Sean E. Britten

I’ve always been inspired by music (I know, super original!) and music has always been a part of my writing. Way back in the days of burnt CDs, my mates and I used to put together CD mixtapes and I came up with the idea of a series of short stories based around pieces of music. Mixtape is all short stories sharing their titles with different songs and inspired, to various degrees, by their lyrics, artists, and vibe.

Currently Playing: The Rolling Stones – Heart of Stone

For weeks he trained to defeat a monster he couldn’t even look at. It didn’t work. Now, his petrified body can do nothing but watch time passing from the corner of her ruined hall.

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For weeks we trained with blindfolds on, learning how to swing a sword and raise a shield and work as a unit without our most vital sense. Some of the new recruits were actual blind men picked up while begging on the streets or working at simple tasks. Was it easier to teach a blind man to be a soldier or to teach a soldier to be blind? I never found a satisfactory answer.

One hand on the shoulder of the man in front of us, other hand wrapped around the hafts of our spears, we descended into the ruins of the temple. I could feel my heart thundering as roots of fear twined through my chest. I’m sure the others felt the same. We used our spears like staves, feeling out the confines of our space. Metal rang off of stone. Rubble cluttered the floor and got caught underfoot, causing us to stumble.

“Take care,” one of the commanders said. “Listen, ears open!”

I could feel by the air on my skin, by the way it shifted, that we’d entered a more open space. I could see fragments of sunlight at the edges of my blindfold, nothing more. Even so, the area was cool and dim. Listening carefully, I heard shuffling footsteps, the creak of leather armour and the clank of shields. Then, a vicious hiss rent the room. The sound alone made my legs almost too weak to hold me.

“She’s here!” someone shouted.

“Together, remember your positions!” another voice said.

For a moment, all the training we had done flew out of my head. I was helpless as a blindfolded babe. Men crashed into my shoulders at either side, however, and instinct took over. I reached for my shield and hauled it around in front of me, feeling the men at my sides do the same. Knots of soldiers turned into miniature phalanxes, moving boxes of men presenting shields on all sides. By the jostling and shouts, I could tell the process ran less smoothly than it had done in training but even blind most of us found the places into which we slotted. I shoved my spear forward, rasping against the edge of my shield, so it would bristle from the wall of shields.

The temperature inside the phalanx quickly mounted. I could feel the other men’s hot, damp breath and twisted limbs, shields and spears held in such a way to armour us in all directions. I listened for our enemy. Low hisses, and then the dry scrape of scales on stone. A long, soft, sinuous sound.

“That way!” A hand pushed me in the shoulder.

With men shoving from behind, and to either side, I couldn’t have resisted even if I wanted to. The unseen room wasn’t easy to negotiate even with the smaller phalanx. We thrust our way toward the source of the noise as best we could but ran up against piles of rubble and other obstructions that were difficult to navigate without the use of sight. My shield crunched into something the size of a man and heavy. Crying out, I lanced it with my spear but the weapon glanced off solid rock.

I pictured what we must look like from the perspective of our sighted enemy. A squat, boxy, hardshelled, many legged, many limbed thing, bristling with spines, blundering blind around the room in clumsy, lurching movements. Cracks could be felt in our armour hide as men stumbled into obstacles and lost cohesion. I was crushed for a moment between the men behind me and another solid impediment until I shouted at them to stop.

Suddenly, someone screamed and there was a terrible clatter of weapons and shields. Another snarling hiss split the air and I heard the rasp of scales. Another crash. I and the other members of my phalanx struggled to turn in the direction of the noise to help but we tripped and came apart before having to find one another again.

Some of the screams went on and on. Some cut out abruptly, as if sliced in two with a razor. The sudden absence they left loomed, unnaturally large. I heard something wet, like a spear being driven into flesh, a man shrieking in pain, and then the splatter of thick liquid on stone. I could smell it in the air, the iron stink of blood, the taint of sweat and fear.

“I can’t fight like this!” someone said.

“Leave the blindfolds on!”

Another yell cut into yawning silence. The clatter of a dropped sword or shield and then nothing. I listened hard as our phalanx drew to a halt, panting and heaving. Scales scraped and more soft hisses snuck through the room.

