But there was no answer. I turned away, not wanting to see Molly in that state. But the sight haunted me long after I stopped looking. Her stone features had trapped her in a perpetual state of peacefully sleeping, which only made it more disturbing. It wasn't much less traumatizing than it would have been to wake up and find my girlfriend dead. And I couldn't be entirely sure that she was still alive inside of there. It wasn't like her transformation came with an instruction manual - I was only assuming that she was like the fictional creatures whose curse was broken at sundown. What if she never turned back from stone to flesh?
My mind and my heart were both racing. So what did I do? I sat down and ate a quick breakfast - the same as I would have done on any other morning, except now my stomach was turning with anxiety at every bite and refusing to digest the meal. I averted my eyes from the bed when I reached into the closet to get dressed for the day. And I went off to work.
Okay, I know that sounds uncaring of me. And in hindsight, I should have at least worked up the courage to say goodbye to her before I left. But I wasn't thinking straight. The obvious, normal response to seeing Molly unresponsive and immobile would have been to call 9-1-1, but I knew that wasn't going to help. I didn't have anyone else I could turn to with a problem like this. I thought maybe I could pretend it wasn't happening and get on with my life, hoping against hope that I was losing my marbles and I would return home to find everything normal.
Did that work? Of course not. I spent practically the entire day stealing glances at my phone. I sent her a few texts throughout the day - normal messages, like "Don't forget we're almost out of milk. Love you!" - imagining that maybe I'd get an equally normal response and everything would be fine. And every time my phone buzzed in my pocket - or, since I couldn't focus on anything else, in my hand - my heart jumped out of the pit it had sunken into, overwhelmed with relief and excitement. Then I'd see that it was just a politician asking me for money or some other type of scam, and the pit in my chest opened back up again. I hadn't dreamed it. She was lying there as an inanimate statue - I knew her well enough to be sure that she'd reply to my texts in any other circumstance.
It was the middle of winter, so I drove home in the fading light of dusk. Even on a normal day, it was awfully depressing to lose every hour of sunlight to my windowless cubicle, and I felt even worse that afternoon. But it at least carried a little bit of hope at a time like this. I couldn't tell exactly when the sun sank below the horizon - too many trees and buildings in the way - but if Molly was going to be unfrozen at all, it was likely to happen any minute now. I waited for another buzz in my back pocket as I drove, and I pulled it out for a look at every red light. Still nothing.
When I finally pulled into the driveway and walked up to the front door, I paused for a second and then knocked. I immediately wondered why I had just done that - it was our house, and I was holding the key in my other hand. But when I heard footsteps on the other side, I felt a weight lift from my shoulders that had been there all day. She was alive! And I could see a flash of blurry movement through the pinhole in the door. "H-hello?", that familiar voice asked warily. "Oh, wait, it's just you, hon. Why didn't you let yourself in?"
"I wanted to make sure you were okay first." I hadn't thought about it that way before I knocked, but subconsciously, that was probably it. "Are you okay now?"
Molly gave a deep sigh. "I mean, I can move again... Let me get away from the door before you come in. I don't want anyone else to see me like this."
Well, that told me what I was about to see when I opened the door. And there she was in the hallway, in the same mutated reptilian form I remembered from last night. She flinched when she saw me, her leathery wings instinctively curling forward to cover herself - particularly her bare breasts. I realized quickly that, with those giant limbs reaching out from her shoulder blades, it would be impossible for her to put on any of her normal clothing, even something as simple as a bra. She had slipped on a pair of panties, though, at some point while I was gone. Her legs were relatively unchanged, aside from being covered in blue scales like the rest of her body.
I reached out to comfort her again. She returned the favor by hugging me twice - once with her arms, and simultaneously raising her wings over my shoulders as well. "I'm just glad you're alive. How long was it before you could, uh...?"
"I could only get out of bed a few minutes ago," Molly answered. "It was horrible. I woke up and I couldn't move a single muscle, no matter how hard I tried. I couldn't even open my eyes, so I was blind the whole time. I thought maybe I was a vegetable in a hospital bed or something, but I could still hear everything - I heard my phone going off a bunch of times, and I knew it must be you, and I wanted so badly to pick it up and tell you what was happening, but I was just stuck like that. I thought I was gonna be trapped there forever, but then suddenly I felt myself twitching and I realized I could move again! And then, before I could do much of anything else, I heard a knock on the door... Wait... What time is it?"
"It's 5:45," I replied, glancing briefly at my phone and all the unread messages on it. She must not have even had time to fulfill her burning curiosity and look at what she'd missed before I came in. I could see by her face how disoriented she was. "In the afternoon," I added.
"Oh my god...", Molly said. "I was like that all day? Was I, like, hibernating or something? Because I'm a goddamn lizard all of a sudden? I don't get it..."
Of course she wouldn't properly understand what had just happened to her. She didn't see herself like I did. "Molly, I don't know how this is even possible, but... I think you're a gargoyle now. Which means you turn into stone during the day and become alive again at sunset. When I woke up this morning, it was like you'd been replaced with a statue of yourself. To be honest, I thought you must have been unconscious during all of that. I'm sorry, Molly, if I had known you were aware in there, I wouldn't've left you like that without saying something. I didn't..."
But I could tell she wasn't listening. She was staring down at her scaly body, as if searching for some lingering fleck of gray on her skin that would prove she'd just been stone for the last twelve hours. Her eyes were welling up with tears. "Is that going to happen to me... every day? From now on?"
"I hate to say it, but... I think so, yes. I mean, I was worried you might not come back from it at all. At least you get half the time where you're free from it?"
That was the wrong way to put it. Her mouth, which was now pushed out into a little bit of a reptile snout, curled up in disgust. She was busy flicking the sharp claw on her thumb with the even sharper claws on her forefingers. "I can't believe this is supposed to be the good part of my life now. Like, oh, I'm supposed to be happy that I'm alive again so I can go back to being this monster thing?! I don't even get one tiny moment of each day where I get to just be normal..."
I leaned forward and hugged her chilly, cold-blooded body even tighter. Molly pressed her awkwardly-shaped snout against my shoulder and started to sob. She was definitely not going to get used to this easily. And now was definitely not the time to tell her that I was just as attracted to her as ever.