“I’m telling you, I can still do it!” I insisted, stomping out into the garden.

Kyra followed close behind me, wearing an indulgent yet patronising smile - the kind a parent gives a child when they make an outrageous claim, a ‘yes, dear’ smile. It bugged me no end, because the claim I’d made was far from outrageous!

“I can’t understand why you don’t believe me,” I grumbled. “I mean, look at me, I’m basically the same shape I was when I was ten. Now if I’d filled out a little more, maybe I’d have some trouble...” I trailed off as I shot a resentful look at my own flat chest, and then at my girlfriend’s rather more voluptuous figure. But at least in this situation, not being very top-heavy would help me prove my point.

Ignoring her sympathetic grin, I kicked off my shoes and rubbed my hands together in preparation. “You owe me five bucks when I do this,” I told her.

“I don’t recall agreeing to that,” Kyra snickered, “but sure. I’ll even raise it to twenty.”

I grinned. “You’re on!”

Then I turned away from her, planted my hands in the lawn, and lifted my legs into the air.

As it turned out, it was a little trickier than when I was a kid. I hadn’t tried for almost a decade, and I was out of practice. I wobbled precariously for a couple of seconds before finding my balance.

But once I did, I was as steady as a statue, as solid as a stone, as rigid and unwavering as a totem pole. In my flipped field of vision, I saw my girlfriend gazing at her watch, her glimmering green eyes flicking up and down every few seconds to check I was still upright. Her long brown hair trailed over her heaving bosom, twitching gently against her smooth olive skin.

My own internal clock - which had always been fairly accurate - told me it’d been over half a minute already. Blood was starting to rush to my head. I’d actually downplayed my own abilities when I’d told Kyra - I could go even longer than I claimed, but it made me feel sick to do so. I’d set a full minute as my limit.

“Forty-three, forty-four, forty-five...” Kyra murmured. “Huh. Wow, Syd, I guess I was wrong. You can do a minute-long handstand...”

Despite the strain of being upside-down, I grinned triumphantly. “Y’see?” I croaked, my voice tight from the exertion. “No backing outta the bet, by the way. Pay me, bitch...!”

“In fact,” she continued as if I hadn’t spoken, crouching down to make eye contact with me, “I bet you can go even longer than that.”

I realised what she was about to do just a fraction of a second too late. I didn’t have time to close my eyes before she opened hers properly, lifting her filmy, translucent inner eyelids. She kept them closed almost all the time, able to see perfectly clearly through them, and only opened them if she needed to clean out grit or stray eyelashes... or to unleash their power on an unsuspecting human, like me.

Her emerald eyes, already stunning when partly obscured, blazed beautifully when fully unveiled. But I only had an instant to appreciate them, before their power flash-froze me.

The moment of petrification always feels longer than it actually is. It takes about 0.2 seconds for the transmogrifying magic to blast out of Kyra’s irises and through my skinny frame. But from my perspective, time seems to slow down as I feel my flesh harden, my innards calcify, my face freeze in whatever expression she’s caught me in - usually a surprised and slightly aggrieved one, as was the case here.

“For twelve hours, I’d say,” Kyra concluded. “Yeah, I’m sure you can hold the pose for that long.” She giggled gleefully, her hair wriggling and writhing manically, like it often did when she got excited.

I didn’t reply, obviously, because I couldn’t, being a statue. I couldn’t even think a response, complain mentally, because I wasn’t capable of thinking right now. The blood was no longer pounding in my head - in fact I had no blood, and my head was solid stone through and through. As was every other part of me. I may as well have been in the first place - no onlooker would’ve been able to tell the difference, after all. If someone were to wander into our garden, they’d have no way of knowing I was ever anything but a decorative sculpture, carved from a block of granite.

Upside down, for some reason. The artist’s whim, they’d probably assume.

“Gods, Sydney, you look great like this,” Kyra sighed, moving out of my field of vision. (And no, I don’t know how my stone eyes can still see - a quirk of the magic, I guess.) “So gorgeous and graceful...” She began circling around me, admiring me intently as she usually does after freezing me. I couldn’t see her, nor could I imagine what she looked like, because I had a concrete brain.

But I know her prehensile, serpentine hair would’ve been compulsively coiling and uncoiling, quivering and undulating with lust. I know she would’ve been running her hands over herself, and probably over me, too (not that I could feel it). Because I know how much she gets off on turning me into her pretty ornament.

In the elongated split second I’d had before her power paralysed my neurons, I had time to curse inwardly, to mentally rebuke myself for falling for her ruse, for letting her trick me into doing a handstand. I should’ve known! She does this all the time, after all. Steering our conversations so I somehow end up adopting whatever pose suits her.

I rarely see it coming. Maybe that makes me gullible. Maybe I just see the best in people - and I trust my girlfriend, even knowing how mischievous she is.

Or maybe I don’t really mind being a statue now and again. Which, to tell the truth, I don’t.

It’s not like the change hurts, after all - it’s actually quite a pleasurable sensation, the feeling of every molecule of my body transforming into cold, hard stone. And then I’m a blank, brainless object, untroubled by my predicament, for roughly half a day before the effects wear off. (The days of permanent petrification are long gone. Modern gorgons can only freeze people for about twelve hours, their powers diluted through thousands of years of interbreeding with humans.)

My inability to think or feel, or to perceive time, certainly lets the hours pass more easily. But when I unfreeze, when my brain softens back into its natural state, I always remember. I remember what it felt like to be a static statue, made of unthinking, unfeeling rock. A mindless, motionless monolith.

And, although I may grumble and grouch at her, if I’m being totally honest... I really get off to it too. To the powerlessness. The thoughtlessness. The numbness. The complete loss of my senses, my identity, my humanity, reducing me to nothing but an object, body and mind.

And the knowledge that she could do it again, at any time.

And the knowledge that I’ve given her permission to do just that.

“Well, I should honour the bet,” Kyra mused playfully, her voice echoing above me. I heard a rustling sound as she delved into her playsuit pocket and pulled out a twenty dollar bill, which she tucked into the narrow crevice between my parted legs. “There you go. Consider yourself paid, bitch,” she chuckled.

Crouching down, she stared adoringly at me, her eyes once again shielded by her inner eyelids. She batted her outer lids playfully, fluttering her eyelashes at me.

“Well, I’ve got some work to get done,” she told me in a teasing tone. “I’ll come back and admire you some more later. Have a nice day, my sweet, sexy little statue!”

Leaning all the way down, she kissed me on my cold concrete chin, giving me a great view of her cleavage in the process (not that I was capable of enjoying it at that moment). Then she got back to her feet and strode away, vanishing back inside our apartment.

I was left in the centre of our garden, upturned and immobilised, an inverted human figure composed of solid, still, stone. Unthinking, unfeeling, unmoving.

Unable to recognise or express, at that moment, just how much I loved it.

And how much I loved the gorgeous gorgon girl who’d done it to me.