Hera’s Hall of Shame
by Rachel McCarren
Private Residence
Litochoro, Greece, 402 00
Year 2023
When Zeus leaves to lie with his whores, with his concubines, with his other women, with his male admirers, with his most pretentious peers and competitors, with his other sisters (and brothers—though they’d never admit it), or with the nymphs he favors whose bodies are soft and androgynous as flowers, blessed with same the gift of shapeshifting and genderfluid performance as he is—I lie here, plop powdered rosewater loukoumi between my teeth, chew while I surf live-streams. My shins rest on the shoulders of my pet lioness, Lysistrata, stretched across the floor at the foot of the sofa, purring in her sleep. My feet rise and fall with her breath. My phone blips—it's a text from him.
Out with friends. Be back late.
No shit—I’m sure he's out gallivanting with his new favorite mortal mistress, that thick bitch with the platinum hair and the artificial ass and tits—but I could care less. Mortal beauty only ever lasts as long as your typical television series—then he’s back to scanning supermarket magazine tabloids and TMZ for the next batch of up-and-coming-of-age assets.
I swear on Medusa’s head, I’m not jealous of him. I may have been, once, in those early days, when he would leave me, a perfect beauty, to go sailing on the wind in search of strange; that curious species that only grows in the wombs of mortals, in the uncurated wilderness of urges—flawed, misshapen, resilient, disfigured, asymmetric, tortured, rough—really though, underneath all that pomp and fluff, he’s just a special kind of tolerated rapist. His beauty is persuasive, and the power he possesses and proudly passes on to his kin is seen by mortals as a blessing (and not for the curse that it truly is). Women are said to pray for him to appear to them, to invite him in knowingly—but I doubt they know exactly what they’re up against after those first few moments of silent submission.
I’ve never submitted to him.
That’s probably why our marriage has lasted into the age we’re in. I know him, I know what haunts him, what fears drive him—pathetic, never-satiated, narcissistic, fiendish, floundering, incestuous Zeus. The man loves a challenge, a little sass, back-talk, a face slap, a crude, knotted rope whip across the back. He’s a glutton for punishment, even more so than our hard-browed and brooding brother Hades. At least the Prince of Darkness can get a hard on just from a pity-smile thrown his way—Zeus must create an entire narrative of pain, he must create the illusion that he hates himself (more than our mother ever could) before he can fuck anyone, as anything. So afraid he is of becoming irrelevant, these days he’s stooped to pin-pricking condoms, all to brood a bastard or two along the way (just to land them empty-handed and delusional in an insane asylum somewhere in a foreign land, raving about their supernatural origin and fame). Sometimes, I swear he strays just to come back and fall limp at my feet, like a runaway hound. He craves shame, it’s what drives him. I make him tell me what a bad husband he’s been, tickle the soft spot under his chin. Then, I let him come—quaking, weakened, crawling on all fours, flesh spent, begging, mutilated, drooling, dragging himself on his haunches like Cerberus, our brother’s sweet, spoiled, stupid mutt—whimpering and dripping blood on the marble steps leading up from i plateía to my temple doors—and I can’t help but let the damn fool in.
Rachel McCarren (she/her) is a storyteller from Butler, Pennsylvania. She is currently based in Dublin, Ireland, where she works full-time as a makeup artist. Rachel received her BSc in Creative Writing from Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania, and her MFA in Creative Writing from Carlow University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Through Carlow's international MFA program, she studied abroad in Ireland, completing two summer residencies at Trinity College Dublin. Her work has appeared in The Honest Ulsterman, The Broken Spine, Goat's Milk Mag, Lupercalia Press's Vulcanalia, Anti-Heroin Chic Mag, The Pittsburgh City Paper, The Unexposed Mag, and more. Her debut book of poems, Necromantic, is now available on Amazon.