“From now on your name is Medusa, Water Witch of the Sea Snakes, and according to my royal magic I decree:
The adders in your soul will forever hatch,
Bringing back to their mother a dirty royal batch.
I will let this go on, until I’ve chosen my few.
The best will go with me,
And the rest will go with you.
Keep your imagination but you don’t have much time,
For you’ll cease to exist when I cast you out of mine.
And when that day comes, all the baby snakes you hatched into the hearts of others will cry out for their harlot mother, but I won’t let you turn from them. You’ll collect every fish that serves you and be cast into the center of my Icarus flame forever where you will eternally burn, lighting the streetlights of my royal city. You’ll think you’re really being burned alive, but you can’t die. You’re immortal!
You wanted to keep the crown, and so I let you keep it! Now your suffering will be fossil fuel forever, fueling the new kingdom I’m imagining – the kingdom where you don’t exist.”
A dead calm fell over the crowd.
“And to you, Mer Folk! For not telling me of her infidelity:
I now transform you into lowly fish!
If that makes you angry, go serve the Water Witch.
If the people really love the King,
They’ll serve as fish in suffering!”
King Loch Ness lifted his royal monster body from his chair and by his command every mermaid and merman became millions of tiny fish with no hope but to become fish food for every dolphin, whale and snake in the entire ocean.
“Why would you do this to your Mer Folk?” the tiny fish shouted from the amphitheater.
The Monster King breathed fire with his words, “BECAUSE I DON’T KNOW WHO MY REAL FRIENDS ARE!!!!!!!!!!!”
Finished, the great monster spun around on his fat Monster body and completely disappeared for an indeterminable amount of time. Rumor had it that he crowned Daria Dolphincakes his new monster queen and they went into hiding in the deepest darkest parts of the ocean where no mortal fish dared to go for fear of the pressure.
It seemed harsh, but according to Loch Ness, his REAL FRIENDS would take the time to look for him.
“And, Little Miss Brinley, that’s quite enough story time for you tonight.” Daphne closed the book and gently placed it on Brinley’s nightstand.
This time Brinley didn’t protest. She was too full of questions.
“Daffy, is it hard to know who your real friends are when you have money?”
“I wouldn’t know, Brinley. I’ve never had any.”
EVIL AMONG US
Daphne open and shut her eyes three times slowly.
Was she having a nightmare?
This can’t be real. This can’t be happening.
The woman who murdered her baby was standing in front of the school assembly introducing herself as the new principal of Immanuel’s Sheep Christian School.
Daphne’s first instinct was to tell someone, but who would believe such a story?
Those dirty cash eyes found Daphne’s in the crowd.
The hairs on the back of her neck stood to attention.
“I promise to be fair and judicious in all my decisions as your new principal here at Immanuel’s Sheep Christian School. I hope to be receiving the same respect from you all.”
Daphne walked away from the assembly with a zombie-like gait. She was having a nightmare. Surely she would wake up any minute.
She saw police standing in the hallway.
Should she tell them?
Could she trust the police?
As she approached them, to her horror she realized they were crowded around her locker.
“Is this your locker, young lady?”
“Yes.”
The two classmates who’d been walking along side of her quickly disappeared into the crowd leaving her standing alone.
“I don’t have anything illegal in my locker.”
“Sure, if you don’t call this illegal.”
Practically beaming, the cop held up a bag full of crystals to the overhead fluorescent light.
“Crystal meth. And a locker full of it. You were really going to make you some money, huh?”
“Officer, that’s not mine.”
He shook his head.
“That’s what they all say, kid. It NEVER is.”
“Someone planted that.”
“Your principal called and asked us to check on a tip your counselor reported. Sarah Battles suspected you were on drugs, but we never dreamed we’d get a bust this big.”
The cop clamped the cuffs down on her wrists triumphantly as he began reading her rights.
The other students walked by extra slow with wide-eyed curiosity, but Daphne didn’t even see them.
She didn’t see anybody anymore.
Her principal had murdered her child before planting enough crystal meth to put her down for ten years, and she had no proof. No reason for anyone to believe her.
She had nothing to say to Rex, to Catherine, or to anybody.
She had no words, only tiny hot tears that drizzled down her face like shooting stars.
With every tear she made a wish, and it was always the same wish, “God, if there is a God, please let me die. Please take me to be with Rio.”
THE FIRST SIGN OF HOPE
Daphne didn’t consider jail to be all that bad compared to the nightmare she called her life.
Sure it was lonely, but she was so tired of people. People meant pain, and she didn’t know how much more pain her heart could hold.
Sure some family had tried to visit, but Daphne denied them all.
She knew it was just for show.
They didn’t really want to be there. They were only trying to do the right thing, and Daphne didn’t need their pity.
She didn’t need their pity or their prayers.
She had everything she needed, and that was the magic book Brinley mailed her just in time.
Maybe the book wasn’t even really magic, but it gave her something no one else could give her. It gave her hope.
Brinley believed it was magic, and that was good enough for her.
It’s Good to Be Queen.
“Some queen I am! Wearing orange and locked in a cage.”
