by Paul Finch
But even that was not punishment enough for Athena. Oh no. It was not enough that I rot for eternity in a stinking cave. Not for her. She wanted rid of me entirely. Wanted me expunged. But not by her own fair hand, of course. She used Perseus. When he was given the task by King Polydectes to slay me, she favoured him. Prevailed upon Hermes to give up his winged sandals as well. Begged that coward Hades to supply a cap of invisibility. And, of course, it was Athena herself who supplied the burnished shield so that Perseus could see my reflected image without ever having to look upon me. I stood at the mouth of the cave before he came that day, looked out over the dolphin-torn Mediterranean dawn, and-on my knees, weeping every tear I had left-I begged Poseidon to offer me safe passage away from this island before Athena's assassin came.
Poseidon refused. Of course he refused. This time Athena was watching. And so a great hero was born-Perseus, offspring of Danae, bastard son of Zeus, slayer of the Gorgon!
And that, you would think, might have been enough retribution even for the insane Athena. But you would be wrong. Grateful Perseus made a votive gift of my head to her, and she took it. She took it and attached it as the central boss of her shield, the aegis. And then, as Athena Promachos, she carried my head for all time thereafter into battle at the vanguard of her armies. A purity of terror, Virgil called me, the Gorgoneion. 'A severed head rolling its eyes'. 'Therein was set,' says Homer, 'as a crown the Gorgon, grim of aspect, glaring terribly, and about her were Terror and Rout.'
Of course, things have moved on since those heady days. We don't see much of Zeus and Athena any more, do we? They've retreated into Mount Olympus's obscure heights. We're much more modern and grown-up now. We don't believe in monsters.
While Doug watches something writhing on my face, I've been thinking about all of this and reading Das Medusenhaupt. You may be familiar with it. It's one of Sigmund Freud's late essays from around 1940. In it, he calls me 'The supreme talisman who provides the image of castration.' The sight of me, he said, makes the spectator 'stiff with terror'. Freud, typically, had an answer for any man who came across a woman like me. You know, thecastrating type of woman he was always on the lookout for. This was his advice, guys. Are you listening? He said you should display your own penis in riposte. He thought this would work. To display the erect penis, he said, is to announce, 'I am not afraid of you. I defy you. I have a penis.' Oh, what a screwed-up miserable little man he must have been. I wish I could have watched what happened to his little cherub when I stepped into his study.
But at least Freud had a healthy respect for my dark side. Incomprehensibly, I'm a symbol for women's liberation these days. They plumb the depths of my story and find the wellspring of their own righteous womanly anger. Their anger? I'll show them anger!
Doug's sitting ever so quietly at the back of the room. He thinks I've forgotten about him. He's desperately thirsty, but he's too scared to move. He's fading fast but still valiantly hanging onto life. If he's a good boy I'll find some moisture to give him.
May 28th . Annette prefers to breakfast alone these days, but I insist. All morning I've had her between my legs, investigating the mysterious boiling/moiling/roiling going on down there. I'm actually a bit scared to look myself. Annette is a handy probe. My remote surveillance device, if you like. Her plunged head can get right down there and do the preliminary research. Only... I'm not quite sure how best to use her head exactly. As a plug? Or as something to stroke the area? Oh, that's a horrible thing to suggest, isn't it? How terrible is that? Everybody only wants the best for me. Annette. Even that well-meaning if inept counsellor, Borthwick. He rang Annette's mobile, asking after me. I heard it tinnily beeping, and fetched Annette back up to let me listen. Mr Borthwick wants to come over.
Midnight. A few minutes ago, I made a mistake. I forgot I was holding Annette against me. I dropped her when I remembered, but she slumped straight to the floor, dead. After waiting a respectful few seconds, I touched myself down there, still without looking down. The hardness made me flinch. What is it? Perhaps even my own rigid fingers aren't going to be safe from the appetite of that slippery flesh. I'll have to find more creative ways to pleasure myself.
"Mr Borthwick?" My voice quakes on the phone. He thinks it is because I am frightened. "Mr Borthwick. Yes, it's me! Oh, thank God I've got through! It's Susan Daseum. You said you'd come over? You were... umm... so helpful before..."
"Susan? Can I speak to your mother?"
"Mr Borthwick, please can you come over? Please? Please hurry! I'm... I'm... I'm..."
