God of Wrongs You Can’t Shake

Sarah Hooker

Hunger gnaws at me as I glide through the steaming spring waters, alone and useless. I miss the Romans. Slithering between their road-puckered feet listening to gossip and feeding on the curses they tossed me. Liquify whoever stole my cloak. Gouge out the eyes of the glove thief. Rip off the member of the man who stole my woman. Today languid tourists lurk along the edges of the ancient bathhouse, ignorantly holding curses in their hearts while I starve.

I am not the goddess of the hot springs. She is gone. The Romans forgot us, the springs silted shut, and my creator didn’t survive the centuries of mud. When they restored the baths, they found her stone head in a sewer and mounted it beside a descriptive plaque for tourists to gawk at. 

They never found me. There is no plaque for the god of revenge, of wrongs you can’t shake. But I still smell them, lingering in the air to tempt my hunger. Just out of reach. I spend my time planning ways to end my wretched immortality, but I haven’t yet committed to any. 

I’m imagining a tourist finding the dried out husk of my body at the edge of the water when I sense the curse like a darkening sky before rain. Ages have passed since I ate one—back when pilgrims soaked their dusty bodies in the baths. A woman steps out of a shadowy overhang. It’s so cold mist rises in thick swirling curtains from the water, and through it, she is a blur. 

She circles the bath, hands in her pockets. Her face is hard and beautiful—determined. I taste her curse on my flickering tongue, metallic like blood. I shiver in delight. 

Soft algae brushes my scales as I swim against the current, hasty with hunger. The woman’s face shines with pale purpose as I wait below, spiked tail trembling. She glances around. A plea escapes her lips before they return to a resolute thin line. 

Her hand flashes out. 

The curse drops. 

It flutters, reflecting back and forth between the sky and the shadows before landing lightly. The woman breaks her mouth open again. Someone else yelps. A security guard. It is forbidden to throw things into the spring now—not because it is sacred, but because of preservation. The guard runs, ready to fish out the thin sheet sticking atop the water.

I flick my shadows, making the smallest wave. The curse tilts, pauses, then sinks down, still in its reflective dance. I wait. I’m tired of waiting.

At last, I feel it on my tongue and close my eyes to savor my first taste in centuries. It is a good curse. Thoughtful. It pulls at me like lightning pulls from the sky. I taste her on it. Rachel. She is young. She is smart. Her meager life was bearable until the assault.

The letters spelling out the curse are double-edged. She’s gone over it twice, pressing hard with her pen. The curses women drop are so heavy they often make my stomach ache, yet I prefer them. Righteous anger avenged is the sweetest treat.

To the divinity of the waters

Punish the man who assaulted me

Show him how it feels to have his body penetrated and bloodied

Rip him apart and silence his voice

#

When I look back, she is gone. Even without the goddess, I still do the curse ritual, half emerging from the water. The cold stings my clawed feet and worms its way between my scales. I flick my tongue out, savoring residual magic. Bowing low, I imagine her waving a hand to release me to my duty. 

When I pleased the goddess, she would scratch the top of my head until my tail whipped against the water and her laugh shook the stone walls. There is still laughter in the baths sometimes, but mostly the tourists are somber. They shuffle through, adjusting the volume on their audio guides, shushing their children to avoid disturbing the past. I am the past. After this one last curse, I will join my goddess in death.

#

The violator lives across an ocean. It doesn’t matter. All water is connected. I considered punishments the whole trip. There are many ways to penetrate a body. There are even more ways to silence a voice. 

I slither out a metal faucet whose water smells of chemicals. The violator’s house is sparse, with more screens than cushions and two other men who call him Ben. Tonight, Ben plays video games amid a pile of spent cans. In the past, I would go straight to work, but there is no rush, no backlog of curses, no goddess waiting to scratch my head. 

I lick the sharp edge of a can and taste my prey. He is young. He is smart. He is jealous of his older brother. Rachel looks like his brother’s wife. 

I wait until the morning so the alcohol won’t dull the experience. Rachel specified pain. The sun is high by the time Ben steps into the white-tiled shower. The warm water reminds me of the springs. When Ben turns his face up to the shower head, I slither down, clawing my way in through his tender throat. He opens his eyes and mouth wide, but I eat his scream. Panicked hands scratch at his neck, digging to his throat. I pull hard at the chewy mass of tongue until it rips away like oyster meat. This is joy. This is purpose.

Ben’s knees slam against the porcelain, bone grating against bone, and we both feel the pain that answers the curse. Blood flows down the drain, and I hope Rachel can taste it next time she drinks. All water is connected. I hold back enough so that Ben feels he has a chance and fights. His arm smashes through the glass shower door. I shiver in ecstasy as red fills our vision. 

Mouth flopping like a fish, Ben crawls across the floor, hands and stomach scraping glass shrapnel. When he pulls himself up to look in the mirror, to find the monster, our mouth forms a name. Rachel.

I am revenge renewed. This is why the goddess made me. Perhaps I won’t join her yet.

#

Months later, I circle the great bath, watching an old woman leaning against a pillar and staring into the dark green water. I sense her curse buried deep. She’s fed it for sixty years, since her childhood, and now it will feed me.

Violations against women and children have become my specialty. This shiny new world does not protect them. It is like the dazzling glare of the sun on the spring’s water, hiding the secrets below. I know what the old woman sees there. 

When I approach, her white eyebrows lift. I’ve pulled her from a memory. She smells of blood and betrayal. Delicious. She glances at my official guide badge. It reads Tour Guide Ben.

I jerk Ben’s mouth into a smile. It’s been easy navigating the world in his body. Safe. Powerful. He’s still in here, although he no longer wrestles for control. Removing a violator’s genitals always brings them in line. 

“Did you know that people used to toss curses into the spring?” I ask in Ben’s low voice with my forked tongue lingering on the soft vowels. “They believed the goddess would avenge them.”

The old woman snorts. “Can’t say I put much faith in a god’s help. Did it work?” 

I want to tell her that I made sure it worked. The goddess blessed me with life for this purpose. 

Instead, I pry Ben’s mouth into a smile and shrug his beaten shoulders.

Sarah Hooker (she/her) is an emerging writer from the mountains of North Carolina. She works as a photographer and now tells her stories with words in addition to images.