Free Story: Fury Shit

RATED M FOR MATURE. I AM NOT KIDDING.

Jason of Iolcus

Take a left at the guy rolling the rock up the hill

I’m the one under the rotten boat stern that keeps falling, crushing me, and then resetting itself to go again

Tartarus

Hades

Date: I lost track a while ago, sorry

Alecto

Office of Erinyes Recruitment

Fields of Asphodel

Hades

Alecto,

Thank you for your letter of… whenever it was. I certainly hope I’m responding in a timely fashion for the sake of my dearest spouse. Anything I can do to make up for the wrongs I perpetuated upon them when last they and I… 

… Ugh, you know what? Fuck it. Yes. Yes, you should hire Medea. They’d make a fantastic Erinye and you already know why. But if you need confirmation, fine. I have nothing better to do than be crushed repeatedly by a perpetually regenerating version of the ship I once sailed to glory. 

Where would you like me to start? The potions? The sorcery?

(Note: said potions and sorceries were carried out with full knowledge of reference to aid reference in his quest for the Golden Fleece, see appendix A). The fratricide? Cannibalism (note: see previous note and appendix A)?

Or would you like a description of my fiancées’s slow, brutal death from poison, poison administered via a dress given to Cruesa by Medea as a wedding present (note: in becoming affianced to Cruesa, reference broke a vow he had made to applicant vis a vis eternal love thus incurring punishment as determined appropriate by applicant)? Of the way she murdered our sons, our beautiful boys, snapping their noble necks as though they were worthless toys and throwing them down from a golden chariot, shattering every single one of their bones upon impact (note: forensics suggest the boys were dead for hours before they were thrown from the chariot and had been poisoned; King Croesus was the primary suspect as he had made no secret of his desire for revenge, but died before he could be questioned).

I do not think you’ll find a being more furious than Medusa anywhere on this planet, in this solar system, in the cosmos. That they could so openly and viciously attack those they once claimed to love speaks volumes about the iciness of their heart and the impartiality of whatever is left of their soul. You might as well direct it before it wreaks havoc on any more innocent lives (note: innocent, huh?).

Jason of Iolcus

“It’s interesting,” Medea said, walking a slow, languorous circle around the man who lay on the floor bleeding from multiple small, but deep, puncture wounds in his chest, “that so many people think the definition of fury is really angry. My ex-husband did, the absolute rube. Imagine,” they said, arriving at his head once again, stopping, waiting for his entire body to contract, to attempt to shield itself even in the absolute delerium of pain, from a blow he was certain was coming and dreaded past the pink foam bubbling out between his lips and soaking his expensive linen suit. “Imagine,” they said again, crouching down, balancing without effort on the pinpoints of their sharp stilettos, leaning over so he could see the smile that showed all of their teeth, “having a mind so limited you can’t comprehend the idea an emotion named after goddesses of vengeance might be a little more powerful than really angry.” 

 “But… I… I didn’t… I don’t…” he coughed. Choked. 

“Here’s the thing about fury,” Medea said, tapping him on the nose with her first finger. “The recipient, in this case you, of the curse or punishment or,” she circled her hand vaguely, “doesn’t have to. You don’t have to feel an iota of guilt or responsibility for us to show up and ruin your day. Or the rest of your life. All we care  about is the initiating party being furious enough for it to jiggle your thread.”

Medea scratched their chin with the back of their thumb. They inhaled deeply. “I could let you live,” they mused. The man whimpered. “Honestly, death is the easy way because wow, she is pissed and she has receipts. Ouch…” Medea closed their eyes for a moment and ran their tongue over their canines. They flowed over the man, setting one knee on either side of his waist, straightening until their spine cracked. “Alas, I have somewhere I have to be. Lucky you. Enjoy Tartarus. I’ve heard it’s lovely,” Medea giggled, “this time of year. Yes, this will hurt and no, it won’t be quick.”

Interview Transcript: Helen of Sparta

Tisiphone: What do you think are your greatest strengths?

Helen: Well, once I decide on a goal, I’ll do whatever I have to in order to achieve it. And, if I’m lucky enough to earn my place among the Erinyes, your goals will become my goals. That means whoever earns the wrath and the thunder will get what’s coming to them and I’ll be seeing to that personally. I wore a crown once upon a time, but it was the Spartan crown. That means I don’t mind getting dirty, I don’t mind getting bloody, and I don’t mind ripping throats out with my teeth. 

