This is the fourth chapter of Stheno, a five-part urban fantasy novella.
The previous chapters may be read here: (I) (II) (III)
The header image is by Kizuna-chan on DeviantArt.
Tig growled. Low and mean. In the hitherto quiet room it reverberated in Kylie’s stone ears like the beating of war drums. The doorknob turned slowly, tinking and janging in its frame, and she fought ever harder to move her mineralized muscles with each pert, metallic clink.
The lock clicked.
An icy spike of terror twisted in Kylie’s gut. Tig trotted closer to the door, and when he left Kylie’s fixed line of sight she felt helpless and alone as she never had before, even though he was still right at her side, his tail still brushing reassuringly against her leg.
She felt sick. Wanted to vomit. To wet herself. To tremble and quake until she vibrated apart at the seams. But her body was made of solid stone, and so she stood rigid, literally petrified, unable to act on her fear in any way.
The door began to creak slowly open. Kylie’s stone heart lurched, and Tig barked savagely. Lunging at the door only to reel himself back in and hem close to Kylie. Fighting the conflicting instincts to protect her and to engage the threat. His barking so frantic and ferocious that Kylie was certain her neighbors would start to wonder what the hell was going on.
The intruder suddenly pushed the door all the way open. It hit the wall with a loud bang, and then… nothing. For a moment, all was still as a painting. Tig snarled fiercely, still hemming close to Kylie’s motionless stone body. She could feel his fur bristling against her legs. Ready to die for her in an instant. From behind her, she heard a clipped, contemptuous chuff of laughter. The intruder had scanned the room with the thoroughness of a military commander, and found its defenses wanting. A loud but small dog. A gun on the table. And one helpless statue.
The moment stretched- and broke.
At the bottom of her vision, Kylie could see Tig tense up. His tail curled back like a scorpion’s. Responding to some aggressive gesture by the intruder. She heard heavy boots stalking forward. One step at a time. Closing the distance to Tig. And her.
Then, the intruder charged thunderously. Tig leaped to the side. Kylie saw none of it, nothing but the counter and the floor in front of her, but she sensed his plan, the sidestep towards the intruder’s exposed flank. He landed to Kylie’s left, out of sight. A scrabble of paws as he darted in for his target.
The room erupted in desperate, thrashing battle. The noises rippling forth from each combatant’s throat like a soundboard of prehistory. Snarling. Hissing. Growling. Tig’s jaws snapped at empty air, then crunched on flesh. Blood spattered the floor in front of Kylie and she had no way of knowing whose it was until Tig withdrew back to her side with red-whetted teeth. Still hemming close to her, still trying to place himself between her and the enemy. He looked up at the intruder and snarled, and charged once more.
Kylie was totally powerless to intervene. She tried to move with every fiber of her being, every muscle screaming action, but it was like trying to drive a booted car. Her body was solid stone and she could only stare ahead and listen in stark, immobile terror, fearing for Tig’s life as he squared off with the unseen enemy. Please God, please please please help Tig, please help him please let him win. Please don’t let him die.
The fight was short and brief and ended with the sickening sound of a boot smashing into living flesh; Tig’s sudden, strangled yelp. Then the hallway closet door slammed shut and all Kylie could hear was Tig scrabbling desperately at the inside of the door, whining frantically trying to escape, to rejoin the fray. He was out of the fight, and Kylie now faced the intruder alone, as nakedly vulnerable as any lamb had ever been before the jaws of a lion.
A shiver raced up Kylie’s stone spine when she heard a familiar voice coo to the banging closet door- “Good boy. Stay.”
The heavy bootsteps approached confidently now that no resistance was left to be made, and when the intruder finally entered Kylie’s field of view she was unsurprised to find herself facing Stheno once more.
She’d traded her blue burqa for a hijab of the same color, and Kylie was dead certain that if she took it off, a roiling bolus of serpents would be exposed to the light. The hijab framed Stheno’s face as an almost perfect, moonlike circle, and for the first time Kylie had a full, unblinking view of her. Her swarthy skin looked slick and oily. Her was nose broad and fleshy, her cheeks jowly and riven by permanent scowl-lines. She wore an enormous pair of thick-framed butterfly sunglasses to shield her phosphorescent eyes. Those accursed eyes which had sentenced Kylie to this living death. She stared back at Stheno in fearful loathing through her own blank gray orbs.
At first, Stheno seemed to take no notice of Kylie, and simply strode around the room, carrying herself with the unhurried ease of a triumphant predator. Her chest thrust out, hands on her hips. She picked up the television remote and clicked it off. Setting the remote back down, she noticed the gun on the end-table and smirked at the sight of it. Then, finally, she turned to face Kylie and looked her stone figure up and down appraisingly. Her lips were like fat, purple sausages, and when she grinned they parted to reveal rotten, yellowed teeth.