“Where is she?”

“Shut your mouth! Shut it!”

I heard whispered prayers. We inched this way and that, shields held in front of us and over our heads, but couldn’t pinpoint the sound of our target.

Something smashed into the man on my left. Screaming, we lashed out and hacked at the air with our spears. Another bit of rubble had been dropped or tipped or tossed, knocking aside his shield. We fell apart and tried to come back together like we’d trained but thrown spears whipped through our mass. I heard the man beside me get hit and he let out a gurgling cry. When I reached for him, I felt the haft of the spear jutting from his throat. Another spear cut past my ear, narrowly missing, and hit the man behind me.

“No more, no more!” another man behind me cried.

I felt fumbling and suspected he was removing his blindfold. Moments later, there was another scream. And then another abrupt silence, the cry of horror ripped in two.

Something crashed into my shield, and the shield of the man on my right. I felt the tip of it lash against my arm, cold and scaly and dry. The end of a powerful tail. I fell over backward and lost my spear. There was a bloodcurdling hiss. The man beside me was ripped away, crying out, and I heard what sounded like bones splintering. Rocks pelted us from all sides. The chaos drove us apart and left us scattered. She was dividing us and picking us off while we floundered, unable to see, unable to remove our blindfolds. She was far more tactical, smarter, than we’d been led to believe, able to think like a human being instead of just reacting like a ravening monster.

“Retreat! Retreat!” someone yelled.

I would, if only I could find the exit. I’d been twisted and turned around and no longer had any concept of where I was in relation to the entrance to the ruined temple. Dropping my shield, I ripped the sword off of my belt then used it as if clearing a path. Its blade hissed through the air. Metal bounced off of a pillar or something else made of stone, hard enough to chip it. I had no idea if I was retreating in the right direction or headed deeper into the ruins. With my free hand, I reached for the blindfold. I needed to get some idea of where I was, to find a way out. Just a glimpse. But I was too afraid. Those terrible cries, those abrupt silences, just one glance in the wrong direction would be the end of me.

Men sobbed. Weapons and shields clanged, I heard them ringing off of stone. Our enemy hissed and lashed out. I could hear rocks and spears and other blows landing. A few cries cut short. I found a corner of the temple and tucked myself into it, back to the rough wall, sword held out in front of me. I heard what remained of a phalanx retreating and thought of trying to follow but I couldn’t make myself move. I could barely make myself breathe. One by one, the remaining soldiers in the room were picked off and fell silent.

“Please, please,” I whispered, sword quaking in my hands, and I silently prayed.

Scales rasped over the stone floor. I could hear the looping, sliding, sinuous movements getting closer. A piece of rubble rattled into my foot. I felt the gentle push of air disturbed by another presence. She was looming right over me, I was sure of it.

“Away, monster!” I said.

Lunging forward, I swung the sword at where I perceived her to be. Something else crashed into my sword and wrenched it out of my grasp. Helpless, I stumbled backward and tried to fend off my attacker. Hands shoved my arms away and clawed at my face. They dug in under my blindfold and ripped it away. Instinctively, I slammed my eyes shut. As nails trailed the sides of my face, however, mindless terror took hold. I couldn’t help but look.

A horrible, warped, reptilian face hovered less than a hand’s breadth from my own. Human in form, largely, but green and angular and patterned with scales. I could see hooked fangs lining its jaws. Instead of hair, she had snakes emerging from her scalp, writhing, their own little fangs bared as they hissed. And her eyes, those eyes, glowing yellow, radiating with power.

My eyes turned to stone first. I felt the weight spread across my face. I started to scream but it died in an instant as my mouth, my teeth, my tongue, the lining of my throat, all turned to stone. It spread across my skin like a wildfire that left every inch of me hard and grey beneath my leather armour and clothing. Frozen, half-standing in an awkward crouch, hands raised and face contorted in terror.

I thought I was dead. I should have been dead. I couldn’t move, I couldn’t blink, I couldn’t breathe. My body was cold and heavy, unfeeling stone. But somehow I could still see, I could still think. Impossible, it was impossible. Maybe more impossible than being turned to stone by a stare in the first place.

