Eyes of Salvation(Douglas Richards) “I'm so glad you came, Henrietta,” Nana Ruth said. “Nice to have a visitor.”
Truth was, Henn Watkins didn’t want to be there at all. Nana just happened to have a big enough house with plenty of room and it was the first place she thought to escape to.
And the perfect space to plot against a cheating husband.
She sat in a flower-patterned chair – tacky and old as f**k, she thought – beside her Nana’s bed, holding her calloused hand.
“I just had a feeling you were a bit under the weather, Nana.”
Her Nana being ill, well, that had been going on for years.
“Oh you were always so intuitive,” Ruth said, straightening her position in the bed. Intense teal eyes took Henn in. “You look like I did when I was your age.”
Tucking a strand of strawberry blond hair behind an ear, Henn could easily see the strong resemblance. Except for the eyes, of course. Henn's eyes were a lifeless dishwater grey.
“I think I might stay a few days if that’s all right?”
“What about Max?”
She wanted to snap: what about the scum bag? He’s f***ing his secretary or a fellow lawyer or someone not me if you must know.
Instead, she said, “He’s good with it. Besides you need me.”
She had left a note for him as nice as could be. Poor Nana blah blah blah. Need to look after her, a few days. See you soon. Miss you love. Gag!
Wouldn’t do to have hubby know she knew about his side piece. At least not yet.

Releasing herself from Nana’s damp grip, she walked to the window. She saw the boot worn path that led from the rear deck of the main house to the front door of Nana’s studio.
The small outbuilding sat sun-dappled between trees, leaves casting fluttering moth-like shadows on the tin roof.
When she’d visited as a kid she had been warned against going near the shack. “Nana does her work there,” her parents whispered. But even that one time she’d dared to peek in the windows all she saw was black.
“Are you sure everything’s okay?” Nana asked.
“Everything’s good.”
Good? She wanted to scream and tell her Nana how she was just doing her good man’s laundry when she’d smelled the perfume from lower in the pile. On the good man’s underwear of all things.
And now she was here. Planning. Plotting. Thinking. Get a lawyer definitely, blindside him, take half, no, over half of what he had, maybe future earnings too. Set him up, play the game, steal from him slowly…
Options.
So much she could do.
This made her smile.

When Nana fell asleep, Henn found the guest bedroom – the old room where she used to stay when she was a kid – and lay on the bed. She couldn’t sleep.
She slipped downstairs a little while later and lit a joint on the back porch. She found herself walking down the path to Nana’s studio.
The wooden door was locked as it always was but she could see it had some play to it.
A well-placed shoulder popped it open.
Flicking her joint away, she stepped over the threshold. She found the light switch, but nothing happened. She turned on her phone’s flashlight instead and looked around.
The place smelled like rot, as though air hadn’t circulated in here in a long time. Which was probably true.
So this was the great room where the magic happened, she thought as she heard some mice skitter past.
She strolled to the large work table all the while spotting the many large crates strewn about. What had come in them? She wondered.
A few weird looking machines sat near the far wall. She couldn’t imagine how they were used.
As hard as she tried not to look - like telling her not to hate her husband at this point – her eyes landed on the installed floor drain.
She felt her stomach heave slightly.
How much blood had gone down that drain? she wondered.
Lifting her phone slightly, she noted the huge corkboard fastened to the wall, multicolored pins stabbed through many photos. Pictures of household pets mostly. Cats/dogs, rabbit, guinea pig. But she also saw more exotic animals. A chimp, a shark and even a cougar.
They were all dead, she knew. Dead and mounted.
Nana’s work. Hard to believe her Nana Ruth had once garnered such a reputation as the local taxidermist, as an artist, that she received shipments from all over the world.
Pressing on, Henn’s light played over the tabletop: intricate brushes lay scattered among dried up dabs of paint and some tools she didn’t recognize.
She walked from one end of the room to the other.
As she turned to walk back, she jumped, almost dropping her phone.
Her light had caught something!
She swallowed hard.
Quick, she put her phone out illuminating inside one of the larger crates.
It perched there in the shadows.
A gargoyle? Like those seen on churches, looked like.
Creepy. What was it doing here?
She took in the enormous leathery wings tucked against the gargoyle’s side, wings that rose up, forming a giant V above the demonic visage, darkness trapped between appendages.
Had someone sent this to Nana as a joke?
Maybe.
As her light played down the scarred and pitted horns on the gargoyle's head, her flashlight beam jumped in her hand as she stared into bloody holes where eyes had been.
It was like the eyes had been gouged out.
She shuddered. Looked so realistic too.
She followed long, skeletal arms to long fingers ending in chipped yellowed nails, razor-sharp claws.
Okay enough. She swallowed down bile as she hurried to leave the studio.

