Monsters

The shatters of glass littering the floor crunched under twenty-four sets of panicked students' feet. I heard frantic screaming all around me. The kids from my art class ran around me and wailed like it was Armageddon. My eyes weren't focused on the chaos, though. I was busy staring into the angry, reptilian eyes of a gorgon.

~~~~~~~~~~~

It started normally enough this morning. My dad and mom waved me off as I boarded my friend's car to ride to school. I suffered through several periods of absolute boredom, until suddenly

RRRRRIIIIINGGGG!

The bell wailed, and my 5th Period Science teacher, Mrs. Frost, ordered us out the door of class to gratefully leave us to our assorted other teachers. As soon as I entered the room, I streaked to my seat and yanked out my huge construction paper portfolio. It was dotted with doodles of multicolored seashells and anatomically correct sketches of seahorses. I grabbed my charcoal and scratched a rough outline of a woman with gorgeous curly hair. She smiled from the page, and my immature part wanted to wave. But passing sixth grade Art is important, I reminded myself, and turned my attention to the teacher.

Just as Ms. Johnson was about to explain the day's art project, a huge, shadowy figure smashed through the enormous art-covered window, landing with an enormous crash onto my desk. My classmates fell from their chairs in their effort to get away from the strange person, running to the other side of the room and standing there in shock and silence. I realized the poor person must be a woman, and she looked injured. Still unable to wrench myself from the seat, I reached out a hand to touch her, maybe see what was wrong.

Then the horrifying humanoid figure raised her head and stared at me.

~~~~~~~~~~~

I withdrew my hand quickly. Her sickening eyes peered deep into mine. She had no irises, instead, her eyes are completely orange, except for her red slit pupils. Her pulsing slit pupils read my identity like a book. I stare into only her eyes, but she stares into me.

But I managed to wrench myself from her horrible, hypnotic eyes and tried to focus on another part of her face, any other part of her face. So, instead, I focused on her hair--or should I say, her snakes. They hissed feebly around her shoulders. Her smoking cape lay draped around her reptilian shoulders, barely hiding her scales. Under that, she wore a ripped white priestess's dress fastened with a belt made of more living serpents. Her face sported two vicious-looking tusks. She dripped thick, golden blood from her innumerable cuts and scratches. Her animal-like hands were bronze, and the talons gleamed wickedly in the sun.

She looked down at the childish charcoal drawing she was dripping blood on. She snatched it up with clawed fingers. She stroked its surface with such gentleness, it’d have been almost sweet, if it hadn’t been so terrifying. I can smell her stale breaths she examines my art.

"I used to look like this," she croaked. Her voice sounded unused, like she's spent the last few years screaming into a pillow to communicate. "Young. Pretty.I think this is just a lovely portrait of me, dear. Thank you for it, how much will that cost?" She turned to me and babbled. Her huge fangs were inches from my nose, but her tusks are already touching them. I could taste the curdled smell of blood on her breath.

The beast sighed. "Ah, but look at me now, little ones. I said look at me!" she screamed.

She whipped around furiously, as if to find whoever wasn't looking at her on command. Her eyes locked onto my poor art teacher, who was cowering by the big red wall-phone on the other side of the room, frantically typing in numbers 9-1-1. Ms. Johnson dropped the phone in terror. The snake-woman narrowed her eyes and approached.

"You look a lot like the woman who did this to me," she sang.

She's insane. She's absolutely mad, I thought in horror.

She swayed with each step, wobbling like she was drunk. She looked like she has been through too many fights, and one of the broken bones had cracked her sanity, too.

"You look just like her!" The monster giggled wildly as she approached. "Juuuuuust like her. Such pretty hair, such pretty eyes... Yes, that is you, isn't it! Yes, you did hate my sister, didn't you! You really did want her to suffer." She turns on my classmates, hissing and spitting. "Oh, children, I should never have taken part of her burden. Look at what it did to me, children. Look what being kind has done to me! Never be kind, children. Whatever you do, never sacrifice to save your sister. Oh, she's dead now. A man came down from the sky and stole her head and her life with a polished shield. She's dead, and who's left? Not my other little sister. Oh, she wasn't supposed to die, like me, but she-- she just-- disappeared one day. Into smoke," she babbled angrily, spinning away from the kids and ranting to the ceiling.

A strange mix of horror, shock, fear, and pity washed over me. I listened to the words inside my head over and over, and recalled a myth I read a long time ago... Suddenly, I broke up her terrifying monologue, words exploding form my mouth before I could stop to consider whether it was a good idea to speak them.

"Who are you? You're one of the sisters of Medusa, aren't you? The two immortal sisters who shared Athena's curse? Stethno and Euryale, right?"

She spun towards me, her face the picture of a surprised monster.

"Yes. I am the eldest, Stethno. You remember me?"

"Y-yes." I hadn't thought of what to say next when I blurted the question out. I knew the myth, of course, but I was worried she would kill me if I talk too much. She seemed to like ranting manically. "I remember you, yes."

"I thought the humans had forgotten us." Stethno's face softened.

"No, no," I told her, gathering confidence. "You are the stuff of great legends! People write stories about you, and tell them to their children, and their children, and their children. No one forgot you, ever!"

Her eyes gleam triumphantly. "They shall write new stories of today, then! The day the eldest gorgon escaped the Earth Mother's grasp and razed the humans! Burned them to the ground! I shall be remembered forever!"

"No!" I cried out, panicking. I collected myself a little and continued, "I-I mean, you can be remembered forever, even without the razing and the... burning to the ground and all that. You don't have to destroy us. I mean, you are human under those snakes, right? Human, like us?"

Stethno's eyes shone with unshed tears. "Yes," she whispered. "Yes, I am human."

"Humans don't go around killing other humans, usually,” I pointed out cautiously.

Her face burned with shame. "I was so lonely..."

"I know." I stepped closer to the gorgon and stretched my hand out. Part of me screamed to run away, but instead I drew nearer. I rested a hand on her shoulder and she sobs.

"You don't attack people to be less lonely, though. I know. My parents are gone, and I used to lash out at my foster parents." I found myself telling Stethno everything. I forgot about the other kids watching us. I forgot that she's an immortal mythical death-monster who was just threatening to raze our civilization and all that. I told her the whole story, about how my parents died last year in the car crash, about how I had to move across the country and left behind all of my friends and family. About how I screamed at my foster parents every night for months. I was scared and lonely and broken, and I lashed out at the people trying to help me. Stethno listened quietly the whole time. No ranting, crazy screaming, or hissing, just silence. When I finished, she stared at me for a few minutes. Then she curled her scaly lips around her tusks into a smile.

"Thank you, human. Thank you for sharing your story with me."

She turned around slowly, dripping her strange golden blood across the floor. Stethno suddenly broke into a hobbling run and jumped, falling the three stories to the ground. The wind caught the huge, bronze wings that unfurled from her back. They ripped away her shawl as they snap open, and she flies away without it, over the skyline and into the trees. My classmates watched her sail away silently, too stunned to speak. She let out a cry that was pitiable and terrifying, shaking our bones. Then she just disappeared. The last gorgon alive... gone.

And the strangest thing is, she took my picture with her when she left.