The Everlasting Wound of Polyphemus by David Anaxagoras
The museum warehouse was more than ample space for Polyphemus, and he could make it a true home with just a little effort. That’s what Gale, his social worker from the Department of Mythical Beings, said. She was helping him to settle in on his first night. She had found him the accommodations and even miraculously parlayed it into a job doing heavy lifting for the museum, which seemed like a great fit if not for his blindness.
“You’re not blind,” Gale reminded him.
Pol adjusted the bandage over his single, large eye.
“Have you ever been stabbed in the eye with a sharpened, burning log?”
Gale didn’t answer, but he heard the whisper of paper turning and the scratch of a ball-point pen, nearly out of ink.
Pol eased himself down on the floor and leaned slowly against the wall. He had learned to be cautious. Walls were likely to give way suddenly. The world had a habit of crumbling around him.
“Comfortable?” Gale asked.
He tightened his bandage. “They really don’t mind if I stay here?”
“The museum is happy to have you. Spend the weekend getting settled in, and on Monday you’ll be fresh and ready for your new job.”
“I don’t see what good I can do.”
More whisper-scratching.
“What are you writing?” Pol asked.
“Documenting. It’s what social workers do. Before I go, do you want to take your bandage off? Permanently?”
Pol shifted. The floor was hard. And the wall suddenly didn’t seem so strong. Was it bending under his weight? He quickly sat up.
A warm hand fell on his knee. He hadn’t felt a gentle touch in millennia.
“The doctor said you were healed, remember,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong with—”
“I think you should go, now!”
Polyphemus had used his grumpy ogre voice. He didn’t like that voice. But he also didn’t like being told there was nothing wrong with his eye when there was definitely something wrong with his eye.
Gale’s shoes clicked across the floor to the exit. She paused at the door a long time. Finally, she left.
Pol arrived at the museum with Aphrodite on his shoulder, one hand on her smooth marble hip to steady her.
The Director’s Assistant’s Intern led him to the new exhibit with her voice and Pol placed Aphrodite on her feet just where the Intern said. With a little encouragement he nudged her into exactly the right position, then brought three more statues.
“I see you’re getting along.” It was Gale. He knew it was Gale before she spoke. She had a way of walking that wasn’t rushed like the modern world. Her steps were heavier, deliberate. It reminded him of women he’d known long ago.
“Gale. I’m sorry about last week,” Pol said quickly.
“I forgive you, Pol. And I shouldn’t have pushed you when you weren’t ready.”
Pol inhaled. It felt like the first breath he’d taken since that night.
“You brought cold cuts,” Pol said, taking another sniff.
“I brought a whole picnic basket.”
Pol and Gale sat under a sycamore in the park. He could hear young children laugh-screaming not too far away. Three thousand years ago he’d have popped them into his mouth like grapes. He wasn’t that guy anymore.
They ate in silence for a bit, then Pol asked, “Why are you so nice to me?”
“It’s my job to take care of mythical beings.”
“Do all social workers take their clients on picnics?”
She stopped chewing. Wax paper rustled. She was putting her sandwich away.
“You’re right,” she said, her voice even. “It’s not appropriate. I seem to keep forgetting myself around you. It’s just that you’re a special case—”
“You mean hopeless.”
“Pol—”
“Because I’m an ugly brute.”
“Don’t say that about yourself, Pol.”
“The last time I looked at anything with this eye, all I saw were men who hated me. I forged the thunderbolt of Zeus! I built the walls of Mycenae!”
“Is that why you won’t take your blindfold off? So you don’t have to see yourself in their faces? In their fear?”
“All they see is a monster.”
“I don’t, Poly.”
“Bah!” he said and stalked away.
Pol sat on floor of the museum, across from Aphrodite. She was marble, but she was the only woman close to his size he’d met in thousands of years. And she was a good listener.
“I cried out for my brothers,” he said. “Nobody came to help me. Do you know what it is to be injured and left alone in the dark?”
He held the nozzle of a box of wine to his lips and drained it.
“Pol?”
He jumped. How had he allowed Gale to sneak up on him? Stupid wine.
“Pol, don’t get up. I just wanted to let you know I’ve been transferred out of Mythical Beings. Your new social worker will come by tomorrow to introduce themself. Goodbye, Poly.”
Pol had never been struck by Zeus’s thunderbolt, but he was certain this is what it felt like.
Gale’s footsteps echoed away. The air thinned, absent her presence. It was hard to even draw a breath.
Pol stumbled after Gale on his oafish legs. She was in the parking lot before he caught up to her.
“Gale, I—”
“Dammit, Poly! Look at me. I want to be seen. Don’t you?”
Before he lost his nerve, he pulled his bandage away from his face.
Polyphemus opened his eye.
The world was a smear.
He fought to not close his eye again. It watered, but he kept it open.
Gale’s hands took his.
His vision shimmered. The smear became a blur, and the blur became a haze. His breath quickened.
“Why did I wait so long?”
Finally, the haze lifted.
What he found, sharp and clear, was love staring back at him with one large beautiful brown eye.
The eye blinked, and Gale smiled.
Trembling, joyful, Polyphemus said, “I see you.”