After letting herself out – definitely seen enough - she returned to the guest bedroom, stripped naked and threw on a long t-shirt. Within minutes, she instantly fell asleep.
In her dream she saw herself sniffing Max’s underwear again, the perfume so strong, much stronger than it had been in real life and then she was….
She was above everything.
She was the gargoyle soaring, seeing everything through sharp night vision.
She landed on a street lamp shining down on a quiet section of townhomes. She drew wings in and silently waited.
Silently watched.
Within minutes, a cab pulled to the curb and a woman slid out the back door. Wearing high heels and a miniskirt, she wobbled up the steps as the cab rushed off.
She reeked of perfume
Had she just come from work? From a hotel? Maybe even her own apartment.
So this was the woman who was f***ing her husband, Henn thought.
The woman looked around, perhaps sensing danger. But never looking up.
Adrenalin surging, down, down, down Henn flew, lightning quick.
Her huge talons bit deep into the whore’s shoulders and as she screamed in both pain and terror, Henn lifted her into the night air, giant wings snapping hard against the chill.
She was soaring up, up, up to the horrifying cries of the struggling quarry in her clutches.
Above the buildings, she soared.
She released her.
Listened to her bloodcurdling wail as she fell. Then watched her hit the road, body bursting on impact like a blood-filled balloon.
She felt –
Sick? No, she didn’t. She felt elated.

Within seconds she found herself outside the penthouse apartment she shared with her husband.
From outside the window, she watched Max pour himself a drink. A light rain had begun to fall, droplets peppering her view.
Maxwell paced through the living room, then, she saw. He looked down at his phone, then brought his ear back to it. His lips moved. Leaving a message perhaps.
Was he calling his f**k toy? So sweet. She was busy being dead, but then he didn’t know that.
She let out a deep guttural cry that seemed to come from deep inside her throat, a primitive sound of rage.
She smashed herself against the window. It cracked but didn’t shatter.
Max’s drink slipped from his hand, his face a mask of pure terror.
Their eyes met.
Wings beating, she moved backward, ready to ram the window again. As thunder rumbled across the heavens, a shard of lightning flared across the sky.
In that brief light, she saw her broken reflection in the fractured glass, a mirror showing the gargoyle’s full wingspan, the savage look on its face and the eyes –
Her own grey eyes peered out.
Again she threw herself at the window and this time it imploded, shards of glass raining everywhere.
Max had no chance.
She gutted him in seconds, nails and fangs ripping at him as he screamed for his life. Blood and flesh bits spattered the floor, walls and ceiling.
As she left the carnage behind, flying into the night, she felt exhaustion set in.

She woke suddenly, in darkness, night vision focused on the studio table in front of her.
She couldn’t move she noted. The odour of decay again assailed her nostrils.
Was she still in the dream? Was she still in the gargoyle body? This felt real.
Rain ticked heavy against the tin roof.
The studio door creaked open slowly, a brief sliver of overcast day seeping across the ceiling as the door opened all the way.
Dull florescent lights flickered on as the door closed. Henn’s eyes adjusted. Nana must have switched the breaker somewhere.
The studio lit up and she knew then –
She was still inside the gargoyle body. She stared ahead at the table, unable to look to the sides due to the crate walls.
This felt somehow more real, more like a nightmare.
She heard the shuffle of feet moving her way.
“Thank you for the visit,” she heard her Nana say as she approached.
She stepped into her line of sight –
But it wasn’t Nana she saw, no.
It was her own young body! Her body dressed in the same long t-shirt she’d worn to bed.
No, this wasn’t happening.
Henn’s eyes bore into her.
Brilliant teal eyes.
Nana’s eyes. In her body!
She wanted to scream but nothing came out.
She watched as her body moved, as her hands reached down and grabbed a large piece of plywood from the floor.
Henn saw the nails still on the outer edges.
As she slammed the board over the crate opening, Henn screamed.
This wasn’t happening.
She cried as each nail pounded home.


THE END

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