The Rotten Luck of Melinoë

It was just plain rotten luck, or perhaps some cruel twist of fate, that Melinoë, the goddess of nightmares, had plenty of nightmares of her own.

Nightmares of smooth scales and winding bodies pulled flush against her own. Serpents, snakes. They curled around her shoulders, tangled in her hair, corkscrewed around her wrists and ankles. They pulled taut, slithered, and writhed, covered her mouth, her eyes, her ears. And she woke up gasping. 

It was rotten luck. Really it was. So much of her life (or un-life) had been marred by disaster. 

Take for example her birth—a painful one. Persephone’s body contorting in pain. Melinoë, slippery and covered in goddess’s blood, falling from Persephone’s womb, head over feet into the rapids of the river Cocytus where she drowned, only to be reborn into death by the twisting ocean of the Underworld. The tumultuous water carried her from Elysium to Tartarus to the liminal fields of Asphodel where she hunted to survive, sucking the slippery dreams right out of soul’s heads until Hecate found her and taught her magic.

Consider also her hair, how it grew long and thick as weeds, matted from sleepless nights and her constant traipsing the thorny bushes of Underworld forests. The bushels of golden locks sprouted from her head like branches of trees in all directions, never framing her bronze skin or her long face in delightful ways like it did for Hecate, her mistress, her mother, her teacher. No, Melinoë was not only dead, not only nightmarish, but she had to be ugly too. Ugly, wild, untamed. These are what nightmares are, and what Melinoë had to be. 

Everything about Melinoë was rotten luck. Rotten to the core. Eons spent exploring the Underworld, creating her mischief, creating horrible dreams, hexing and cursing and bewitching. Forever a child, a rough and tumbly sort of child, with too knobby knees and perpetually scuffed elbows. Even Melinoë’s own body sat at an awful disproportion to her work. A maker of nightmares ought to, at the very least, be taller.

It was rotten. Truly and horribly rotten. Especially rotten, when one day (or night, it was so hard to say), she strayed too far from the protected grounds of Asphodel and into a horrible pit of monsters. Dozens of them, creatures of all manner of size and shape and horrible deeds. Monsters each slain by some god or another, or a demigod, or—gods forbid—a regular old human. The monsters had no use for Melinoë’s nightmares; they were nightmarish enough already. 

Beginning at one end of this place, Melinoë walked down the line of slain creatures. A cyclops, a minotaur, a chimera, a—oh. 

Dread filled her stomach, like a dream, only heavier. 

A woman. More than a woman. A serpent. Scales and fangs and a long, winding body. A woman at once so horrible and so beautiful. A woman who reminded Melinoë of all her nightmares, but also some daydreams (nicer ones). A woman who reminded her of her mother, Persephone. One that turned her heart to stone. No, not literally, but almost literally, in the sense that she stood unmoving for a long time, watching the serpent lady and her strange eyes sway. 

“Melinoë.” Medusa crooned. “Oh, sweet Melinoë.”

Melinoë shuddered. It was not strange Medusa knew her name, for everyone knew the name of their nightmares, but the way she sang it, sweet as honey. 

“Stay with us a while.” Medusa sang, uncurling one scaled arm, wrapping it tight around Melinoë’s shoulder. “Stay with us, won’t you, dearest? You’re a monster like us, aren’t you? A terrible, rotten monster. Stay with us.” 

Oh yes, Melinoë was rotten alright. Her whole life had been rotten. 

She folded herself into the serpent’s arms, let herself be lifted like a child onto her mother’s hip. 

“Melinoë.” The other monsters sang, coming closer to her, wrapping her in their arms, their paws, their talons. 

Oh yes, it made sense. That rotten things would love each other, and that monsters who had lived every day of their lives cloaked in a nightmare, would welcome the nightmare goddess with open arms.