A Prelude
Sea monsters of legend they share an unbreakable bond. Thinking as one, feminine strength has been mortifying for flesh and bone men who quiver, petrified of the merest mention of these maritime females. Mighty gods, brave sailors, even the likes of Odysseus, they have challenged, rising above with monstrous parts and female distortions, skewering mankind’s view of women. Like a two-headed barbarian, they bare collective teeth, incisors quick to slash the flesh of infringing newcomers.
Poised on opposing sides of the Strait of Messina between Sicily and Calabria, they jointly rule land and sea. Their strength is closeness, keeping vigil over sailors, offering them only a lottery of inescapable threats. Knowing each other’s individual strengths helps to fortify, cementing a hardy shield to protect from defeat. As a twosome, no sailor lives to tell the tale, for all that try to kill, not a single one has breathed a word, for breath is stoppered, slowing the heat of churning blood, until each heart comes to a final, deadened stop.
Scylla
I am Scylla. A rock shoal of disgusting proportions: a sea monster bearing six long necks, each doomed with a canine head of slashing jaws. A female monster of land. I reside on the Calabrian side of the strait, more exposed to men, unlike Charybdis, who has the comforting shelter of sea-churn above her whirlpool head, allowing a hidden existence from men’s scorn.
Cursed by beauty, Circe, a witch of the seas, stole it, taking my ephemeral grace that Glaucos, a sea god, fell heavily in love with. I was once the most prized nymph, a star within the halls of the gods. With the unformed wisdom of a girl, I flaunted Glaucos’ love, wanting Circe’s jealousy to rise, bubbling within her chest into spiteful flames. A fatal flaw of mine: the pressing need to be greatly desired. So, in swift revenge, she turned me into a gargoyle, animated with monstrous limbs of rock, capable of devouring men, beheading them easily as wheat from chaff using three sets of razor-clawed teeth.
From these formative years, I learnt by fateful mistakes, never longing for eyes of men, nor requiring male gazes to attribute value.
Charybdis is my lover, a woman of seaweed swirl, a hazy sage enchantress, cast in shimmering silver of the sea’s turning tides. Others seek to destroy our affection, jealous that creatures could ever find a heart ready to give love.
Cunningly laced, Odysseus whispers bands of lies, endeavouring to tie our love into gnarled knots in his clenched fists, desiring to break our feminine bond. Although he curses and spits slander about our hideous and fearsome appearances, secretly, he pants for otherness, cognisant of a lost lure, discerning an especial power that he is inept to restore or steal. His attempts are flaccid, akin to puny efforts to arouse our sexual intrigue. Humans are spittle to us, existing only in forgetful wisps of smoke as opposed to our lengthy, steely endurance: life forms that have witnessed thousands of men praying for free passage.
I let Odysseus sail past, a man instantly forgotten. He is nothing more than a lost taste of bitterness on my turning tongue.
My love for Charybdis is eternal, never crumbling to ruins as brittle human vows in flimsy, temporal churches. Her watery hands place a circle of liquid promise around my stony finger, a binding of minds, forged in a wave-shaped chapel.
Charybdis
It is I they fear. Charybdis, a watery goddess of impenetrable depths. A force that all sailors quake at, for I am an unseen enemy, lost in bands of translucent ribbons. Dreading me more, sailors steer too close to shore, becoming lost in the rocky arms of Scylla, my six-headed bride.
Odysseus, in order to sacrifice only a few of his sailors, drove straight into her eternal embrace, avoiding a churning deep-sea death. Acting for the majority of his crew and to prevent a shipwreck, I missed my chance to devour handfuls of fallen sailors, pale and puny, rotating them in my river arms of darkest blue, a churning caldron of no return. An act I have performed countless times as each century bleeds into the next. For none can defeat me.
I hear Odysseus whispering reels of promises to my land-locked lover, Scylla. He wishes to have her claim another trophy, adding to his collection of war-fought treasures, forgetting his vows to his wife, Penelope. Poor Penelope. A noble woman wedded to an absent ghost. She, a mere mortal woman, forgotten in history, due to the inflated tales of her husband, Odysseus, known for battling the dreaded Cyclops. Yet, the man of twists and turns falters with us, my lover of stone holds his fate in her very jaws.
Intrigued, I observe Scylla’s tearing of flesh from beneath the surface: six men are chewed, turning to mulch in torturous teeth. Even here, in the midst of horror, she is my siren. My love never falters even though she prays to have her former beauty restored, wishing that I knew her as Glaucos did, a nymph of silver-tail, milky skin, silken hair and crimson lips; lips that now whisper spirant promises to me.
Yet, I love her monstrousness: her beastly self is thickly sown into the fabric of me.
Epilogue
Eternity is cut short.
For Circe, in doubt of her failing magic that created a bloodhound in Scylla, longs to reverse her misdoing, unable to live with the plethora of male deaths on her conscience. Demanding an end to her exile, she seeks out Scylla’s cavernous home, hiding poison from Trygon’s tail in her flowing cloak. On turning Scylla to stone, killing her own creation, she drinks a tonic, granting herself a mortal life. Shattering the vial upon the rocky ground, she skips off into the distance, careless of Charybdis’ love, one that mirrors boundless rotations of imperishable seas. Charybdis sinks to inky despair, unable to reach watery hands upwards, seeking to stroke the rocky skin of her bride.
