A Man of Stone

I was born on November 5, 1989 in the small town of “Naranjas” in a remote island called “Cayo Perdido”. My mother was 14, my father a mystery and my birth a local legend. It had been a strange day, people say, with small intermittent earthquakes. At first they were spaced wide apart but as the hours passed they became longer, harder and with only a few minutes in between. At some point during this bizarre occurrence my mother arrived at the hospital. I was welcomed into this world under a table, during the last earthquake. As I took my first breath and started crying something even weirder happened, rocks started falling from the sky like a hailstorm and my body slowly started getting gray, hard and cold as if it were a statue carved from stone. But I was moving and crying and very much alive. As my cries subsided the rock storm gradually stopped and I changed into a white and rosy, blond, bouncing baby boy just like any other baby in the nursery.

Needless to say my teenage mother was scared of such a freak of nature and didn’t want me. From there on the details are not clear, as no one is sure what happened to me. Some believed she gave me to social services, others that I was taken in by a foreign couple looking to adopt. The truth is far more sinister. Somehow I ended growing up in a secret government facility where they experimented on me and a number of other “subjects”, as they called us. We had no names to identify ourselves, just numbers. I was subject 42. They experimented and tortured me in ways that ordinary people can only imagine and they violated every human right, on the basis that I couldn’t be considered one, in order to get extreme reactions from me. That’s how I discovered my curse. I realized that my negative emotions controlled every rock and stone in a 5 mile radius. When I felt mad they would explode or break into pieces. If I was scared they would shake fiercely, causing an earthquake and if I cried they would fall from the sky. When the emotions were too intense my whole body turned into a living statue.

The people that were in charge of the facility abused me, and all the others, in such a way that by the time I was 7 I learned not to feel anything but hate towards the scientists. They would get me in the lab and I would concentrate on my hate so much that my body would turn to stone, botching their experiments, breaking needles in my arm and making the monitors flat line. When I didn’t know how to turn at will they would stick needles in me and perform constant and painful genetic testing and other more obscure things in order to discover where my curse came from. I learned to control my power in order to protect myself and not hurt others with the erratic and uncontrollable behavior of the stones around me.

         Like I said, there were many others in the facility, all with different powers. I specially remember subject 43, the girl that lived in the cell next to mine. We used to talk through the wall and get together during our one hour of recreation in the inside patio. Some subjects had grown to adulthood in their cells and knew nothing of the world outside. I myself ignored what was beyond the walls of the facility, but was eager to find out. Amy, as her parents had named her, came from the world outside into the facility when she was 8 and her parents couldn’t control her curse anymore. She would tell me stories of the world outside and was determined to escape. She would talk in vivid detail about the wind, the sun, the moon, the stars, the rain, the ocean, the flowers and the trees and many other things that existed beyond the walls of the compound. It all sounded so wonderful that I wanted to escape with her.

She was my only friend, but we could talk only during the day. At night I would hear strange gurgling and tearing sounds, moans and grunts coming from her cell and even though I couldn’t see her I knew she was turning into the beast. She was a beautiful girl with alabaster skin, dark blue eyes and long black hair, but I had no clue what the beast looked like. She was sweet, she was the one that named me because I had no name but the number given to me, but hints of sadness and disdain could be heard in her voice when she talked about the evil beast inside of her. At night she would turn into a perverse monster that had forced her family away from her. By dawn she would be herself again, Amy to me, Subject 43 to them, and not remember anything of the night before. The beast became so powerful in such a short time that she didn’t gain control over it until her late teens. Her parents had tried tying her up with chains, locking her up in cages and at first it worked, but eventually the beast became too strong for its many prisons and it started escaping, killing animals and even a person. They didn’t know what to do so they turned Amy in to government men in black suits. Amy was both innocent and dangerous. Even so I loved her. I had never given or received love until Amy.

One day when I was 17 a control panel caught fire during recreation hour. Alarms blared and the emergency exits opened without having to use the fingerprint pad. I was sitting next to Amy at a table when it happened. I grabbed her hand and pulled her as the subjects started running to the exits, us at the head. We passed metal door after metal door in a seemly endless corridor. At the end of the corridor there was a steep stair case with another metal door at the top. We ran to it thundering two steps at a time, a bunch of other subjects following us. I opened the door and was blinded by the light of day. Subject after subject kept coming out and running in different directions into the surrounding forest. In the midst of such chaos I lost my grip on Amy’s hand and that’s the last I saw of her. I ran through the woods barefoot without stopping or looking back, my feet turning to stone with the pain inflicted by twigs and rocks, the ground shaking with every step I took. I didn’t stop running until I found a street in which I signaled a car and hitchhiked to the city. Weeks later I saw a tabloid with the headline “Secret underground government facility decimated by fire.” I stole the magazine and read the article. It was mostly speculation about aliens, the writer dubbed the facility the “tropical area 51”. Bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. The only thing I found to be useful was the news that the place had been reduced to ashes and closed down. The government denied any involvement.

I lived on the streets at first, sleeping in abandoned buildings and public parks. I discovered the harsh way that when I’m pushed into a “fight or flight” situation my body turns to stone, “statue mode” as I call it, and that in that state I have enhanced physical strength.

        Now I’m a handyman at the cheap motel I call home. I also do good things. I use my curse to protect people. Some would say I’m kind of a hero or vigilante I guess, a statue that prevents muggings and killings out in the streets. I don’t really care. I don’t seek evil out, but if I stumble upon it I deal with it. Being a hero doesn’t pay the rent. I just do what I do because I think it’s the decent thing. I never even gave it much thought, until one evening something happened.

