finn the Shark. He didn’t exactly know what a shark was, or where to find one, but with renewed determination to put an end to this shit, he began to look for Finn’s base of operations. Each night, the grand gargoyle peeked through every lit window in the dodgy part of town, glimpsed behind every unlocked door along the alleyways, and sniffed around every uninhabited house. After nearly being caught multiple times, experiencing an unexpected shower of the old chicken stew variety, and getting his horns stuck in a door frame (twice), he adjusted his approach and focused on listening for incriminating whispers in the shadows.
***
Gustav’s perseverance eventually paid off, and he was closing in on Finn the Fiend, Fish, Shark, whatever. The first clue was a flickering light in a decrepit tavern in a poorly lit, acrid-smelling cul-de-sac. Going around the awfully crooked house and vaulting over the rusted fence landed him in a small, grimy backyard littered with cracked porcelain. Pointedly ignoring the shards in the hope he would not see a tiny gargoyle’s wings or a leg among the rubble, he crouched low in the shadows, listening for signs of movement. Alternating between listening, creeping, crawling and creepy-crawling around, he made his way to the cellar entrance. Peeking in through a murky window got him absolutely nothing, but rubbing the dirt off with his finger gave him a tiny peephole. Leaning in, he found them: a dozen of the stolen small ones imprisoned in metal cages, faintly stirring in the dim light. That was clue number two.
When he saw Finn the Twat take a small cage off a shelf, he swallowed a battle cry, kept his composure and whispered, “Cabbage! Oh my! They gargoylenapped you, mein Freund!”
The fleeting thought about him inheriting a love for the too obvious puns from his maker and mentor, just rounded the corner as Gustav got his shit tighter, and shifted for a better view of the table now topped with the chubby gargoyle being placed on a doily. A fucking doily! The atrocity! Gustav’s heart swelled with fury at the sight of the banana-sized gargoyle screaming at the sight of lace.
Just as he was preparing to break through the window and expel his wrath on Finn the Finished, he halted as he heard another voice approaching the table with a somewhat fuming Cabbage. The white lace truly didn’t bring out the calmer character aspects of the small one.
Despite Finn’s slight build, shaggy hair, and beady eyes that made him sport the image of an anorexic rat, his voice was sharp, and Gustav picked up on the cunning and condescending conversational tone. However, Gustav soon learned that the tone was amateurish once he heard how a professional sounded, and Finn’s audible attitude got quickly put in its place by the clattering, high-pitched tones of a posh-looking, rotund woman. It was no wonder Cabbage was steaming like a choo-choo machine when the pair were haggling over his worth, or his price, if you will. That was clue number three, and there was no time to waste.
Gustav readjusted his plan once more; it is most important to improvise and reassess actions according to the parameter changes of any given situation, or so he heard Mr Brooks once explain to one of his students, therefore, he decided on a more delicate, sneaky approach.
The cellar, which was about to have its first invasion experience, was a standard specimen of basement variety; two dirty windows flanked a dirty door that led into two connected rooms. The rooms were decorated in warm, dirty-earthy tones, with delicately decomposing details, which subtly (yet boldly) accentuated the unpolished vintage wooden furniture and other useless crap.
Following his revised plan, the gargoyle ever so gently opened the cellar door and sneaked in, taking great care not to make a sound while approaching the bickering duo. Cabbage noticed him first, and as the good boy that he was, kept quiet, and as a fierce gargoyle that he was, he discreetly shifted into a fighting stance, fists at the ready. The thief noticed the gargoyle’s slight movements, turned his head, his eyes widened, and as the thought to run almost assembled, Gustav knocked him out with a well-placed punch to the nose.
The posh lady’s scream would have shattered many of the gathered eardrums, if only they had not been made of fine stone, but alas, they were. Just as she gathered her voluminous silk dress skirt and tried to flee, Gustav and his vengeful ideas turned to face her. With a roll of his stone-cold eyes, the gargoyle extended his wing and perfectly positioned his extra-sharp claw so she could brush against it just right with her fleeing neck. Testing his flair for dramatic statements, he said, “Truly, there are far better ways to commit suicide.”
The lady looked at him with wide, rapidly blinking eyes, desperately gasping for breath, and valiantly trying to contain blood spraying from her ruptured carotid artery. The gargoyle found himself morbidly intrigued by her kneeling, gurgling form. What Gustav couldn’t see, though, was her mind frantically trying to figure out how such horrific horror could befall her most noble of personas.
A tiny burp snapped Gustav from the gore and the fast-forming puddle of noble blood, and as he turned around, he saw Cabbage gnawing on Finn’s leg. “Not so fast, hungry one. We still have things to do and questions to ask.”
