WAAAAIT!!
DON'T LOOK AT ME!! I MEAN IT, DON'T YOU DARE LOOK AT ME!! Lower your eyes this instant!!
I'm sorry, no, I really AM sorry. I didn't mean to yell at you like that. It's not that I'm mad at you or anything...I just wanted to keep you safe. It's been so long since I've talked to anyone REAL and I didn't want to spoil the sweetness of the moment because of my hideousness. No no, I really AM hideous, trust me. Don't have my face on yet? Ha! You have no idea. Truth is, I haven't had my face on for quite awhile...my own face...my REAL face. Mine was stolen away from me a long time ago.
What's my name? You're starting to turn your eyes up toward me aga-...I SAID DON'T YOU LOOK AT ME!! I swear it's only for your own safety...I'm a freak!! No, I am not exaggerating, not even by a cubit. I really am trying to protect you. In fact, my name MEANS "Protector" or "Guardian" but you wouldn't know that probably. People don't say my name with any kindness or pride in their voices anymore, if they even say it at all.
Didn't catch my name? You're right you didn't, and I don't think I'm going to tell you. People tend to hate hearing it, they run away from it ....and me. I'm so tired of everyone running away....so tired of being alone. So if you don't mind I think I'll just go on as if we've already done the awkward introductions...DON'T RAISE YOUR EYES!! KEEP'UM DOWN! MY FACE IS NUCLEAR WASTE!! VOLCANO LAVA ISLAND HOT HOT!
Sorry...did it again. Okay, this isn't working for us is it? How about I just turn my back to you, it'd be a lot easier than trying to keep you from doing what your eyes only seek to do naturally, and I don't like trying to talk to people while cowering behind a stone gladiator's ass...VERY distracting in its once physical perfection... and I was seriously looking forward to meeting him too and then...nevermind...wait...okay, I'm turning around...still turning around...tuuurrrning arrrround and...THERE! Is that better??
Yesss, that IS my real hair! Yes they're real and YES I'd advise you to keep a safe distance. You can't even IMAGINE what a pain in the neck it is to brush out in the morning...LITERALLY. Puts things into perspective doesn't it? When you're complaining your head off about split ends or heat damage just look at me...NO WAIT DON'T LOOK AT ME!! Again, so sorry...I sometimes forget even for a moment that I am not human anymore...or so the "higher ups" try to tell me.
I didn't always have hair this...uhh..."lively" and wild yaknow. When I was young...wait, I may be still technically young under all this uh...nevermind...let's just say a long time ago I had BEAUTIFUL hair. All jet black,shiny, the most delicate gentle curls... perfumed chords of silken virginity as the orators and the lyres would once sing. And my eyes were even better, the most intoxicating shade of...uh...amber...yes golden amber, nicely shaped curvy hips and a full bosom too. I had the soft "sun-kissed" look all you young girls today dream about and read all those silly magazines to get the "secrets" of.Oh, Oh sure, I read magazines, they DO wash up on shore from time to time...and then there are those poor tourists and lost sponge divers...by the way, who is Sponge Bob Squarepants?? HPMH! And they call ME ugly!!
But, to get to the point, I was quite the beauty queen...once...but that's another lifetime ago...or two....or seven...yaknow what? Let's just make it a Baker's Dozen and move on...that'll work.
That's why they picked me. Because I was so very pretty, and innocent...or to be more precise why SHE picked me. See, in those days people believed that the more beautiful, soft, doe-eyed and full-figured you were, the more pure and innocent of belly...err...innocent and pure of HEART...yes, that's what you people say nowadays. Seems silly to me, as how when you speak with a loud voice it always flows out deep from within the belly, but whatever...get with the times! And that's not true either, you know! I knew plenty of girls on the island where I grew up who looked just as "chaste" and "well behaved" as I was, yet they lifted up their dresses for any husky goat herder who had a horn under his shirt and no brown or broken teeth!!
