The Gorgon:

Consider this my confession.

You are my priest. Words are easier to write than to say out loud. Therefore, be merciful in your judgment.

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This began, as all these things do, with an omen. A friend of a friend asked to read my tarot cards one night. She went by Angel Rose in those days, the sort of name that screamed “New Age hippie.” I’d been around this woman a few times at Jena’s house and enjoyed her company.

That evening, she came by wearing a green and blue tunic with leggings to set off all the crystal jewelry she’d made. I sat back amused while she chatted about the Venus retrograde creating bad hair catastrophes all over town.

“A Venus retrograde is not the time for major beauty changes. Many women find this out the hard way,” she remarked as Jena served us coffee.

Jena and I spent another half hour indulging her eccentricities. Then she pulled a tarot deck from her bag without warning and asked if I wanted a reading. Any other time in my life I would not have agreed to such a thing. After growing up in a Catholic orphanage, I had a high level of skepticism about religion in general. People with woo-woo vibes weren’t even on my radar. But Jena kept going on and on that night about how Angel Rose had a gift. So I shrugged and put down my cup.

“I’m game,” I replied. “But why do you want to read my cards?”

Angel Rose gave me a wide-eyed stare that made me feel uncomfortable. “There is something very amiss in your life. Just be open to what I have to say.”

With delicate hands, she placed a velvet cloth on the table. Then she shuffled the deck while doing some deep breathing. As Jena lit candles and incense, my sense of unease deepened.

She placed seven cards face up on the cloth. After studying them for a few silent moments, Angel Rose announced with a grim face that my husband was abusive. We’d been married less than a year at the time.

I laughed. “You’re out of your mind.”

“You can tell what he really is by the little things,” she insisted over my chuckles. “His mask slips off when you take a good look at the details. The cards say he keeps close tabs on you and goes out of his way to make you feel inept often. This is all training for worse treatment. You should leave him.”

“This is way off base,” I told her, grabbing my purse to leave. My phone began to vibrate. I knew without looking that it was my husband calling to ask when I’d be home.

Angel Rose studied me with pity. “That's what you think.”

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Two other psychics approached me on separate occasions in public in the month after the reading. Without any prompting, they disclosed that my husband had no aura. Neither asked for payment of any kind. Calling him a “spiritual void,” they both urged me to leave him.

The second one actually cornered me in the parking lot of a grocery store, saying the Divine wanted me to leave him for the sake of the child. I told her to save her spiel for the gullible since I had no children and drove off. It alarmed me that she tried to run after my car, pleading with me to listen.

Convinced these psychics were in cahoots with Jena’s nutty friend, I deleted Angel Rose’s information from my phone when I got home. Then I called Jena to say that I wouldn’t be visiting ever again.

“Angel Rose told me to expect a call like this from you today,” Jena replied. “She wants you to know that she’s sorry she ruined our friendship, but please remember this advice: You’ll see the devil in a little thing.”

I hung up on her.

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My spouse never struck me. He also didn't swear. His tone, however, could become demeaning without warning if I irritated him. When I went out, he would call no less than five times. To see if I was safe, he said. He liked to correct my pronunciation, particularly if what I said made a valid point. And he sat down with me after every shopping trip to go over the receipts line by line. This ensured that every purchase was necessary and our finances were sound.

So he was moody and cheap occasionally. These were harmless, little things. But in all other regards, my husband was a normal, attentive spouse. He had a sweet way of charming me with his quiet nature. Our entire courtship from first date to wedding day was only three months. Sometimes I am able to convince myself that I hadn’t known him long enough to recognize what he was. This, too, is a lie. On some level, you always know.

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Our physical relationship changed when we found out I was pregnant two months later. The lack of intimacy was initially explained as a concern for my well-being. I protested, but he was lovingly adamant. He smothered me with gifts and gave me whatever I wanted. This behavior grew worse after our daughter was born. Then he simply stopped touching me at all. If I persisted beyond a light kiss, he would gently pull away from me.

