The Gorgon’s Head: Retelling Medusa's Myth

An irreverent reworking of Medusa’s myth. I first wrote this over a decade ago and unearthed it while researching her story again.

---

The pooling sunlight on the temple floor was suddenly stained by shadow. A great white stallion had leapt noiselessly up the temple steps and stood - hot-breathed and unmoving - at the high entrance, watching the girl at the altar. She knelt to pray, her corn-gold hair shining in the sunbeams surging through the pallid shadows of marble and metal.

From the cold stone eyes of the statue, Athena looked down in envy. She was seldom desired: she didn’t draw men inexorably in like Aphrodite, though she had far more going on inside her helmet. Even queen Hera, with a few more aeons under her girdle, could cause a fire in the blood. Weaving and pottery didn’t rouse the passions like feminine mystique. Athena begrudged the girl her bright, untarnished purity, like a new gold coin sprung from the mould: not yet spent or hoarded or stolen. So, the goddess watched in interest as the white beast approached the kneeling girl.

The girl was Medusa, the loveliest of the Sea’s three daughters. As he watched her, the sight of her beauty pierced Poseidon’s depths, raising a tempest of desire. There was nothing like a little minor deity to put a sting in your jellyfish. Poseidon had ridden the waves with every weed-clad sea-nymph in his wide domain, and a fair few river naiads – too much salt was bad for the blood pressure. But they were all formed of the same stuff as he: cold and frustratingly slippery. This land-bound delicacy had skin as soft and dry as a sun-warmed pebble on the shore.

The gods’ desires swayed freely as gusting winds, unfettered by concerns and consequences. Poseidon’s brother, Zeus, had a trick he used to bed his quarry: no woman could resist a god in beast’s guise. The offspring he had fathered as a bull, swan or stag now milled about doing great deeds, much to Hera’s wifely chagrin. Poseidon decided to give this a try, transforming into a white stallion with undulating white flanks slick with fresh sweat, mane shining like a waterfall. No need to be too original.

Medusa first sensed the deep smell of the animal, of musk and dust and sweat - curiously tempered with a keen saltiness, reminding her of the shore. She felt a hot breath on the back of her shoulder, like a gust from the depths of Tartarus. The flared nostrils brushed into her hair and she turned to see the animal. There was a gleam of something in the stallion’s eye, something distinctly un-equine, which sent shivers through her body. Medusa had seen that glint before, lining the bars in taverns, festooning couches at lavish feasts, surreptitiously darting about at solemn religious rites. Usually, a slap and a cutting remark were sufficient, but now it was too late. Before the girl had time to writhe out of reach, Poseidon had her on the floor of the temple.

Athena watched distastefully. Even Zeus had the decency to remove his exploits to some sequestered spot before having his way with them. Thankfully - no one likes to see their parents’ intimate moments. She also saw the power that the fragile girl had over the god. Medusa was barely a blip on the deity scale yet had high gods transfiguring into lowly beasts for her. How dare she mock the goddess by flaunting her pious chastity with coquettish wiggles of her peach-like buttocks. Little tart.

As she watched the scene below, the goddess felt her anger rise like Hephaestus’s fire. She allowed it to surge, until it burst in a wave over the prostrate girl. It brought a metal-wrought change to quench the Goddess’s envy. Cornflower delicacy was crushed beneath brazen flesh. Tusks protruded between sharpened teeth, lining a blood-red mouth. A slate-grey tongue lolled out like a hunk of rancid meat to mock the lips’ inviting grin. Brass wings arched out crookedly. The filigree strands of corn-gold hair transfigured into vipers thick as wrists: ever-coiling, ever-hissing – like a struggling mass of tortured souls. But the eyes. They were stone-flesh eyes, dark and dead as the silt of the river Styx.

Athena might have been spiteful, but she overdid it. She transfigured my poor sisters, Stheno and Euryale, too, and left us no hope of grace. There were no creams for these kinds of skin concerns, and no hairstyle suited the serpentine look. We three monstrous women lived secluded: horror-creatures borne from the deep of an envy-twisted imagination. And there we tried to remain. I wouldn’t complain, though. If that was the result of poking Athena’s insecurities, I don’t want to imagine what happens if you really tick her off. It was all long ago now, anyway. She can’t do much to a shade in Hades’ realm.

At first, we couldn’t get enough of the petrifying gaze. The thrills of turning men’s heads had been dulled over the years from constantly having to fend them off.  Much more fun to turn them to stone: they expected less and didn’t complain half as much. The first time I saw a living thing after the change – a rat, it was – I was astounded by its throttled squeak as its beady black eyes turned to granite. The next one was a priest in the temple. Seeing my hideous appearance, he began a scream which never left his lips. Well, he should have been a more careful about keeping marauding god-horses out of the temple. On sunny days we reclined lazily on the blasted grass, pinging flies out of the air like small stone bullets for target practice. Only problem was that metal flesh does heat up uncomfortably fast. Our sunbathing sessions always left singed welts on the grass.

All about our hiding place was scattered a sculpture-garden of unwitting exhibits, ranging from cats to goatherds stood in shocked awe - along with their wide-eyed sheep. We tended our collection, curating the aesthetic carefully. We soon had a flock of sheep of our very own, and a flock of shepherds. We had a static Mexican wave, and a selection of scenes from our favourite plays. There was little that a man wouldn’t do to avoid being torn apart by scything tusks before we eyeballed him.