Tisiphone: Can you give me an example of a time you went above and beyond for something someone else may have considered unimportant or minor? 

Helen: I once started a land war in Asia to get rid of a husband.

Tisiphone: Really? Whose? 

Helen: My best friend’s. Mine would have been a nice bonus. Unfortunately they both survived, but their absences gave us time to get everything into place to off them when they returned home and freed up other members of our girl gang. We all moved to a commune on Lesbos. Can’t recommend it highly enough. 

Tisiphone: So if I told you we had a client who was furious because his boyfriend broke a pencil he bought while he was on vacation in Japan that was limited edition but, in the end, just a pencil, you would…

Helen: Is he very angry or is he furious?

Tisiphone: Excellent question. Legit Furious. 

Helen: Oh. I’d cut his boyfriend’s special pencil off. 

Tisiphone: You start on Monday.

Interview Transcript: Clytemnestra of Mycenea

Megaera: Tell me a little bit more about yourself. What do you think would make you a great Erinye?

Clytemnestra: I was married to fucking Agamemnon. 

Megaera: When can you start?

“Do you think,” Helen asked, stretching her arms over her head. They liked it when she did that. It emphasized her narrow waist and the swell of her hips. “That the Erinyes are goddesses or psychopomps?”

“What?” He looked up at her from where his face was buried in her cleavage, though he wasn’t distracted enough for his hands to let go of her ass. 

“Do you think the Erinyes are goddesses or psychopomps?” 

She felt his eyelashes flutter against her skin before his lips moved to her belly. “Who cares?”

“I do.” 

He lifted his head. He frowned, felt around for his glasses, shoved them on to his face, slightly askew, raked his hair out of his face. 

He actually is sort of cute, Helen thought. Too bad he has It coming. 

“What?”

“I do,” Helen said. “I read your paper. I’m a mythology nerd. I’m invested.

“You… read my paper and you want to talk about it now?” he asked, running a finger down one side of her rib cage, her flank. 

“Oh, I mean, talk nerdy to me, baby.” She leaned forward and kissed him. He had stale-coffee breath. 

Were I but in possession of my own agency and not merely an agent of Fury.

I would rip his spine out for that. 

“Well. I mean…”

“I wonder if the student who told the dean you stole her paper could give me a more nuanced explanation.” 

“Hold on —” He bolted upright and started feeling around for his pants. “I’ve never stolen anything from anyone!”

“We know,” Helen said, covering a yawn with her forearm. “I think it’s the C from last semester.” 

“She failed a test and didn’t turn in her final essay!” he squeaked as Helen stooped to remove a knife from the folds of her sweater. 

“I’m going to have to get this dry cleaned,” she lamented. “Would it kill you to vacuum once in a while? And yes, we know all of that too. We don’t have control over how people think, by the way. Or what they feel. We just answer the calls that sound like destructive and agonizing fun. For you not us. To be clear. Put your pants on, no one should die with their ass hanging out.” 

He did as he was told and started to get up but Helen grabbed him by the hair and threw him against the wall, then held him there with a hand around his throat. 

“I don’t understand,” he rasped. 

“What’s not to understand? We’re furies, she’s furious. Oh, and you’re wrong, by the way. We’re goddesses. Psychopomp, I’m insulted.” Helen kicked him in the knee. He howled. “Oh, now you’re talkative. Should have known. Nestra, I’m bored, can you come take the trash out?”

“Oh, I see, it’s all sex and Stand Up at the Thalia until he starts whining,” Clytemnestra said, crawling out from under the desk, brushing dust off her shoulders. “This is such bullshit.” 

“You said you didn’t feel like making out with lunch today. I asked you three times.” 

Clytemnestra threw an arm around Helen’s waist and pulled her close, kissing the spot where her neck met her shoulder. She pulled away frowning after only a brief moment. “You smell like stale coffee.”

“Ugh, I know. The faster you flay him, the faster I can shower.” 

“Flay?” the man burbled.

“Those were the instructions we got,” Clytemnestra said. “I’m actually impressed, usually when someone’s that angry, the target actually fucked their shit up but this kid has a massive hate boner for you about something that is one hundred percent her fault. Gen Z, am I right?”

She left his face and cranial nerves for last. So he could watch. And so they could ask him if Charon had finally gotten a new robe. 

