Ancient Worlds: Between a Rock and a Rabid Sea She-Monster
After Odysseus makes his way past the Sirens, he has to thread his way through twin threats on his way home: Scylla and Charybdis. Like many of the threats the Ithacan king faces, these have become proverbial: to be caught between Scylla and Charybdis is to be forced to choose between two terrible options.
And terrible they are. Scylla is a many-headed creature who snaps up sailors as they pass by. Charybdis is an unseen monster who lives under the sea, gulping down water and devouring ships like an aquatic Sarlacc. And if these weren’t individually terrifying enough, they are placed on opposites sides of a narrow strait, so that Odysseus must choose between them. Sailing far enough from Scylla to avoid getting chomped means getting sucked down into Charybdis’ maw, and vice versa.
(And does anyone at this point notice that an overwhelming number of Odysseus’ problems involve him being in terror of being sucked down, eaten, conquered or otherwise waylaid by women? UNLESS HE TERRIFIES THEM WITH HIS GIANT… UH… SWORD? I mean seriously. I really don’t give much weight to Freudian analysis the vast majority of the time but sometimes? You say one thing and you obviously mean your mother.)