Alexandra Haverská is a Czech speculative fiction writer of German origin living in Prague, a city that breathes the fantastic. Her English-language fiction can be found in Constraint 280, The Wondrous Real Magazine, and 666 (Black Hare Press). She has stories forthcoming in the anthologies From the Ashes: An Anthology of Elemental Urban Fantasy for Burn Survivors (Aurelia Leo) and Daily Flights of Fantasy (Iron Faerie Publishing). Her Czech-language fiction is published in various Czech SF&F and horror venues.
“This story imagines what Medusa from Luciano Garbati’s statue Medusa with the Head of Perseus (2008) might want to say.”
I awaken to raindrops falling on the cheeks. I flicker the eyelashes, just enough to get rid of the water. I’m enclosed by a wall of sorts, but above, there’s the night sky. The stars are arranged queerly even though I think I know them. Hercules. Cassiopeia. Stars and names, names from the yonder. From my time. What time is the now, though?
The right arm is stiff, the muscles tense, aching. I’ve been holding a burden for the whole time. Since when? For what time? In the now, it seems like forever.
I gaze down. It’s a head. Severed and handsome. A young man. I recall his name from the mists of time, the forehead frowning. Another star, another story. My story. I watch him and the mind wanders.
The day we met was bright and breezy, a day perfect for dying. I knew he was sent to kill me and I felt sorry for him. He was a puppet of fate, the same I was. I thought my part in the fabric of destiny was long over but then Perseus and his men came for my head.
I didn’t go willingly. I struggled and killed but never loathed him, Perseus.
Yet here I am again under the night sky.
Daylight. Wall. Loud, unfamiliar noises beyond. Choking dust. A strange sensation. Down and further, far below the arm and the head. I turn the gaze. A little songbird is gently pecking at the toe. My. Toe. I move it to shoo him away. The bird takes off. The bird I’ve looked at. Queer and queerer. The bird that lived and the snake-like bottom half that has vanished. There are the sculpted, athletic legs, perfectly cast in bronze—my legs—that many lost their breath for, that turned the head of a God, that caused me to be the monster I am. No, the monster I was. The birdie. It tickled me and flew.
The days before I became the Monster. I was young, my limbs were lean, and the Gods coveted the mortals. Some seduced, some took. Me, I was taken. On the altar that belonged to another. I remember the pain, the blood, the shame… but above all the chastising voice of a goddess smitten by jealousy, condemning the act I didn’t orchestrate.
Damning. Me.
I cry into the falling night.
On the Medusa with the Head of Perseus’s unveiling day in Manhattan, great applause. The press raves about the magnificent detail of a tear dripping from my eye. The artist who made me nods and laughs nervously. Never created the tear, has no idea where it comes from.
‘Medusa’s tears of joy.’
‘Medusa’s tears of justice.’
‘Medusa finally empowered.’
The praising tweets rain incessantly, feeding up the zeitgeist.
“Fools!” I want to shout. “There’s no justice in what you served me!”
Compassion, frustration and anger. In a single drop.
