I recently traveled to London with my daughter and one Saturday night we went to a concert at O’Meara, a newish venue in a small street with a church directly opposite. As we stood in line I kept looking up at part of the stone wall surrounding the church and I swore I saw a carved face in it, though my daughter couldn’t see it.
Later in the evening I ducked out of the concert for a breather and sat in the corner of the bar drinking a cider and scribbled this little piece of flash fiction on a napkin.
#GargoyleTroubles
by Debbie Manber Kupfer
Seamus O’Meara was a gargoyle now, and he hated every minute of it. Not that he had any choice. His dad had been a gargoyle as had his grandfather, great-grandfather and all his ancestors from back in the realms of history where the O’Mearas had begun.
They had started off of course as leprechauns, but had got cocky – and the fairy godfather thought he would take them down a notch, so gargoyles they became. One church after another until finally Seamus had ended up looking down at O’Meara Street.
But O’Meara had changed of late. No longer a quiet alleyway only known to the church goers, but rather a place of worship often desecrated by partygoers that frequented the venue that had sprung up across the street. Seamus had been sat on, spat at, climbed and pissed on – all in the interests of a congenial Saturday night.
He’d had enough. He gazed down at the revelers and plotted his revenge.
© Debbie Manber Kupfer, 2017