Unsurprisingly, tensions sometimes arose. Stheno once had a big row with Euryale because she had stolen Stheno’s strapping huntsman ‘boyfriend’. I had to listen to them clashing and clanging all over the place with their tusks and claws for days. They had forgotten the fact that Euryale was now both repulsive and lethal to anything with a pulse. And that the huntsman no longer had one.

For a while, we lived like grotesque children amongst a palace of new toys. But I became restless. I longed for the touch of flesh on flesh, for looks of desire not startled horror. The grotesque tongue got uncomfortably wind-chapped, and the snakes wouldn’t shut up - whether I asked nicely or smacked them. I lingered like a lover by the granite faces, their eyes ringed by convulsed brows. Their looks never let me forget. They bore down on me in writhing dreams, the rounded pupils replaced by my own serpentine slits. Sometimes I raged, clawing my granite hide and limbs with bronze nails until they screeched like battling Stymphalian birds. It was like some tortuous adolescence, my exterior and interior in a fraught exchange. Except, my death-stare was devastatingly effective. I would have turned myself to stone over living as this cold, animate horror.

My loneliness crystallised over time, deadening my heartbeat. I grew flinty cold and hard. The brazen shell became my flesh; the snakes’ tails rooted in my brain.

But a hero was coming. We felt it in the air, caught the taste of him on our tongues: an airborne oracle. He might bring me an end.

I came across Perseus’s shade in the Elysian fields recently and dragged the whole story out of him.

The enterprise was never his idea in the first place. His poor mother, Danae had attracted the drooling attention of King Polydectes of Seriphos. This little ‘errand’ to fetch a monster was an obvious ruse to get the gangly-limbed teenage Perseus out of the way.

It would have been certain death - a permanent place in my sculpture collection. But Athena, never one to let a vendetta rest, had furnished the young stripling with divine equipment: a mirrored shield, adamantine sickle, a dog-skin cap of invisibility and winged sandals. She told him to search out the Graeae, our three swan-like sister-Fates, with one eye and tooth between them, the only ones who knew our hiding place. Finding the Fates more concerned with their eternal sibling rivalry than his quest, Perseus confiscated their treasured appendages. Amidst a stream of surprising expletives, they revealed the location of our den. So, Perseus set out on his inaugural Great Deed.

It wasn’t like the other great mythic battles between heroes and monsters. Considering the spectacular shows that Hercules put up, or Theseus, Perseus’s efforts were poor spectator sport. Not everyone can be a natural entertainer. He was pleased to find us snoring loudly as he flew up invisibly on the winged sandals, wincing as he took our reflections from the mirrored shield.

He avoided mention of the moment when he severed my neck, I noticed. Telling the story to fans, he had probably described the sun glinting brightly off the sickle’s arching length as he plunged it down like some thunderbolt from Zeus. I knew that he had chickened out at the last minute, though. Athena had moved his sword-arm for him. Some hero.

He had forgotten the hundreds of snakes wreathing my head. I had, by now, come to a mutual agreement with my scaly companions over sleeping patterns, making us all less grouchy. They lay in a blissful torpor when Perseus approached. On finding themselves suddenly minus one body, they had quite the hissy-fit. The sound woke my sleeping sisters, who exploded into action, ready to gouge stomachs.

But Perseus had already slipped away, nymph-like, on the winged sandals.

My snakes screeched from the depths of the bag, as if all the world’s winds were trapped within.

My body lay alone in the dust, blood seeping out like tar. From my neck sprang two monstrous offspring, Pegasus and Chrysaor – tokens of Poseidon’s attentions. This winged horse and falchion-bearing wastrel gave no heed to the plight of their mother, prancing off to other adventures. If only my suitors from the long past could have seen the body they once lusted over just then: monstrous, headless and un-mourned.

Athena came to visit though, of course. She collected two phials from my veins - healing blood from the right, deadly blood from the left - and gave them to her personal healer.

My head winged its way towards the palace of Polydectes, waylaid only by a brief altercation with a sea monster over a maiden. Perseus’s shade vibrated with excitement as he told me this story - he really thought he had managed it all by himself this time. I reminded him that overcoming petrified statues of sea monsters, courtesy of my severed head, is not all that tricky. His self-satisfied air sagged, his shade kept fading in and out of view before finally vanishing into a damp mist.

I didn’t need to hear the rest of the story from him, though. What happened next had spread round Olympus faster than news of Aphrodite’s latest indiscretion.

You might have heard that Perseus arrived at the palace and found his mother at breaking point, about to give in to the King’s advances. You were probably told that the young hero presented his gory prize to the court, turning them all to stone. Then he married the girl he’d saved and settled down on a throne somewhere.

But that wasn’t what really happened, was it?

Perseus did strut up to the palace and Polydectes did demand to see my head, fully expecting the boy to have nothing to show. Perseus lifted the blood-encrusted bag, put his hand inside, and braced himself for a despondent nip from the snakes. He lifted my head out, his eyes cautiously averted. But rather than stony silence, he heard a shocked intake of breath from the court.

He looked up. Hanging from a blood-matted, corn-gold lock of hair was the twisted face of a maiden. My face. The glassy eyes were round and blue, pale cheeks shrunken like overripe peach skin. At that moment, no man looked at me with desire. They couldn’t even manage pity.

No stony transformation staunched their horror.

If you enjoyed this, do check out my latest book, Enchanted Creatures: Our Monsters and their Meanings as well as my other writing.

Medusa Gorgon Myth Retelling -- Copyright Natalie Lawrence 2026