In This Version, Cancer Is a Woman
By Salena Casha
If we were really there for the battle of Hydra and Hercules, we’d remember the crab. Monstrous, the size of two buildings, difficult to miss with its burnt orange shell. As Hydra’s heads fell again and again to Hercules’ sword, the crab leapt from the murky water and wrapped herself around Hercules leg. Pinched as if Hades depended on it, sinking her claws into his striated calf. Hercules wouldn’t admit it, but if he’d been in a confessing mood, that bite hurt to Mount Olympus and back.
Maybe we don’t remember her because she was a crab first and a woman second, things history likes to forget. Maybe we don’t remember her because Hydra was a villainous female enough for the both of them: two were unneeded. But what if these ladies had just been minding their own business, eking out a living in a desolate swamp when a demi-god with daddy problems tried to make a name for himself? What if the victor told a different story?
What we do know is that they both died, Hydra and the Crab. They often do, these women who find themselves at the wrong end of a man’s pride. And of course, Hercules left, the remnants of a valiant heroine crushed into the grass beneath the weight of his golden club—the first sign that the environment was going to hell in a handbasket because of man. Once she was sure he was gone, Hera herself slid across the damp ground to cup the crab’s powdered exoskeleton in her palm. Bent her face close.
As she lifted her palm to the heavens to immortalize the crustacean in stars, she whispered,
We have not lost yet.
And somewhere to someone, it meant something.
Salena Casha’s work has appeared in over 100 publications in the last decade. Her most recent work can be found on HAD, Wrong Turn Lit and The Colored Lens. She survives New England winters on good beer and black coffee. Subscribe to her Substack at salenacasha.substack.com.
Illustration: Sidney Hall (1831) astronomical chart illustration of the zodiac Cancer. Original from Library of Congress. Digitally enhanced by rawpixel.
A note from Writers Resist
Thank you for reading! If you appreciate creative resistance and would like to support it, you can make a small, medium or large donation to Writers Resist from our Give a Sawbuck page.