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I really like this interpretation of Medusa's face

I like this interpretation of Medusa's face. She's supposed to be so horrifying that you die just from looking at her...so what does she look like?
Like a corpse? Like a fetus? Something that should be dead, and yet is animated? Something that's almost human, but not quite?
In Priscilla Galloway's YA novel Snake Dreamer, Medusa's face is described as a composite of parts that don't fit together, like a parody of a human face. "The proportions were horrid." The protagonist is looking at Medusa's face through a mirror, and the monster's face is clearly meant to represent a distorted version of her own face.
When we look at Medusa, are we looking at ourselves and, if so, what part of ourselves? Our capacity for violence? Our mortality?