SERPENTIGENA

STONE

'So it started with a rape'�'�

The thought flashed across my mind like so much summer lightning. I got out of bed quickly, the book falling to the floor. I knew what was happening, I knew what was before me as I looked at the closed doors of my wardrobe. I opened all the windows. It was dark and there was rain coming. Sleeping peacefully the snake Ia lay coiled in its glass cage. She was but one of the things I inherited when my Mother passed away. How old the snake was no one knew'�she had passed from my Grandmother to my Mother and now to me. I would be her last caretaker.

I opened the wardrobe and perhaps it was the lamp light or shadow but the jacket and the pants seemed to shimmer and call out to me. I was instantly afraid of all of it. My hands betrayed me as they touched the fur of the coat. It was silver and gray; I assumed chinchilla or fox and the sensation of its touch gave me chills. The pants were hanging in such a way that they seemed almost liquid; golden and slick like virgin oils. There was no mistaking snake skin. As my hands moved from fur to skin the smell of rain and animal washed over me. Away there was thunder. These were the things I inherited, these things were mine: the jacket, the pants, the book, Ia, the gun and something far more, I inherited the task of revenge.

I turned leaving the wardrobe doors open and realized that Ia had awoken and she had been watching me. Her diamond head raised and pressed against the glass so that her eyes; cold and ancient, followed my every movement.

As I made plane reservations I began to form a simple plan. It would take two days. One day for each. It had just started to rain as I finally went to sleep.





WATER

It seemed that there were two of them. One lived in the east the other in the west. I lived in the middle. I would go west first.

The night before I left I dreamt of water. My family has always had an aversion and fascination to the ocean. It is a distrustful body; its waves scheming, the seductive lies of its crashing lullaby. It is a man, the sea, and I was not as easily seduced as others in my family had been. My dreams were hard and rabid. Water pulled me under and stroked my skin with tide-full hands; rapturous echoes filled me with memories of diamonds glistening on the water, fire burning, waves crashing. There was a temple, a woman with such beauty I cried because I knew what was coming and then it did. I awoke. The heft of the gun an alarm clock, a warning. The last images of him emerging wet and terrible from the water left a bitter taste of salt and blood in my mouth.

The sun blazed white and harsh; Helios's chariot whipping the clouds into submission across the blue of the Californian sky. My sunglasses mocked him, the coat, silver and gray like the moon mocked the heat. My body was absorbing the warmth as if I were indeed a snake and the west a rock where I would bathe. If people stared I didn't care. Purpose precedes care. I wore nothing underneath the coat, nothing underneath the pants; the gun cooled my back where it was secured at my waist, the book tucked in an inner pocket of the coat guiding me. The sound of my boots thumped against the cement of his street like music, like death or the Riverman's rowing against the Styx, it was all a song, all of it.

The door to his house was before me; leaning against it I felt the water of him, the passion.

How long had she suffered as a monster, how deep the punishment?

I was inside. I could hear the ocean everywhere crying out to warn him but it was not to be'�He was mine, he was the last descendent of the sea as I of stone and somewhere far away I knew the snakes were watching.

As I held him in my gaze I couldn't help but think that maybe, just maybe I could turn men to stone just by looking at them.

Those were my last thoughts before I shot him





KNOWLEDGE

Then there was one.

The gun was secure under the plane wrapped and hidden in a suitcase. The coat had taken to cradling me when I slept. The pants becoming more a second skin than something I took off and then put on. They were me; they smelt cold and animal-like. I slept as the plane swept me East.

I landed at night. The sky a bruised nightshade of purples and blacks, the moon hidden in the bosom of Artemis; I had no friend in the moon or sun and was indifferent to its secretiveness. The coat warmed me in the night chill. Although I was still bare underneath, the thick fur of the collar warmed my heart and muscles so that I moved quicker and with renewed venom.

As I was the last of my lineage this was my task. I thought of my Mother and her Mother and so on back to when it all began. Had there always been such a desire for revenge? Such a need to set it all right? My feet moved in and out of crowds, my eyes still hidden behind the glasses. The book was now silent as it had given up its last secret. The throb of the gun sending chills down my back, it was hungry for this, it had been fashioned for this.

It had been a descendent far back and far away who made the gun. It was forged from the metal of a shield and the bronze of a statue; both remains of even more ancient descendents. I knew stone and metal work well. It was a skill passed down through our family which had created a business that still thrived. Our work graced the gardens and homes of the rich all across America. My Mother in particular had an amazing talent in sculpting women. My favorite of these, a nude woman with flowing hair that had always reminded me of snakes, still rests in our garden. One night I found her kneeling by it and crying, the book that I now possessed by her side; I remember asking her why she was crying and she could only reply, 'Doesn't she make you want to cry?'�

The sculpture was beautiful and heartbreaking invoking a feeling of sadness and anger that struck me like the final blow of an axe to a tree. I never knew why but now as I arrived; the great house dark and sleeping, pompous like a great sleeping bird I felt the axe fall again and this time the anger that washed over me made all the sense in the world.

As I entered the yard the moon came out and I could just make out two great statues guarding the doors, as I drew closer I realized I was right in feeling the house was birdlike as the statues were indeed of great owls. There was the bird of knowledge; the familiar to the one who cast my family from beauty to horror, woman to serpent; the very incarnation of my families disgrace. With the butt of the gun I smashed both heads of the birds and from behind me a screech of mercy could be heard in the trees.
It was a language I understood for the first time and it was ringing through me as I entered the house. The birds crying out that name, the name I yearned to cry. It sounded deadly on the air, more a rattle or hiss. It was the name I had so long wished to utter, to release from a legacy of terror and fear and now as I stood over the sleeping creature that was my last quarry I felt the gun yearning for that same release.

Looking around I saw all of it so clearly lined in the volumes of books and papers that filled the sleeping woman's room. There was knowledge everywhere but there were now also snakes. She and I so close to being family. My greatest descendent a worshipper that sought protection, hers a supposed Goddess of terrible wisdom and vanity linked forever.

Then in one blow; temperamental as a Gods whim, I shot and as so long ago one woman raped and beaten was killed and a monster born, so died this woman, killed by the monsters remains.

Perhaps it was only my imagination but as I left the house the screeching had changed and instead of birds I heard snakes and they were speaking to me, they were saying; 'Medusa'�Medusa'�Medusa!'�

Want to comment on this Short Stories? Sign up to Edit Red and you will be able to comment on Short Stories and get access to: Upload your own stories and poems, get readers and their feedback, promote your work...