Few dared to date Medusa,
For they feared being covered with contusions.
Those who did wore a blindfold to hide their eyes,
A blind date with fate and a disguise.

One of the braver men,
Who thought he could apprehend,
Medusa, his name was Trent.
He didn’t last long,
He took his blindfold off,
And like many before him,
He turned to stone and wasn’t heard from again.
Another challenger’s name was Wren,
Like the bird,
Medusa thought that was the strangest name she’d heard.
So, out of spite,
She reached across the table and exposed Wren’s eyes.
He gasped as his skin turned coarse,
Mouth open wider than a horse.
Medusa pushed him over,
Watched as he shattered,
And smiled to herself,
Even though she was lonelier than anyone else.

Medusa didn’t mean to be so cruel,
It was the consequences of her being used.
By a man to do things she didn’t want to do,
Unspeakable and terrible abuse,
She was the only one to lose.
So, she became a viper,
Her gaze became a noose.
Asphyxiation,
Righteous indignation.
She wouldn’t let herself be used again.

Finally, a man named Hunter arrived,
He tightened the blindfold around his eyes.
He sat across from Medusa, the table lit by candlelight,
She blushed, for he was quite a sight.
He reached across the table and shook her hand,
And he asked her if she had any plans.
She was taken aback, her mind rolling off the tracks,
Lost in a flashback, she babbled about tasks she had to do,
None of which was true.

Hunter laughed, a sound so sweet,
It made Medusa nearly fall out of her seat.
Was this the one she had been searching for?
Or was he just another liar?
Authenticity tends to hide,
Just like the scars Medusa had on her thighs.
One of her snakes whispered in her ear,
Advising her to ignore what she wanted to hear.
The snakes only wanted what was best,
But for whom? What was the purpose of their quest?

Hours passed by like comets,
First date turned into many happy moments.
Before Medusa could catch her breath,
Half a year had passed,
And Hunter had asked,
To see Medusa’s face.
She insisted that he didn’t,
But she knew he wouldn’t listen.
He lowered the blindfold,
As teardrops glistened,
Medusa thought she had just lost,
Her heart…

Hunter had heterochromia,
Left eye green, right eye a shimmering blue.
Medusa’s eyes were both red,
That pulsated in blossoming hues.
To both of their surprise,
Hunter didn’t turn to stone.
He captured her lips in a kiss,
Both of them were alone.
Medusa found the one who could see her,
She no longer had to hide.
Hunter loved Medusa,
It made her cry.

The world is filled with hurt people, like Medusa,
Who may push you away and leave you in contusions.
But underneath that deadly gaze,
Is a mountain of pain…