Cabbage looked at him, spat out some flesh and blood, flew back on the table, dragged the doily to the rim, and sat down on it, motioning to Gustav with his arm, “He’s all yours, my Lord of the Stoned,” before crossing his arms firmly over his chest. Maybe the doily was working after all.
Gustav tied Finn to a chair, dropped on his unconscious form a bucket of piss he conveniently found in the far corner of the basement, and while Finn slowly blink-blink-blinked his way back into present contemplated the questions he should ask (and maybe a bit on what parts he should cut first). When Finn came to, Gustav, despite giving it much thought, simply asked, “Why?” The most boring of questions.
Finn’s wide smile at seeing the grand gargoyle revealed a couple of missing teeth. “Pebbles, why don’th you go fuck youvself.”
Gustav gave a heavy sigh, looked at the expectant Cabbage, switched the view down to his stiletto-style manicured claws, wiggled them, and disassembled Finn into pocket-sized Finns.
A couple of hours and a few small but exponentially growing heaps of Finn the Stake later, the puddle of piss and blood beneath him signified that the thief might have reconsidered his stance on participating in the quiz part of the evening.
Cabbage delicately pinched his nose and gave a dramatic gag, pointedly looking at Gustav. Gustav simply adored the fact that the wee one found torture unsettling, but had absolutely no scruples about chewing on the guy’s leg. The double standards were out of control these days.
“Well?” Gustav asked Finn the Filet.
The thief rolled his one still-working eye. “It’s just good business. The townies want the fucking gavgoyles, and will pay a fovtune for them.”
Gustav gave Finn a rather irritated look that the latter either ignored, or missed on account of the recently developed sight issues. “Don’th take it personally, Pebbles. Davling, look, we can make a deal, I can give you a cut. Let’s say five pevcent. That’s an awful lot of-”
The generous offer found itself dismissed with a curt “No,” gift-wrapped in impatience.
After another couple of hours of cutting, as Finn’s ear-piercing screams gradually transformed into silent ones, Gustav figured it was a good time to try the question thingy again.
Cabbage delicately pinched his nose and gave yet another dramatic gag.
Finn the Finished looked at the gargoyle, sweat and blood dripping down his forehead, eyes wide with dying terror. Apparently, all the condescension had leaked out with the blood and excrement, and slowly, wheezed out, “What do… you want… to know?”
Gustav kept glaring at Finn for a few minutes, not letting the crackling breathing sounds of the bleeding thief distract him while he sorted his priorities. “I want to know where and to whom every single gargoyle went. And then, if you’re still alive, I want to know who else was involved. After that, you are free to die.”
Finn, or more accurately, the one sentient pile of a multiple set of flesh piles formerly known as Finn, eventually gave his full and final confession to Gustav and Cabbage. Upon his sudden and unexpected passing, buckets of Finn got tossed unceremoniously into a nearby manure pit. The posh lady’s remains followed as well, scandalously, without a proper ceremony befitting her most noble of personas.
***
Gustav returned the gargoyles from the basement to their loved ones, getting an accidental crash course in breaking and entering in the process, which helped immensely in retrieving the ones that had already been sold. Incidentally, an unfortunate series of suicides by smashed heads and cut throats had befallen the town’s upper echelon. He got all the gargoyles back in the end, or at least the ones that hadn’t been destroyed (may they forever fly on the warm winds over the great stone arches).
Cabbage enthusiastically coordinated the retrieval between his work at the market and fancied himself Gustav’s right-hand gargoyle. Pleased with their success, he insisted on being addressed as General Cabbage, but that didn’t catch on among the gargoyle community. The bossy one also kept the doily, which started a fashion trend, and soon a specialised shop, Delightful Doilies for Exquisite Gargoyles, opened, boosting the town’s ever-accommodating commerce. Word spread among the small gargoyles that they now had a fierce protector who can handle shit.
In the following months, perched upon his gate, Gustav listened to the talk of the townsfolk about the miraculous return of the small ones and fast-spreading rumours that the theft or purchase of a stolen gargoyle came with a curse of imminent suicide. It was widely referred to as getting gargoyled.
The small ones took it upon themselves to visit Gustav and express their gratitude. Their visits transformed into regular and frequent occurrences, and lively chats about their daily lives and never-ending issues. They had quite a few, most of the heartache variety. When a small one named Sandy came to complain that her fiancé had a mistress, Gustav firmly declared, “Um, no. I can’t handle that shit,” despite Sandy’s insistence that he in fact can and should. But other than the occasional bruises on stone hearts, everything was peaceful on the gargoyle front, and Gustav was pleased with his new role, if a tad grumpy.
