StATuE

Considering Ray had just officially missed rent again, hadn’t heard back from any interviews, and that he’d actually considered buying cat food since it was on special – and then did buy it – the sudden thunder suited him just fine. A little weather would scatter most of the casuals from The Butthole – what everyone called Button Park – so maybe this time he could enjoy nature without getting mugged again.

Crunching through the autumn leaves, and sidestepping the broken glass and syringes, gave him a sense of peace. The first drops of rain were invigorating, and he considered getting soaked to cut down the water bill. Until, that is, it really started gushing, and the fresh breeze turned into cold howling.

The next lightning flash, he ran for the nearest shelter – the underside of Holcott’s Bridge. In the daylight, and from above, it was a charming thing of thick wood planks and irregular masonry, artfully decorated with decades of tags – though nobody knew who Holcott was. From underneath though, it spanned a rancid stretch of mud, rotting leaves, and used condoms. Still, it was cover.

Suddenly a nearby tree exploded as lightning struck it. Ray shrieked, close enough to feel the heat and to smell the burnt wood. How many people got to see a lightning strike up close? A part of his mind lamented not having his phone on him to record it. Might have given his dying channel a boost.

The tree groaned and folded in half like Ray’s dining room chairs, which were lawn chairs. He gawked as the forty-footer collapsed, wood tearing like the splintering of bones. And screaming? There was a shrieking, a shrill alarm as the top half of the tree came free, and when it hit the ground – hard enough Ray felt the echo down his spine – something came loose: an awkward hissing ball, which tumbled under the bridge beside him, and unfurled. And then, it lay still.

Ray gasped, and leaned forward. The thing was an animal. A bird, as it had wings. That made sense; birds lived in trees, and this poor sap had just been evicted – a kindred spirit, down on his luck. It was about the size of a turkey. Did turkeys live in trees? Ray didn’t know. But he did know they tasted good, and that was a lot of meat–

–Wait. Did turkeys have tails?

He crept closer. This turkey definitely had a tail. A long, narrow one, twitching and featherless. Ray gulped, but before he could do anything else, the turkey lurched to its feet and hissed, and Ray threw himself to the ground and whimpered.

It didn’t attack him though, instead wobbling out from under the bridge and further into the park. Its tail snaked back and forth, and the whole damn bird was really long. It kept stumbling, probably shocked or injured, and it didn’t make it too far before collapsing entirely.

Despite his better judgment, Ray approached. The storm had abated, and in the moonlight, Ray realized the prone animal wasn’t a turkey at all.

The head was more like a rooster, but the main body was completely featherless, covered in grey scales. It did have two big, turkeyish wings, but its feet were crocodile-thick, and ended in severe talons that reminded him of Jurassic Park. And that tail: long, with ridges or frills or something running down the back.

And Ray gasped. A bird head on an animal body – as an amateur cryptozoologist, he knew exactly what this was. Impossible as it was, this was a gryphon!

And it needed his help. He bundled it in his arms and took it home.

The gryphon stank. Not worse than Ray’s apartment, but different. It exuded an earthy rot accented with sharp notes of birdshit, which clashed with the old building’s perennial haze of urine and playful wafts of foot-cheese.

Nevertheless, Ray was pleased. He created a nest of old towels and gently laid the gryphon down. Its eyes were closed and its breathing was shallow, and he feared it was injured. He had no idea how to care for an animal – much less a myth! – so he sat with it, talked to it, and tenderly petted its head.

He poured it a bowl of water, and taking their chance encounter as a sign from the universe, gave it another bowl filled with his cat food.

A day later, it woke. It side-eyed him and sniffed at his fingers, but it seemed content enough to eat and to allow Ray to tend to it. He never had a pet before and hoped he didn’t screw it up. Of course, he suspected nobody had ever had a pet gryphon before.

Although he was growing to love the little guy, a part of Ray was underwhelmed. The stories made it sound like gryphons were majestic – big, proud, the kings of the skies. Eagle-and-lion featured most prominently. Chicken-and-gecko, less so. Still, he knew that descriptions of cryptids were often exaggerated, due to just how rare they were.