He hadn’t. 

“This is why he’s still single.” 

“Not because he’s a skeleton who ferries people over a haunted river to the lands of the dead?” 

“The fact he doesn’t live in Nyx’s basement should give him an advantage over the majority of Olympians.” Clytemnestra glanced at the gelatinous remains slowly sliding down the wall. “I wonder if he lived in his mother’s basement.“

“Hey, Nestra?” 

“Hmmm?” 

“Babe, I love your body. It is my absolute favorite thing in the cosmos.” Helen ran her palms over Clytemnestra’s shoulders and around to her back. “But, I feel like we’ve talked about you maybe wearing a shirt when we’re Erinyeing.”

“We did talk about it and I told you that shirts impede my range of murder motion. Plus, it’s my signature at this point.”

“Is it, though?” 

Clytemnestra rolled her eyes and took her wife’s hand, twirling her into an embrace. “Listen, brat.” She walked her fingers up Helen’s spine until she cradled the base of the other woman’s skull. “Do I need to prove how much I love you?”

“I wouldn’t be opposed. Except that I smell like stale coffee and you’re covered in blood.” 

“That couch has seen better days.” 

“Because we just seduced someone on it and then killed him.”

“You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

Intern Information Sheet

Name: Iphigenia of Mycenea

Pronouns: she/her

Mother’s Name: Clytemnestra of Mycenae

Father’s Name: Agamemnon of Mycenea That Fucking Bastard

Cause of Death: Sacrificed by father to appease gods on eve of Trojan War

Cause of Fury: see above

References: Clytemnestra of Mycenae (mother), Helen of Sparta (aunt), Medea of Colchis 

Mission Rating: TBD

“You’re sure we can’t make an exception?” Medea asked. “Because I’m feeling a lot of fury and I’m pretty sure if I add it to the collective, we can do some permanent damage.”

The warehouse had been swallowed by shadows hours earlier, winter embracing darkness almost as easily as Persephone had when offered the opportunity to add some goth to her wardrobe.   

“They seem furious too.” Iphigenia knelt between her mother and Helen, small between the two goddesses who had spent centuries, millennia, feeding on fury, righteous and misplaced, massive and microscopic, mobilized and utterly unconscious. 

“It seems that way,” Clytemnestra agreed, putting a hand on Iphegenia’s shoulder. “But you need to dig through the noise. Through the volume and the words. Shatter the mirror with which they reflect what the world wants to see and use the shards to excavate, to pare down, to cut away until you find truth.”

“That one,” Helen said, pointing to a woman at the heart of the crowd, one wearing a red sweater, hair so freshly dyed she was sweating ombré. “Try her.” 

Iphigenia nodded and took her mothers’ hands. Medea lay their palm against the girl’s back. 

Tendrils of sickly mauve and acid chartreuse emerged from Iphegenia’s forehead, her chest, her belly. They were delicate, hesitant, careful as they slithered across the space, weaving around and through the members of the assembled crowd.

“Good,” Medea said. “Very good, little one.” 

“Soon, you won’t need them anymore,” Helen explained. “But keep them as long as you like. Theatrics never hurt anyone. Well, any of us, anyway. And a terrified mortal is a compliant mortal.”

“Don’t underestimate the thrill and terror of the chase though,” Clytemnestra said. “A fury has to eat and it’s all much better fresh than regurgitated.” 

“Ew,” Medea and Helen said together. 

“Helen, do you remember what happened the first time you tried to eat fear?” Clytemnestra asked. 

Helen grimaced and rubbed her stomach, blanching.

“I’m there,” Iphegenia said.

“Excellent, sweetheart,” Clytemnestra said. “Now pin her down.” 

Iphigenia inhaled deeply, then exhaled for the same count. She closed her eyes. 

One of the chartreuse tendrils wheeled back and then drove itself into the woman’s spine. 

Through her body and out through the center of her sternum. 

“Oops,” Iphegenia said.

“That’s alright, it’s fine, she’ll be fine,” Clytemnestra said. She shrugged at the other furies. Medea snorted. Helen laced her fingers through Iphegenia’s. “But why don’t we find… her.” She redirected Iphegenia’s attention to a woman on the outskirts of the crowd. One who was looking right at them. 