My voice snares him. He won't be able to stop himself. When he arrives, I will take the skin of his purple head back just beyond the glans. I'll rub there gently, gently. Then I'll go straight for the breathless double-scream you only get with a straight yank that tears the foreskin all the way past suddenly and pointlessly clenching balls.
Maybe I'll practise on Doug first. He's fond of orally related games. Let me ask him. No, he doesn't want to play.
I can read the mind of everyone now. Counsellor Borthwick's head is full of my charms. He doesn't even know why, but he's anxious to get here as fast as he can. He's running, practically skipping, up to his bathroom two steps at a time. He feels young again. Wants to freshen himself up. Deodorant. Change those old socks.
Time to comb my hair for him. The serpents lift the brush from the dresser, and do it themselves. They arrange their grins, amused.
Here Mr Borthwick comes. I'm watching him approach the house in his car, seeing through his eyes. On the dashboard is a promise. ' Every situation is unique. Get help early. Counselling is free.' My snakes whisper something, and I agree. I send the counsellor back for his wife and daughter.
My test results sit in his bulging lap. They reveal incipient pathological traits and schizoid tendencies, don't they, Mr Borthwick? Isn't that their emphatic conclusion? So why are you on your way to me?
Mr Borthwick arrives with his family, looking red-faced. Touchingly he's brought the psychological evaluation with him. He's clutching it in his hand. He's intending to use it to break the ice between us. Now Mr Borthwick, we both know why you're here. Why don't you put that silly report down and bring your nice family a little closer?
I ask the wife to come into the bedroom first. I begin a seduction-well, a sort of seduction. I promised the snakeheads first pickings. "Fair and foul I love together," I sing, as the strands busy themselves with her. I'm quoting Keats, but I don't think she hears. Doug, watching from my loins, is equally unappreciative. "Meadows sweet where flames burn under." I love this poem. "And a giggle at a wonder." She's dead by the time I finish.
I look down at Doug. He has such pity for the woman. Genuinely. He's run the whole gamut of fear since he's been here in this room, but instead of cringing self-indulgence I find an unexpected depth of real sadness for what has happened to Mr Borthwick's wife. He'd have helped her if he could.
I lift Doug up, raise his body to the ceiling: an honouring. I'm almost overcome with affection for him. All the other girls thought I was mad seeing grungy Doug, but even my untutored self sensed there was something worth knowing there, after all. "I'm going to let you live," I tell him. And in that moment, at least, I mean it.
My breasts are active later in the night. Swaying. Ripening. My nipples stretch and point with painful erectness at the sky. Exposed as they are, the moon gives them a certain iridescence, a tantalising sheen-well, I think so anyway. I still haven't found out why they're so lively tonight. To attract a man? No, it can't be that. They wouldn't have to work so hard for that. Bait for something else, perhaps? A god? I suck in an eager breath at the prospect of that, and at the same moment Clarissa squeezes me, hardening in anticipation. Is that what she's there for? To clench a god? To hold a god inside me against his will?
Date??? I don't know. Nor what day it is. It doesn't matter. From now onward all calendars and clocks will recommence. It's cool, and I'm feeling calm. The last of them, the daughter, is finally dead. I tried to keep
her alive as long as I could, but my new flesh hasn't yet mastered any real willpower. I can't hold back for long. I don't think I'm going to be a patient monster. No, I don't think I am.
It's nearly dawn, and I'm breathing in the last of the cold night air. Clarissa, who did some complex things with Mr Borthwick, lies sated at my side. I can smell salt in the wind from the distant sea. Overhead, sunrise warms the clouds, and the hills are waking. Lying here on my back under the still-visible stars, I feel an affinity with all the other monsters in the world-mythic and otherwise. Some are still out there, waiting their chance to return.
The ancient writers were wrong about me. They said my gorgon sisters, Stheno and Euryale, were the only immortal ones. Untrue. Poseidon gave all my family immortality when his god-seed drove though me. I have simply been waiting for the right time to return.
The world is not ready for us. Ovid would have understood that. His trivialising of the myths, turning the old stories into something unreal, mere edifying tales, did more than anything else to unprepare the world for our re-arrival. The ancients, at least, knew what to do with monsters. The sons of the gods were still alive then. Perseus. Heracles. Aeneas. Where are they now? Long forgotten. Even Ovid died in inglorious misery. Exiled by Emperor Augustus, he was sent to the backside of the Roman Empire, present-day Romania, riddled with cancer, and never again saw the city of Rome he loved.
Who will stop me now?