        It was a Friday night in late November. For months the newspapers only talked about one topic; a serial killer that had been traveling across the country. Witnesses said that the killer was a huge creature, not human, that was over 8 feet tall and drove a red and chromed Harley Davidson. Police said it chose it’s victims at random and dismembered them, always attacking at night. “The Monster,” as the news called it, had been seen lurking around motels, diners and breaking into houses but somehow it always avoided getting caught.

        That night, while walking home I passed by a big house with beautiful and expensive glass windows from floor to ceiling and noticed a red and chromed Harley Davidson parked in front of it. I thought to myself that the killer couldn’t be stupid or overconfident enough to leave its vehicle in plain sight, so I kept walking. Then I heard a horrendous roar that made me turn into “statue mode” immediately. I ran back to the house just in time to see that in a matter of seconds the windows were stained with blood and strips of flesh.

        The door was open. I peeked inside and saw pieces of a man scattered all around the living room. I slowly walked in and followed a wet noise I couldn’t quite make out. When I entered the kitchen I saw the thing and what it was doing. The creature’s clothing was in shreds. It was pale, bald and muscled, over a foot taller than my 6’2” frame and it looked much stronger. It didn’t look like a human at all. Its eyes were completely black and it had three rows of teeth that looked like the ones of the sharks I’ve seen on discovery channel. The monster was dismembering a second victim with its bare claws, just ripping it apart like a rag doll. It took a dismembered arm, held it above its mouth and slurped the string of blood that trickled from it. I could see it was taking great pleasure in doing so too, because it paused to mutter a sinister chuckle of amusement every now and then.

        The thing didn’t have ears either, but it heard me getting nearer. “The Monster” turned to me and charged. It pinned me against the walls biting and clawing at me, pulling at my stone limbs. We fought intensely for what seemed like a long time, thrashing the kitchen until I managed to pin it to the floor and put a knife to its throat. I pushed the knife in hard, attempting to slit its throat but its skin wouldn’t open. The monster seemed to be choking so I dropped the weapon and started strangling it with my solid and cold stone hands.

        To my surprise the monster started convulsing. Its shape and size started to transform before my eyes. The less air that entered its lungs the faster it morphed. Its sharp teeth sank in and were replaced by human ones, long black hair started growing out of it’s skull, its body got smaller and thinner, and before I knew it I found myself choking a woman.

        I let go of her neck and stared at her in awe as she groaned in pain and held her neck, gasping for air. The monster’s clothes hung loosely on her body. I felt my heart quicken and the ground shaking. I was scared for the first moment in a long time.

“Rock,” she said.

“Amy?” I looked at her quizzically. She was an adult now, thin, frail and almost naked, but it was her. She was the only one who knew my real name. The one who named me, Jackson Rock.

“Rock,” she said again, almost in a plea, as her eyes filled with tears, “Save me.”

        She had lost herself. She was never a bad person, but the monster she was born with was evil. She was strong, but the beast’s thirst for blood had taken control of her. She fell under it. She lost herself to it. She wanted to be saved, but I wasn’t sure she could be.

        She stood in front of me, tears flowing like rivers down her blood stained cheeks. I looked at her and realized that if I let her go, whenever I saw her again she would be too far gone into the cravings of the beast. Amy would be gone and there would be no traces left of who she was. That’s when I gave in to her. For the first time in my life I allowed myself to feel freely.

        I walked up to her and kissed her lips softly, with all the years of yearning seeping through the kiss. Only then the ground stopped shaking and my skin turned from cold stone to warm flesh. She responded with fervor regardless of the carnage in the rest of the house. They were already dead and there was nothing I could do for them. Not that I cared. But I cared about Amy. I carried her to the shower to clean her of all the blood and then helped her to the bed. There we made love for the first time.

        We had been in love in our teens, but I never acted on it, afraid of losing control of my emotions and my powers hurting someone, but at that moment I stopped caring. I had to love her because my carefree life was sad and senseless. I saved people’s lives so they would have the opportunity to go on living and loving, yet I never allowed myself to act on love until now.

        So I took the time to passionately kiss her and gently caress her. I stroked her black hair and looked into her eyes repeating to her how much I love every inch of her and of what she truly is. I promised her I would take her away from the claws of the beast. I kissed her face, her belly, her legs, her fingertips and everything in between. And I made love to her like I never had done so before. And I also knew that no one had made love to her like me before, with true unbidden love.

        The next morning I woke up when I heard her vomiting in the kitchen.

“Amy, are you okay?” I asked as I approached her. She was dressed in clothes too big for her that she had obviously found in the bedroom, looking at the carnage the beast had done.

“Don’t touch me,” she said, horrified and stricken by guilt, and pushed me away, “I‘m a monster.”

“I‘ll help you.”

“You can‘t, Jackson, it can‘t be controlled. It can hurt you,” she said walking towards the door, as she cried.

        I grabbed her shoulders and pressed her against the wall, “Please don‘t go,” my voice broke and my eyes filled with tears, “Don‘t leave.”

“I‘m sorry,” she said crying as she escaped from my grasp, "I don't want it to hurt you."

        She ran towards the door and I followed her, but I turned and went back to the room when I realized that I was naked. I hurriedly fetched my pants but by the time I got to the door she was already revving her bike.

        She took off without another word. I tried to run after her but with every step I took she looked farther and farther away. I fell to my knees, crying against my best efforts. I turned to stone and as my tears ran down my cold cheeks, rocks started falling from the sky, wreaking havoc in the city.