Modern Day Medusa

Maria was a nice girl. Studious, kind, shy. Yet she never fit in with the other school girls, preferring a life of seclusion. During her sophomore year, however, her body began to blossom and boys started taking notice. Peter, a popular senior, decided to ask her to a house party his friends were having. Pleasantly surprised, she says yes.

Maria arrives at the party that night and Peter immediately greets her with a hug and a squeeze to her butt. Maria is immediately uncomfortable but she just laughs it off. Later on that night, she is in the bathroom throwing up in the toilet. She looks sad, tired. She hears somebody trying to open the door. “I’m in here,” she yells. There’s a quiet moment right before the door is kicked in and a staggering figure approaches her. It’s Peter, and from the look on his face, he has just one thing on his mind. She tries to scream but he cover her mouth. She is raped right there on the bathroom floor. When he’s done, she grabs her purse from the sink and leaves silently through the back door of the house, as Peter and his friends lay on the couches of the living room, laughing.

The next day at school everybody knows. As she walks down the hallways, she hears whispers, “slut”, ”whore”. She walks into the bathroom, where the popular girls stand congregating in front of the mirror. Ashley, the leader of the group, sees Maria and smiles. Then they all turn toward with devilish grins across their faces and grab Maria. “What are you doing?!” She yells, but they keep quiet. Ashley takes out a pair of scissors from her backpack “Let’s see if Pete will talk to you after this”. They proceed to chop her hair off over the toilet, as Maria screams and yells. She begs them to stop, but the more she does, the more vicious they became, submerging her face in the toilet a number of times.

When it’s all over, Maria runs home sobbing. As she stands in a street corner waiting for the crosswalk, strangers point and laugh at her botched bloody hair and water running down her face and neck. Filled with despair and anger, she decides to end the misery and jumps in front of an oncoming bus.

A few days later, word of Maria’s suicide travels around the school. The school’s atmosphere begins to change, as stories of alleged rape and torture begin to circulate. Ashley and her friends are in the same bathroom in front of the same mirror doing their makeup. Suddenly, a strange noise comes one of the stall, they turn around, but no one is there. “Hello?” Ashley yells, but there is no answer. As they turn back around, we see something emerging from the toilet- red, shapeless. Two eyes surface from the water.

Maria is back.

(Story was written by Nelson Vanegas)