The gorgon swayed backward, and then whipped around with snakelike quickness to sweep the room. Nothing moved. All the other soldiers were either dead or turned to stone, like me. She hunted among them to be sure, tossing aside shields and dead men.

I wanted to scream but I couldn’t. I couldn’t even inhale. My heart should have been racing but I could no longer feel any kind of rhythm in my chest.

Whoever had survived, no one came back for us. Sunlight moved across the cratered openings in the temple’s roof then those gaps went dark. The gorgon returned to some other part of the ruins, leaving me alone with the rest of the statues. Trapped, staring, unblinking, unable to move. I felt only a vague discomfort but really I felt very little at all. I was stuck inside my own mind. I prayed to die. I prayed to go insane, wishing more than anything that madness would allow me to take leave of my senses. I raged and I screamed, silently, inside my head, and I begged and I pleaded with the gods and I cried without tears.

The night stretched, moonlight and stars barely visible through the gaps in the ceiling. I raked myself over the imaginary coals of a thousand regrets and could-have-beens. Whatever I tried, I couldn’t bring insanity on myself. Even though I could think, it was like my mind was just as frozen as the rest of my body. My lungs were paralysed mid-breath, my heart trapped mid-beat, and my mind, unfortunately, was frozen in a state of terror and regret but remained cruelly sane.

As the sun rose, I saw light poke through the temple ruins. Unable to do much else, I studied my surroundings. The temple had been a grand stone structure once, dedicated to the goddess Minerva, walls lined with altars and statuary. There was not so much rubble from the ceiling and structure as we’d thought. Most of the obstacles we’d run into were statues of soldiers and adventurers, even sacrifices, who’d ventured or been forced into the temple and turned to solid rock. Weapons rusted at their sides and clothing rotted off their bodies. Some of them I knew, of course. New statues made from men I’d trained and fought alongside who’d been caught and transformed like myself.

There were about two dozen statues in just this part of the temple complex alone. Scattered among them were shattered bits and pieces from more statues that had been reduced to rubble. Some of them had been destroyed in yesterday’s battle. Some pieces had been used as ammunition against us. And then there were the bodies. Those who’d been killed instead of petrified had gone stiff and become discoloured overnight. I envied them. Older bodies, skeletons, were strewn amongst the rubble.

Another attack was attempted late in the afternoon. The remaining men I’d come to the temple with tried again in two small phalanxes. I felt a savage surge of joy. Silently, I screamed encouragement and advice. They couldn’t hear me, of course. They couldn’t see me either, all of them were blindfolded once again except for those recruits who were already blind by nature.

The gorgon slithered back into the room. I saw for the first time that she’d actually been wounded in yesterday’s fighting. A shallow spear wound marred her side, now crudely stitched closed and surrounded by dried blood. Again, I felt some small pleasure as I watched it hamper her movements. As I watched it hurt. I shouted insults, threats, hatred at her that she couldn’t hear either.

Unfortunately, the remaining men did no better than we had done the day before. They’d learned nothing from the encounter, attacking with the same modified phalanx tactics. I got to see how the gorgon fought. She wore no armour and carried no weapons of her own. Her naked upper body, a well made woman’s body, looked vulnerable atop the tail of a giant snake. Her fingers ended in thin talons. Fangs bristled from her mouth and she appeared unnaturally strong but she couldn’t simply overwhelm the men. She fought by pelting them with rubble and dropping larger pieces of ruins or even statues into their path. She used their blind confusion to scatter them. Stealing spears and swords, she slaughtered them as readily as they would slaughter her. When some removed their blindfolds in desperation, she locked eyes with them and used her gaze to turn them to stone. Others, she ripped their blindfolds away like she’d done to me.

The remnants of both phalanxes fled back the way they’d come. I screamed at them to come back, to save me somehow, to end this, but once they were gone they didn’t return. The gorgon retreated deeper into the temple ruins again to nurse a couple of fresh wounds.

Over the following days, I got to know the faces of my fellow statues. Some I knew from training alongside but many had been there when we arrived. Judging by what remained of their clothing and equipment, I guessed at their origins and what had led them here. Soldiers or mercenaries or mere travellers. Some, I believed to be sacrifices made by the local villages. Fed to the beast, such as it were, either out of fear or in the hopes of some kind of favour.