“Ah, my dear, kind Kylie,” she said, “You are even more beautiful in stone…”
Fuck you, Kylie fumed behind the demure marble mask of her face, Fuck you, you monster.
Stheno’s smile was predatory, and behind the sunglasses her eyes drifted hungrily over Kylie’s stone figure. Lingering upon her slender neck, the swell of her chest. She reached out one of her gloved hands to caress Kylie’s cheek, the cold leather fingertips tickling her frozen skin. Her fingers drifted downwards along her neck, gently toying the sculpted veins and tendons of her curled hand. She tugged at Kylie’s jacket, her pajama bottoms. As if Kylie were a display mannequin clad in the new year’s apparel lineup. Then she teased down the jacket’s zipper and smiled at the sight of her unprotected chest.
“Perfect. Simply perfect. You make an excellent statue, just as I said you would. Your face is just as I envisioned. So pensive, so maidenly.”
Just change me back, Kylie pleaded silently. Her lips were forever sealed in a sad pout but she thought as passionately as if Stheno could read her mind. Please turn me back. You- you did this to me… somehow. I don’t know why you did this but you must be able to reverse it. You have to. Please. I don’t want to be a statue forever.
Stheno held up her gloved hand in front of Kylie’s face again, mere inches from her gray stone eyes, and her pointing index finger suddenly sprouted a long, black talon that punched effortlessly through her leather glove. Stheno waved the onyx claw in front of Kylie’s face and then began tracing it down along her cheek, drawing squiggles and spirals. It didn’t hurt, didn’t break Kylie’s stone skin, but still it left an electric sizzle of fear in its wake. Kylie knew what the point of the display was- I can break you. I can pulverize you if I want, and you can’t stop me.
Stheno teased the claw down Kylie’s neck all the way to her shirtline. Then Kylie felt an icesplash chill as the claw sliced the thin fabric of her t-shirt with a rending tear, exposing the shiny gray globes of her breasts. Her nipples, hardened by the cold long before being petrified, had been changed into pert pebbles. Stheno smirked again.
“You are fuller than I thought. Lovely, lovely.”
Stheno leaned her ear in close to Kylie’s bare breast and rapped the knuckle of her claw-finger against it, purring contentedly at the dull tunk it made. Then she continued dancing around Kylie’s stone body, examining her now with the critical eye of an artist.
“I am quite pleased with your pose, overall. Especially considering the lack of direction. Dainty, yet stable. Of course, you could have extended your leg more, to accentuate your calf muscle, and perhaps your chin is angled just slightly too far down. It is coy, but it does a disservice to your lovely neck. But still, a commendable pose, Kylie. You should have been a model.”
Shut up, Kylie thought, Shut up and go away. If you’re not going to turn me back, just leave me alone.
Stheno giggled. “What’s the matter? Can’t you speak? Are you embarrassed by compliments?”
She twirled around behind Kylie and unceremoniously pantsed her. A sharp chill violated her nether regions, so cold she would have gasped had her lips not been cemented shut.
“Perfect,” Stheno repeated, tracing her fingers down the small of Kylie’s back, the smooth, round curves of her buttocks. “You have an enviable figure, Kylie. I’m so glad I found you.”
Satisfied with her inspection, Stheno came back around in front of Kylie and leaned on her hips, gazing into the statue’s frozen face with a smug grin.
“Don’t be so shy, dear,” she teased, “Certainly you are better off as stone than you ever were as a person. Look at your counter- so many bills to pay. Now you needn’t worry about them ever again. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Kylie could not answer. She could only stare ahead blankly as the gorgon continued taunting her.
“Now, now, you needn’t thank me,” Stheno continued, her face contorting into a wicked sneer, “You are probably upset. Angry even. Ungrateful little bitch that you are. But I am used to it. You ignorant, condescending, ungrateful Americans. Always so willing to destroy the lives of others with your missiles and bombs, before prostrating yourselves before them to hear their tales of the horrors you inflicted, to beg their forgiveness for defeating them. It’s pathetic. I have never been more insulted than when you stood so raptly at attention to hear me tell of my life earlier. All your fake niceties, treating me like some Hollywood sob story, just a poor wretch to be pitied. You and your disgusting, contemptible pity. You think I want your pity? I lost everything when your army came to my mountains. The work of five thousand years, all reduced to ashes by one American bomber plane. My sanctuary destroyed. The one place where nobody questioned a woman who covers her head, where I was not constantly reminded of the beauty that was stolen from me by one of your goddesses. The same beauty you possess so casually, that you so easily take for granted. So white and pretty. You don’t even know all the things you have that I can never possess, Kylie. Even in stone. The world is a stage made for people like you. If I hadn’t shown you my eyes, after we parted you would have never thought of me again. You would have simply danced off to your next performative little pity act.”