No, I really wasn't like that!! Just so you know...that's why I was chosen above all others of the girls I grew up with, but it doesn't matter now....and probably never did.
So...umm....I'd suppose you'd say I was kind a "nun" of sorts, though, if I had been able to wear all the frumpy head gear that the vestals of that Nazarene got to wear I might not be in this...umm....pickle?? Is that the expression?? What IS a pickle anyway?? I've never seen one...is it like a pomegranate? Come to think of it, I haven't seen much of anything.
He was a God amongst Men...and I do mean that literally. He stood well over 7 staffs high...err...feet?? That's your thing now right...Feet?? Yes, 7 feet. Very hairy chested, and as you kids say today...ripped?? 'Course the last issue of Seventeen magazine that I saw was dated in the new calendar year July of 1,999, so I may be a bit behind the times on your...uhh..."slang?" A muscular hairy Greek Alpha male with a billy goat long beard, as was fashionable in those days....oh and by the way, THAT was about a staff long too....yes a foot! I have never seen one of those awful man horn things since, and I hope to NEVER see one again!! Well...maybe.
He couldn't keep his eyes off me. Not many could, so THAT didn't surprise me. Truth is, I might've liked the way he looked IF he weren't an old dirt bag...and a psychotic!! They're ALL psychotics don't you know, every last one of them, horny Alpha male Greek psychotics who demand we all bow down to them!! They sit up in their ivory temples high on the mountaintop and judge us....and rob us! I'd have to say, the world became a MUCH nicer place when you decided to ignore those infantile jizzumed up egomaniacs once and for all....that pale Nazarene fellow who got himself murdered on a tree was much better...or that fat gold smiling baby I see always sitting with his legs crossed in faded travel brochures that the tourists leave...whatever his name is? Or perhaps you're not kneeling at the feet of anyone anymore? I don't know.
I don't have the luxury to not believe in anything now, and I definitely had no such luxury then either, I had no choice, about any of it. I know they're real. I see it when I look down at my cracked pale hands. I see it in my hair that's uh...always on the go. I see it in my nightmares and I see it in my memories of my past. Hm, I don't know why I called those two different things, for my nightmares and my memories really are interchangeable.
Oh I don't want to talk about it...I don't...I really don't....but..b-but I've got to say it at some point. I've avoided telling anyone, even myself, as if by somehow never saying those words aloud, never letting them slip on through my jagged sharp teeth that it somehow will never be real. That it will never claim me...but I know it has...and...and I know that the only way I might ever be free again is if I say something...if I talk to someone...if I finally speak the truth.
I...I...I'm a rape victim.
That's right...you heard me. I was raped.
Excuse me. Yes...yes I'm crying, as I'm sure you understand, though, you've probably never met a woman before who has to carefully check where every teardrop from her...from her cheeks lands. I have to catch them...even my tears are deadly...EVEN MY TEARS...have teeth!! I don't want my sadness coming back to bite you.
Yes, it was "Big'n'Hairy" He was one of them as I said before...a co-worker of my employer you might say in your own words today...her peer...and...and like I also said already...he was a lecherous dog...an egomaniac with a monstrous and unforgiving horn. He took me. HE TOOK ME! Right there...right there in the dead of night, in the place where I did my duties. He snuck up behind me and tore me away from the world...he used me for his own wants. It didn't matter that it was not what I wanted. It didn't matter that I needed to stay pure and untouched...it didn't even matter that I was alive. I was nothing to him...NOTHING, but a warm young SHEATH for his vile man horn, HE was up and needed release. It didn't matter that I was barely a woman at the time...he couldn't see me really...he couldn't hear me...he couldn't feel me...not the REAL ME anyway, just a body. But I still feel him, every single night, his hairy oily stink musky sweaty body all over me...smothering me from behind, crushing me, tearing to tatters my once pure white Priestess dress, even shattering much of the gold and silver around my neck. I remember the blood...all the blood...my blood all over me. The red crusty scabby blood pulp in my scalp from all the hair he tore out as he forced me against him, the puss-filled scar from his lion's teeth digging into my shoulder, the gnarled flesh of my broken earlobes as the "sacred" gold rings they once held fell to the floor.
