Undercover Gorgon
A Mt. Olympus Employment Agency Miniseries
R.L. Naquin
Bottle Cap Publishing
This book is a work of fiction. All names, places, and characters are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real people, living or dead, is coincidental. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any way whatsoever without the written permission of the author, except as brief quotations.
Edited by Sara E. Lundberg
Cover design by Yocla Designs
Published by Bottle Cap Publishing
Copyright © 2015 R.L. Naquin
All rights reserved.
Table of Contents
“Episode #0 — Becoming”
Transmonstrified
About R.L. Naquin
Other Works by R.L. Naquin
“Episode #0 — Becoming”
At 12:01 AM on my twentieth birthday, I lost my humanity.
Okay, maybe that was a little dramatic, especially since I was never human to begin with. I’d thought I was human. Clearly, I was not.
I didn’t notice at first. I sat on the foot of my bed, drying my hair with a towel and watching Kathryn Hepburn toss a withering look at Humphrey Bogart as they drifted down the Amazon. I glanced at the clock. One more minute of being a teenager. I tried to think of something immature to do in my final seconds of pre-adulthood.
I couldn’t think of a damn thing.
I’d never been a very good teenager anyway. I didn’t drink or smoke, slam doors, sneak out at night, or moon over boys. Twenty wasn’t likely to be much different from any other age. I’d still go to class on Monday, I’d still be working a shitty job at a drug store, and I’d still be living in my old bedroom in my parents’ house.
At least, that was my thought at midnight. At 12:01, everything changed.
I gave my hair a last rub, then dropped the towel on the foot of the bed. My wet hair hung to my shoulders in heavy strands. Once it dried, it would lighten to a dishwater, nothing color, which went well with my eye-colored eyes and my pallid skin. Not a looker, as Bogie might have said. I wasn’t ugly, exactly, but I wasn’t noticeable—which was fine with me. I didn’t care if anybody noticed me. Most people pretty much irritated me anyway.
Shadows moved on the wall in the flickering light of the television. My hair brushed my bare shoulder, and I scratched where it tickled.
My hair licked my finger.
I froze and peered at my hand where it hovered over my skin. A thin, emerald snake slid over my knuckles and flicked its tongue. I frowned and glanced at the terrarium across the room.
“Daphne, how did you get out?” I let the little grass snake weave between my fingers and headed toward the habitat I kept for her. “The lid is still closed. Did you slip out when I fed you?” I lifted the hinged door and tried to place her inside.
Several things occurred at once. First, I spotted Daphne already tucked in a corner behind an artificial rock. Second, the snake in my hand wouldn’t come loose from my head. And third, several more snakes slithered across my hand.
Had I been a typical human, I might have lost my shit. But I’d loved snakes since I was a little girl, and I was studying to get a degree in herpetology. I was all about the snakes, reptiles, and amphibians. So, yes, I had a buttload of snakes crawling on me, but my initial reaction was that Daphne had somehow managed to lay a clutch of eggs when I wasn’t looking.
“Okay, kiddies. You’ve had your fun. Time to get in bed with Mom. My parents will freak if you’re running around the house.” I took careful hold of several at once and gave a gentle tug to disengage them from my person.
They wouldn’t come lose. In fact, I felt the tug all the way to my scalp.
With my left hand, I held out a snake, and followed it with my right hand to its origin. My fingers prodded the base. It appeared to be attached to my head. This was, of course, stupid. Snakes couldn’t grow out of my head, even in the weirdest of Internet urban legends. Still, my entire head squirmed with them and, as many heads as I found, I could find no tails.
My heart raced and my mouth went dry. This was the worst nightmare I’d ever had—way worse than the dream about the rabid squirrel with the eye patch and the tiny hooked paw.
“Okay. Breathe. Wake up, Patrice. Just a bad dream. Wake up.” I hit the light switch in an effort to get a better look in the mirror by my bedroom door. Pain raced through my head like someone had shot me through both eyes with a Daisy Red Ryder BB gun. I covered them with one hand and slapped at the light switch with the other until I got lucky and flipped the lights off.
Dream or not, the pain had been real. The snakes attached to my head squirmed and writhed in agitation, as if they, too, had felt the stabbing pain. I threw my bedroom door open and ran out in my cotton nightgown, yelling for my parents.
I was halfway down the hall when they heard me. Their light flashed on and I spun around, shielding my eyes. “Turn off the light! Turn it off!”
The light went out and my parents stepped into the hall, the low light of my television giving us enough to see each other. I rose and stared at them, waiting to see if they saw what I thought I’d felt—hundreds of snakes growing from my head.
I expected either bewilderment at my odd behavior or horror at what they saw. They gave me neither. I certainly hadn’t expect an apology.
Dad took a step toward me. “Sweetheart, I can explain.”
Mom gave me a watery-eyed smile. “I am so sorry, honey.”
I frowned. “Sorry? I have snakes on my head. How is that something you did?”
Mom glanced at Dad and back at me. “It’s not exactly something I did, but it did come from me.”
The snakes settled over me, curling around each other and laying still.
I gave a nervous laugh. “What? You planted snake seeds in my scalp?”
I was still going with the idea that this was a terrible nightmare. Even worse than the one about the blood-filled water balloon fight with Christopher Walken.
She shook her head and walked toward me. “It’s a recessive gene. Somewhere in my family, way back, we’re related to gorgons.”
I snorted. “What are you saying? Medusa is my great-grandmother?”
“Something like that.” She took my hand. “Come sit down.”
In a daze, I followed my parents into their room. Dad turned on the bathroom light and closed the door enough to shield my eyes from the light, yet give us enough to see each other.
A terrible thought occurred to me, and I squeezed my eyes shut. “Don’t look at me! I might turn you to stone if you look me in the eyes.”
Dad patted me on the arm. “You wouldn’t do that to us. We trust you. Just don’t look straight at us.”
This was insane. I noted, as if from a far off, detached sort of way, that in the more natural bathroom light, my skin was a sort of translucent, sea-foam green. It was kind of pretty.
“I don’t understand.” I twisted my arm in the light to see the color better. “Why am I only seeing this now?”
Mom and Dad glanced at each other again, then Dad looked down at his hands. “We were contacted when your mother was pregnant. The situation was explained that you wouldn’t appear human. They gave us a choice between giving you up to be raised as a gorgon in a foster home for mythological creatures, or raise you ourselves with you having no knowledge of what you really were.”
I pointed at my he
ad. “But I didn’t look like this.”
Mom brightened. “The man who originally contacted us sold us Deity Springs Stealth Insurance for you. It disguised you so well, no one would ever know. Including you.”
I scowled. “You bought me a disguise that was mousy and unattractive? Thanks a lot.” I shook my head and the snakes hissed in objection to the movement. “So, why am I seeing this now? What changed?”
Dad took a deep breath. “Your insurance lapsed. We can’t legally cover you anymore.”