It all started with this old goat of a man up in the Blueridge, Verne. Now Verne
had his eye on a girl from the valley, and he was dead set he would get her, if it was the last thing he did. So Verne made his way down the mountain, into town proper, but this girl, as you would, wanted nothing to do with old Verne. She bolts, and he dashes after her. They have a wild chase, across field and forest, until they come to a river. Now she’s backed into a corner, and so she does the only thing she can do. She jumps into the river, and just like that she’s gone, vanished into the reeds. Then, get this, Verne takes the reeds and makes them into a flute. They say if you go traipsing up into that neck of the woods, you can still hear him play on moonless nights.”
Luke looks up at Gus and notices with a smirk that he’s passed out in his chair.
The storm roars outside as he lays down his guitar and draws a handgun from inside his jacket. Two cracks ring out in the observation deck. One leaving a shattered window to the central chamber, another a red hole in the guard’s head. Luke lops off a finger with a switchblade and strolls over to the open sill. He draws a grappling hook form another pocket and ropes down into the darkness. At the bottom rests the box, bereft of anything but a small pad on its front.
Luke presses the finger to the pad and takes a step back as the front of the box
lowers into the ground with the whine of hydraulics. Inside rests a casket topped with a grid of eerie blue light. A small lever on the casket deactivates the force field and a
comatose woman rises up from inside. Carrying her in his arms, Luke begins his climb up the walls of the pit. A single bolt of lightning streaks overhead.
This story is written for Style B (of the 2020 NJCL Creative Writing Contest), a classical myth in modern dress and setting.
The myth in question is Argus and Mercury from Ovid’s Metamorphoses. Like the original myth, this story includes within it a modern version of the myth of Pan and Syrinx. In this story, Luke is Mercury, Gus is Argus, and Verne is Pan. Jupiter’s presence is alluded to by the approaching unnatural thunderstorm, and the unnamed woman that Mercury removes from the facility is Io.
Summa Cum Laude
11th Grade
NJCL Modern Myth Contest
Jack Purple, Yorktown High School
Verne is Pan. Jupiter’s presence is alluded to by the approaching unnatural thunderstorm, and the unnamed woman that Mercury removes
from the facility is Io.
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