#mangled mythology

            Mangled Mythology First of all, it wasn’t a box. I realize That’s not the heart of the matter, but when history has spent several thousand years blamin’ you for all human misery, you get to be persnickety about details. It was a jar. A great big sealed jar, heavy as judgment and ugly as a tax collector’s hat. But “Pandora’s jar” don’t sing, so poets changed it to a box and then…

            Mangled Mythology Before we get started, I’d like to say one thing on behalf of snakes: they are better company than most heroes. A snake will hiss at you honest. A hero will smile, ask for directions, and then try to remove your head in the name of destiny. I’ve been called a monster, a horror, a cursed woman, a cautionary tale, and once, by a poet with more confidence than…

            Mangled Mythology I’ve been blamed for a lot of things in my life, and some of them were even legitimate. I built the labyrinth. I admit that. I am not proud of it, though I will say the workmanship was exceptional. A man may regret a structure without denyin’ the corners were true. I’ve also been accused of arrogance, schemin’, excessive cleverness, poor workplace boundaries, and,…

            Mangled Mythology Let me start off by sayin’ I didn’t ask for the labyrinth. That fact gets lost in the retellin’, mostly because poets enjoy architecture more than fairness. They talk about twisting halls, dark passages, stone corridors, dead ends, echoes, and the terrible beast waitin’ at the center. They make it sound like I drew up the plans myself, sharpened a pencil, and said,…

Everyone knows about the Belows. Once a city exists for long enough, when human lives wear grooves into the natural flow of the world’s magic, a Below forms Underneath the city.  

Humans leave grooves in the flow of magic, but in between the grooves magic pools and stagnates. The Cities Below are the real-world representations of the stagnation. Every man-eater or dark creature you can dream of was first born in a City Below. Werewolves under Greece, Vampires under England, even more obscure creatures like the Wendigos in Canada and the Chupacabras in Puerto Rico. There are Cities Below, with their monsters and shadows and darkness, and the Cities Above filled with humans and only the darkness and evil humans can create. Casters come and Seal off the Belows. People move on with their days. Such is life.

J. Rolfe Leach

‘Leda and the decoy: a chance encounter’ (2019)