Read by Grace Cookey-Gam - podcast here (fourth story)
Medusa slips into the sultry water, and the snakes sway and hiss about her head. Perhaps they move in pleasure, or revulsion, or annoyance; she’s not sure, she doesn’t understand them yet, these new slithering appendages of hers.
She tries to forget. Relax. Be tranquil.
But out of the corners of her eyes, scales, like green teardrops, pulsate. Black horizontal slits, situated on bulging metallic globes, fix and stare. Forked tongues, pink and unsated, dip into the water, and sip.
In doing this, she can pretend she hasn’t changed. That her hair is fanning out behind her, tumbling over the tub’s edge, the way it used to. That her porcelain skin continues to be praised by her numerous admirers; pristine, is how they describe it, and her. That a glance from her is considered a triumph, and men compete, sometimes violently, to obtain it. From this angle, she is perfection still; the damage, that which is on the outside, from the neck up, unseen.
She shudders. She picks up the soap, and scrubs at her skin, from sternum to toes – the parts the snakes can’t reach, the parts she can touch without accidentally touching the snakes, the parts she can make clean again.
Her actions are meditative.
Her mind wanders.
Her eyes come to rest on her hairbrush, on the pedestal in front of the mirror. The last time she used it, she completed her one-hundred strokes, blew a kiss at her reflection, and left for Athens. The strands of hair seized that day are still wrapped around the sharp boar bristle pins, reminding her of what happened, when she arrived at the temple overlooking the city.
She used to cry at everything – sad music, a man choosing a different woman, losing an argument – now, tears well up, but before they can fall, they boil and evaporate. She doesn’t need the brush any more. Doesn’t want it. Despises it. When she gets out of the bath, she will throw it away, out of the window, so she never has to see it again. Her heart begins to pound, the snakes coil and uncoil and recoil, she grips the edges of the bathtub. No! If she throws it from the window, she risks it falling into the sea, instead of smashing into thousands of pieces on the rocks below – Poseidon can’t take another piece of her – she won’t let him!
Stop.
She takes slow, deep breaths.
Tells herself she’s safe, on this island, in this room, here, now.
She calms.
The clouds of steam part. Her sisters burst into the room, their laughter resounding. Medusa starts, and sinks deeper into the bathtub, hiding her body beneath the waves, causing water to spill onto the floor.
What do they want from her – their mortal family, their beautiful kin, the younger sibling they’ve never paid attention to before?
Stheno and Euryale throw themselves down beside her, dampening their dresses.
‘Sister!’ they cry – a word they’ve never uttered before – and the air buzzes as their snakes echo the sentiment.
‘A body taken by Poseidon,’ says Stheno.
‘Snakes given in return by Athena,’ says Euryale.
‘You’re one,’ says Stheno.
‘Of us now,’ says Euryale.
‘Ask us,’ says Stheno.
‘Anything,’ says Euryale.
They take her hands in theirs, and as she stares into their ancient faces, seeing mouths full of sharp teeth wrapped around wicked smiles; beady black eyes, glinting with malice; smooth, endless, twisting snakes; her blood runs cold. She hasn’t seen herself in a mirror since that day – she’s been too sickened to look – but now, with her sisters before her, closer than they’ve ever been, she wonders, Am I, like them, a monster?
*
Another day, another bath. Medusa has learned that the snakes relish heat and humidity, and as such, she must spend several precious hours in the water each day, to pacify them.
Her sisters pay their usual visit. She’s still unsure of them, but as she can’t have human company any more, she needs to grasp onto this new relationship, shape it, make it stronger. The only things she has in this world now are sisters and snakes.
‘Tell us,’ says Stheno.
‘About your day,’ says Euryale.
‘And the men,’ says Stheno.
‘That you slayed,’ says Euryale.
Ah, they want a story. She complies, but knows she must make it a good one, so they don’t think less of her, their vain and naïve sister.
‘There was a man,’ Medusa says slowly. ‘When I was walking on the rocky northern shore today.’ She tries to conjure the man’s face, but it’s a different face she sees; a different body; a different time and place. Her heart thuds. The snakes circling her head coil and uncoil and recoil.
She glances at her sisters. Myriad eyes peer back, hushed, focussed.
‘From his behaviour, his intention was clear: to find us, and destroy us.’
Her sisters gasp and clasp their hands together.
‘He held a hunting knife.’
Fangs quiver, venomous.
‘But I am no fool. I appeared before him – he had time to cry out – only once – a thin pathetic sound – then he became nothing more than a statue.’
Her sisters sigh, and their snakes hiss; she can recognise this as desire, now she’s becoming used to them, the sisters and the snakes.
‘I would do anything, for my sisters,’ Medusa says.
They celebrate her, and the destruction of their enemies. Then, sisters and snakes depart, satisfied.
Medusa remains in her bath, moving only to add hot water. It displaces the lukewarm, and envelops her.
Her surroundings are unchanged.
Her hairbrush is still on the pedestal.
Her story was a lie. She’s not sure where it came from, she simply wanted to show solidarity with her sisters, to demonstrate she understands how men behave towards them, to illustrate she’s the same as they are. Or she could be.