My friends at the time told me this was “Madonna complex.” Sometimes men develop issues with intimacy once a woman assumes a motherhood role, they said. I read books that suggested the physical changes during pregnancy and breastfeeding could also be a turn off. So I weaned our daughter at three months and got myself back into shape with an exercise regime. Even with these efforts, we made love maybe once a month. As my circle of friends expanded to include couples with children, they all waved away my concerns.

“Sleep trumps sex,” another mother declared during a discussion after our weekly Mommy and Me class. I was the only one not laughing when she said it.

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I am not sure exactly when I became afraid to leave my husband alone with our daughter. Maybe it was the number of times I would return home to find her hurt. My daughter's injuries were typical for any baby or toddler, but they always coincided with my absence from the house. I managed to convince myself that I was paranoid, but something nagged at me.

One day, I decided to have lunch with a friend. My husband said I should stay home, but I had not been out in weeks. My cabin fever made me override his objections for once. He was not pleased.

We'd only driven a block when I realized I left my purse in the bedroom. My friend poked fun at my forgetfulness, then turned the car around. I had been gone less than ten minutes. When I entered the house, I found my daughter on the living room floor. My husband stood over her, shaking.

“I think her leg is broken,” my husband murmured.

I thought I misheard him. He repeated the sentence. Disbelieving, I went over to our daughter and stood her up. The scream that erupted from her throat when weight hit her left leg raised the hair on the back of my neck.

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An emergency room visit confirmed that my daughter had a greenstick fracture. My husband blamed it on a toddler temper tantrum.

“I accidentally dropped her,” he said. “She was fighting in my arms and pissed off because you left. You know how it is at this age. She hit the toy box on the way down.”

I stood beside the hospital bed, contemplating. When I entered the house, they were both in the living room. The toy box was in my daughter’s bedroom upstairs. His story made no sense. My stomach churned for the entire time we were there because I thought he was lying. But one of the nurses pulled me aside just before we left to remark that she’d never seen a more loving and attentive father than my husband. Only then did I relax and put it out of my mind.

It’s very easy to convince ourselves of a lie, if only to avoid seeing the horror unfolding right in front of us.

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A week later, my husband began encouraging me to go back to work. He claimed we needed more money for our expanding family, giving me a sly wink. It had been so long since I'd seen that kind of spark in his eyes that I agreed to everything he said, including the idea that our daughter should have a sibling.

So I started cleaning residential homes and apartments with a partner a few nights a week, thankful for the reprieve from motherhood duties. Since my husband worked from home as an independent computer technician, we required no babysitter. This gave me extra time for visits to the gym with friends and an occasional trip to Victoria's Secret to prepare for naughty adventures.

Our daughter's broken leg mended. Her cast was moved at the end of the month. Almost immediately, she began to have severe behavioral problems. I would wake up in the morning to outbursts unlike anything I'd ever seen from a toddler. After dark, she had night terrors so bad that our doctor reluctantly put her on a mild sedative. My husband assured me that she was just having a very bad case of the “terrible twos.” Other parents I spoke with agreed. I let it go. I let everything go back then. My daughter calmed down eventually and my life went on its blind course as usual for two years.

But my husband had driven the nails into his own coffin the day he asked me to go back to work. By that point, I'd cleaned enough spaces to know that there are things you will only find in certain areas of a home. I kept my house in better shape on a daily basis than any of my clients.

There is a saying in the housekeeping industry I came to know regarding a job well done: “Not a hair out of place.” And it was a hair that eventually damned him.

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I went to clean my daughter's room as usual one bright afternoon. Sunlight splashed across the bed as I took off the unicorn-patterned blanket. A dark strand of pubic hair stood out in vivid relief against the pale yellow sheets. I stood gazing at it, frozen. Then my shaking fingers picked up the single strand, recognizing it as the black pubic hair I cleaned out of the bathtub after my husband’s showers. Both my daughter and I are redheads.

