I heard that sound again, while standing in the silence of a black and white world. I was in the galaxy without stars; only eternity was allowed to exist. Facing toward a statue which was hidden in the curtain of mist, I heard a haunting sound calling me from a distance. Come closer, it said, I’ve been waiting for you for so long. It was a woman’s voice. I saw myself moving inadvertently toward that statue; an odor of danger then permeated the air. My soul smelt the fear, but it had been pulled out of my body, and I could do nothing but watch that moving shell, lured by an intractable force, with fear, stumbling closer and closer to the darkness. Through the mist, I overlooked my hands moving and stretching slowly toward that statue. Just at the juncture when they were going to unfold it, abruptly, a maelstrom of darkness appeared below that statue, like the Black Hole, absorbing everything around me. After a sudden screaming of a woman, my eyes were soon immersed in suffocating darkness accompanying the statue that had been crushed into parts. Though she seemed to have disappeared, her voice had never faded away, always haunting my mind and enticing me to disclose that sacred statue beneath the curtain of mist. 

Then I woke up in the light. 

The morning sunshine passed through the window with wind, causing the bell that hung on the wall to ring. An antiquated clock besides the bed was running, driving me back to the present. That dream with repression, fear, and danger had fettered me in the darkness, smothering me with despair. While lying down with perspiration, I was breathing pressingly on my bed. Although that dream seemed to be unrealistic, I knew it had actually happened. Looking at the corner of my room, I knew who that woman was. A statue of a gorgeous woman was displayed beyond my bed, juxtaposed with a series of her portraits; instead of being concealed by the curtain, the woman was facing directly toward my eyes, giving an indifferent look that was telling me something that I didn’t understand. This was Medusa, the ancestor of my family, who was thought to exist only in the celestial Greek mythology, but only people in my family knew that she wasn’t a creature built up by people’s imagination. 

I left that statue at a corner of the basement since I had been hearing that sound in dreams, but now she was here again. Who let her in, I wondered. 

I quickly took my eyes off her face, while her grim look shrouded me in gloominess. She had not experienced aging while alive, always as glorious as youth. Despite her hair covered by snakes, she seemed to have been perfectly gauged by the norm of beauty. She was a masterpiece of God, an optimum creature who lived under compulsion and jealousy in Greek mythology. This gifted beauty brought both glory and danger to her; she was always living between heaven and hell with love and hatred. Elders used to tell me that after that thing happened, her name became a taboo; my family decayed soon along with her death. Even nowadays, people in my family seldom talked about her experience as if they were remiss to mention it. They regarded her as an aberration that affected this family’s prosperity, the person who would only lead them to evil.

In retrospect, a story gradually emerged in my mind, carrying me backward through Medusa’s life. I saw her doing her job in Athena’s temple but then being raped by Poseidon due to her glamorous beauty. I saw her crying, struggling, and despairing, but nobody was willing to help to drag her out of this evil. I saw people pillorying and torturing her, and even Athena, who also was a woman, put a curse on her as a punishment, which gave her a head of snakes and a gaze that could turn men into stones. The rumor proliferated into a titanic force that eventually accelerated her death. Perseus became the person who went and killed her. I saw people celebrating the death of this victim, who had been raped, insulted, and killed, as if she oughted to disburse the crime which she had suffered. 

This story brought me back to that black and white world, a place where things were flipped, right became wrong, evil arrived in heaven, and the night overwhelmed the dawn. I entered this world again, with the same statue that covered by the curtain. I walked straight over to it, but this time, that maelstrom did not appear. As I was getting closer with certitude, the curtain lifted up and then silently flew away. That statue which was supposed to be there was replaced by a mirror which reflected the epitome of myself. In this mirror, that girl who had been raped, insulted, and killed became me myself. Medusa’s story became that epitome reflecting what I had been through. An empathy between Medusa and her descendent, who lived thousands years after her death, was created due to the same experience that these two little girl had been through. This empathy spanned centuries, connecting two people together; as soon as they met each other, their hurts were cured by the power of love. 

It was girls’ power. 

In the state of somnolence, I heard that woman’s voice reverberating in my mind, “you still have time to tell them the truth. It’s never too late to do this.” At this moment, I eventually realized what caused her to be in my life. Medusa was dead, but the evil she met wasn’t gone; that crime was still hanging over victims’ hearts trapping them in this deep shadow. Neither she was the first person going through this, nor I could be the last person suffering this. Unless the crime could be exposed to justice, there would only be more and more victims enduring in this world. Then I knew what I should do next. 

Medusa’s story still hadn’t ended, and I was here to finish that last chapter.