CHAPTER FIVE

THE CHASE HOME

“Come back with my stinky snake!” Medusa yells.

Perseus keeps running. He tries to shake the snake loose from the tip of his finger, but the nasty little bugger won’t let go. Being bitten by a stinky snake, he has decided, is better than getting turned to goo by an angry monster.

So he runs.

Perseus runs as fast as he can. His friends are just ahead of him doing the same.

Hercules darts through swarms of buzzing flies.

BUZZ! BUZZ! BUZZ!

Jason leaps over a mound of slithering slugs.

SLITHER! SLITHER! SLITHER!

Theseus ducks under a snapping beetle.

SNAP! SNAP! SNAP!

Odysseus dodges moldy globs dropping from a tree.

GLOP! GLOP! GLOP!

As Perseus runs, he feels something strange happening to his clothes. First his boots begin to turn into brown goop. It feels like he is wearing soggy mushrooms on his feet.

Then his shirt and his pants begin to ooze. It feels like he is covered in slime from head to toe.

He knows it is because of Medusa. Her power is rotting his clothes. And he knows that he can’t look back at her. Otherwise he would be turned to sludge too.

Perseus and his friends burst out of the rotting forest. They quickly begin crossing the desert.

The running becomes difficult, because Medusa’s power is even causing the sand to turn into muck.

But then they reach the mountain. They climb up and up, never daring to look back.

At the top, they spy Atlas holding up Zeus’ butt. He is surrounded in a cloud of orange gas.

“Do I smell refried beans?” Theseus says.

“What did Zeus have for lunch?” Jason stops to ask Atlas. But Perseus pulls him along.

“Keep running,” Perseus says. “We can’t let Medusa catch up to us.”

The heroes tiptoe through the cow pie fields.

SPLAAAAAAAAT!

“Why does that always happen to me?” Theseus says, limping along with a poo-covered foot.

Then they cross the yellow sea, leaping from one big brown stinking log to the next big brown stinking log.

Lastly, they wade through the bottomless bog of leeches.

“I am covered with them,” Hercules whines, as thick black leeches dangle from his nose, his arms, and his legs.

All the while, the heroes never look back. They don’t dare. And they don’t stop running until they reach Perseus’ house.

They dash inside and duck behind a couch.

“Is she still following us?” Jason asks.

“I don’t dare look,” Theseus says.

Then the heroes notice something frightening. All the plants in the house begin to wilt.

“She’s here,” Odysseus says.

“She’s causing the plants to die,” Hercules adds.

As they are wondering what to do next, Perseus’ mother steps into the room. A stinky haze surrounds her. She winces at the smell.

“Whoa! It’s not Medusa causing the plants to wilt,” she says.

Perseus’ mother points at the totally disgusting heroes. “It’s you!” she says. “You all reek like you bathed in sewage stew and then were blow-dried with ogre farts.”

The heroes all let out a sigh.

“Now if I could just get this stinking snake to stop biting me,” Perseus whines, shaking his finger. “My quest would be complete.”