Iphigenia nodded and withdrew her tentacles slightly, then shot them back out at her new target. She twined them around the woman’s jeans, crawling slowly enough that the mortal didn’t notice until her hands were pinned and by the time she gathered herself to scream, her mouth was full of writhing black and potion green sludge. As the goddesses watched, the color melted into the woman’s tongue and membranes, shifted up beneath her skin, filmed over her irises. 

“Fury,” Iphigenia said, after a few additional moments. “I feel fury.” 

“Do you?” Helen asked. “Are you sure?” 

“I…” Iphegenia’s brows drew together. She shivered. “No. What’s that smell?” 

“What smell?”

“Rotten flowers… lilies, I think. Vinegar. Milk that’s gone off. Farts. Who farted?” 

“She found it,” Medea said, tugging on Clytemnestra’s braids.

 “Of course she did,” Clytemnestra grinned. 

“What is it?” Iphigenia asked again. “Oh, wait. That’s performative indignation. She’s not furious. She’s just a bigoted cunt.” 

“Exactly. And also, language.” 

“Mother.”

“Daughter.” 

“Here’s the thing,” Medea said. “We’ll check the majority of the room. We’re obligated to do so because sure, we’re villains, but even villains live by a code.”

“Are we though?” Iphigenia asked. 

“We don’t take sides,” Medea reminded her. “We serve whomever is the most furious. When we can be arsed. That’s hardly fair. It’s definitely not just. It’s fun though. But my guess is we’ll find here what we always find: a bunch of absolute bullshit. A multitude of mouthpieces spouting trash fire garbage because it makes them feel good to be part of the collective that’s currently on top.”

“Fury is not by definition righteous,” Helen said. “But there is a certain something about it. Bright. Sharp. It dances. But it forces you to dance alone. It’s too hot, too honed, too vicious to form a collective.”

“Look at the edges,” Clytemnestra advised. “In the dark, quiet places.”

“Look inside,” Medea recommended. 

“Look deep,” Helen said. “Deeper than any well should go.”

“If it’s there, that’s where you find it,” Clytemnestra finished. 

“Look again,” Helen advised. 

Iphegenia looked again. “It’s not there,” she said. “It seems like it would be, like it should be, with the signs and the pins and the chanting and the stiff jaw but it’s not.”

“And that’s why we’ll win,” Medea said. “Are you ready?” 

“I’m ready,” Iphigenia said. She blinked and the tentacles retracted, curling back up into her sternum, around her abdomen, up her arms. 

“Then let’s bring fury to the cowards who can’t muster it for the cause they claim to be willing to die for.”

In the end, they were not ready to die for it, though some of them did. 

Medea stomped and kicked and when they had their victims down, they crushed bones with their fists and pulled hearts from their chests and intestines from bellies and when they got a bit peckish halfway through, they had a few bites of organ meat and then continued cutting a swath through the warehouse and some of the survivors swore later one of the perpetrators was riding in a golden chariot. Medea denied it even to their friends because who had the money for a golden chariot, seriously, especially after they had blown their budget on magnificent heels. 

Helen and Clytemnestra stabbed and slashed as they were wont to do, careful to peek inside the layers of skin and muscle to make certain no actual fury was hiding in a fold or under an organ; so far as they could tell, none did. Helen, wanting to encourage her step-daughter, shook some of her own tentacles loose, thrilled to find that they had grown barbs during their hibernation, and used them to tear moral outrage, words of gods, and more moral outrage directly from those who couldn’t run fast enough to escape them. Clytemnestra laughed when she saw her lover transform, remembering the days after Troy, the days those many arms had held her, the days and nights Helen had needed to touch every inch of her at once, when their own rage, too incandescent for mortal bodies had burned away everything they had been and made them something new, something feral and wild and eternal. 

Iphigenia took her time, not only because she wanted to do it all properly, correctly, but because she found herself savoring what she wrought, taking pleasure not only in killing and feeding but in the act of uncovering, the act of discovery, in dissection. In sorting through all that was inside these humans, these hypocrites, these conflicted masses of meat and electricity, in seeing what she could change, if she could change them by pressing this neuron, shaking this gland, watching that artery bleed. Could she force truth? Could she craft kindness? Could she command the world?

She could. They could. 

They could craft beauty, bring peace, shine light.

But then there would be no games left to play. 

No destruction left to wreak. 

No fury left to render.

And what would be the point of that?