That’s not true, Kylie thought, That’s not what I am. I liked you, Stheno. I trusted you. I wanted to be your friend.
Stheno paced in front of Kylie, her face a twisted mask of bitter contempt. Teeth clenched, fists balled at her sides. Her every word was pure venom, and Kylie began to fear that Stheno intended to simply shatter her fragile stone body. Despite her dread of being sentenced to permanent immobility, neither did she relish the idea of being struck and collapsing into a heap of gravel. Not that she thought this mere, blank-stare existence was worth living. But such is the will to survive.
Then Stheno sighed deeply. Her face softened, and she smiled again, the same faux, fiendish grin that Kylie saw when she first entered the apartment.
“No, your pity is useless to me, Kylie. Pity cannot rebuild what was taken from me. But you can. You, physically, Kylie. That’s how this ends. I have lost much in my long life, but I know how to lose. I know how to suffer. I know how to survive. And I am going to take everything you have to repay the debt owed to me. Your country. Your body. Your life. Even your feeble, entitled mind. They’re all mine now, Kylie. All I had to do was look into your conceited eyes, and then patiently wait for your little heart to stop beating. And while you stand still for all eternity, staring at the walls and slowly going mad, my collection will grow ever larger, and your world will belong to me.”
She crossed her arms triumphantly and tipped her head back to loose a harsh, guttural bray of laughter.
“I think we should go meet your new companions.”
With another quick swipe of her claw, Stheno tore Kylie’s shirt and jacket to ribbons and cast their tattered remains aside, leaving Kylie totally nude. Her stone cheeks grew hot as Stheno stopped and stared lustfully at her now naked body.
“We are going to have a lot of fun, later,” she teased, tracing her finger up Kylie’s inner thigh. Despite her horror the sensual touch sent a lightning rod of pleasure coursing through Kylie’s body, and she wanted to whimper.
Stheno leaned Kylie back and got a firm grip on her. One hand under her armpit, the other on her crotch. She hefted Kylie up effortlessly, despite her new form weighing hundreds of pounds, and carried her out of the apartment. Tig still howled inconsolably in the closet, but Stheno paid him no mind and carried her new statue down the hallway as if it were nothing more unusual than a dresser or bookcase. No one came out to stop or question her.
Kylie wasn’t sure what to expect upon leaving the building. Stheno carried her such that she was tilted gazing up at the ceiling, then the moon and the stars, and she could see nothing of her surroundings. She was soon set down with a solid thunk on the grass verge, propped up against the side of a vehicle. A van, judging by the sound of the rear doors being opened. Kylie realized then just how agonizingly limited her world had become. Anything she wasn’t directly facing may as well have no longer been part of the universe, so far as she was concerned. Out of sight, out of mind.
Stheno came back around and hefted Kylie up, and as she was carried around Kylie saw that the van was black. Its bed was heavily padded with foam, and buckles hung from multiple points on the walls. Stheno laid Kylie on her back and slid her stone body into the bed, where she quickly sank into the foam. She then lashed down Kylie’s arms and legs with the buckles, tugging them to make sure they were secure. Then she slammed the doors, climbed into the cab, and began driving to… wherever.
You deserve this, Kylie thought miserably. She stared up emptily at the drab metal ceiling which was illuminated only by the quick-passing glow of streetlights. Though her body was stone she felt hollow inside. You shouldn’t have ever spoken to her. Tig knew what she was, right from the start, and you didn’t listen to him. And now because you were an idiot, he’s all alone again and you’re just going to exist forever. And mom and dad? They’re going to have a funeral for you. They’re going to grieve for you, and they’ll never know… they’ll never know that you’re still alive, trapped as a stone statue. And they’re all going to move on and forget about you and you’re just going to keep existing, staring straight ahead forever until you lose your mind. The. End.
The drive lasted about forty-five minutes. Despite being unable to see anything outside the vehicle, Kylie was able to roughly chart their journey along the familiar roads. A few minutes after leaving her apartment, the van turned onto a freeway. That had to be Woodhaven Road. After awhile they turned right, onto I-95. Another right half an hour later, and back onto the street. A very busy street, judging by the sounds of traffic and crowds of pedestrians outside the vehicle. The lights illuminating the van’s interior were much brighter here. Center City?
Eventually Stheno parked the van and got out, and Kylie could only wonder what fate might be awaiting her. She heard Stheno’s heels clicking on the pavement, the van doors opening, and then a conversation began. Kylie strained her stone ears to eavesdrop.
