Gorgon Girls | Ariel Hemloch

I’m dancing with my sisters. We’re in the gardens, drinking sweet wine and eating charcuterie and cupcakes we bought at the fancy grocery store at the edge of town. Emi’s breath smells like strawberries as she spins me around and hugs me from behind. Siena sings along to the radio, licking frosting off her finger. I collapse onto the picnic blanket and sip from the bottle, feeling the wine sticky against the rim.

I’m sitting beneath the statue of a woman, her name erased from the stone slab marking her grave. The sun is warm, the air is cool. My lecture notes open and catching pine needles. A headache electrifies my temples, curdling like rotten milk deep in my stomach, and I can’t bury myself any deeper into my coat. A fetid odor seeps into my nostrils.

***

I’m praying to a faceless woman from my dreams. Am I praying to her? I fold my hand of cards to her, confessing to sins I never committed, and hope repentance can clot all wounds. I imagine her holding me in her arms, brushing her fingers over my scalp. I imagine her soothing voice as rich as butter. She doesn’t touch me. She doesn’t want to touch me.

Blood trickles down my thighs.

***

“Come here,” he says. The night is early. His eyes are blue, his beard scratchy against my neck. I push him away. He grabs my forearm. I tell him no, no, stop, please. My head sloshes like ocean tides. I claw at his wrist. I fall, sinking below undercurrents. Fish swim through my hair. Bubbles escape my throat. I see a dolphin swim by. I taste salt and blood. My skin is frigid. The further I sink, the more pressure builds up inside my head. I am engulfed in black water.

***

I’m dancing with my sisters. Siena looks past Emi and me, a fog forming in her eyes. “Let’s go home,” she says. “Any more wine and I won’t be able to drive.”

“Oh c’mon,” I say, popping a bit of sharp cheese in my mouth. “Don’t ruin the party.”

Siena starts packing up the picnic while Emi finishes the bottle. I’ve never seen Siena scared before.

***

I’m sitting beneath the statue of a woman. She holds a book in the cradle of her arm. Her nose is chipped like King Tut’s burial mask. My phone vibrates. Emi’s photo lights up the screen. I send the photo to voicemail, where she can express her concerns into the ethereal fourth dimension that tethers her phone to mine.

I took that photo of Emi nine months ago. The length of a pregnancy. In between then and now I tucked myself inside a shell. Away from Emi. And away from Siena.

A sprig of pine needles falls onto my neck. I start to cry.

***

I’m praying to the faceless woman of my dreams. But I stop. She speaks, but doesn’t say anything. Her voice is birdsong and sirens and a cacophony of echoes. Her voice is my mother’s, Emi's, and Siena’s. Blood drips from my nose. In the flood of her fury I hear her say betray, and the room shakes like war drums. My eyes turn to fireworks. My hands to shards of glass. I grip my hair with my fingers and feel the glass pierce down to the bone.

Is this what it’s like to stand trial on Judgement Day?

***

“Come here,” he says. I’ve seen him before, but I don’t know where. I ask him if he’s seen my sisters. I describe them as best as I can. Emi and her perfect, red coils, as bouncy as her laughter. Siena and her dimples, one of which holds a diamond stud so even when she frowns the world can still see her resemblance to our mother. Emi wants to be a caretaker. Siena already works at a salon. I tell him about the time the three of us went swimming, and how I teetered off my sister’s surfboard and was consumed by a raging wave. How Emi swam to my rescue, while Siena cried on the beach, watching, calling out to us.

The man turns to water, and I’m drowning again.

***

I’m dancing with my sisters. “I think I’m ready to go,” I say. The wine is rushing to my head. My legs feel like jelly.

“Not yet,” Siena says, checking her phone. “That guy I was talking about was gonna join us.”

Emi groans and lies on her stomach. Her hair shimmers in the sunlight. “Pass me a water, will you?” She turns off the radio with her head resting between her crooked arms.

Siena opens the basket. “Please. I really like him. And I want you to meet him before he gets deployed.”

“Where’s the outhouse?” I ask. Siena points over the tree line.

A family of five packs up their belongings as I walk by. A red cooler, disposable dinnerware, both a football and soccer ball. Their car is parked below the hill. Two boys chase each other with sticks. The only daughter leans against the car, watching me. I watch her too, before one too many stumbles directs me forward again. I walk over the hill and into the trees, following the sound of the lake.