I feel my serpents. They're murmuring, pleading for me to give Doug to them. But I won't. I'm holding off. I'll do so for as long as I can. The legends say that Medusa turned people to stone with her gaze. Do they really think that's all I could do?
It's late for some things, early for others. The wind sweeps through my hair and points the serpents at the gibbous moon. My sisters are outside. Stheno is closest, her restless breasts half in and half out of the door. Above her, astride the roof, the timbers bow under the weight of Euryale's great head. Who will stop us now? Where is Perseus? Lying dead, his bones crumbling in Mycenae. I almost miss him. I'd kiss him now if I saw him.
A breeze floats up from the town. My sex purses its lips and shrieks.
CONTRIBUTORS
PAUL FINCH is a former cop and journalist, and, having read History at Goldsmiths College, London, a qualified historian, though he currently earns his living as a full-time writer.
He cut his literary teeth penning episodes of the British TV crime drama, The Bill, and has written extensively in the field of children's animation. However, he is probably best known for his work in thrillers, dark fantasy and horror, in which capacity he is a two-time winner of the British Fantasy Award and a one-time winner of the International Horror Guild Award.
He is responsible for numerous short stories and novellas, but also for two horror movies (a third of his, War Wolf, is in pre-production), for several full-cast Dr Who audio dramas, and a series of best-selling crime novels from Avon Books at HarperCollins, featuring the British police detective, Mark 'Heck' Heckenburg.
Paul lives in Lancashire, UK, with his wife Cathy and his children, Eleanor and Harry. His website can be found at http://paulfinch-writer.blogspot.co.uk/, and he can be followed on Twitter as @paulfinchauthor.
TIM LEBBON is a New York Times-bestselling writer from South Wales. He's had over thirty novels published to date, as well as hundreds of novellas and short stories. His latest novel is the thriller The Hunt, and other recent releases include The Silence and Alien: Out of the Shadows. He has won four British Fantasy Awards, a Bram Stoker Award, and a Scribe Award, and has been a finalist for World Fantasy, International Horror Guild and Shirley Jackson Awards. Future books include The Rage War (an Alien/Predator trilogy), and the Relics trilogy from Titan.
A movie of his story Pay the Ghost, starring Nicolas Cage, is due for release in 2015, and several other projects are in development.
Find out more about Tim at his website www.timlebbon.net
RICHARD JAY GOLDSTEIN has been writing fiction and non-fiction for over twenty-five years. He lives with his wife, kids and grandkids in the mountains east of Santa Fe, New Mexico, where it's still pretty quiet, thanks. He's a lapsed ER doc, and has published fifty-something stories and essays in the literary and SF/fantasy/horror presses, including a number of anthologies-such as Music For Another World (Mutation Press), Virtually Now (Persea Books), Bugs (Pill Hill Press), So Long And Thanks For all The Brains (Collaboration of the Dead), Carnival (Static Movement), True Dark (Red Skies Press), PULP! (Twit Publishing), Cosmic Vegetable (Dreamscape Press), Halloween Frights Vol. III (Wicked East Press), Strange Halloween (Whortleberry Press), and Escape Velocity-The Anthology (Adventure Press of Seattle).
LISA L. HANNETT has had over 60 short stories appear in venues including Clarkesworld, Fantasy, Weird Tales, Apex, the Year's Best Australian Fantasy and Horror, and Imaginarium: Best Canadian Speculative Writing. She has won four Aurealis Awards, including Best Collection for her first book, Bluegrass Symphony, which was also nominated for a World Fantasy Award. Her first novel,Lament for the Afterlife, was published by CZP in 2015.You can find her online at http://lisahannett.com and on Twitter @LisaLHannett.
A published writer for nearly 40 years, ADRIAN COLE's work spans the horror, SF, fantasy, pulp, YA and Sword and Sorcery genres. He has had over two dozen novels published, among which are Madness Emerging, The Lucifer Experiment, Moorstones, The Sleep of Giants and The Hand of the Voidal.
His short fiction has been published in many anthologies, including Frighteners and The 11th Fontana Book of Horror Stories, edited by Mary Danby, Cold Fear and New Tales of Terror, edited by Hugh Lamb, and The Mammoth Book of Werewolves, The Mammoth Book of Frankenstein, Dark Voices 2 and Shadows Over Innsmouth, edited by Stephen Jones.