I still remember it all.
But the worst bleeding of all was...was...THERE....I could never have fit him, even if I had desired it, but he made me take him. He bluntly plowed and ripped at my tender...my tender place... ruining it...he impaled me...he stabbed me through and through again and again with his flesh...he pummeled me almost to the point of death. Before IT had happened, he once tried to entice me to his bed by claiming that he could make me feel "the motion of his ocean" but he failed to mention that even if I screamed no he'd force it down every opening I possessed and leave me battered from his "Tide." It is no wonder that I HATE the sea now, despite being a Greek girl raised on an island!
I hurt...I hurt all over. My teeth even ached with the fear...with shame....my gut churned and rained a never-ending storm of pain and disgust at myself over and over again, and my blood vessels pounded dirges in my ears. From that point on I felt nothing, I heard nothing. All voices were muffled echoes, the world around me blew cold. I wanted to die, I wanted to live, I wanted to breathe, I wanted to hide, I wanted to be clean again and run away from my skin, I wanted to wash it all away, to lose that defiled body, that tattered soul, to scrape it all off...and I didn't know what I wanted, all at the same time.
At this of all moments, EVERYTHING was taken from me. Everything and everyone I had ever loved. OR, they betrayed me. My Mother and Father spat upon me and cast me from their lineage. You see in those days, it was a man's world...or...to be more specific, a man's DICK-tatorship! HE was not to blame! It was my evil female nature that SEDUCED HIM in the temple, not that I was a harmless well-meaning young girl TRYING to honour the will of my family and my Mistress, a girl who was ultimately ambushed! I think I could have used one of those "rape kits" you young ones always talk about. Not that it would have helped me or anything. The tyrants on top of the mountain could even make the truth disappear!
My innocence, my beauty, my Humanity even, all gone. My purpose of living stolen. I was not even permitted by my Mistress to go end my life in a pig trough or under the imposing shade of a gnarled old olive tree NO!! I HAD to be made an EXAMPLE of, as if I, a mere mortal girl, could have power over an omnipotent Alpha Male God! You might say in your modern, umm...LINGO is it? You might say I was "permanently reassigned." Yes, to this tiny little island that you now find yourself on. And as part of this "disciplinary action" I was forced to wear this perpetual mask of sorts...to become this THING...this SHE-beast that you've heard so much about, and your parents heard about, and your grandfather, and your great-GREAT-GREAT grandfather's people heard ab-
You know, I'm invoking that "Bakers Dozen" thing again. Moving on.
I shut myself off. Why in the name of Hades would I not? It's not as though I had anything PRESSING to live for anymore. So I went quiet, dark, deaf, and dumb for hundreds of years. I mean truly, wouldn't you? If YOU had been viscously raped and unjustly imprisoned for it on an island ALL ALONE for a literal ETENRITY with no one to talk to, no one to care for? No one to care about you or remember who you are?
Well, that's not QUITE true. You see, after about the first millennia or so, I began to really make an effort to try again...baby steps...a syllable once a week. Then, letters, then words...and we come to the present century where when it's late enough, and I know that all the tourists are gone, I try shuffling them around, or walk among them...my...my 'Boys."
On I haven't told you that part yet, have I? You want to know the REAL kicker of it all? The thing that really, REALLY makes that "board" up on the mountaintop a bunch of truly SICK and TWISTED sadistic macho psychopaths?
I can get you hard.
No really, I can. ROCK hard....with just one tiny glance Sirs, and for much longer than six hours.
No no, try forever! They decreed that I can't look at ANYTHING that breathes air with my eyes....without turning them or it into a...uhh...statuesque fellow.
