(///infirmary.deride.budgie – Island of Serifos, Greece)
She was going to be last up again. It wasn’t Miss Higgins’ fault, she knew that. But it was really annoying being called Zenia Zylyftari.
That was probably why she was going to do everything possible to make her appearance at the art expo one for the ages. Her fellow teens would be tired and bored when she came to speak. So give them something spectacular. People love a memorable dessert.
The art expo was the chance for the sixth form art class to show their work to their contemporaries. Everyone in her year would sit in the hall as the artists filed up one by one to wow them and try to take the top prize. It was the event all the art students looked forward to. More so than their audience, they imagined.
Zenia’s alphabetical dysfunction had caused her more than delay in the past. Schoolchildren could be merciless, and over the years had either feigned sleeping in front of her in tribute to her ZZ initials or had donned fake beards to reference some band of ageing rockers she had previously never heard of. Teen life was not easy for someone with a name over which she had no control.
So she had dived into her Greek background to find something which she could relate to, lighting on a misunderstood mythological figure, someone else who through no fault of her own was regarded as an outsider, someone who had developed to become a threat. Zenia hadn’t gone that far in people’s minds, but she felt a kinship as she worked on her masterpiece.
And yet, as she viewed it the day before, and admired how good it was, she knew it was just that. Good. Not great. And great was what she had wanted.
A new idea came to her. She loved it, this was what would transform it. And she forgot about sleep as she worked feverishly throughout the night to bring it to life.
When the expo started it was hard to keep concentration. It was a hot day. Given that the work was produced by people studying art, she found it curiously bland and unexciting. She liked Melinda’s papier mâché budgie, she admired Charlie’s scale model of a hospital but was annoyed that he had labelled it as infirmary as it showed he had watched too much Netflix, and she wanted to deride Cecily’s oil painting of fruit because it was so old-fashioned, but she was forced to appreciate the brushstrokes.
By the time her turn came round, she could see that people’s focus had long since departed. Always the same for her. But she knew that what she was about to show people would take their breath away.
Zenia had prepared a lengthy preamble, an explanation of why she had chosen to create what she had created. But she could see that everyone just wanted to leave at this point. So why delay. After the briefest of pauses, she took hold of the cloth and with a dramatic flourish, pulled it off and announced: ‘Medusa’s Head’!
People sat up to attention immediately and strained to look at it. Even Miss Higgins could see the attention to detail. The facial expression, the mix of emotions she had captured to reinforce the complexity of the mythological creature. The piercing and sinister fixed stare of her eyes. And then there were the snakes, the scales and tongues of each one clear for all to see, the range of green tints she had used across them giving her hairs individuality.
Zenia paused again. Now for the piece de resistance, her late addition. She said nothing. She left out her reasons for creating her, she didn’t dwell on Medusa’s complex history. She simply reached for the switch on the motor which she had added only the day before, and switched it on.
All the effort paid off. The snakes now started to wriggle and writhe gently on the top of Medusa’s head. The class gasped.
But there was one more thing. One more button press and Medusa’s eyes started to glow, bright red light beaming out from them. And what a reaction. This stunned the hall into total silence. People sat frozen in open-mouthed awe. Miss Higgins was as speechless as the rest of them. It was a total triumph.
As Zenia switched the eyes off and recovered her Medusa, the bell rang for the end of the session. Still nobody moved. Well it wasn’t a surprise really, it was such an amazing piece of art she wasn’t at all shocked that people were still sitting silently, contemplating it. Zenia took Medusa, collected her bag and left the hall. The others would follow soon she was sure, once they had come to terms with her genius.
She couldn’t wait to go home and show her parents.
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