Medusa

by Jessie Burton

If I told you that I’d killed a man with a glance, would you wait to hear the rest? The why, the how, what happened next? Or would you run from me, this mottled mirror, this body of unusual flesh?

I’d never known a change that wasn’t monstrous.

I was lonely and I was angry, and rage and loneliness can end up tasting the same.

Four years alone like that sharpens the hunger for friendship and it bloats your dreams of love.

His chest was a drum on which the world beat a rhythm, and his mouth the music to dance above it.

But seeing as I’ve been accused of vanity enough times by people who nevertheless thought it their right to ogle me, I might as well tell you: my hair was lovely.

I still had it in me to laugh! Not many things since that moment have felt as sweet.

“I’m not a murderer,

Bro.

She was a woman who’d done nothing wrong except exist.” “Except exist,” I echoed in a whisper.

I could taste Danaë’s loneliness because it tasted exactly the same as mine.

“I wasn’t there, Merina,” Perseus said, sounding prickly. “It didn’t happen to me.” “It would never happen to you,” I said. “What does that mean?” “Nothing.”

“And so, like so many women before and since, she was forced into a corner and she made the timeless bargain?”

I could never explain to this golden, glowing boy what it was like to have bad luck pile up at your feet again and again until you felt you were drowning in your own sorrow.