This was no smoking gun, I told myself at first. It was just a stupid hair, a little thing.

But a voice mocked me inside: Isn't that what Jena told you the tarot reader said? That you’d find the devil in a little thing? Isn't this exactly what all of them were fucking warning you about when they told you to leave him?

In the end, I would come to understand the psychics had been warning me about something far worse.

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I cleaned the rest of the house. Then I packed two bags and a file of important documents. I also put together a third bag of groceries from the kitchen cabinets and stocked the cooler with food out of the fridge. I picked up my daughter from Pre-K, then drove out of the city limits without looking back. Along the way, I stopped to withdraw most of our savings from the bank.

I called my husband from a payphone that night in some town I can't recall. I just know it had been desolate enough to match my mood. I told him I wanted a divorce. I was not surprised that he did not ask why. He likely knew what happened as soon as he stepped into the house. Demons have a sixth sense that way.

My husband said he would still like to see our daughter and wanted to set up a visitation. I told him I would think about it. A part of me was still not convinced my suspicions were fully correct. This idiocy did not last very long.

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I was bombarded with calls from my husband. Within days, I found myself agreeing to let him keep our daughter two weekends a month. The visits began that same week. I dropped her off at my former house with a sense of foreboding so strong I nearly drove off before he came outside. Then I met his eyes and suddenly realized how silly I was being. He was still her father even if I no longer wanted to be his wife.

I left with a vague headache. When it departed four hours later, I found myself on my sofa with no memory of driving home or coming inside. Frantic, I got up with the intent to go get my daughter. My phone began vibrating as soon as the thought crossed my mind. I spoke with my husband for a while. When I surfaced again Sunday afternoon, I was at the house watching the two of them descend down the front steps to my car.

Disoriented from this new memory loss, I watched him tuck our eerily silent daughter into her car seat. When he turned to face me, I began screaming hysterically. My husband grabbed me by the lapels of my jacket and pulled me into a fierce hug. I felt his lips kiss my right temple. My hysteria fled.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t able to keep you,” he said. “We would have had many children together.”

I drove home thinking the gesture was sweet.

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A month and a half after we settled into our new apartment, my daughter began telling her new Pre-K teacher she had a secret she could not tell. During these times, she would cry hysterically or hit herself. She also started making drawings that looked like male genitalia.

During one of these incidents, they took her to the school counselor. The woman wiped her face with a tissue and asked what was wrong. My daughter replied that she missed lying on top of her father.

I was summoned to the school that day for a meeting. The principal, counselor and her teacher were all in a room with my daughter along with a social worker when I arrived. I explained that her father and I were separated for complicated reasons. When this was met with silence, I asked my daughter what she meant when she said she “missed lying on top of Daddy.” She would not respond. The professionals present also tried to no avail.

Exasperated, I said, “Did you ever lay on top of Daddy when I was around?”

“No, Mommy,” my daughter said. “Daddy said he didn’t want anybody watching us.”

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I never made a formal accusation because I had no proof. It's not for lack of trying. I asked one of the few remaining friends I had to break into the house with my spare keys while he was out of town overnight at a business conference. After copying the hard drive of his computer, we found no credible evidence of wrongdoing. There were, however, four disturbing old pictures among our family photos.

One was of a decapitated child sprawled in the snow several feet from its head. The others showcased a man with a hat obscuring most of his face as he sat at a table eating what appeared to be a baked human infant. Though the photographs appeared to be from the late 1940s, there was no mistaking the garnet ring with its intricate silver band glittering on the man’s right pinkie finger. It was the only piece of jewelry my husband owned when I met him.

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In an act of desperation, I confronted him.

“I know what you've been doing,” I said over the phone.

“You've always had an active imagination,” he replied indifferently.

“I have proof,” I lied.

The silence stretched on.