“Ah, Miss Elapina,” a male voice greeted, “Welcome home.”
“Thank you, Mister Burton,” Stheno cooed, “It was a long, eventful trip. I am glad to be home.”
“I brought the dolly you requested.”
“Excellent, excellent. It’s in the back, if you will follow me.”
Kylie heard Stheno giving instructions, then she felt rough, masculine hands touching her legs, her arms, unbuckling the straps. A moment later she was loose, and carefully carried out of the van by two workmen. She tried to ignore them, tried shamefully to pretend that she couldn’t feel their callused hands gripping her bare skin- her arms, her ass. They weren’t fondling her. To them she was just another heavy object, a mere thing to be hoisted. They set her down as gently as they could on a metal dolly, and while they set about positioning her she was tilted up enough to see that they were on the sidewalk beside a massive skyscraper, its glass walls rearing up into the night, illuminated in mellow shades of orange cream. The straps which had secured her fragile stone body in the van were retied around her waist and thighs, tethering her firmly to the dolly. She didn’t feel quite stable on it, the metal platform just slightly uneven, and she hoped the straps would hold her up until they got to wherever they were going.
“Wow. It’s a lovely statue,” Burton said approvingly once the workmen stepped back. Kylie assumed he was a concierge. He was dressed like one.
“Thank you,” Stheno replied, grinning up at Kylie. Gone were her rotten yellow witch-teeth; they were straight and pristine white now. She must have put on a pair of dentures in the car. Indeed, her entire countenance was nigh-unrecognizable save for the sunglasses and hijab- her oily skin hidden beneath a sediment of foundation and concealer that gave her an infant’s glow. Her purple sausage lips were now red and voluptuous, and her face overall seemed a bit slimmer, her cheeks a bit higher, thanks to layers of contour and highlighter. Expertly applied, all of it. Only Kylie knew the true nature of the evil behind the mask. She stared hatefully back at the gorgon. “I think it may be my finest work.”
The workmen rolled Kylie through the building’s lobby and into an elevator. Stheno inserted a key-card into the panel, and the elevator began shuttling upwards. The name “Mandeville Place” was emblazoned in gold on the back wall of the elevator and Kylie turned that tidbit over in her head. The Mandeville was one of the ritziest high-rises in the city- a forty-three story tower overlooking the Schuylkill River, with only forty-five condos. You had to be richer than Crassus to live there.
The elevator shot up through dozens of stories in only a minute, before finally spitting them out at what must have been the top floor of the building. Stheno exited first to unlock her door, and the workmen wheeled Kylie out into a fancy foyer with Oriental furnishings. A pair of scarlet red divans and ottomans at either wall for waiting guests; between them a huge Afghan rug of matching color. The wall was papered in dreamy, garnet-and-gold arabesques. Against the wall opposite the elevator was a mahogany table with the gray stone bust of a woman atop it. Its eyes wide and sad. Kylie thought with sinking certainty that it was far too lifelike to have been sculpted.
When the condo door opened, Kylie’s enstoned heart sank at the sight of a long, beige hall lined with life-sized nude statues. A row of them against each wall, placed in shallow alcoves atop low pedestals. Most were women; she counted only three men, though far ahead the hallway forked and undoubtedly there were more stone figures in the corridors beyond.
As she was wheeled into the gallery, a chill prickled the back of her marble neck when she realized how impossibly perfect all the statues were. The subtle wrinkles and folds of their faces, their veins and pores preserved with all the fine, intricate detail of fossil leaves. And their hair was not as the hair of most sculptures, neatly carved into wavy tubes pressed down upon the scalp. The hair of these statues resembled frozen fountains, or smooth coils of hardened lava flowing down over their marble shoulders- in a word, real hair, captured in stone. Even their individual eyelashes had been sculpted into rings of tiny stalactites.
But it was their eyes which sent numbing pulses of dread shooting through Kylie’s motionless stone figure, for they lacked any of the exquisite detail of the rest of their bodies. They were merely smooth, drab gray orbs. Perfectly blank, opened wide in surprise, their gazes forever fixed straight ahead. And she knew that they, too, had once been people like her who were turned to stone by Stheno.
She redoubled her useless efforts to move, to run away. She desperately did not want to join the rest of the statues in their eternal, silent vigil. She hadn’t yet come to terms with being stone forever. Forever was an incomprehensibly long time to be trapped in complete immobility, and a small, delusionally rebellious corner of her mind held out hope that this was all merely a terrible dream from which she would soon awaken, or that if it were indeed real, rescue was surely just around the corner. To be glued down to one of those dreadful plinths would make her fate well and truly final.