The truth is, there had been a man; not that morning, but the previous week, on the empty beach. He didn’t seem to be seeking their cave. He didn’t have a knife, or any other weapon she could see. He was just walking. Then he bent to pick something up, maybe a pebble or seashell, and when he stood, his eyes happened to meet hers, and he was turned to stone in an instant.
When she saw what she had done, she froze, stomach full of sand, time made of clay, but heart still beating, snakes still surging.
Guilt, pity, shame – she felt everything, too much. She allowed a single tear to fall, then turned and ran from the scene of the crime.
Later, immersed in her bath, she thought of the man. Who was he? Did he have a wife or a lover? Was he still there, inside the statue, or gone? How could she live with herself – even though it was not her fault; a curse Athena had laid on her, rather than something she’d intentionally done?
She swore she would never look at another man again.
Then she banished the memory, dropping it into the bath water, letting it sink beneath the surface, deep.
She hasn’t allowed herself to think of it again, until this moment. Now, she tells herself it doesn’t matter about the lie, because the version she told her sisters sounded better, less painful, more satisfying. Plus, she enjoyed their reaction – theirs, and their snakes. She wants to be that woman, the woman in her tale, so she wonders, Can you make a monster real, just by telling a story about it?
*
Medusa takes her bath. Hot water pours in. Steam rises. Her snakes luxuriate, and so does she. This is where she dwells, now, when she’s resting, after her daily strolls around the unwelcoming outside world.
‘You,’ says Stheno.
‘Inspire,’ says Euryale.
‘Us,’ says Stheno.
‘Sister,’ says Euryale.
Her sisters laugh. Their snakes entwine, hissing in unison.
She lies back in the water, and there’s a writhing sensation in her belly. She’s been suspicious, lately, about just how deep inside her the snakes have submerged themselves; now, it seems she may have found her answer (or so she chooses to believe, because she can’t contemplate the alternative). She’s not ready to share this news. She has learned, from her snakes, how to camouflage, so she covers that part of her body with both hands, curious if her touch will reveal movement beneath her skin, but it does not.
Soon, her sisters and their snakes return to their own chamber, and the bathroom falls silent.
She wants to lie on the rocks outside the cave, and bask in the afternoon sun. Rising out of the bathtub, drunk on her sisters’ admiration, her feet feel strange on the cool tiles. She approaches the mirror, out of habit.
The hairbrush, once hers, now lies on the floor in the corner of the room. Those strands of hair have not escaped, and they never will.
The creatures spiral down beyond her shoulders, and she strokes their soft contours with her fingertips, as though teasing out her curls.
The thing in the mirror briefly resembles the old Medusa – the pristine woman with porcelain skin, and multiple suitors jealously competing for her affection – then her snakes hiss, and the spell is shattered.
She lingers in the bathroom, but goes to the window, and peers outside at the sea that surrounds her island home, stretching from the edge of known civilisation towards Athens.
Below her, statues stand on the rocky shoreline, cold and silent. They stand on every shoreline, of every island. And on the mainland. In the fields, on the streets, within the temples, and everywhere else, throughout the entire Western world.
They will stand, right where she created them, until the day they are dismantled by time, wind, or water, or by the will of the capricious gods.
Caressing her stomach, she marvels at her grotesque architecture. Some of the statues are posed with palms upturned, pleading, or about to pray. Others are reaching out, as if they could have prevented their fate, as if it wasn’t already too late, as if she might have granted them mercy. Most have their mouths wide open, gasping, or about to scream, or already screaming. All are staring at the last thing they would ever see: Medusa.
She is proud of each creation, because as well as physical works of art, they became night-time stories for her sisters. Each demise transformed into words that mesmerised her listeners, enthralling them with the pictures she painted, thrilling them with the drama of her conquests.
Like the one about the man on the hillside in Etia, with eyes as blue as the morning sea; one day, while taking a break from watching his goats, he looked up from his cigarette, saw her, and saw no more.
Or the father outside the Fortress of Antimachia, who seemed to think he could protect his young son by standing in front of the boy when the stranger advanced with her snakes, but was wrong.
Or the crowd of thirty men in the square in Chania, assembled to demand protection from the Gorgons, forever stilled in a semi-circle around their own town, ironically achieving a wall, of sorts.
But for the men who existed before the statues, of the lives snuffed out, of the women left behind to mourn, she feels nothing; nothing at all.
Now, as her eyes pass over the statues, Medusa smiles. Her snakes pulse. Her heart coils and uncoils and recoils. And she wonders, Will my children be monsters, too?
(c) Mina Ma, 2022
Mina Ma is an English teacher by day, and a writer by night (not too late at night, though; she needs her beauty sleep). She loves writing poetic prose, dipping into magical realism, and giving allies to her alienated female characters. Her short stories play with metafiction, intertextuality, and narrative structure.
Grace Cookey-Gam is an actress, voiceover artist and classically trained singer. Recent credits include Persuasion (Rose Theatre Kingston, Alexandra Palace & Oxford Playhouse), This Is Going To Hurt (BBC), Hollyoaks (Channel 5) and Things Fall Apart (BBC Radio 4). Grace is represented by http://www.rebeccasingermanagement.com.
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