The Gargoyle Gang : An Introduction to the Descent into Madness
Aiden Kurtz: He can remember how it started, but he can’t seem to put the pieces together in order to figure out how things got this bad. It wasn’t always like this. It started at Southside High School, in Mr. Phillips’s English class. The man took a particular liking to Aiden, told the teenage boy that he had potential but he needed to apply himself more. Started calling him by his last name, “You know, like the character from the novel? Or have you been skipping out on your readings?” The kind teacher looked at Aiden with expectant eyes, holding up a well-marked copy of Heart of Darkness. Not wanting to be chastised for spacing out in class, Aiden nods along, zipping up his black JanSport and throwing the backpack over one shoulder. “Come by my office after school, kid. I think you and I could help each other out.” He trusts his teacher enough not to think ill of him, so he reports to Mr. Philips’s room right after seventh period ends. “Ah, Mr. Kurtz! Glad you could join me!” Aiden liked the way his last name rolled off the man’s tongue, he made a mental note to tell his friends that he just wanted to go by “Kurtz” now. The trusted teacher clapped a friendly hand over the boy’s shoulder, steering him down the hallway and down the chilly metal stairs and into the depths of the old school’s basement. Fizzle rocks. It’s an invitation to a world that Kurtz wouldn’t be able to get out of until it killed him. “You can’t tell anyone about this, Kurtz” And he doesn’t.
Hunter Alex: Seeing red was easy for him. Anger was a palpable emotion, one that was easy to relieve himself of. There’s a fist-sized hole in the drywall of his bedroom, he covers the hole with a poster of a loud band that really couldn’t be classified as “music,” just noise. The pills get handed to him every morning before school, and again just before he goes to bed. Mom used to keep the orange plastic bottles in the bathroom medicine cabinet until she caught Hunter double-dipping one too many times. He was torn between wanting to feel everything and nothing simultaneously. Hunter can remember his mom crying after he broke the hallway mirror, glass shards poking out of the peaks of his now-split knuckles. “I just don’t know what I’m supposed to do with him! He scares me, I’m scared of my own son! What kind of mother can say that?” The woman lit up a cigarette as she ranted to Clint, or as Hunter liked to call him, husband number three. “Send his sorry ass off to military school, that’s what my dad did with me and I turned out to be a damn good man!” The big man is boisterous as he takes another long swig off a warm can of Coors Lite, the neckline of his wife-beater soaked with a thin layer of sweat. When Hunter notices the hand-shaped bruises on his mother’s arms, he corners his step-father in the kitchen, pushes the man in the nook between the refrigerator and the stove and delivers a swift uppercut to Clint’s jaw before repeatedly punching him square in the nose. “Who’s a good man now?”
Jackson Schulz: When he was a kid, he remembered telling his parents that he wanted to be a scientist; a physicist or a doctor. He couldn’t even spell the word “physicist,” but he thought that he would make a good one. His parents are supportive — they buy him the toy kits, the plastic test tubes and the junior microscope, take him out to dinner when he wins first place at the science fair, brag to all of their snooty co-workers about how smart their boy was. He thinks about those days, when everything was innocent and no one was getting hurt. The prodigal son of a doctor and a lecturer, meant for greatness but always falling short. Jackson can remember the first time he watches his father exchange his stash of medical-grade pharmaceuticals for money; There’s a young man with curly hair and wide eyes standing at the back door of the big yellow house, waiting for the sleight-of-hand exchange of money for the big sack of pills. It was right after Grandma got her diagnosis, the cancer came back after being long-dormant and it was aggressive as ever. The insurance company wasn’t going to be able to cover the cost of all the expenses anymore, so the family was forced to reevaluate their options. Jackson watches the shallow rise and fall of her breathing as she sleeps, Hospice set up a bed in the living room now, complete with all the tubes, bells, and whistles. He tiptoes over to the staircase and watches as his father injects something into the IV drip. It’s the first time that he realizes chemicals have a certain kind of power.
Wyatt Hudson: Curiosity may have killed the cat, but hey, at least the cat got its answer. He was born with too many questions and not enough answers. Wyatt’s mom swears to God in Heaven that her son’s first words were “But why?” The young boy had a hunger for knowledge and thought that he could answer every question in the world if he asked the right people. When the family was forced to move into a different, smaller house; But why? When mama said that daddy wasn’t coming back now or ever; But why? When Wyatt’s older sister Raven ran off and left her newborn baby at home; But why? There were so many questions he had yet to have answered, but some that he was too scared to ask. He finds a boy who’ll answer almost anything (within reason), and promises that he’s found a way to make sense of things, to make sense of everything. “It’s just a game, what’s so special about it?” Kurtz smiles, which is an unnerving expression with his gaunt features, lifeless eyes and pupils that look wrong and too big. “It’s not a game, it’s so much more,”. He grabs Wyatt by the hand and leads his friend over to the locker bank. Kurtz’s fingers are cold and shaky as he dials the combination, pulling out the worn paperback player’s manual. Turning on his boot-heels, he tosses the book at Wyatt, who fumbles to catch it. Gryphons and Gargoyles. It scares him and excites him all in one. When things get bad, when it becomes more than a game, and Wyatt can’t bear to look himself in the eye, he has one question for the person that got him into this mess in the first place.
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