The Hydra. The Nemean Lion. The Erymanthian Boar. The Stymphalian Birds. Geryon. Cerberus. Heracles. It seemed the world was full of monsters. Almost all were the illegitimate spawn of gods, bestowed with superhuman strength and yet very human taste for violence. Almost all of them were killers. If one killed the others, however, we held that blood to cleanse them of their sins. If one killed the others, we forgot that they killed mortals too.
I was his third and thousandth conquest. Heracles had married twice before me, his wives two other daughters of two other kings. He had killed the first of them, and her children, apparently lost in a mad rage. It hadn't been the first time wrath had taken him that way, and it wouldn't be the last.
Lust was another vice of his: besides his wives, my husband had known hundreds of women and almost as many men across Greece and abroad. Once, when staying with another king, Heracles had slept with all fifty of his daughters in a single night. His thirteenth labour, his admirers had called it, as if the labour to begin a pregnancy could be compared to that which ended it.Each and every princess laboured more.
I was not meant to be at all. Heracles had sought another as his third: Iole, the daughter of a king. He certainly has a type. Her father had promised her to the victor of a competition, as if she was some trophy to be won. When Heracles took the lead, however, he changed his mind and called the contest off. The king knew of the hero's reputation, and did not want his daughter to risk suffering her predecessor's fate. It was his son who died instead, killed by Heracles as he stormed out of the city in a rage.
The hero came to me, seeking the third wife he had been denied. There were no competitions for my hand, no great courtship: Heracles had raped me before, and cared no more about my will when he came to claim me on a permanent basis.
My own father did not protest as Iole's had. He had already given me to a centaur, a monster who had threatened him, because he'd been too frightened to refuse. When Heracles killed the centaur to take me for himself, my father was not any braver. In fact, he was grateful to the hero, as if being half-god rather than half-horse absolved him of sharing the centaur's crimes. If one monster kills the others, we forget he is a monster too.
I gave my husband children and a kingdom, but I was not the woman he had sought. He used my father's army to wage war on Iole's, killing him, her brothers, and any other relatives he found. He sacked their city, and took the fleeing woman as his captive. The contest took longer than he planned, but Heracles won her in the end. I heard her cries that night, and knew that he had gone too far.
I had two visitors whilst he was waging war. Both were women, and both spoke as if of royal birth, but otherwise they made an unlikely pair: one was beautiful, an archetypal princess like Iole, whilst the other was grotesque.
"Are you Heracles's wife?" The latter asked, as I stared at her scarred, pale flesh. "We came for him."
"I am Deianira," I told her. "He may believe that I am his to own, but he does not define me yet.
"Good." The beauty smiled at me. "We came to save you from his heroism, but perhaps it's time a princess saved herself."
"Did he use you too?" I wondered if there were any noblewomen that my husband hadn't chased at one time or another.
"Not him," the disfigured woman said. "I only know him as the man who took my father's bull away. We know his type, though. We know the damage they can do."
"We sought your husband out as one of the worst. Breaking his vows to you is bad enough, but he lies to the world when he calls himself a hero. He saves fewer than need saving from him. We live to punish men like that, seeing as heroes will not rescue innocents from themselves."
"Who are you?" I asked. "Where do you come from?"
"Blood in the ocean."
"Beneath the earth," the grey woman replied. "We have largely left our lives behind us, but we cannot shake the fury they ignited in our hearts. We are just two furies now, delivering justice and vengeance to such murderous men. If you wish to help us, you can join us as the third."
"What can I do? My husband is too strong to kill. The best killers have been trying his whole life."
"The world's best fighter will never die fighting. When he is eating, sleeping, or getting dressed, however, he has no great invulnerability to death." She handed me a vial. "If you wish to stop his crimes, just soak his clothes in this and flee. The contact with his skin will do the rest."
I wondered then if I could do it, but Iole's cries gave me all the required strength. I smeared the potion on Heracles's cloak, and heard him howl the following morning when he put it on. I was surprised to find I felt no guilt. It was not the cleanest death, but it was kinder than some that he had dealt.
I cloaked myself and left, but hid to watch his funeral. I have to make sure that he is gone for good. I almost laughed to hear the other attendees talk, admirers who had come from far and wide: most blamed me for the death, but seemed to believe it had been an accident, or the result of my jealousy over Iole. That insult to my pride is one of many, and nothing to the countless crimes which warranted this fate. They took my disappearance to mean that I had killed myself from guilt at my mistake.
Nothing could have been further from the truth. For the first time in a long time, I was free. The furious pair found me again, and I joined them on their quest to slay the monsters who slayed monsters to excuse their crimes. I learnt their own stories. Queen Andromeda. Princess Ariadne. It seemed the world was full of women wronged by heroes; I was the third and thousandth in their ranks, an army of victims keen to bring our justice to our captors.
"You saved me," Iole said, once we had set her free. "You are my heroines. Thank you."
"Don't thank us," I told her. "I just did what needed to be done, and I should have done it long ago. I am not your heroine to thank or follow, as the heroes have their cults: I just finally had the strength that anger brings, and I will continue to use that anger to do good. I am just my fury now."