Medusa and Lizzie stood at the edge of the tumbling tidal plunge.
“I guess I’ll be making me amends.” said Lizzie dolefully.
“Whatever do you mean?”
“I was a scoundrel to you and your bunch. I deserve a good flogging.”
“Oh? Why didn’t you say so!”
Going to the ship and clambering up and inside Medusa returned wearing a short black leather cape and mask, carrying the twenty-foot twelve plait magical Leather Bullwhip.
“I say, ******,” said Perry sitting up on the grassy knoll. “What do you think is going on here?”
Hat over eyes, ****** mumbled something, not seeing Medusa taking Lizzie roughly by the arm and dragging her to the open clearing before them. ****** was snoring, fingers over his belly, Perry watching with rapt interest as Medusa pushed the woman to her scuffed knees and lashed her wrists. Lizzie lowering her head of long frizzy blonde hair bending forward to make her gritty sweat drenched back muscles the more pronounced under the precipitous waterfall’s crystal spray.
The cowboy heard the first crack of rawhide on splitting flesh but stayed asleep dreaming it was Medusa getting the beating when in reality it was Medusa lacerating the robust pirate who’d requested the treatment as proper discipline in accordance with the code of the high seas. Lizzie didn’t shriek at first; bearing up to the brutal lashing but as Medusa showed no sign of abating, the woman threw her head back howling and screaming in insensible agony. Her body numb with a feverish pain; Lizzie shook from head to foot and turned the color of blood even where she weren’t bleeding. At last collapsing on her face barely conscious, tears and perspiration clouding her reddened eyes.
“Up, *****,” ordered the Mistress. “Have you had enough?”
“No, ma’am” came the growling whimper. “I let meself be captured by those scurvy knaves. For thet I deserve at least three hundred more lashes.”
“So be it!”
“Mistress Medusa! Stop!” shouted Perry unable to take the sight any longer. Blood from Lizzie’s taut muscles had sprayed everywhere attracting crawling colonies of insects to the sweet nectar. “I can’t sit watching you beat a woman to death.”
“What have you been doing ‘til now?” scolded Medusa.
“I wanted to see how far you’d, oh, I should have known.”
“Relax, Periwinkle. She’s going to need a good cleaning up before she has any supper. Why don’t you take her over by the waterfall. Dawn will give you something to make the leathery old broad smell like a ton of roses.”
Confused by it all, Periwinkle helped Lizzie stagger to her feet leading her by the waist to the flowing waters there she sat up on a rock trying to stretch her limbs but they were shredded.
Dawn brought Perry a bottle of cooling salve. “Here you are, Mister Perry.”
“Thank you, Dawn. This will ease the pain I’m sure,” he said patting a *** of the wet cream into his hand stepping to the brawny pirate’s defined back to begin smoothing it over her rough skin.
“Perry,” she said, “Let’s get this sweat off me ‘fore ya go a-wastin’ that thar fine perfume what ya got there. Leave it be, lad, it’ll be there when we need it. Whyna join me under the spray an’ have a bit of it. I’m for the taking as is.”
Perry feeling the twitch in his ***** tore out of his vest and collar. “Get it all off, man, we’s not doing laundry.”
“Oh, right,” he said, tugging off sox and braces.
Naked as man and very large woman they dipped under the chilly waves. He was luxuriating at the sandy shoal enjoying the flowery wind blowing over the verdant mountainside.  “This is paradise,” said Perry laying in the rippling currents.
****** awoke to the smell of Dawn’s bubbling cauldron. He sat up hungry and ready to eat.
“Mister ******, you cannot eat ‘til you have bathed,” said the witchy gypsy.
“Bathed?”
Yes,” she said. “We cannot eat my mother’s grass soup until we have cleansed our inner light.”
“I don’t know,” he said catching himself mid sentence.
Leaving the boiling ***, her body well rounded and dusky olive Dawn trundled to the flowing mist her limbs bristling. Medusa scaly and filthy giving him a look he could never live down he pulled off his rumpled blue outfit.
“You look a whole lot different when you drop all that cowboy gear, you know that?”
“Uh, I reckon so. I don’t ‘member the last time I walked around buck naked like this. I’m sure liking this heat.” ****** without his chaps and hat and other duds was a surprise. He looked like something natural to the rainforest. Maybe an ancient panther god. Medusa meanwhile was shedding scales all over the place in the Amazonian heat. She was starting to turn so dark a shade of green she appeared brown, and her vipers, in her ultimately relaxed state of mind appeared to have transformed into long black curls that lay wryly down to the hollow above her ***. Taking his fingers like a child they walked hand in hand into the breaking waves.
After they’d eaten Medusa felt relaxed, like her bones had turned to water. The sound of the big river flowing nearby made her thighs vibrate and she opened her eyes to search out the man. He wasn’t far. This was new. It still felt like a surreal dream, everything since the huge sacrificial ceremony all those potions and powders and juices still made her head spin. The jungle heat made her center of gravity tilt so Southward she could barely walk upright. She was throbbing with a need she thought she had banished a thousand years ago. “**** this play-cowpoke, he got to me,” she thought, “Curse that white bandana, and his perfect ***. I gotta get over this,” she lectured herself; but not this second. She laughed out loud and tapped his shoulder as they sat by the fire. He jumped a little, but then granted her a new thing. A slowly sweet smile. And she rolled into his arms in a heated abandon of simply wanting to be held to his flesh, kissed, to feel his hips grating on hers, and then to sleep, nothing more.
This was a whole new world.
Perry and Lizzie taking a flaming torch and winding further up the mountainous path, stopped on a steep plateau where planting the flame, she playfully tackled him, pinning him to the ground. He was prepared as ever. Her groaning moans were pleasure mixed with pain from the severe beating Medusa had given her, not that Lizzie Quick, Queen of pirates hadn’t had worse at the hands of the Royal Navy. The chattering women were hairy and hunched; the naked ringleader of the bunch coming forward with her shaman husband.
“Remy!” cried Perry. “What are you doing here like this? What’s happening?”
“Arrgg me hearty. You be my prisoners now and me wife’s gotta thing about heads. She likes ‘em real small an’ yours is too big, Periwinkle.”
“Have you gone mad, man? You can’t shrink our heads!”
“Oh sure they can. They’ve got it down to a science. I even helped ‘em make a few improvements. Take ‘em away, grrrls!”