Of course, I wondered if all of them were trapped in the same hell as I was. All of them frozen, staring back at me with unblinking eyes, unable to speak or communicate in any way. Those who had been stuck here for years, decades, I couldn’t imagine what state their minds were in.

My ears picked up at the dry rasp of scales on stone. The gorgon slithered into the room. I jeered and cursed her, and yelled threats I would never be capable of following through on. I imagined the other petrified statues doing the same, a chorus of raging silence.

The gorgon showed no reaction, of course. Nursing her wounds, she began to slide from one statue to the next. The most recent victims like myself. She studied their faces and our uniforms out of what appeared to be simple curiosity. A few she made minute adjustments, shifting them this way or that into the shafts of sun piercing the temple roof. Like the owner of a gallery posing works of art. Weapons, shields, even bits of rubble and bone she tossed aside. Corpses she dragged to the sides of the temple. I cursed her some more but eventually ran out of motivation and fell silent within my own mind.

Suddenly, the gorgon seized on me. She whipped around like a striking snake and held her face over mine. I’d seen her do it to others but somehow I hadn’t anticipated it. If my heart was beating, it would have been racing in my chest.

I was repulsed and afraid. Afraid of what, I wasn’t sure. What worse could she do to me? Gleaming yellow eyes studied the planes of my face. I snapped at her, spat at her in my mind, but it was obvious she had no sense of what I was feeling. She didn’t show any awareness I might be looking back at her at all. Repulsion and fear were burned away by anger.

Although I hated to admit it, able to study her now, her expression neutral, I could see that beyond the superficial markers of her monstrous nature she looked ordinary. Not just ordinary, in fact, her features could even be called beautiful beneath her green skin and yellow eyes and fangs. The snakes that made up her hair coiled and twined. Each was about a handspan long, heads and bodies a little thicker than my thumb. Threadlike tongues flitted. They appeared peaceful though, almost sleepy. I struggled to maintain my rage. She studied me for what felt like a long time. Then, with tremendous, easy strength, she shifted me a little further away from the wall. I didn’t know what to make of the monster’s touch. Even if I’d had a choice, I’d have been shocked into silence. The gorgon slithered backward and disappeared again into the ruins.

Later that evening, I was surprised by the sound of music. Inexpertly played, the plucking of strings, probably a lyre, a series of notes clumsily assembled into a kind of melody. I didn’t recognise it but it could only be the work of the gorgon. It came again and again, improving upon itself with each repetition and then falling silent as darkness came.

Days turned into weeks. I counted bricks on the opposite wall and then counted them again. I studied bones on the floor and tried to reassemble them into complete skeletons, estimating which bone went with which joint although I knew nothing of anatomy. All the other statues, I gave names to those I didn’t know already. I told myself stories about their lives, their backgrounds, their loves, and what might have been. The stories intermarried and wove into an epic tapestry. I shifted between parts of the stories constantly but I never confused the cast of characters, through repetition I knew them better than I knew my own family. I didn’t sleep and these elaborate fantasies became my dreams.

The highlights of my long days and lonely nights were when the gorgon played her lyre. Often she stayed at the back of the temple but she sometimes slithered through the open room between statues, strumming. A pair of wooden ribs with strings stretched between them. Really, her tunes were discordant and amateur, the attempts of an unlearned student, but with so little beauty for me to appreciate the music caused my unbeating heart to soar.

The gorgon was the only living creature I could set my eyes on. At first, I cursed her using every vile threat and insult I could conceive but eventually my outrage flagged. More and more, robbed of other options, I looked forward to when I would see her again. I even began to empathise with her. Yes, she had cursed me to this terrible fate but she didn’t appear to even be aware of this aspect of her ability. And we had attacked her after all. We came into her home with our spears and shields, she was only defending herself. If she really wanted to harm people, she could have left the ruins and gone storming across the countryside leaving nothing but statues in her wake. By all appearances, she only wanted to be left alone.

Why had we attacked her? Our commanders had worked us up into spasms of disgust over the mere existence of such a monster, but why? I knew the story of how she had ended up this way. She’d been abused and betrayed in the worst possible way. How could I not begin to feel for her, with all this time to think?

