Meda: The Modern Medusa

The rain clawed at the windows of the cramped flat, a wild, frantic sound that filled every corner of the room. Inside, the air was thick with the smell of old books, strong tea, and something older still — the dusty scent of memory.

Meda sat hunched in her worn armchair, a knitted throw draped across her lap. Her hands, twisted by time and arthritis, curled around a chipped mug that had long since gone cold. Across from her, on the sagging couch, sat her grandchildren — not children at all anymore, but grown men and women in their thirties. They wore the city's tired uniform: dark jeans, battered boots, jackets still damp from the storm. Their faces — lined by stress, not age — held a look she knew too well: the brittle tension of people who had learned that dreams and promises were dangerous things.

"You want to hear it," Meda rasped, her voice like paper tearing. "The real story. Not the version you picked up on Reddit or stitched together from office gossip."

They exchanged uneasy glances. Outside, the storm gave a hollow boom, as if the sky itself was warning them.

"Alright," she said, setting her mug aside with a small, decisive clink. "Listen close. I'm only telling this once."

Meda leaned back, her gaze unfocusing, as if watching a reel of old film flicker across the cracked ceiling.

"There was a girl once. Sharp as glass. Full of bright ideas and stupid, reckless hope. She worked at one of the most powerful firms in the city — a place so pristine it looked like heaven from the outside. The kind of company where people kill themselves slowly for the privilege of staying inside the glass box."

"She was good. Better than good. She believed if she played by the rules, kept her head down, worked twice as hard as anyone else, she'd make it. She'd matter."

Meda's fingers twitched on the armrests, as if still typing long-dead emails.

"But the glass walls weren't meant to let her rise. They were meant to let the powerful watch her struggle."

She coughed, a dry sound, before pressing on.

"One night, her boss called her into his office. Late. Said he admired her 'initiative.' Said he saw 'potential.' He offered her a shortcut — a different kind of promotion. She said no."

The word *no* dropped into the room like a stone into deep water.

"She reported him. Filed the complaints. Trusted the system."

Meda smiled then — a terrible, broken smile.

"Turns out, the system was him. Always had been."

"First, the emails stopped coming. Projects she had built from the ground up were suddenly reassigned. Meetings moved to conference rooms she was never told about. At first, she thought it was a mistake. She apologized. She tried harder."

Her voice hardened.

"That's the first stage of the curse. Doubt yourself. Think you deserve it."

"The whispers started next. 'She's difficult.' 'She's too emotional.' 'She’s unstable.'"

"The people she'd laughed with at coffee breaks, the ones who'd cheered her on in brainstorming sessions — they peeled away from her, one by one. Silent, shame-faced, like they'd catch her ruin if they stood too close."

"The snakes," she said quietly, "were never real. They were the people she thought she could trust."

Her grandchildren shifted uneasily. One opened their mouth to speak, but thought better of it.

"They made her a ghost before they let her go. No one fired her. No — they just made sure the air got thinner every day until she couldn't breathe anymore."

"And when she left," Meda continued, voice low, "she found that the curse followed her. The city had no place for women like her — women who fought back, who embarrassed the wrong man. The firm had whispered their poison into every ear that mattered. She applied for jobs she should have walked into. Heard nothing. Smiled through interviews while they smiled back with knives behind their teeth."

"She lost her home. Her savings. Her health. Even her name — because by then, 'Meda' meant 'trouble' in all the circles that mattered."

The storm outside had gentled to a steady patter, as if even the rain was listening.

"But she didn’t die," Meda said, her mouth twisting into something that might once have been a smile. "Oh no. Death would have been easy."

"She lived. In the cracks, in the shadows. Built a life out of whatever scraps society hadn’t poisoned. Found others like her. Not victims. Survivors."

For a long moment, no one spoke.

Finally, her granddaughter — a woman with tired eyes and knuckles red from years of biting back — said, "But if everyone knew... why didn’t anyone stop it?"

Meda leaned forward, the old chair creaking under her.

"Because it’s easier to believe she was the problem," she said, voice fierce. "If you admit the truth — that the world is rigged, that the glass box was always a cage — then you have to admit it could happen to you too. Better to pretend she's crazy. Bitter. Toxic."

Her grandchildren looked away, shame flickering across their faces. Shame for the world they'd inherited. Maybe even shame for the times they'd looked the other way too.

Meda sat back, closing her eyes for a moment. Her hair, once glossy, now a tangle of white and silver, shifted slightly in the draft from the window. If you squinted, if you let the night trick your mind, you might think it moved of its own accord — a slow, restless writhing.

But there were no monsters here. Only a woman who had survived being devoured.

"You wanted a real story," she murmured. "Now you have it."

The storm began to fade, leaving only the sound of breath and blood and memory filling the room.

And the knowledge — bitter and irrevocable — that some curses are real, and they are made of paper trails, whispers, and the silence of those who should have stood beside you.