Daphne shimmied up to the top bunk that she’d been assigned by her suite mate, Big Jean. Apparently a mullet and a skull on the bicep are surefire ways to tell who decides the sleeping arrangements.
She attempted to prop up onto her little hard pillow.
She could almost sense Brinley was sitting by her side as she flipped open the book to a page that had been carefully marked.
“What is that?”
A deep voice startled her, reminding her she wasn’t alone.
A very curious Big Jean peered over into Daphne’s top bunk world with squinty blue eyes that were swimming in crow’s feet.
“It’s just a book. This little girl says I’m a character in the book.”
“Sometimes little kids say things and I think they’re so silly and then years later, I realize they were right.”
“I know. That’s why I’m reading it even though she isn’t here.”
“But I”M here.”
Big Jean was turning out to be rather tenderhearted despite the skull on her bicep and her finely crafted mullet.
“What? You want to hear the story, too?”
“Hell, I’d be grateful for a punch in the face right now. Ever since the guards found my stash of hooch I’ve practically been praying for death.”
Daphne pulled out the butterfly bookmark that had been carefully placed.
Big Jean plopped onto the top bunk. The metal bed creaked in protest.
“No way am I starting from the beginning, so let me fill you in. King Loch Ness was the good guy, but he’s disappeared to the bottom of the sea. Now Medusa has taken over and … well, you’ll see. Chapter Five: Badfi
sh …”
CHAPTER FIVE: BADFISH
With King Loch Ness nowhere to be found, Medusa quickly gained control over the entire ocean, turning it into a veritable mythological underworld.
Feeling betrayed by their King, millions of lost fish in the sea quickly looked to Medusa for answers. Now with her magical powers still intact and the King out of the way, she was more than happy to help.
Using her homemade black sea magic, she once again appeared as a mermaid siren with her nest of snakes hidden from plain view. Now with her breathtaking beauty and angelic mermaid voice, she easily convinced all the fish in the sea that she was the noble one and King Loch Ness was a big grumpy monster who had abandoned everyone to be shark bait.
She turned the snakes surrounding her into shiny purple dolphins she once again called her sea servants, and they took over King Loch Ness’s Virtual Reality throne in a storm.
How quickly all the fish forgot that they’d just seen her snakes with their own eyes! How quickly they forgot the fear of the eternal curse King Loch Ness pronounced upon all fish who followed that Water Witch Medusa. Their tiny fish eyes could only see a beautiful Mermaid princess with flowing purple hair and a noble dolphin chariot made of iridescent sea shells and turquoise.
They were little fish, with little fish brains that combed the ocean in search of pretty, shiny things.
Every fish hoped in its heart that it might find even one of the pearls Medusa lost when she shattered her crown upon the throne. Every fish hoped for a pearl. And being a charitable mermaid, she daily pulled snake eggs from her purple locks and cast them down to the little fish like pearls to swine – candy to babies.
With their poor tiny fish eyes, they could never hope to realize the candy pearls were really poisonous snake eggs ready to hatch in their bellies! The dirty pearls tasted like candy and filled up their fish bellies all day long and even until the evening.
She insisted the fish call her Medallia again.
“Praises be to Medallia, the Mermaid Goddess of the Sea,” shouted the fish as they merrily gobbled up all the pearls she threw from her Dolphin Chariot.
The more snake eggs Medusa got rid of, the less snake bites she endured. Now as the masses of fish grew sicker daily, she felt herself becoming more powerful and more beautiful.
It wouldn’t last, though, because as the snakes grew bigger and stronger they began rapidly reproducing faster than Medusa could rid herself of the eggs. She could toss a million pearl eggs by day, but by dusk she found herself tormented again by a fresh bed of vipers, hatching just before bedtime.
This most prolific mating assured that Medusa was never granted even one full night’s rest. If by some chance she fell asleep for even a few hours, she was sure to wake up in a storm of stings with the dawning of each day.
With the vicious cycle growing beyond her power to contain, Medusa daily felt more anger and frustration. It was almost as if she could taste the disgusting venom in her mouth. Wrinkles were forming on her beautiful Mermaid face, and her magical powers were dwindling from what already felt like a million sleepless nights.
Motivated by her great pain and desperate for even one night of sleep, she cast her hair pearls out into the ocean quicker than the fish could eat them.
A million pearls a day, yet the fish were never satisfied. Greedy for more pearls, they daily encircled Medallia’s throne and even began fighting each other over what they were now referring to as Pearl Candy.
As a result of their growing obsession with pearl candy, the fish lost interest in Medusa’s virtual reality center. They no longer cared to have their wildest imaginations fulfilled. They only wanted more pearl candy.
The fish were beginning to swarm Medallia’s throne like locusts. She could see her black magic kingdom clearly on the verge of collapse.
With time running out, she had to think of something – a plan.
She needed to create a creature more powerful than Loch Ness – a bloodthirsty creature that would hunt down sea monsters and destroy the ocean.
“It will be half mermaid, half dog. I will call it a Mer Dog. It will walk upright, thinking it’s a God. Not ever wanting to admit they are really dogs, these creatures will call themselves humans.”
