Captured (A Modern Medusa Story)

EPILOGUE: AVERISTA♥️

Leonardo Da Vinci worthy snake sculptures covered the ceiling of our home. Myriads of them, writhing and wrestling against one another. Made of marble, yet looked so real and eerie that most of the visitors questioned me about how we managed to sleep in here at night.

Oh, little did they know. We, snakes, barely slept at night.

They designed the marble on the floor, the furniture, the walls, and every surface in the mansion to resemble a snake's skin pattern. Let's just say home couldn't get any home-ier than that.

Nights were different here, at our place. It wasn't time to dive into a good sleep. We valued our nocturnal tendencies. Darkness was the perfect hour to scramble around with my snake sisters — Stheno and Euryale, known by other people as Helene and Iruka. Out over the gravel, onto the trees at our humongous backyard, and back into the almost-freezing water of the garden's pond. This was all our little playground.

We mostly spent daytime trying to pretend that we were fully human and not a bunch of disoriented snakes.

On this unlucky day, I managed to mix myself up amidst the crowd as the beautiful blue-eyed goddess cat walked up the stage.

I couldn't believe Helene and Iruka had coerced me into this event. Now I was an awestruck young girl all over again, getting flustered at the sight of a not-so-random woman.

Phoebe McQuinn stood like a naked bouquet of red roses, begging me to pluck it off its shins.

A flared mini dress matched the color of blood painted on her lips and heels. She rocked a new chin length blond chop and bangs. Her drop dead gorgeousness introduced her before she even could — a goddess.

Three years . . . yet here I was, boldly lusting and preying after the blue-eyed lady's fake innocence.

Three years since I had seen her and still my blood rushed the same way it did the second I saw her. Three years since she made me fall from grace, only to fall for her bait again.

Her father's poker smile sat well on her face, beautiful . . . nothing sinister and everything seductive.

"She is the fire . . ." Her voice bounced off the snake-scaled walls as I put on a nonchalant facade and hoping it would sink through my skin to the point that I would be really unaffected by her. "Creeping over my threshold,
over the creases on my skin,
and sliding into my folds . . ."

My breath got caught in my throat when her fresh eyes skimmed around her audience, only to find mine. Fuck the stupid facade.

It hit me how much I had been avoiding all of this. How I threw a fit when Helene had told me she would be inviting her daughter to do her book launch party at our place. Me and my sister's home. As if the McQuinns hadn't money spilling from their bank accounts to afford any place on this freaking planet. She could launch her book in the fucking moon if she wished to and everybody knew it would cost her nothing.

Helene claimed our place was ideal for the event because of Phoebe's serpent-themed poetry book. Oh, please. I almost lost my mind at that.

Helene and Iruka were all doing this on purpose, so I could finally confront Phoebe again. I didn't understand their obsession with getting me back together with her. As if I even broke up with her in the first place. Last time I checked, my heart had always been with Phoebe. It belonged to her. I just wasn't sure whether to acknowledge it or not.
And it scared me how this event would come about. I knew what would happen, and it freaked me the hell out, because I knew I would end up a victim of her love all over again.

As much as I found excuses to miss the occasion, Helene, like the mother she was, made sure I attended and, worse, conversed with the stupid guests. Even asked me to show some of them around. The audacity that woman has.