A Head of Snakes

Writober 2025: Day Eleven Gorgons>Response Post

🔗Links in the Table of Contents are Jump links to my responses to each of the challenges
🐦‍⬛This is original work created by Maria L. Berg and this post counts as copyright. All rights reserved.

🎃OctPoWriMo 🦇Writober Flash Fiction 👻Halloween Photography Challenge

Today’s Theme: Gorgons

These are my responses to the prompt post for Day 11 of Writober: Don’t Look Her in the Eye

OctPoWriMo

Monsters I Don’t Meet

My neighborhood is full of monsters
I hear them all the time
The pirate ghosts’ loud music
thumps and thumps all night
as they surf their ship’s wake
in the glimmering moonlight.
The werewolves gather in one yard
and bark and bark all day
pretending to be real dogs
whose people are away.
The mad scientist has so many creatures
that he wants to build
that’s why he’s always drilling
saw, saw, saw, drill, drill, drill.
The vampire who has a security light
on only during the day
is always leaf-blowing his roof
I guess to keep his landing area clear.
The lake spirit taps at the windows
she leaves wet footprints
as she drips up the dock
she’s hungry and can’t get warm.
And death loiters in the bushes
I hear him in the wind
I didn’t care that he was in there
but then he took the cat
and won’t give him back.
I’ve never seen or met them
It’s not a friendly kind of place
We all keep to ourselves, but
I lock the door to keep them out
just in case.

Writober Flash Fiction Challenge

The Game

The gorgon’s playing field has fallen into disrepair. She got tired of the hypocrisy of her worshipers clapping and cheering when she bowled over the last one she turned to stone and it fell and shattered on the stone yard. So she turned them all to stone. She quickly realized, however, that once all of her worshipers were statues, there was no one to clean up her mess. The game was no longer fun when the bits of statue were left all over. Some bits from their centers that weren’t completely stone rotted and stank. Birds and other scavengers began to gather to feed on the rotting guts, and they left their own stinky messes. It was unpleasant. And no one gathered the balls she threw, so if she wanted to continue playing, she would have to slither after them through the mess and smell, and that didn’t appeal to her. She went inside, closed the door and imagined that some day more worshipers would arrive and clean up the mess to appease her. She would try not to turn them into statues as quickly as this batch.

Halloween Photography Challenge

For today’s images I wanted to capture the fear of the gorgon: snakes too close to the face, and being turned to stone. I enjoyed the results I got from my cut-paper filter capturing the deadly beauty of snakes and gorgons.