She continued fruitlessly trying to squirm as the workmen hefted her off the dolly and plunked her down onto an unoccupied pedestal near the door. Stheno had them tilt her back just enough to squirt her feet with an adhesive, then they pivoted her according to Stheno’s direction- “Slightly to the right… no, no, left a bit… okay, now forward just a smidge… and… there! Perfect!”
Kylie despaired as the workmen stepped away, perfectly unaware that they were leaving her, a once flesh-and-blood woman, on what may as well have been her grave. She was positioned facing out, her head turned so that the door was just visible at the edge of her right peripheral view. Half a dozen of her petrified companions were in her line of sight. Five of them were women- some dainty, some voluptuous. All were nude, all in various elegant poses, as if they had been expecting to model for traditional sculptures, blissfully unaware that they would be holding their stances for a very long time. One of the statues was a lean, serious-looking man with hair like frosted grass, his arms held somewhat awkwardly at his sides.
Stheno thanked the workmen and saw them out to the elevator. When she pranced back into the now-empty gallery, she stopped in front of Kylie’s pedestal and gracefully mounted it. She placed one hand upon Kylie’s stone cheek, caressing a frozen skein of hair behind her ear. Staring deeply into the blank stone orbs of her eyes. She grinned widely and bit her lip, letting her fingers drift slowly down the marble curve of Kylie’s neck, to her breast. Tracing delicious circles around her frozen, permanently erect nipple. It felt good. Really, obscenely good. Stheno seemed to know it. Of course she did. The whole thing was a game to her.
“Normally, I give my new statues a more… intimate welcome to my collection,” Stheno breathed hoarsely as she continued teasing Kylie’s tit, “But tonight I am pressed for time, so that will have to wait just a while longer. Now, you be a good little statue for me, and after the party we will get to know each other a little better. I have such plans for you…”
She planted a kiss on Kylie’s cold marble cheek, then leaped off the pedestal and quickly bounded out of view. Kylie heard the elevator ding again- a different elevator, to her left. Service elevator? It must have been, for she soon heard the clatter of wheeled tables and carried chairs, Stheno directing what must have been caterers.
Who on earth throws a party at this hour? Kylie wondered, It’s gotta be around midnight now.
She heard the caterers setting up in a room somewhere to her left, but since she couldn’t see them at all she quickly tuned them out, and lost herself in her own thoughts and memories. All thoroughly tarred by a black brush of despair. Dead dreams welling up in her mind like ghosts from the abyss. Her hopes and ambitions. To be a veterinarian. To maybe try her hand at art again. To own her own home. To settle down and have children. Just two, that would be enough. A boy and a girl. Now never to be born. The images of these and a thousand other might-have-beens and never-to-bes swirled bleakly round her mind, a tempest of ashes sealed within her granite heart.
Eventually Stheno came trotting back through the gallery, her heels clicking on the tiled floor. On either side of her were two short Hispanic cocktail servers. She walked them out into the foyer, where they could immediately get to work, and then she came back into the gallery for one final check of her stone prisoners, and her own appearance. She fussed over her hijab, patting herself down and smoothing her black cotton abaya, murmuring assurances to herself as she did so. Then she stopped and took a deep breath.
“And now, ladies and gentlemen,” she announced, twirling dramatically around the silent hall of statues, “It’s showtime!
The gallery filled slowly. It was a small gathering, less than fifty, but they quickly made the narrow hall into a sea of fresh-laundered suits and elegant evening dresses, incensing the air with cologne and perfume. Kylie watched them filtering past her, turning their heads to admire her sleek stone curves as if she really were the result of meticulous chiseling by a master sculptress. She wanted to flush crimson, to cover herself, to cringe into a corner in shame as their eyes drifted appraisingly over her nude body.
She recognized some of the guests. All members of Philadelphia’s upper crust. The president of the University of Pennsylvania. The CEO of an IT company. A political activist who had recently made waves in the news. Some of them she had voted for, or against. The mayor. A handful of city councilmen and a pair of state representatives, breathlessly congratulating Stheno on breaking boundaries with her unique art installations. One of the councilmen expressed interest in bestowing her a grant for a public art gallery, a suggestion which Stheno politely chided.
To her surprise, there was even an A-list actress in attendance- Gwen Altren. Kylie had watched a few of her movies. Now Gwen was watching her, her eyes drifting over Kylie’s stone figure with the keen eye of a critic.
“You’ve outdone yourself, Miss Elapina,” Gwen said. Her wheat blonde hair was tied back in a tight ballerina ponytail, and she wore a red sequined dress which seemed sprayed onto her body.
