Heart of Stone

Flash Fiction by J. Edward Tremlett

What can I tell you of Krystos, whom I have loved?

Should I tell you of our shared childhood? How we ran and played across the beaches and hills of the islands? How we learned their stories and secrets from old crones and hoary fishermen?

How we realized, one day, that what we felt for one another was not just friendship?

Well, perhaps I alone felt it. That would explain his actions, just as his actions explain mine. For I have allowed Krystos to die on the grey stone beach of Sarpedon.

“Sarpedon, where walks Medusa…” as the old tales said, and we two believed.

I feel no shame—no regret. There is no sense that I should row to that desolate shore to warn him. By now he’s already waiting, staring at the dark water.

By now my love is dead.

Krystos’ failings are many and painful. But let me tell you why I remained his friend, beyond the attractions he first encouraged, then callously spurned.

He was a man of action and intellect, equally at home searching for the past in some dusty old library or fighting the winds in a sailboat. He was kind to neighbors, generous with friends. And he was an amazing conversationalist—spinning stories I was happily lost within for hours.

And such places we went! The old, forgotten ruins on surrounding islands and far-flung shores. Timeworn libraries, decaying schools, and places where the old and the mad told tales to the unwary.

Like pilgrims we journeyed, hoping to find an answer to our question—where now walked Medusa and her sisters?

We never found that answer, together. But alone I have.

And that is why Krystos, whom I loved, is dying this night.

Our ancestors called them the Gorgons, and they were truly terrifying. Everyone has heard their legend, or at least thinks they have. Later poets corrupted their true horror, turning them into a morality tale of divine urges and failed female chastity. However, the ancients understood they were not women changed by godly vengeance, but creatures born awful and terrible—fierce, serpent-haired things set upon the world to frighten and destroy.

Beings whose gaze was so dangerous the gods placed their likenesses upon shields when they made war.

As children, Krystos and I were fascinated by these creatures, as we were by all monsters. Perhaps it is part of growing up on these isles, for each day the fishermen bring home at least one thing none can identify. Mostly small, squirming things—quickly destroyed by sun and air.

But sometimes a true aberration is brought up from the darkness. And as the men watch it twitch—dying ever so slowly, as if out of spite—they whisper “Gorgon.”

And they dare not kill it for fear of divine retribution.

But Krystos and I were not content with warnings. We searched for the real history, hidden behind centuries of myth, legend, and lies. As children we asked the ones we were told to not speak to. As teenagers we read the books that were hidden away or thought destroyed.

And as men we dared go places those answers might hide—Italy, Egypt, Tunisia, and then the grey stone beaches of lonely, forbidden Sarpedon.

“Sarpedon, where walks Medusa.” Just not the day we went there.

And so our quest ended, and we turned to other pursuits. But we never forgot the thrill of that search—the feeling we were on the cusp of some great discovery, he and I. And in that search we became closer still.

Or so I thought.

The problem was the others—always those others.

Men from bars. Women from cruise ships. College boys from coffee houses and girls from the fields. He was always having new, sensual adventures that did not include me, but that he had to tell me about. And though I begged him to stop he insisted on the telling, as though this was one of his amazing stories.

As if what we had meant nothing.

I once asked why he could not be pleased with what he already possessed. He looked at me as though I’d asked a foolish question, and said “because then I would never know.”

And he had to know, Krystos.  It’s why, even after we stopped actively searching for monsters, he kept up with his many avenues of research. Sometimes I wondered if he thought he might find an answer to our many questions in someone’s bed—just not mine, anymore.

Which is why his tryst with the scuba diver truly enraged me.

The ancient sources pointed to the Isle of Sarpedon as the place the Gorgons dwelled. Those tales also spoke of sacrifices made to appease these creatures—young men rowed there at dawn and left bound and helpless upon the grey stone beach. When the priests returned the following morning there was nothing left but their bonds.

Nothing but the grey stone of the beach, cracked and silent.

As children we were told to never venture there, though it was but an hour’s sail from our shore. Merely touching the beach was considered an act of bravery. Bringing home a rock even more so, though bad luck often befell those who dared this.

(A divine curse, some said. How we two laughed at such nonsense!)

As men, Krystos and I went there many times, searching for clues. We scoured the entire island but found no ruined temples, no ancient lairs—nothing but that uncanny beach of broken, grey stone, worn smooth by time and waves. Eventually we stopped, deciding there was nothing on Sarpedon but legends and dread.

The scuba diver changed all that.

They met on Lesbos over drinks at a seaside café, and talked underwater archaeology for hours. After that Krystos decided the answer to our mystery lay not above the waves, but beneath them. Perhaps an earthquake had swallowed up the evidence? Perhaps their temples lay submerged in that dark water?

Perhaps…

The more Krystos conversed with this person, the more excited he became. Suddenly things were so clear! Suddenly his passions were re-fired.

And, just as suddenly, I was no longer a part of our shared quest for this answer. His messages became curt, our conversations short. He deferred to his new friend in all things, and they shared very little—preferring to giggle with one another, then say they’d tell me “when the time was right.”

Something about how they looked at one another, the last time they belittled me, made me understand I would never be invited to share their secret.

And so, last night, I decided to make the time be right.

It was a simple thing to arrange to meet the scuba diver under false pretenses. Simpler still to arrange an arrest by our police, ever happy for bribes. And even simpler to message Krystos on a foolishly-unlocked cellphone and lure him to Sarpedon.

The answer is there, he read, an hour ago—Meet me on the island. I will show you.

I imagine him sailing out there, eagerly fighting the night winds. He scans the grey beach for any sign of a lamp or fire or another boat. He assumes some sort of dramatic entrance from underneath the waves, like that time he told me about in great and delicious detail.

Only it will not be the scuba diver who walks up from that dark water.

As I have said, Krystos and I went there several times but found nothing. But maybe there was a reason those priests left the young boys alone there. Maybe, after unknown aeons, the Gorgons had tired of dispatching large groups of avenging heroes.

Maybe we two were one too many.

I could be wrong, of course. But I have faith—faith in her.

I see Medusa rising from the waves, staring with utter contempt. I see Krystos fall to his knees as she strides proudly onto her beach —relishing his surprise and fear as his chased-after myth comes to meet him at last. Snakes curling, scales glistening—

Eyes, hating.

What will he say to someone he cannot charm? Will he beg for his life? Will he scream?

And as his flesh turns to grey rock, cracking and breaking, will his last thoughts be of her, the scuba diver, or me?

I do not know. All I know is that I will never see him again.

And I know that, one day, I will find the courage to go alone to Sarpedon. I will find where my love fell and look for a rock that might have been his heart.

And then I will wait for the night to come, knowing that when Medusa sees me kneeling there, I shall finally have Krystos to myself.

And there on Sarpedon, where walks Medusa, shall our two souls dwell for all time to come.