SCARIEST THING EVER

On the Medusa of Leonardo da Vinci (click here)

It lieth, gazing on the midnight sky,
Upon the cloudy mountain-peak supine;
Below, far lands are seen tremblingly;
Its horror and its beauty are divine.
Upon its lips and eyelids seems to lie
Loveliness like a shadow, from which shine,
Fiery and lurid, struggling underneath,
The agonies of anguish and of death.

percy bysshe shelley

When I was in the 2nd Grade I was commissioned by the teacher to write a Halloween story. She wanted it by the deadline, when the bell rang that very day. I had one of those huge pencils and a piece of paper that had about an inch between each line. I began to write all about the Things I had seen on T.V.

There was a family named the Addams, with Gomez and….Morticia and I thought she was cute. Her feet were like tree roots.

I had seen the original Godzilla, a huge reptile that came out of the sea and ate busloads of people. I was five and the next day I had what amounted to a psychic hangover. It was foggy, and I gazed north from our garage into the empty field. I strained my eyes for the giant head to materialze out of the mist, teeth bared and hungry for little boys.

"THEM" was a movie about giant Ants that lived in huge mounds out in the Mojave desert. A Queen Ant flew west, started to live in a drainage ditch in L.A., and had taken two kids hostage into a tunnel. As my son recently pointed out, the movie ends before they actually get the kids out.
That’s the LAPD for ya.

Then there was the Vegetable Man. I told you all about him yesterday.

I had seen a movie where an evil man had a Wax Museum and the figures were so real because..they were real...he just poured hot wax on pretty girls and when they stopped wiggling their toes, kicking and screaming...

Voila!

...a whole new exhibit!

But the main character of my story was going to be someone I knew about, but couldn’t remember her name. I think I had seen her in a movie at the Punch and Judy with my older buddy Mel.
I described her to my teacher, but she had no idea what I was talking about.
So she sent me to the Principal.

He knew who I was talking about. He told me the whole story .

Medusa was originally a beautiful maiden, priestess in Athena's temple, but when she was raped by Poseidon in Athena's temple, the enraged goddess transformed her beautiful hair to serpents and she made her face so terrible to behold that the mere sight of it would turn a man to stone.

Perseus cut off her head and she was so rough lookin' that he used her head as a weapon. Pegasus, the winged horse, was born from the blood of Medusa, fathered by Poseidon.

When people saw her, they turned into statues, like the Wax museum, only they were made of stone.

I’ve had a girlfriend before with hips that moved in a fashion that could only be described as Serpentine.
I knew a girl that spoke with a forked tongue and she did other tricks too.
Then there was Terri, whose snake-eyes gave me the complete Willies. I could not stand to look into them.
I have even heard of girls that seemingly could unhinge their jaw.

But I have never seen a girl with snakes for hair.
If you were to look at her you would turn to stone.
The principal had said her name was Medusa.
OOOooohhh! Medusa!

And you know what?

I made that deadline and got an "A".

After all these years I still have that story I wrote!