“Thank you, so very much,” Stheno replied. “It was my most difficult work to date. Very time consuming to get the model into a decent pose. She was not my most cooperative subject.”
“Well, it was worth the struggle,” Gwen said, still scanning Kylie’s figure, lingering on the delicate features of her face, “It looks startlingly real. You even sculpted her eyelashes!”
“That is the most difficult part,” Stheno admitted, “The eyes. Windows to the soul, wouldn’t you agree?”
Gwen smiled. “Will you ever reveal how you do it?”
“My dear,” Stheno said delicately, “If I were to teach you how I make my statues, I would have to keep you locked away in my gallery forever.”
Gwen laughed politely, and the two moved on out of Kylie’s view, still discussing the marvelous craftsmanship of the sculptures. She was glad to be out of the spotlight for a moment, but it was only a pale shadow of relief. She had never felt so utterly, helplessly naked. All the public humiliations of her life- fumbling her words at a third grade recital, tripping in the high school cafeteria and faceplanting in front of everyone, the screaming match with Jake the night of their breakup- all paled in comparison to this examination. Dozens of eyes passing over her nude stone body, judging her features and her pose, intimately scrutinizing the most private parts of her anatomy, wondering aloud how Stheno had sculpted her so perfectly. None even suspecting the truth, that there was a living being trapped within the inanimate stone figure.
The night ground on in this agonizingly slow manner. Someone would come over to her plinth to admire her sculpted form. The activist, gazing hungrily over her. The CEO, asking Stheno if she would be amenable to sculpting a copy of “it” for his building’s lobby. A gay couple whispering about how if only “it” were a little taller, “its” breasts a little smaller, “it” would be the perfect sculpture. She could see them admiring the other statues too, but as the newest one in the gallery, the night’s headliner, Kylie was the belle of the ball. She hated every second of it.
God, what did I do to deserve this? she thought desolately, Why did you let this happen to me? I know I’m not a great person, but… what did I do to deserve this punishment? Can you even hear me? Are you even there?
She didn’t know how many interminable hours she stood there for. Trapped. Motionless. Naked. Her only outlet for recreation being to eavesdrop on the various conversations taking place. She learned that Comcast was soon to announce its third tower in the 30th Street Station District. The Candlelight Institute was close to cloning a Caspian tiger, which, she was given to understand, was extinct. Gwen Altren hated the director she was working with and was going to terminate her contract with the studio after completing her present film. One of the state representatives knew that the governor was planning to endorse the other guy for president. All perfectly interesting, perfectly useless information.
She tried to resign herself to this new life as the minutes dragged into hours and the sound of the party faded to a dull background hum. Every time she felt restless and tried to fidget she was disappointingly stymied by her immobility. She tried crafting poems in her head to pass the time, brief stanzas or haikus. She thought of trees and birds. Of the warm spring sun and the fuming blaze of leaves in autumn. Of cirrus skies and breakers crashing on the shore. Of her parents. Of Tig. These and a thousand other sights she would never again set her eyes upon. Her gaze was forever fixed ahead, her entire world reduced to a narrow view of her fellow statue prisoners, her own marble breasts, and the cold tile floor. Her parents would die. Tig would die. The trees would die and come back into leaf and then die again and again and she would live through all of it, standing perfectly motionless on the plinth while the wheel of eternity spun around her.
Presently, she was aware of a small crowd forming in front of her. At some point during her reverie, Stheno had materialized at her side. Kylie stared at her bitterly, wishing nothing more than the chance to throw herself at the gorgon and bite her throat out. Her muscles failed her but her hatred remained red-hot, and she stared in bitter rage as Stheno began speaking.
“Thank you all so much for joining me tonight. I know this gathering was a bit last-minute, but you all have been such dedicated patrons of mine that I felt it was only proper to invite you over for this announcement.”
She looked up at Kylie’s impassive stone face with a knowing smirk. If Kylie’s thoughts could kill, Stheno would have disintegrated into a heap of cinders. I hate you. I want you to die. I wish you would just die, right now. And all your snobby friends, too.
“I have heard much spirited discussion over my newest sculpture. How exquisitely detailed it is, how finely posed. I am truly humbled by your compliments. But the most interesting discussions I’ve heard revolve around the title of the piece.”
At this, Kylie’s fantasies of tearing Stheno into tiny, bloody pieces ceased, and she felt quite self-conscious again. The sharp humiliation of being naked before so many strangers had gradually been dulled by the passing of the hours, and the realization that they didn’t view her as a naked woman but just as a piece of art. She hadn’t considered that she’d been renamed, though she noticed all the other statues had titles. They were engraved on copper plates fastened to their pedestals. The name of the buxom woman across from her, Excess, had garnered several fits of bawdy laughter. The taut, muscular man with the title Toxic had provoked a long discussion between Stheno, Gwen Altren, and the university president about the nature of masculinity. And now Kylie wondered sheepishly what her new name was.
