A Gorgon’s Tale
by Lia!
Once upon a time there lived a beautiful woman named Medusa. Medusa lived happily in the temple of the goddess Athena until one day Posiedon the sea god decided it would be a nice time if he raped her. He jumped her right in the middle of Athena’s temple – Medusa put up a struggle and all, but being that Posiedon was a god and she wasn’t she really couldn’t stop him from his vicious recreation.
Athena was pretty pissed off at this desecration of her temple so she turned Medusa into a hideous monster with snakes for hair that was so damn ugly that even looking at her would turn a man to stone. She didn’t do a thing to Posiedon, after all it really was Medusa’s fault for being so attractive in the first place.
So Medusa, now suffering from a tad bit of low self-esteem over her current physical condition, took to living on the island of the dead, smack in the middle of the river Styx.
Caught between life and death and feeling only rage and fear Medusa kept away anyone who dared approach her simply by exposing her ugliness to them and seeing them promptly turn to stone. Sooner or later everyone was afraid of Medusa, especially Medusa herself.
Often Medusa wished she could turn herself to stone, shut off all the pain and rage and fear that Posiedon left inside of her . Her cold sharp scales and stone ugliness protected her from further pain, but the old horrors were not silent and she longed for the inanimate stony numbness that would smother off the last of her sentience.
Unfortunately Medusa’s reflection was not lethal, so no matter how deeply Medusa gazed upon the horror of her own visage she did not find stone-death. She was only made more acutely aware of her monstrousness. Medusa broke an awful lot of mirrors.
Medusa lived like this for an awfully long time – stuck between life and death and waiting for some decisive act to break the precarious balance.
Luckily a hero named Perseus who was having a little trouble with his girlfriend (she was being fed to a sea monster) showed up on the island of the dead intending to lop Medusa’s head off (apparently her severed head would be ugly enough to turn the sea monster to stone).
Medusa put up a show of a fight but in the end she got what she wanted – her selfhood amputated at the neck.
As it turns out, Medusa’s head did kill that sea monster, so maybe her suffering had some meaning after all.
Somehow I doubt that she would think so.
