Sunglasses make the world look darker. Staring at the world through tinted lenses, just makes everything look shadowed…and dirty.

But, when I look at the world with my real eyes—ones not hidden by a sheet of plastic—everything around me turns to stone. Smooth, carved marble with realistic designs, prefect anatomy, and flawless expressions. The sight of one of my statues would make any artist burst into tears. Never would that artist realize that my art was once something real...something that, maybe, I cared about, or loved…

Something that was destroyed simply because I refused to taint my world.

His arms are still wrapped around my shoulders, holding me tenderly in an everlasting embrace. Pale fingers linger around my jaw line, so agonizingly perfect…so tantalizingly close. Staring up at his face, I can’t help but wonder how all of the others can possibly see imperfection in such a wonderful creature? Humans are so fascinating…so alluring. Each one is different; each one has a personality unique to their being. Their faces can show thousands of emotions, sometimes all at once. And their hair is so beautiful…not at all like the twisting, snarling strands of my own.

But…what always drew me to this human…were his eyes.

Blue and endless, like the oceans of my homeland. They always seemed to spark with their own light. I wish they would spark that way again, to show me that he is still alive behind his stony face. My human…my love…

“Let me see your eyes…” He had whispered to me…in the lazy atmosphere of a perfect sunset. His body had felt so warm against my own, lulling me into a doze. I didn’t reply to his request. Instead, I simply burrowed deeper into his embrace, relishing the feeling of his soft skin…breathing in the scent of his living body.

The flaw of the human race is curiosity. They always want to know everything…to see everything. He wanted to see what I was hiding behind my reflective glasses. All he could imagine was beauty beyond compare. All he could dream of were my crystalline eyes that I kept hidden from him. I should have done something to stop him. I could have ensnared him with my words and gently drawn him away from his curiosities. It would have worked. It had always worked.

He placed one hand gently against my face and reached around to pull my sunglasses away from my eyes, so he could behold his treasure. My reflexes were too slow…Before I could do anything about it, the beautiful blue eyes of my human stared down into the inky black of my own. We held each other’s gaze for a single, agonizing moment…

Then, his skin turned to stone.

I never want to leave him. My human. The first creature in the world to capture my heart just as successfully as I captured theirs. I want to sit in his arms forever, remembering the night that fate took him from me. He seized my heart, and now it is trapped beside his own within the hollow interior of his body.


Surrounded by my menagerie of stone figures, I sit in complete silence, unable to tear my cursed eyes from the face of the human that I loved…and eventually destroyed.

“I’m sorry.” I whisper into his ear, knowing that he can no longer hear me. His features are so flawless, the pale marble reflecting his stunning face back at me.

If only things could have been different.

If only I had been human like him.

But instead, I am a Gorgon…an heir to Medusa’s curse. With serpents for hair, and eyes that can petrify a human on sight, my kind can never find true happiness.

And after losing my human…the only thing in the world that still mattered to me…I will never try to defy my fate again.