Medusa in the Closet

Late nights and early mornings at university hang in the dark circles under my eyes, but it’s been years since then and countless restful sleeps have cured my face of those persistent bruises. Even so, the happy life I thought I led then comes back in flashes, digging in those abandoned trenches. This camera at my feet — long since run out of film — is my lifeline. The mirror is only here to document this.

I see the closet door behind me. Dark wood that fades near the handle, black painted brass handle and lock whose key was buried somewhere in the garden by a senile ancestor who must not have realised it would be needed now more than for whatever stupid game they played. Near the bottom, pale speckled splinters mark where mouse teeth have filled a hundred tiny stomachs a hundred times. Through the widened gap they created I follow her shadow when my sight isn’t occupied with its own depletion.

Her. I caught her. And the world will never know.

I watch the world lying down, my cheek to the dusty floorboard marking out a space to go numb, and then eventually die in. The mirror lies lengthways in front of me, propped up on the column of a fireplace that hasn’t been lit since my last good sleep. I’m given enough time to be cold, not to remedy it.

Sometimes I drift off, soothed by the soft wind whistling through the cracks in old windows. The front door creaks open and shut, sometimes slamming, sometimes clicking closed in time with the lullaby the house sings to me, deceiving me that all is as well as it always has been. I was a child in this house, after all, when there were no monsters yet.

An hourglass used to occupy the mantle above the fireplace. Its contents now whirl around me, dancing in the intrusive breeze. I avert my gaze when it begins. Blindness would only help me for a short while. Behind me, the closet looms all solid and still, not needing sleep. I used to hide in there. Now full of coats older than life itself and shoes which hadn’t seen a pair of feet in a decade or longer, it holds a beast.

Sometimes the latch clicks, her shadow stills, and silent as death it opens, and so do my eyes. In any state of rest I reach for the camera and fumble until my fingers find the button. I aim it at my own reflection, but the flash resounds loud enough to scare her back into hiding.

I know I can not stay awake forever. I know that soon my lashes will fall without my permission, my limbs will disobey me, and my blood will run cold. I know that when that happens she will be free to run loose through a door that I can’t waste time closing. I am saving the world, until I fall asleep. I shoulder Atlas’ burden with my shoulder to the floor. Except gods, like doors, don’t need sleep.

Behind me she is laying down as well. A snake or two sneaks through the gap to watch me. She has spies, I have none. They will tell her when to strike.

I push myself to sitting and put my head in my hands. The camera rests between my knees, begging to be fed with film and be put to use, but I only wipe the hourglass’ contents from my face and wonder if, behind the white flashes, she might have been beautiful once or if she is even now. I didn’t get a chance to see before she hid. Maybe I will, in the subtle space between waking and sleeping. Maybe I won’t even see the snakes, just two eyes, and a face I would have liked to waste a few reels of film on, in other circumstances.

My knees begin to numb, and I shift up to a more comfortable position, imagining being found this way but as stone. I wouldn’t make for a pretty statue like this, so I cross my legs instead and straighten my back. The black beady eyes and shimmering heads of the snakes point out the faults in my posture. She whispers something to them, muffled by the coats. I imagine she approves, but wish I had something to cover me. Even if a coat can’t warm a piece of stone back to life, it would make the going easier.

My stomach twists in hunger. Hers does, too. I hear it. It sounds like thunder and a salty spray of foam smashing on a cliff’s face, fizzling out and falling, then renewing again. A white flash that has carved away these ridges, still gnawing at them.

She has given me enough time to realise I am going to die here, but not enough to be fine with it.

When it happens, it’s still a shock.

I was right. A snapshot of her eyes and nothing more serves me a mercy when she catches me disarmed. I will be discovered with that smile on my face. Not a work of art and certainly not beautiful, but onlookers may imagine I went out with one in my sight. I wonder if she will look beyond me when she’s done with me, and see herself, and think the same.