MEDUSA became an agony aunt on a whim. It began with a silly title for an all-women group on a social media platform, who invoked her by name and posted pictures and stories of men behaving badly towards women. Of course, the members were unaware of the power of invocation when they created the group. They had merely wanted a space where they could gather and show each other which men to avoid.

In the beginning, she had not intended to involve herself. She had kept apart from humans since that awful business with Perseus, existing somewhere between myth and reality, ethereal as a wisp of breath on a frosty night. Her hand went to her neck as the memory of her beheading forced itself upon her, much as Poseidon had forced himself upon her body all those centuries ago. Still, it brought a small thrill to have her name invoked after all this time. 

Firstly, it was time someone realised what she truly had been instead of the monster Perseus slew and Caravaggio painted. A humble servant of Athena, punished for Poseidon’s crime by the one who should have been her protector. Secondly, regardless of the medium or the intention, an invocation was an invocation. It would be rude not to take an interest.

And so, Medusa began to visit the group each morning, to read the posts from the previous day. It gave her succour. More importantly, it gave her life. Literally. With each mention of her name, with each plea for her to intervene, she became more substantial. More real.

Most of the posts were silly and fun, and definitely not to be acted upon. One woman’s husband had stacked the dishwasher in a displeasing manner. Medusa took a selfie wearing her reflective sunglasses in case the curse could transfer through electronic media and turn people to stone, and made an account on the platform. She used it to answer the post, telling the woman she should reorganise the man’s belongings in a way that displeased him to see how he liked it.

That had brought forth approval from the members of the group, and they favoured her with many tributes of thumbs up and laughter emojis, and comments about how real the snakes looked and asking which AI she had used.

Another man had not brought his wife a treat from the shop. He had offered and she had said no, but it was apparently common knowledge that he should buy one anyway, in case she changed her mind. Medusa found that difficult to understand. She had always spoken the truth. These games the humans played with each other were perplexing and she told the woman that she should have been honest.

Medusa began drinking tea in the morning when she read her page. She had quickly come to think of it as her page since it called upon her specifically. She would sit cross-legged on the floor with a cup of strong tea and a pack of value brand biscuits from the supermarket. She found she liked being around ordinary people, although she had covered her snakes with a hat, and worn her sunglasses to avoid freaking people out and inadvertently turning some poor cashier to stone, but each outing was an adventure for one who had kept herself apart for so long.

Some of the posts on Medusa’s page were more aggravating, like the woman whose husband had run away with a barely legal girl the same age as his daughter, but while it made her lip curl and her snakes, now freed from the hat, hiss in sympathy, infidelity was no longer punishable by death. Society appeared to have become more forgiving than it had in her day. Besides, she could hardly go around striking down men for infidelity; there would be statues everywhere. When she responded to this post, she advised the woman that she should hide kippers in all the hard to access places in the man’s car.

She decided then that she must be very careful about who she chose to punish. If she chose someone for punishment she would not be as eager to mete out retribution as Athena. There must be fairness. Undeniable guilt and a crime heinous enough that no-one would decry her decision were the only criteria she would countenance. They may think her a monster, but all those statues in the cave where she had hidden herself away had once been men who came to kill her.

The first time she decided to turn a man to stone, the plea had not come from the group. It came when she was walking back from the supermarket with a packet of chocolate digestives. As she walked through the park a small voice cried out from the bushes to her right.

“No! Please. I’ll tell…”

The sound cut off and a male voice growled. “You’ll tell nobody, you hear?”

Medusa did not wait. She charged into the bushes, pulling off her hat, and stopped in front of a middle aged man. He was holding down a girl of nine, 10 at the most, with one hand over her mouth, and the other lifting her skirt.

“Ahem,” Medusa said and the man scrambled to his feet.

The little girl shuffled backwards with a yelp of terror.

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Medusa grabbed the man by the front of his shirt and spun him around so her back was to the girl when she took off her sunglasses. It did not take long. When it was done, she put her sunglasses and hat back in place and turned back to the girl.

“He won’t hurt you again,” she said.

The girl, eyes wide, nodded but continued to shuffle backwards until she was at a safe distance, then jumped up and ran away.

One morning, while she sipped her tea and nibbled on ginger biscuits, a post appeared in the group that made Medusa splutter and inhale crumbs. When she had done choking, she swallowed several gulps of tea and tried to control her breathing. The snakes all stood out from her head, rigid and hissing the same fury that boiled through her veins as the meaning of the words sank in.

“Sixty-two million views!?”

Once she had control of her emotions, she clicked on the link at the bottom of the post.

For the next hour she forced herself to watch, to read. When she was done, the fury was a burning coal in her chest and her snakes writhed in rhythm with her thudding heart.

“Sixty-two million views.”

How was she to punish that? And punish it she must, she decided. She could hardly let something so despicable go by without making an example of those who took part. She would need to track down the men who had created this horrific content.

She went back to her page and wrote a three-word response to the post.

“Watch this space.”

Then Medusa set to work.

Being immortal, she had found that learning was the most useful way to combat boredom. Her current passion was for how the internet worked and she had become quite the hacker. In no time at all she had tracked down the address of the man who had posted the most recent video at a location in the south of England, close to the coast. Medusa slipped into her incorporeal form to ride the ether to that destination.

To her surprise the dwelling was quite affluent; she had been expecting something more squalid, given the content of the video. She stood in the bedroom, at the foot of a huge bed, watching the man and woman sleep. The woman she recognised from the video. Medusa wanted to wake her, to show her what her lover had done to her so that she would not grieve for him.

The man awoke instead. Seeing Medusa’s shadowy form at the end of the bed, he threw back the cover and leapt to his feet.

“Who are you?” he demanded. “What do you want?”

Medusa stepped into a sliver of moonlight from the slightly open curtains and let the light caress her curves. She smiled at the fear in his voice and made her voice soft, seductive. “I saw your video online,” she said. “I wanted to meet you.”

His stance grew cocky, self-assured.

“Do you want to be in the next one?”

“Only if I can stay awake.”

He took a step towards her. “But that’s no fun.”

Medusa took a step back and felt the wall until her fingertips found the light switch.

As light flooded the room, the man had no time to react. One moment his eyes were widening in terror at the sight of her writhing snakes and glowing, slitted eyes. The next, the grey pallor of stone crept across his face and his gaze darkened forever.

“It was more fun than you could ever imagine,” she said.

The woman was still asleep and Medusa wondered if she was drugged still. She opened the woman’s phone and entered the number into her own phone. Then Medusa sent her a text with a link to the video and the words: “Do not mourn this man.”

Before she left, Medusa snapped a selfie in front of the statue, careful to cover her eyes once more, and posted it on her page with the words: “One down, 61,999,999 to go.”

Cheryl Sonnier grew up on a council estate in South Yorkshire and, after much moving around, now lives on a council estate in Leeds. Her stories have been published by the Morning Star, Wyldblood Press and Nightjar Press, among others

Stories, of up to 1,600 words, should be submitted to: Morningstarshortstories@gmail.com