For my wife, who requested it.
All she had wanted was to put her hair up in French braids. They looked so neat and elegant on that woman in the booklet where the step-by-step instructions made it sound as simple as looking in the mirror. Maybe it was, for all she knew, but for her, a woman whose hair was so unruly that she couldn’t even get a brush through it, it was a Herculean task.
An hour into the process, Medusa was so frustrated that she just wanted to shave her head and become a mass-murderer.
“Okay, let’s try this again,” she said, studying the instructions. “Chad and Lucifer go over Jafar and Travis.” The snakes hissed and she reached back and wrestled them into place. “Okay, now Hecate and Adolf go over Jafar and Travis.” She grunted as she tried to grab the writhing mass. One of the snakes bit her—probably Adolf; he was still mad at her for the whole split-ends treatment she’d had done the week before.
She had just gotten the first two steps in place and was searching with her pinky finger to pull Devon and Mephistopheles into the emerging braid when her cell phone rang. It was Stheno. Jezebel, who was one of her bangs and more helpful than most, answered the call with her forked tongue.
“Where are you?” Medusa asked. “I thought you were coming to help with this.”
“Hero trouble,” Stheno said. “I’m in a taxi on my way over now. When’s he picking you up?”
“At seven. That’s ten minutes from now. I haven’t even put on my makeup yet.”
“You don’t expect him to look at you, do you?”
There was a pause. “Well, I want to look nice in case he does,” Medusa said, a touch defensively. “Anyway, that’s why I needed your help with this braid, so I could let him look at my back.”
“I don’t know why you don’t do what I do and wear a hat,” Stheno said. “I fill it with mice; that’s the only thing that keeps my hair under control.”
“I want to impress him. He looks like such a special guy.”
“You met him on Tinder,” Stheno said.
“He swiped right, didn’t he?”
“But you didn’t put your real profile picture up.”
“Of course not! I’m not trying to turn the whole Internet to stone,” Medusa said. The snakes were restless and her fingers were getting tired. “Just get over here, would you?”
Just then the doorbell rang. “Crap, he’s here already.” She released her hair reluctantly and the snakes all wriggled out again into the freedom of an intractable tangle.
“Put a hat on,” Stheno said.
“No. Look, I don’t care. He’ll just have to accept me as I am. I’m sure Perseus and I will have a great time tonight. I’ll call you later.”
The Green-Walled Tower 
April 4th, 2015 at 12:26 am
he is back!!!
April 4th, 2015 at 9:14 pm
Yep. 🙂 Finally.
April 4th, 2015 at 12:34 am
brilliant story! this is a tickling thought though, you have perfectly portrayed what will happen if Medusa tries a braid!
April 4th, 2015 at 9:13 pm
My wife and I somehow got on the topic last night, so she said I should write a story about it. Of course, then she read the last line and declared I was a terrible person. 🙂
April 4th, 2015 at 8:18 am
I can feel her pain of frustration! Instructions via book, pamphlet, or video are not always what they seem. Of course, anything is simple and perhaps easy ; If you already know how to do it! Thanks for posting this. I’m quite sure others have experienced the same type of thing..or similar.
April 4th, 2015 at 9:11 pm
I’ve always thought French braids looked impossibly hard, even if you had real hair and not snakes for hair. 🙂
April 4th, 2015 at 9:27 am
I love the dialogue. Your fiction just gets better and better.
April 4th, 2015 at 8:46 pm
Thank you. 🙂 Hopefully someone will eventually pay me for it but even if they don’t, writing is its own reward.
April 5th, 2015 at 4:37 am
That’s so true. We have to always remember that. I forget sometimes when I get another no response or a, not at this time – you’re not right for our publication. The best antidote to rejection is to write something.
April 9th, 2015 at 12:53 pm
Perfect.
April 10th, 2015 at 9:55 pm
Thanks, Lynda! That’s high praise in one word.
April 10th, 2015 at 11:13 am
That’s the way of things right, she goes through all that trouble just to lose her head over a man.
April 10th, 2015 at 9:54 pm
Ain’t that the truth. All men are scum, even the heroes, right? 🙂
March 3rd, 2016 at 9:00 pm
[…] found out this week that our university’s literary journal is going to publish my story, Braiding Mythology. Now I’m apprehensively waiting to see what my colleagues will think of me after they read […]
March 3rd, 2016 at 11:05 pm
Oh, dear! Too bad she can’t cancel this one. 🙂 Great job, David. Loved it. Congrats again!