“There are several reasons why I chose such a provocative title,” Stheno continued, “The model, for one, was very spoiled. Shy, but spoiled. A rich daddy, of course. She insisted to me on striking her own pose, rather than the one I thought most fitting. This caused much friction between us, and made the sculpting process rather aggravating. Why, I almost wished at times that I could simply turn her into the statue and be done with her!”
The small crowd chuckled, while inwardly Kylie seethed. You lying bitch. You callous, lying bitch. You know that’s not what happened.
“The statue you see before you is not what I wanted to sculpt. My vision was, initially, quite different. The sculpture here is the result of incessant tug-of-war games with the stubborn model. Unfortunately, many of my models throughout the years have had similar chips on their shoulders. I select them for their looks, naturally. It is a shame that physical beauty does not often translate to a pleasant personality. I have meditated for a long time on this issue, why my models feel so entitled to disagree with me on the direction of the piece. I am the artist. I am the one with the vision. Yet, they think they know better. Sometimes they even think they’re being helpful, and offer unneeded and unwelcome ‘advice’ to me. As if I am just a naive foreigner who doesn’t know her own trade. And worst of all, they are not even aware of how condescending they are. They simply do it, unconsciously, no different than breathing. This is why I chose the title. This one word summarizes precisely the problem with this model, with all of them. It is a systemic scourge, a pestilence, which needs to be ripped out of the heart of this country like the tumor that it is.”
Stheno paused dramatically. The little crowd applauded, and Kylie could only think of how much she wanted to tear all of their throats out. You stupid snobs. You worthless, seal-clapping prigs. You’re cheering for a monster. She doesn’t care about any of you. She’d turn you all to stone too if she wanted, and she wouldn’t feel an ounce of pity. She doesn’t have a soul.
“And,” Stheno continued, “though I am pleased that all of your remarks about the statue’s title have been quite positive, I doubt the public’s would be so enthusiastic. There would be controversy, shaming. ‘Bad press.’ However, recently I have come to the conclusion that such a gauntlet would be worth running, in order to excise this infection from society. That is why, as Councilman Johnson suggested earlier, I have decided to open a public sculpture gallery. Thanks to your donations and good will, I’ve managed to procure a parcel on the Parkway for this gallery, right across from the Rodin Museum and Barnes Foundation. I’ve already had the blueprints drafted, and aim to begin construction by the fall of next year. Controversy or not, I want the public to discuss and enjoy my sculptures, as they so dearly deserve to be. I will be very busy in the coming months, as this new public gallery will be filled mostly with all new sculptures, as well as select pieces from here- including this newest one.”
The little group applauded, and Stheno grinned smugly at Kylie. “I think it deserves to have the eyes of the world upon it.”
I am not an ‘it’, Kylie thought despondently, looking out over the clapping crowd of high rollers. She wanted to scream at them, to tear their heads off. To kill Stheno. To run away. To hug her parents. To be back home with Tig. More than anything, she wanted to cry. But she could do exactly none of these things, and so she simply stared ahead in sepulchral silence as the party wound down around her.
My name is Kylie McKenna.
I was born in 1998.
I am a Gemini.
I went to UPenn.
My favorite book is Little Women.
My hobbies include art and astrology.
I’m a waitress. Temporarily. Want to be a vet someday.
Tig is my dog.
I am not a statue.
I am not whatever is chiseled on my pedestal.
Please let me out.
Sometime late in the night the last guests filtered out. Kylie’s inner clock told her it had to be past two, though of course she had no way of knowing for sure. She hoped Tig had escaped the closet somehow.
Stheno followed the last drunken couple out to the elevator, leaving just a pair of caterers to clean up. One of them bent down in front of Kylie to pick up a dropped napkin, and when she rose she looked over her frozen stone figure. Her eyes wide, as if amazed and disconcerted by the level of detail in the sculpture. She crossed herself, muttering some oath in Spanish, and quickly shuffled out of Kylie’s view.
After the caterers left, Stheno disappeared for awhile. Kylie stared ahead at her fellow statues, those she could see, and wondered what they were thinking. They all had their own stories, stories which had ended weeks or months or years before. They may have been through dozens of such parties already, while she was just Stheno’s latest victim.
