Gargoyle

If he had heard it once, he had heard it a thousand times:

If you keep making that face, it will freeze that way!

His mother told him, his father told him, his aunts, uncles, and grandparents all told him, time after time. It was something he lived in constant terror of:

His face freezing in a pleasant expression.

Who would want a gargoyle with a smile? Or even a grin, for that matter? Unless he could somehow manage a hideous grin. That might not be so bad. They said his second-cousin Charlie had managed that one, and he did alright for himself. But the truth of the matter was that Reginald's grin wasn't hideous- it was rather nice. And for the life of him, he could not keep it off his face. Everything made him smile! Or worse- laugh! Stories, jokes, sometimes just thinking would put a smile on his face. And then someone would nudge him and say, "If you keep making that face..."

It hadn't been such a big deal when he was just a kid, but now that he was approaching Fossilesence (the change that marked a young gargoyle's passage into adulthood) Reginald knew he absolutely had to do something about the way pleasure inevitably showed up on his face.

He tried everything- thinking horrifying thoughts; trying to hold a grimace for extended bouts; taping his face into hideous expressions; he even resorted to paying his little sister to pinch him at random intervals so he could at least look pained- but nothing worked! It seemed he was doomed to be the world's worst gargoyle...


(Gargoyle)