Arghoyle

My name is Hurgruglbulglglglrrrll. Mouthful, yeah, I know. I'm a gargoyle, one of those badasses who crouches on the corners of churches and rich peoples' houses, vomiting precipitation earthward and shielding the place against malignant...fuck it, the metaphysics is boring.

I've been on the roof of this church out in Midwest Bumblefuck, USA, for about twenty years now. My predecessor, a decrepit fool, fell asleep on the job and took a tumble to the flagstones. This brought about my reassignment from a cozy vista in Italy. Somebody must've decided "Oh, Hurg is enjoying the view of nubile female Italians a little too much. Let's stick him on the corner of a church where the only butt-related things he'll hope to see are the sweatstained ass-clefts of obese male Americans."

I'm one of the two of us stationed here. My partner is a crotchety, old guard bastard who goes by Aghrlorlgllluuh. He tolerates zero shit. Don't move, don't talk, don't do anything. Got an itch on your ass (yeah, gargoyles itch. Crawling bugs do that to us same as to you), well, tough. Wait until you're off the clock to scratch. A gargoyle's shift runs from midnight to midnight, in case you were wondering. No breaks. Good thing we don't smoke, right?

Anyway, there we were one afternoon, me on the northeast corner of this little white bread, whitewashed church of a one-road podunk town with a population that peaks at about five hundred--that's including all the deer--and Agh on the southeastern one. It was winter, the shitty kind of Midwestern winter where the sun comes up at eight and is gone by four and the temperature high matches the number of frostbitten fingers you've got at the end of the day. On this particular day Mother Nature decided to blot everything out in a ferocious snowstorm. Have you ever physically experienced the expression "blow it up your ass"? Next snowstorm you run across, head outside and spread your cheeks to the heavens. Bracing. This was the asshole kind of snow too, gritty shit like God decided to scour the whole world with an iceberg being fed through a sandblaster.

I couldn't see the ground. Hell, the paw in front of my face was a dark gray mess set against the backdrop of a whirling twilight snowstorm, but that asshole Agh...."You're shirking," he said. Can't move an iota but talking, that's fine and dandy? So we don't move our mouths to talk and it's not like humans can understand us. The principle stands, though.

"I'm itching," I said. I made a point of scratching with extra fervor as I said it. I could hear the scrape of sandstone against sandstone (all real gargoyles are made of sedimentary rock. Your mass-produced mockeries of factory-molded concrete don't count) as I raked my claws over my tush, picking out snow clots wedged in unmentionable crevices. Good thing I wasn't one of those anatomically correct 'goyles.

"You're shirking," Agh repeated. I peered in his direction, barely making his crouched form out through the gloom and snow.

"Come off it," I rumbled. "No human's going to be out in this kind of weather, and if they were they wouldn't think to look up at a couple of corner-jockeys."

"Composure and pride in our work is paramount," Agh said. I couldn't see it now, of course, but I knew he was inclining his head ever so slightly, setting his stance the tiniest bit higher, more erect.

I reiterated, "We're sitting on a church in the middle of nowhere, in a blizzard."

"Disregard of the rules under these conditions has as little an excuse as excusing them under others," Agh said.

A flurry of snow crystals scattered from the area around my head as I snorted. "The rules," I said. "Those rules were outmoded as soon as humans invented Rock-Em-Sock-Em Robots."

"Eh?" Agh said. "What is a Rocky Socky Robot?"

I scraped my forepaw--the one I rested my forepart's weight upon--across the roof. The tiny wormlike trails in the snow that were almost immediately filled in with new precipitation. The movement brought another growl of displeasure from Agh's direction. "Do you really think humans would be as frightened of us now as they were back then? They've come along enough to make life of their own. They're not complete idiots."

"Mockeries of God's vision. Artificial creations that do not hold the divine spark within. They can but follow others' commands, not live for themselves."

"How are we any different, then?" I asked, turning on my post to face Agh. "You call this shit we do life?" I grated out a mocking laugh. "We're just doing what we're told. Sit on this roof, don't move, don't do anything you might enjoy!"

Agh remained motionless. "Your predecessor felt much the same way as yourself. He acted in accordance with his beliefs. There is always a choice. We have the option."

I craned my neck forward and peered over the edge of the roof. The darkness and snow occluded the ground some twenty-five feet below. Yeah, why shouldn't I bail? Maybe enough snow had piled up to cushion the fall. Then I could go on my way as a free gargoyle. Maybe go back to Italy!

But as I leaned over, a mighty blast of wind roared along the church's roof, as if Satan himself was copping the squat right after a three-course Tex-Mex dinner. It pressed against my hindquarters, breaking out around me in a mad gale that threatened to topple me from my roost. I scrambled back to the comparative safety of my worn pedestal. The fervent movement dislodged a few shingles, ash-black bats which the wind picked up and whisked away, never to be seen again. My claws dug into the stone and I clung for dear life as the wind and the snow surrounded me in an opaque cocoon of noise and motion.

The storm subsided in due course, the snows melted, and winter became spring. Some of the daughters of the oldsters here paid visits home for spring break. They always dressed in their Sunday finest, but they were better than the alternatives. I was interested in them, sure, but not that interested. Not interested enough to risk a gander of any finer details.

See, I haven't moved since the night of that storm.