With the exception of the lone man, the other statues’ poses were all more graceful and deliberate than her own, more obviously posed, and she wondered how Stheno had lured them in. Probably they thought they were just going to be regular models, unaware of the nature of the trap until it was too late, until they felt their flesh changing into cold stone and they realized they could no longer move. She thought of Venus flytraps, of anglerfish, of spiderwebs and wolves dressed as sheep. Stheno’s guise was more abominable than them all, for at least the victims of such deceitful predators died. She and the dozens of others in this marble mortuary had been sentenced to a living death, their minds locked away forever behind blank, unmoving eyes in a prison of their own immobilized flesh.
There was a loud clap at the other end of the gallery.
“Excellent performance tonight, everyone!” Stheno announced, suddenly twirling into Kylie’s field of view. “All of you standing so perfectly still for my guests. You’ll be happy to know that the party was a smashing success. I know you all heard my little announcement; the councilman said the grant is as good as mine, so some of you will be rehomed soon. Temporarily, of course; you’ll be rotated around. I loathe to part with any of you for long, my dears. Still, you must be excited for the change of scenery.”
She wandered about the gallery as she continued speaking to her captive audience. Occasionally she stepped up to a pedestal to brush some perceived blemish from the gray stone body mounted atop it, or to deliver some taunting missive. In this way, Kylie finally learned some of the other sculptures’ real names. Curvaceous Excess had once been known as Rebecca. The dainty, ballerina-poised girl directly across from her, titled Standard, was formerly Stephanie, and Stheno lingered in front of her for a long time, planting kisses up and down her slender stone leg.
“My little dancer,” she cooed, “Your performance that night at the Kimmel Center still plays in my head. Watching you twirl, graceful as a gazelle… I had to have you. A risk, of course. You were a rising star. So natural that they came looking for you. The interview with the police detectives was such fun, wasn’t it? Ah, but how could they have known they were walking right by you? That’s the beautiful thing about this age, Stephanie. None of you believe in magic anymore. It makes my job so much easier.”
She danced away from the ballerina, and looked around the gallery, as if undecided about who she intended to tease next.
“And yet, despite my precautions, sometimes, someone catches on. Right, detective?”
She trotted over to the only male statue in Kylie’s line of sight- the one called Toxic. Stheno mounted his pedestal in a single bound and began caressing his broad marble shoulders, his stone muscles taut as hawser. His face frozen forever with slightly raised eyebrows. One hand reaching at his hip, like he were trying to draw a holstered sidearm. As if in his final breath he’d realized the true nature of his enemy.
“Poor, poor Detective Sullivan. You were so close to figuring out my secret. My own fault, of course. I shouldn’t have claimed Kristina. I really shouldn’t have, but I simply couldn’t help myself. Such a pretty, prissy little socialite. She fairly jumped at the opportunity to pose for me. So eager to be immortalized in stone.”
She laughed shrilly, then left the detective to his solitude and bounded over to one of the statues beside Kylie, out of her field of view. She thought it was her immediate neighbor, judging from the nearness of Stheno’s breathing, the sound of her lips planting a fusillade of kisses on the statue’s marbleized flesh. If it was her neighbor, Kylie had caught a glimpse of her when she was carried in, before the workmen secured her to her plinth. A stone Venus, cutting a provocative pose with her arms stretched high behind her, thrusting her ample chest out. Still smiling impishly, like she’d been changed so suddenly she hadn’t any time to be alarmed before she was petrified.
“Oh, Kristina, my dear, jabbermouth Kristina. How your family searched for you. You were much loved, dear, despite what you told me. The police, the journalists, our poor private detective just across the way… I thought they would never give up. And though you were nearly the end of me, I’ve no regrets about granting your wish. No regrets.”
Presently, Stheno leaped back to Kylie’s plinth and smirked up at her. “Though of course none were so risky as you, Kylie, you little show-stealer,” Stheno teased, sauntering over to her. As soon as she ascended her pedestal she began tracing her fore and ring fingers up the smooth marble curve of Kylie’s leg. “The new girls always are, though. I’m sure you enjoyed all the attention you received tonight, hmm? Such beauty captured in you. Such a melancholy expression. You are my first attempt at a candid sculpture. Thankfully, you posed perfectly, else I would have been carting your rubble down to the river.”
For a long minute, she just stared deeply into Kylie’s blank gray eyes. Her sultry breath fogging her stone face. She leaned in close and kissed Kylie’s cold, pouting lips, and cupped her hard breast in one hand while the other drifted down south to her mound. Kylie would have moaned. She wanted to squirm, to push Stheno away. But she was solid stone, and her muscles refused to obey her. All she could do was stand in rigid torment while Stheno played with her.
There was a knock at the door.
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Maybe im tired and missed it while reading but did Kylie’s clothes change to stone with her or just her body?
Using puns as chapter titles doesn't really fit the mood of a very frightening story, but otherwise, excellent!