His most recent novels are The Shadow Academy (Edge, Canada) and Nick Nightmare Investigates (Alchemy Press, UK), and forthcoming as eBooks on the Gollancz Gateway site are two quartets, The Omaran Saga and Star Requiem, which are also available as audio books from Audible.
NICHOLAS ROYLE is the author of First Novel, as well as six earlier novels including The Director's Cut and Antwerp, and a short story collection, Mortality. In addition he has published more than a hundred short stories. He has edited eighteen anthologies, including theDarklands volumes and Murmurations: An Anthology of Uncanny Stories About Birds, and is series editor of Best British Short Stories (Salt). A senior lecturer in creative writing at the Manchester Writing School at MMU, he also runs Nightjar Press, which publishes new short stories as signed, limited-edition chapbooks, and is an editor at Salt Publishing, his list including Alison Moore's Man Booker-shortlisted The Lighthouse and Kerry Hadley-Pryce's The Black Country.
IAN ROGERS is the award-winning author of the dark fiction collection Every House Is Haunted. His novelette, 'The House on Ashley Avenue,' was a finalist for the Shirley Jackson Award and has been optioned for television by Universal Cable Productions. For more information, visit ianrogers.ca.
PAUL MELOY was born in 1966. He is the author of Islington Crocodiles, Dogs With Their Eyes Shut, The Night Clock and a forthcoming collection from PS Publishing, Electric Breakfast. He lives in Devon with his family.
SIMON KURT UNSWORTH was born in 1972 and is despairing of ever finding proof that the world was awash with mysterious signs and portents that night. He lives in an old farmhouse in the Lake District with his wife, the writer Rosie Seymour, and assorted children and dogs, where his neighbours are mostly sheep and his office is an old cheese store in which he writes horror fiction (for which pursuit he was nominated for a 2008 World Fantasy Award for Best Short Story). PS Publishing released Strange Gateways, his third collection of short stories, in 2014 following 2011's critically acclaimed Quiet Houses and 2010's Lost Places. His stories have been published in a number of anthologies including the award-winning Exotic Gothic 4, Ash Tree Press's At Ease with the Dead, Stephen Jones' Haunts: Reliquaries of the Dead, Ellen Datlow's Hauntings, and Salt Publishing's Year's Best British Horror 201
4. He appears in seven volumes of Stephen Jones' The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror and The Very Best of Best New Horror. His debut novel, The Devil's Detective, came out from Doubleday in the US and Del Rey in the UK in March 2015.
THANA NIVEAU has twice been shortlisted for the British Fantasy award-for her debut collection From Hell to Eternity and her story 'Death Walks En Pointe'. Originally from the States, she now lives near Bristol. She is a Halloween bride who shares her life with fellow writer John Llewellyn Probert, in a gothic library filled with arcane books and curiosities. Her stories have been picked for The Mammoth Book of Best New Horror andBest British Horror. Her novella 'Not to Touch the Earth' appears in Whispers in the Dark and other stories have appeared inInterzone; Zombie Apocalypse: Endgame, Steampunk Cthulhu, Love, Lust & Zombies, Horror Uncut,Sword & Mythos, Exotic Gothic 5, The Burning Circus, The Black Book of Horror series,Terror Tales of Wales, Terror Tales of Cornwall, Sorcery and Sanctity: A Homage to Arthur Machen, Demons and Devilry, The 13 Ghosts of Christmas and Magic: an Anthology of the Esoteric and Arcane.
RAY CLULEY 's short stories have been published in various magazines and anthologies. He won the British Fantasy Award for Best Short Story with 'Shark! Shark!' in 2013. His most recent work includes Water For Drowning from This Is Horror, Within the Wind, Beneath the Snow from Spectral Press, and Bone Dry (aka Curse of the Zombie) from Hersham Horror. His collection Probably Monsters is available now from ChiZine. For more information, he blogs occasionally at www.probablymonsters.wordpress.com
ALISON MOORE 's short fiction has been published in Best British Short Stories and Best British Horror anthologies and broadcast on BBC Radio 4 Extra. The title story of her debut collection, The Pre-War House and Other Stories, won a New Writer novella prize. Her first novel, The Lighthouse, was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize 2012 and the National Book Awards 2012 (New Writer of the Year), winning the McKitterick Prize 2013. Her second novel, He Wants, was published in 2014. Born in Manchester in 1971, she lives in a village on the Leicestershire-Nottinghamshire border. She is an honorary lecturer in the School of English at Nottingham University. www.alison-moore.com