It’s what Frank taught him when he first got Ray into cryptozoology, and Frank would know. He was, after all, one of the few people who had actually seen the real Loch Ness monster. It wasn’t some flippered serpent, like most people thought. Rather, “It’s actually a land animal,” Frank said. “Kind of a seal crossed with a giraffe. I caught it bathing, and it was real friendly. Only, the little git nibbled my phone, so I wasn’t able to get a photo.”

But Ray had his phone. He took a selfie with his gryphon and sent it to Frank, with the line, “guess who found a gryphon!!!!”

“not bad,” Frank texted back. “is that ai?”

“no its real!!!!”

He sent a couple more photos and then a short video, which the gryphon accented with a couple clucks and a shake of its roosterish wattle.

Frank didn’t reply for a few minutes, and then the dam broke.

“HOLY SHIT IT REAL”

Next, a torrent of questions, and a recommendation – no, a demand – that Ray put the gryphon up on his channel.

“teh world needs to now!! and ull make bank!!”

“yeah?”

“yah!! ill spread the word, get it on ur socials too! make hype for a week and then do a livestream! $$$”

They hashed out the plan. Ray would create a couple teaser videos, they’d get the word out, and then next Friday, the whole cryptozoology world could tune in to his livestream and interact with the gryphon.

“we need branding,” Frank said. “what his name”

Ray thought it over, as he pet his gryphon and fed it more cat food.

“Graham”

“Graham the Great Gryphon :)” Frank said.

By Monday, all their colleagues in the Cryptid Conservation Collective knew of the event. By Tuesday, other cryptozoological organizations had heard of it, and a couple paranormal fandoms had started chatting. Wednesday morning, Frank’s thirteen year old nephew got a hold of some of the promo images and memed the crap out of them, and they hit the middle school circuit; by evening, they’d gone to college. Thursday, a tiny local newscaster picked up the story, under their “Well, Would You Believe It?” segment, and everyone else jumped on board. By Thursday night, Graham the Great Gryphon got a ticker on every twenty-four hour news cycle, with vaguely amused casters claiming “The big day is tomorrow! Guess we’ll find out then.”

And on Friday, Ray drank his last energy drink, put on his headset, and turned on his camera.

There were more people in his channel than ever before, and if they stuck around, he would make bank. But, when he saw their first comments in the chat, he wasn’t hopeful. Naysayers, ridiculers, and griefers.

Ray swallowed hard. “Well, time to meet the man of the hour,” he said into the camera. He scooped Graham into his lap and into the shot. “Ta-da!”

Some said “whoa!”, more said “fake!” – but they hung around, which was what counted. Actually, more viewers kept logging on, which counted even more.

But viewers being viewers, did what viewers do: they grew bored.

“Make him do stuff!” they cried.

Graham was entirely content just sitting in Ray’s lap, happy to side-eye the computer monitor, but apparently that wasn’t gripping viewing.

“Um,” said Ray, “Speak!”

Graham ruffled his feathers and closed his eyes.

“Dance!”

Graham dozed.

Ray regretted not taking the time to teach his gryphon any tricks – if one could even be taught.

“Um,” he said. On a whim, he lifted Graham bodily and positioned him right in front of the camera. “Say hi to our viewers, Graham!”

Graham made a low growl and twisted away from the camera. Ray maneuvered him closer again, pushing his head towards the lens.

“Come on! Say hi to the nice people!”

Graham’s claws dug into Ray’s lap as the gryphon’s body tensed. Undeterred, Ray pushed his head closer to the camera again. When Graham’s eye was almost touching the blinking red light beside the lens, the camera malfunctioned somehow, because suddenly the room was lit up by a flash of red. Graham let out a hiss that would put a locomotive to shame, and Ray flinched.

“Jesus!” Ray said, and then giggled nervously. “That was loud, eh?”

Free of hands, Graham retreated from the camera and nestled in Ray’s lap again.

The chat room had gone completely silent. No doubt, his viewers were shocked – and he hoped, delighted – by Graham’s performance.

But the moment passed, and the viewer count kept rising. The algorithms responsible for promoting videos noticed his stream was gaining steam, and pushed it ever harder. This caught the news’s attention again, and that drove even more traffic to see Graham.