***

I’m sitting beneath the statue of a woman. My lecture notes open to our unit on Titus Andronicus. Nobody in my classes knew but me. My professor didn’t pry when I walked out during the final presentations, and an arts major presented an analysis of Shakespeare’s play.

In the bathroom stall, I hyperventilated. My lungs filled with salt water. The air was fetid and cold.

Someone knocked on my stall door. It’s a receptionist. She asked what’s wrong.

I coughed, until salt water and seaweed and forty-eight days worth of flotsam gushed out of me and onto the floor.

***

I’m praying to the faceless woman of my dreams. Her face is mine. Her voice is mine. She still has bruises on her neck, and one crescent-shaped and violet beneath her eye.

She tells me it was my fault. How I never should have left my sisters behind.

How I shouldn’t have told Siena.

I stop praying. I grit my teeth. I scream I didn’t betray my sisters, or the woman.

I watch Emi enter my bedroom. My body is sitting on the edge of my bed. She brushes my hair with her fingers and says she made soup. I am a shell. She holds me close like she found me stranded on the beach. My skin is laced with coarse sand beneath her touch.

I watch my body, sitting at a dinner party with Emi and our cousins. Siena enters the dining room holding a plate of cookies. Her diamond stud is dim in the yellow fluorescents. Our eyes meet. Siena greets the cousins, and asks Emi to step outside with her. Emi comes back alone, with red eyes, a strained smile, and a story Siena told her to say. There’s an anchor in my throat for the rest of the night.

The faceless woman pulls my attention back to her, curling cold fingertips around my chin. She says I deserve this. Her pupils stretch and split, and when she smiles teeth are sharp. She pries my mouth open and shoves her fingers down my throat. She pulls the anchor out, still dripping with mucus.

***

“Come here,” he says. He says I’m pretty. Prettier than my sister. I tell him she’s over there, and walk into the park bathroom.

He follows me in.

***

I’m dancing with my sisters. Siena pulls me down next to her. “Listen, both of you.” Emi turns the radio off and sits across from us. “He told me he loves me.”

I gasp. Emi scoffs. “And you believed him?” she asks.

Siena’s face is stoic, as immovable as carved stone. “I do. Please. Don’t ruin this for me. Promise me you won’t ruin this for me.”

“Let me see his picture again,” I say. She opens the dating app.

I don’t tell her he has a handsome face, or a strong body that makes me want to stare. But the hope in her eyes and the way her dimple nestles her diamond piercing when I say I won’t ruin their relationship and she smiles like Mom used to on her wedding videos – I believe myself the way she believes me.

***

I’m sitting beneath the statue of a woman. I’m texting with the receptionist’s friend in Women’s Services. She promises I’m not alone in this.

I try to call Siena. I’m sent straight to voicemail.

***

I’m praying to the faceless woman of my dreams. Her mouth splits open into a pink cavern, spreading wider and wider until she’s torn straight in half.

I stare at her slimy entrails. Snakes crawl out of the folds of her viscera.

And they crawl towards me, hugging my arms and legs. They don’t bite. They’re warm and smooth. Their tongues flicker, and one licks the saltwater on my face.

I smile.

***

“Come here,” he says. I tell him my sister’s that way. He follows me into the bathroom.

He grabs my forearm and slams me into the wall. “Don’t ignore me.”

I kick him between the legs and he winces. I scream. He grabs my neck with both hands.

As the world turns to water, and I begin to drown, and everything turns hot and cold and fetid and muted, the bathroom door opens.

The mom and daughter I walked past are standing there. The daughter has a dolphin on her shirt.

They take off running. So does the man.

I float in a puddle against the tile floor.

***

I dance with my sisters. We’re celebrating my decision to become a priestess at our local church, Emi’s acceptance into the nursing program at her college, Siena’s new job and even newer, mysterious, military boyfriend. We’re light and bubbly, letting the sunlight paint new freckles on our bare arms. The radio station plays our song. The song we used to dance and sing to every Saturday after school. We wanted to entire a talent show, and become the next hit girl band.

Emi’s curls frame her face like a dryad. Siena’s diamond stud twinkles with her smile.

And a snake slithers onto our picnic blanket.

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Ariel Hemloch (she/her) received her MFA in Creative Writing at BYU in 2024. Her writing style is a hearty mix of Gothic Feminism and moss-covered cabins. She worked as an editor at Inscape Journal for three years, and believes her literature thrives when rooted in humanity and/or nature. She lives on her family’s farm in Southwestern Idaho – hunting cryptids with her seven cats. You can follow her on Instagram and Tiktok: @arielhochwrites