Medusa

Chapter 1

'And so, Poseidon mercilessly took the young maiden's virtue in Athena's temple and destroyed her body. Medusa blamed Athena for not saving her, accusing Athena of being jealous of her and her sisters' beauty.

Athena vowed that from then, Medusa and her sisters were no longer beautiful and turned them into Gorgons. Ugly beasts with snakes for hair, scales for feet, and eyes which turned their subject into stone. All three sisters were punished for an eternity of this curse and it is said that their offspring, borne from the venom of their fangs, too shared their mothers' curse. Medusa and her children preyed on beating hearts carved out of their subjects whilst staring at their killer's eyes, petrifying them to share death. But while Medusa feasted on mortal's hearts, she craved for the beating heart of a child of Athena to satisfy her hunger for revenge on Athena. So, the children of Athena walk on the Earth and Medusa and her children will hunt for their hearts.'

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My parents never really cared for fiction. My father especially treated novelists with derision.

'Why read something that is untrue when the world is a scarier place,' he had scoffed.

My mother, a practical woman who turned every 3-month stay in an abandoned house a home agreed but argued for me to watch tv and to read books. Every book I was caught with by my father, the same argument arose.

'Our child should grow up normal,' she had insisted. 'She should know how the world works.'

Before, I had thought that my dad's glares every time there was an argument about this topic were because she was disobeying him but now, I know that it was because she was lying about the truth of this world. It was like rearing a prize pig for slaughter, to be fed and cooed at by the farmer for being so well-reared with death looming in an imminent storm.

Finally, my parents decided to share why we moved every three months and why they never allowed me near strangers.

We were children of Athena hiding inconspicuously from Medusa and her children, running and evading the hunt. My mother, the first to die, shared with me the 'old book' which she protected and showed the tale of Medusa's thirst for our blood. The 'old book' was a cow-hide leather encased in

'Each story is true,' She had said. 'We are children of Athena and, like all who share our mother's gifts, we run and we hide from the hunter and our children. Medusa and her children bide their time, training themselves to recognise our scent. '

'But how do we know she is near?' I had asked. 

'When you hear the hiss from the snakes in her hair, the smell of the flesh of her victims and sense that you will die, run.'