It didn’t hurt that, under what the gods had done to her, the gorgon was beautiful. Her face, her elegant neck, her breasts, and the way her waist tapered into her thick and muscular tail. The fantasy world I’d built based around the other statues was populated with legions of beautiful women, it was true. But the fantasies paled in the face of reality every time she slithered into the body of the temple. Some of her monstrous traits even began to appear differently to me. The sinuous curves of her tail, the way her fangs dimpled her lower lip. The way her hair-snakes nuzzled her ears and neck. She was beautiful just the way she was. A beautiful, tragic, sensitive soul.

I measured the days into weeks and the weeks into months at first. I could see the cycles of the moon through the gaps in the ceiling. But it all began to blur together. I could watch dust dancing in a shaft of sunlight for hours. I became so lost in fantasies that I would be surprised back into reality after days without taking notice of my surroundings. Sometimes, rain showered through the hole in the ceiling above me and I would vividly imagine every droplet as it landed. My armour and equipment rusted. I watched weeds grow between cracks in the ruins. I gave them names and raced them as they reached for the sun.

The gorgon learned to play the lyre. Her melodies became more complex and polished. I lived for the moments when she would come to move amongst us. No one else had attacked since the men I came with. She would study and adjust the same statues over and over. I would pray she would look at me, that she would touch me, even though I couldn’t feel her hands.

I loved her. My heart of stone belonged to her. My life before this place faded. Maybe I was wrong, maybe those memories were just another fantasy and I’d always been here, only here. It didn’t matter. There came a day where I wouldn’t have chosen to be anywhere else. If this was the only way to be close to my love, to be able to look upon her, then this was the only place I ever wanted to be.

And then the hero arrived, alone. He bore a simple shield and short sword. He wore no blindfold but kept his eyes squeezed shut at first. Bellowing challenges, he felt his way around the space until the gorgon emerged. Hissing, she swarmed toward him with fangs exposed and her hair-snakes arched in a cloud around her head.

The hero kept his back to her and opened his eyes. When she lunged at him, striking, he veered out of her path. She swiped and lashed, and he avoided her with impossible dexterity. It was the shield, I realised. The inner curve of his shield was copper that had been polished to a mirror sheen. Watching her reflection, he could see my love coming without being turned to stone.

Silently, I screamed warnings. I tried to tell her what was happening but, of course, she couldn’t hear me. I begged him not to hurt her. It did no good, he couldn’t hear me either. She lunged and he rammed his sword backward into her stomach. The blade carved toward her sternum and dark blood spilled. She recoiled, hissing wildly. He tore the sword free and, without looking, spun it around in a vicious half-circle. It carved neatly through her neck and cleaved her head from her shoulders.

By feel, the hero shovelled my love’s head into a small sack and left with it for his own purposes. Her body he left to rot. My fellow statues and I he left, ignored, forgotten, abandoned to darkness as light faded from the craters in the ceiling.

It was only my imagination, I’m sure. I couldn’t really feel, I couldn’t breathe or so much as blink. But I’d swear, like the raindrops, I felt a single tear as it fell from one of my eyes and dribbled down my cheek.

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Sean: Similar to The Trident Switch, inspired by Clash of the Titans with a bit of a twist on the classic. I said in the author note of that story how much I loved the creature designs in both the original and the remake. Weirdly, I was picturing the original when putting this one together. Weirdly because obviously Medusa is an absolute smokeshow in the remake and is… very much not, in the original. But, I don’t know, the temple and the vibe of the thing in the 1981 version served as more of an inspiration here!

I’d been thinking of writing a story featuring a gorgon for a while now, as part of All There in the (Monster) Manual, but didn’t quite get there. Had an idea that I couldn’t quite find the handle on but as creatures they’ve got a lot of features I admire. But if you’d like to read something else with a victim turning horrifically into stone, there’s The Hunt, which I think is a pretty good little tale.

There’s also Into the Labyrinth, which takes place in a similar time period and also takes the approach of “do no research and hope it all kind of works out.”

Next Track: The Tubes – Don’t Touch Me There