And if people kept coming, it meant his camera still worked, despite the malfunction. Still, Ray looked it over when he triggered a commercial break. Then he looked up what an ad might be worth with this many viewers. Then he almost fell off his chair.

This wasn’t rent money. This was house-buying money.

The growing audience goaded him on into getting Graham to perform again, since rumours of the “epic hiss” had been circulating, so Ray tried to reproduce it. He wasn’t hopeful, but surprisingly Graham was accommodating. This time, as soon as he was brought near the camera, he got his hackles up and started hissing and scratching, and then he lunged at it with his beak.

And again, the flash of red malfunction.

And again, the chat room went silent, in awe.

And again, even more viewers poured in.

During the next commercial break, Ray videocalled Frank.

“Dude!” said Ray. “This is nuts! I have like… Holy crap, six-hundred million viewers!”

“Dude, I know! This is insane! I knew cryptids were real. I knew it! Screw you, Dad!”

“Ha, yeah. Listen, the streaming thing was a great idea!”

“Definitely!” said Frank. “Hey, you’re going to cut me in, right?”

“Oh hell yeah. Way this is going, we’ll buy ourselves mansions, and then islands to put them on!”

“Awesome! And we couldn’t have done it without the man of the hour. Hey, put Graham on! I want to see him up close.”

“Sure thing!”

Ray brought his phone towards the gryphon, who immediately tensed and grumbled. When the screen with Frank’s face was just a couple beakspans away, Graham squawked and–

And surprisingly, there was another flash of red light, though the streaming camera was nowhere near them. Maybe Graham accidentally tapped an app? A flashing red light app? Ray didn’t have time to think about it, because it looked like Frank had dropped his phone on the other end, and besides, the commercial break was almost over.

He turned back to his fans, and kept showing off the gryphon. This went on all night until Ray felt like he was dead on his feet, but at the insistence of his fans he promised to keep the camera running all night, so that people could still view the gryphon. And so Ray drifted off to sleep, serenaded by gryphon hisses and the occasional flash of red light.

He was woken in the morning by a rooster’s crowing, and he found his channel was still going impossibly strong with billions of viewers. Absolutely record breaking. It had to be. Didn’t look like anyone was chatting though. Maybe they’d all fallen asleep at their computers?

One of his dented pots wobbling on his kitchen floor drew his attention. He found Graham shuffling around on the linoleum, making a mess of things.

“Oh, you must be hungry.”

The gryphon bawked.

Ray checked his groceries and Graham huffed. They’d gone through the last of his cat food yesterday.

“Sorry buddy. I’m all out.”

Graham pecked him in the shin, hard.

“Hey, chill out! The money we earned, I’ll buy you a whole cat to eat.”

Graham hissed but Ray was already making his way back to his computer. How much had he earned? Curiously, the chat was still quiet, even though billions of eyes were watching him.

“Guys, I think we broke a record,” he told his viewers. “I’m just going to check something real quick.”

What he searched for was “most viewers in a livestream”, but what the search engines returned were nothing but breaking news articles about “what leading doctors are calling the Stone-analogous Transubstantive Epidemic (StATuE)”.

“Hmm,” said Ray.

Apparently since the previous day, people all around the world had been suddenly turning to stone. Many people. Billions.

“Hmm.”

Graham pecked him hard in the knee.

“Shh! I’m thinking!” Ray rubbed his knee, and Graham made a low hiss. “Look, I’ll feed you in a moment, but there’s some new disease going around! People turning to stone, if you can believe it, and nobody knows why.”

People turning to stone. To statues. Bizarre!

Graham hissed. Graham, with his wattle flapping, and his comb standing tall and tense, so much like a proud rooster. Truth be told, he didn’t even look like a gryphon. Far too small, and with the rooster head, and the scaly, vaguely dragonish body, he looked more like a–

“–Oh!” Ray exclaimed. “You’re not a gryphon at all, are you, buddy? You’re a cockatrice!”

Graham hissed so hard his whole body shook violently.

“Oh.” Ray gulped. “Shit.”

The last thing he saw was the bright flash of red in Graham’s beady eyes.