“What do you want?” His voice no longer held the air of pretense. The words vomited up from an abyss so dark, my illumination was instantaneous.

I knew he planned to eventually consume my child. The abuse was a precursor, much like the conditioning he used to convince me to become his incubator. He would behead our daughter first, then cook her. Just like the others. And there had been others. I was sure of it.

“I want full custody,” I said. “We won't see you again. If you don't agree to this, I will make sure you will rot in a cage for the rest of your life for these murders.”

His lack of response was all the confirmation I needed.

“My lawyer will be in touch,” I said before severing the connection.

I sat there in the dark for a long while with my cellphone clutched in my trembling hands.

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Just before the final divorce papers were signed, my husband decided to fight it. His lawyers called an emergency meeting at their sleek, expensive office. It was the first occasion we'd seen each other in the eight months since I left. I could not look at him. Instead, I settled at the table and stared at my clasped hands on my lap.

For the duration of the meeting, no one spoke except our lawyers. They mediated over who should have custody and on what grounds.

Eventually, my husband held up a hand. “I should have full custody. There’s no question about it. She’s mentally unfit.”

His voice was slick and persuasive. An unseen force pulsed between the syllables. Despite being aware of it, I felt my resolve weakening. Out of the corner of my eye I noticed my lawyer began writing the words “full custody” over and over on her notepad.

“I want you to bring my daughter back to the house tonight,” he said to me. “Then you can leave and go wherever you want. No strings. I think that’s fair.”

My daughter.

The words evoked a flash of our daughter that day in the emergency room with a broken leg and too quiet eyes. I remembered the way the lies rolled off my husband's tongue even though he'd snapped the bone for the hell of it.

I thought about how seductive it must have felt to him, inflicting pain on an innocent. All right under my nose. I never questioned. To me, it made me worse because I didn't stop it sooner. These tides of black fury rolling inside me evoked a poisonous clarity. I knew my daughter would not survive the week if I left her in his care.

“I've indulged you in this nonsense long enough,” my husband continued.

Our lawyers nodded in agreement, their eyelids heavy.

“All I'm interested in is the girl. This is my right as her father.”

In my head, I heard a low vibrating sound. As it rang in my ears, I felt darkness flowing from my midsection, spreading icy fingers over my entire body.

I raised my eyes and glared at him with a hatred so caustic, it scorched the center of the Void that birthed him. The demon could not withstand it. He jerked backward in his chair from the force of the heart attack, then fell to the floor. I noticed my lawyer backing away from me while crossing herself. The gesture was lost to the others in the chaos of the moment.

As I stood in the hallway later, I heard the coroner say he'd never seen a body where rigor had set in so rapidly.

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We have been making progress with my daughter's therapist, although she never mentions anything about a secret. I found that once we moved into our current house, she stopped talking about it entirely.

I think she has forgotten.

My daughter loves me very much. She also has an aura, although I am told she can choose not to have one if she desires. I am teaching her to live in the Light, where beings do not feed on the pain and suffering of others.

Angel Rose has been searching her contacts for others who have experience raising a halfling child. Since she says my daughter’s cards are positive for the moment, I am hopeful.

I know now that some are born to the Dark.

Others, like myself, are made. I did not recognize what I’d become until a drunk driver ran me off the road one evening not long after my husband’s death. I leapt out of the car after struggling with the airbag, glaring at the cowardly departing vehicle. It veered sharply to the right and struck a tree. It took a team two hours to remove the man from the driver's seat. Advanced rigor had made his hands into vice grips on the steering wheel after he died from a heart attack.

My daughter lapsed into that same haunting silence during the entire experience. On some level, she recognizes that I am now like her father.

For this reason, I am hardly ever without my shades and practice Buddhist meditation to control my anger at all times. I am also careful not to gaze directly at my daughter when I am feeling any emotion other than love.

When the time comes, I will explain these little things to her. For now, I go about my life and try not to think about this. Most days, I succeed.

Most nights, I do not.