I even kill bugs dead. You have no IDEA what it's like to have a stone mosquito fall and stick in one of your toes.
So over the...uhhh..."Baker's Dozen" of years there have been quite a few..."visitors" to my beautiful little island. The higher-ups don't like me speaking my mind, so it seems I have a kind-of-sort-of MAYBE a price on my once pretty little head. That explains much of the first batch of...umm....what is it you call them nowadays? Lawn Gnomes? Yes, my endless garden collection of Lawn Gnomes. I suppose I really shouldn't feel this way, considering that many of them have come to actually KILL ME, but I still feel kind of guilty about it.
Oh, no, not really, not as many as you'd think, at least, not anymore. Now it's mostly poor vacationing family men, just looking for directions, or taking the wrong turn at the wrong place at the wrong time. They get too close to my tiny little home, and naturally I just go to investigate the noises, or like a silly goat I actually try to be a good person and HELP them find their way home again and then...well....you know!
I suppose it's not REALLY my fault, I mean, I didn't actually do anything wrong to be re-made this way...but it bothers me all the same. I feel like I've stolen their lives, spread the same awful egomaniacal poison that has stolen mine. Whenever I can, I try to rummage through their bags and things after...after IT happens, to learn their names, and learn something about the curiosities they bring with them. It took me about 100 years, but I think I've finally ALMOST gotten the hang of using something you call a...a...ca-MER-rah is it? Though it'd help if I could find the shiny stuff on the inside that goes with it more often. You need that stuff to take the photons right? Err...Photo-graphs...yes??
I originally started looking through their things just to find out the name...the name of the person that I just turned to a rock. I think it's an absolute necessity to remember someone's name. When I was a girl, a name was everything you were ever going to be in your mortal life uttered in a single breath. It was the most important possession you could ever own. I think I owe...I owe my boys that much, to know who they were, to try and keep something of them alive...wouldn't you agree?
Unfortunately, most don't have their names on them, or they don't tell me...so when that is the case, I give them one! You see that one over by that beautiful yellow flowers? He's Callebus! He had the most shiny helmet I have ever seen, but his face reminded me of a dog, so there you are. "Mr Muscles" guards the entrance to my bedroom, he had the most awe-inspiring physique..a simply GORGEOUS chest and flowing dark hair. He came to me almost naked, just a single bronze spear and cowhide shield...ooooh, if I could but drool I would...wow. But alas, he caught me unawares, and I him, as I was pruning my flower bushes, so now his face is stuck in that gods-awful pose you see today. It took me nearly TWENTY years of hard lifting to get him where he stands now...I somehow pictured it would be easy to move him, silly me, he WAS so VERY muscular in life (*Swoons*). I wish he had shown surprise like a man in a shot-putter stance...THAT would be so much more...uhh... interesting. Yes, interesting...we'll go with that emotion...and...and nothing more!! Ha!
And over there by the fountain is a man by the name of Edward Lord Knoxley II. He was some adventurer man who came about 125 years ago to perhaps "smash and grab" is it? Yes, smash and grab what few possessions I have for something called the... British Museum? I wonder where that is...Britishland? Why in the name of the Gods would someone want to snatch away my chamber pot for an inventor's talk shop? How silly!! He came with this other gentleman who called himself an....Ad-ver-ral....of the Royal Navy I think? I startled them when they were both talking and taking a leak on my grape vines!! Though, the Adveral left me a curious little contraption made of brass with two glass pieces....I can pull on the small end and the brass stretches out so I can see from long distances things like they were right in front of me...very useful that "Long Eyeball."