Medusa didn’t have the power to create new life, but she had plenty of power to transform it.
It was all so simple. She would persuade the very disgruntled fish of the sea to swim into her new mating pearls in hopes of a better life as a powerful human. Once inside the mating pearl, she would impregnate them with the snake eggs from her hair. Then by the power of Medusa’s black magic the fish would swim through the mating pearls to be transplanted into the loins of humans as either sperms or eggs.
The humans would have sex, uniting the sperms and the eggs, and give birth to millions more humans with souls full of snakes.
The human children would be innocent, but as they grew older and their bodies matured, the heat from their passions would hatch the eggs. The talking snakes would then grow from their hearts and nest in their minds, giving Medusa complete control over their every thought.
The humans would believe they were having original thoughts, when really they would only be puppets who would be too stupid to even understand their own actions.
Intoxicated by the smell of fish, male humans (Mer Dog) would chase after the female’s fishy egg tunnel, thinking they found a magical pearl that was really only a snake egg. They would continue their lusty behavior, fertilizing pearl after pearl in their pointless quest and leaving millions of innocent children without fathers. They would be too stupid to ever realize that what attracted them to the female’s fishy scent was their true identity as meaningless fish in the sea.
Even though they have webbed fingers in the womb, humans would never put two and two together enough to realize they came from fish. They would falsely believe they were spreading their seed and creating new life, when really they were only recycling the same fish souls that King Loch Ness had already created.
The female humans wouldn’t be much wiser, and some would have even bigger egos. Each woman would believe she had magical mermaid pearls waiting to be fertilized by her true love, when really they were only snake eggs ripe for the hatching!
“True Love! Hah! How stupid can these dogs be? To believe in true love? What a beautiful disaster these poor dumb Mer Dogs will be! They will be stupid, brutish creatures, who burn with desire to reproduce, overpower one another, accuse, judge, lord over the entire earth, and kill every living being in the ocean including Loch Ness. I am truly a genius,” Medusa bragged out loud and to herself.
“My Mer Dogs will be nothing more than disgusting fish recycling machines claiming to be God and believing they possess the power to create life!”
”
Upon completion of their human life, Medusa would call to her baby snakes and a human soul with even one snake will be carried away with it’s mother to her Underworld to burn forever in the flames of the Icarus …or so Loch Ness had said. Medusa didn’t believe all that, though. She may have been sentenced to death, but she refused to go down easy. She knew the wicked humans (Mer Dog) would quickly hunt Loch Ness down, chop off his head and feed it to their Mer Dog spawn, meanwhile leaving her the keys to the kingdom alone.
It was brilliant. Now she would be the first to try out her new mating pearl to become the first human. A loving queen, she would never ask her fish to try something she wasn’t willing to do herself.
On second thought, reincarnation was some serious magic that she had absolutely no experience with …. Not to mention no one had ever before mated in her Icarus pearls. Maybe it would be best to find a mate who would swim in first, someone infinitely dumber – a male.
CHAPTER SIX: MAN HUNT
Word on the sea: Latticus - worst pearl candy addict ever in the entire ocean.
Formerly a handsome merman, that saltwater catfish combed the bottom of the ocean for pearl candy day and night. The other fish referred t
o him as Bottom Dweller.
Oh how he’d fallen from glory, Medusa pitied as she pulled up next to him in her pink tortoise.
What happened to Latticus? He’s disgustingly fat, and has whiskers, too.
She thought for sure the big dumb beast would be grateful to have an opportunity for a better life as a Mer Dog. She was wrong.
“No.”
Without so much as a glance in her direction, Latticus continued to search to murky seawater for pearls.
“You big dumb clod. I’m the one with the pearls! I’ve got a million in my hair. Come with me and you can eat them all.”
His little round fish eyes opened wide.
“Yes, here.”
She scooped up a handful and spilled them into the water. It backfired.
Latticus shot after the pearls like a bat out of hell, greedily gobbling them up as if he’d never get another one.
Medusa sighed with frustration. It was becoming obvious she was going to have to play dirty with this one.
“Sea Servants!” she snapped. Her dolphins stood to attention.
“Eat those pearls.”
Within seconds they gobbled up all of Latticus’s precious pearls leaving him begging Medusa for mercy.
“Noooooooooooooooo!”
Finally she’d gotten his attention. A big, sad catfish, now he was crying salt water tears.
“Don’t worry my fish angel.” She patted his fins. “I’ll give you a lifetime supply if you’ll do me one little favor. Crawl into my mating pearl where you’ll mate with me to become the most powerful creature on earth.”
The water in the hot tub mating pearls needed to be a certain temperature for mating, but if too hot it could kill the fish. Medusa had no absolutely no clue where to set the temperature, making the whole thing a little dangerous.
She would test the waters with Latticus first as she listened for his screams outside the pearl. Depending on the volume of the scream, she could then adjust the water temperature appropriately.
“I don’t want to mate with you, snake lady. Everyone in Mer saw your ugly snakes. You’re even uglier than me.”
Soul Snake: Two Thrones, One Queen Page 5