Barbara Kowalski was turning into a basilisk. At night, she lay in her bed and felt her skin harden into stone, starting at the bottoms of her feet. In the mornings, her white sheets were covered in a thin layer of grey powder, as though she were being ground down at the same time. When she stumbled painfully and stiffly from her bed, Barbara inspected her legs in the shower. Up to her shins now what had once been pale skin dotted with blue varicose veins all muscle, tendon, and bone had been replaced with stone. When she tapped on it, it was like tapping on a statue.  

And she knew what that meant, because her grandmother had told her all about the Warsaw basilisk: In 1587, children in Warsaw began to disappear, and when men from the town investigated, they found all the children, turned to stone, in the cellar of a long-abandoned manor. The air in the cellar was thick, and the skies turned weird colors at night. And the old men of the village had faced this before and knew what it was: a basilisk was stalking the city. 

Many men tried to go into the cellar to recover the stone statues that had once been their children. But with one look of the basilisk, they, too, sank into the ground as stone. All until one man, a poor apprentice, decided to take on the monster. Carrying a huge mirror, he made his way down into the cellar where the sulphurous stench of the animal lingered. The apprentice held the mirror up and what did the basilisk see? The eyes of a toad, a crowned crest, scaly skin, the head of a rooster, and a long, curved tail.  The minute the creature met its own eyes, it turned into stone.

Barbara’s grandmother loved the next bit best: The apprentice then married the daughter of the wealthiest man in Warsaw. She was beautiful and the apprentice became rich beyond measure.

“There. You see. You want to marry a man like that—a man who’s thinking.”

Even at six, Barbara didn’t think that was the point of the story.

Barbara Kowalski was turning into a basilisk, and there was nothing she could do about it. She bought expensive lotions at the Toronto department store where young women worked in heavy clouds of perfume. The lotion came home in a heavy navy blue paper bag, like something illicit. But Barbara’s legs just soaked in the hundred-dollar bottle and remained hard as stone. 

Barbara went to a physiotherapist, who snapped gum through the appointment. The physiotherapist had very blonde hair and deep purple lipstick that bled into the cracks of her chapped lips. This woman said, “At your age, the texture of skin changes.” She said it like Barbara had committed a fault, but she hooked Barbara up to a machine that beeped and beeped but couldn’t squeeze Barbara’s legs soft. By now Babara was basilisk up to the thighs and her stone feet were curved into claws. 

Barbara crisscrossed the city in the subway, stiffly descending the stairs to visit one specialist and then another. She went to a chiropractor, a nice man with sandy hair and round glasses. At first, he was very reassuring.

“We’ll have you fixed right up,” he said. 

But when he put his clammy hands on Barbara’s calf and pushed, a small chip came away from her knee and Barbara got the hell out of there, past all the mirrors in the waiting room. She couldn’t meet her own eyes or bear to look at her shabby coat and plain shoes. 

Barbara Kowalski was turning into a basilisk, and she started to build her nest. In her basement, she set up her television and old couch. She layered quilts on top. Green ones. Red ones. Ones with a rose pattern. She took to wearing sunglasses, just in case, though the eye doctor told her there was nothing wrong with her eyes. 

On the street, little girls pointed at her—mostly at the way her shoulders now hunched over under the weight of the stone wings budding on her back. She couldn’t turn away easily when red-faced parents mumbled “sorry” in her general direction. The stone was half-way up her torso and entirely up her back, so she moved with a slow, stiff waddle. Her family doctor had stopped taking her calls.

Barbara felt best in the grimy downtown bar where women weren’t allowed. Men had been ignoring her since she turned thirty-five, and the fifteen-year tradition held. She slipped in through the doors and sat at the sticky bar, watching hockey on TV and drinking the warm beer placed gently in front of her by the old bartender. She left a generous tip in bills when she heaved herself home. 

At home, she sat among her quilts and watched the TV, wondering what use a monster was in a twenty-first century city. No social media clout in it. No villages to terrorize. The fate wasn’t pitchfork but oblivion. Yet she knew something else was happening. The stone spread slowly toward her face. One day, she wouldn’t be able to move. One day maybe she, too, would thirst to kill. But for now, she was a forgotten middle-aged woman with stone arms and stone legs and a belly that had retained its pouch when it hardened. The city whirled in color around her but she knew she was turning grey. 

Barbara Kowalski was turning into a basilisk. And now it was her turn to look in the mirror.