And then there was Lawrence Sienna or says the light painting photon thing with the words next to it called a... "Dree-vers...uhhh....LICKS-Scence??" that I found next to him in a purse made of hemp. Lawrence is a recent "guest" to my island. He came from across the sea, a land called CALF-or-Rinnia...I...I think...about some 30 or 40 years ago. His hair was long and so was his beard like a Spartan, but unlike a well-groomed man of Lakonia, his beard and hair smelled like a dead goat who had defiled himself in life with a pig. He wore tunics and sandals of many colours, and was constantly setting fire to sweet-stink smelling leaves that he rolled up into bundles in his mouth...no, no...he said they were a type of grass, my mistake...hmm. In any rate, he said he was looking for the truth and looking to enlighten himself...or so he told my tree with the yellow apples. Why a grown man would talk to a tree with yellow apples I know not. And what was I supposed to do? I AM somewhat Human after all, I heard a human voice, so naturally I turned to see who it was and then...SSSHIIIT!!
I HATE when that happens!
On the positive side though, he left me this pair of purple glass windows that you can wear on your ears and over your eyes. It works WONDERS for stopping my...uhh....my...unique glare. For the first time in thousands of years, I can actually look at someone without killing them. Well, when I have time to prepare for "company" anyway!
So that's what I do at night, I arrange some of these "Boys" around in a little circle outside my front door and we have our little gab sessions...OKAY I DO MOST OF THE TALKING.... okay, OOOKAAAAY ALL the talking...but what's the difference??
Who knows, if they had the chance to get to know me, they might've even liked me..heh. I ask things of them like, "Well my dear friend Lawrence, how were the birds today? did any of them shit on your head? How are the golden apples this morning? Any new gossip from the apples?"[/b]
Or "Mr. Muscles, didn't you look just so dashing this afternoon at sunset...we need to find you a lady friend Mr. Muscles...but I think women are much too smart to stumble onto here..."
I even give them baths...it's fun. ( *Snort!* )
If you're a smart one, you've probably figured out my name by now without me having to tell you. And if you're both smart and have a great memory, you'll remember that story about me that your parents and teachers tried to make you memorize when you were in school, and if you're smart, have a great memory, and are a curious little fox you're wondering how in the name of Hades I'm still talking to you if the story is....
Well...BUH-UHH....no!! I mean DUHH!! That's it...Duhh.
They're called MYTHS for a reason. Though, I think the people of your times would have a much more COLOURFUL expression to describe it....involving the homemade smelly...ummm...OFFERINGS of bulls.
For the first time in thousands of years, I think I'll tell the REAL story....the true story of what happened. Oh don't worry, I promise you it'll be the short version.
Oh of course, that famous hero guy you heard about really did make it to my island...and he really did use a mirror as a shield.... though I invented that... shtick is it? Yes, shtick for myself LOOONG before he showed up and got the credit! DUUUH, why do you think there's all these pools of water and fountains around everywhere? And how the marble gets so shiny?
You see, what THEY never told you was, that I saw him first....in the marble reflection on the wall...and THEN he saw me. I could have dropped him if I had wished it...but I never have wished it, to make anyone dead, and that's the point.
I did what any normal CIVILIZED human being would do...okay, yes, they'd of first said, "Who the Hades are you and how'd you get in my house??" but, it's ME we're talking about here, so the reason was kind of obvious.
No, I said "Hello."
Yes, "Hello." (I don't know how I managed to even say it, but I did.)
But what was even stranger was, what he did, HE said "Hello" back to me. Yes, that's right, a Greek Alpha Male Warrior PUP, there for the purpose of murdering me and CUTTING MY HEAD OFF....just gently and quietly said hello right back....and then he saw me in his shield...
And then he did the strangest thing that ANY sent murderer "hero" looking to make a name for himself has EVER done....he....he shed a tear for me! He cried a little drop of pity or two or a "Baker's Dozen" of them...for the "monster" in the room.
Oh I KNOW I saw it. It was our angles you see. I could see his reflection. (A most handsome VERY young fellow of those times I might add) and somehow in that same instance, he could see mine. The first man who had seen my face and not gone "Lawn-Gnomey" in centuries.
Of course I had to ask him why he'd weep for a horrible monster...why me? I'd think he'd owe me that much before he killed me at least...he's the one with the sword and shield thingy after all.
But he just managed to say as I saw the last of his tears roll down his cheeks, " I don't know why...but...but you're not what I expected...and I know now...now that I've seen you....I can't kill you...."
So next...would you believe....we talked?? For more than an hour?? Just like that??
Yes, that's right, we just....talked. Actually, HE did most of the talking, and I listened. Turns out, he was a lost little Greek boy in a man's body who missed his Mommy....who knew? I gave him advice on how to get the "guy" his mother was "dating" out of the way and he left and went on to found the metropolis of Mycenae...thanks in part to MY advice. But you'll never get THAT in your school books!!
School books rarely tell the whole truth anyway!
And then there is that horrible brood up on the mountaintop...THAT REAL ending to the story wasn't....how do you say it? JUICY enough for them...didn't suit their tastes. Can't go ONE "mythological" story without some poor undeserving person turned into a hideous freak and then getting something cut off or hacked to bits!!
The ugly girl shouldn't get to live in their world...she should be justly (unjustly) slain...and as quickly as possible!! Pbbb!
I'm tired of standing like this...with my back to you...I think I'll turn around now, since you've been good for awhile. Oh DON'T WORRY, I know how to control IT...you'll be safe as long as I close my eyes....just keep your head down until I tell you it's safe to....you ready? Okay...here I come....wait....wait....okay NOW you can lift your head up again.
Oh, I'm actually quite practiced at doing things with my eyes closed...these disgusting over-sized black pools of death. I...I think I rather prefer it this way. There are times I can even go a whole hour or two...or even cook a meal for myself....all with my eyes closed. It gives me a respite you know, a chance, to see me and the world the way I want to see it. Sometimes, when I can hear the fountain just outside the door babbling in the morning, I'll close my eyes and just start walking...I've taken the trip so many times that I know the distance by heart...and then I bend down, and I take a "look" in the water....and sometimes...every so often...I see myself again....I see that beautiful innocent face I was born with.
I miss her terribly.
Take a good look at this face. Am I really so ugly? Am I really so terrible? The sum of all your ancient fears and nightmares? Can't you see me? Please, please, I just want someone to see me again....just...just one more time...to come away with me...even if it's just for a moment... and REALLY know who I am.
I'm not REALLY the evil monster who guards the treasure.....I'm the "damsel in distress" who longs, so very deeply longs, to be rescued, and to be seen as the treasure.
I have so much to offer....lifetimes of work on plants, and cooking, and singing songs of my youth. I really do have a BEAUTIFUL voice! All I want is just the one chance....just a single chance...to prove to someone special what's in my heart...what's in my mind...what's in my soul. I want to put my arms around the whole world...and welcome them to me...even though.... I've never been loved by anyone. Though, I'd even settle for a friend.
I sometimes think, like the silly-hearted innocent village girl I once was, like some dreamer, that if by chance I could meet someone, some brave, strong, kind-hearted man, and he could somehow love me....and kiss me....I've never even been KISSED....I sometimes think "Miss Ugly" would crackle away...and I could open my eyes again...MY REAL EYES! Not the ones THEY gave me!! That I could look him full in the face.
That the spell would be broken.
I refuse to give up...I refuse to quit believing in who I REALLY am...I refuse to let THEM and that RAPIST BASTARD define me! I REFUSE to submit, to accept this monstrous shell on the outside as me...for I know who I was and who I STILL am. I am not a monster...I am not the unknowable, unlovable woman. I am a good, beautiful, true, and faithful young old woman....I am eternal hope. So, I'll keep hoping.
I think I hear the sound of your rescue boat coming....and it's time for me to head back up to my " EVIL lair" and to bed. Here's to tonight...that we'll BOTH get to dream the peaceful hopeful dreams that are in our hearts...
As a rather new song I heard once goes....
...Pleased to meet you, hope you guess my name....
A safe journey to you traveler. A safe journey...
