Sing Me a Broken Lullaby

"Did you know about the tale behind that sculpture?"

    Jesse jumped lightly off his feet. He'd been alone for a while in the park when a girl's voice came from behind him. He glanced at her. She wore a flannel jacket with the hood over her head so he couldn't see her face clearly but coils of stubborn red hair peeked from beneath.

    "Uh... a tail? Like heads or tails?"

    A bubble of laughter rise in her throat before she walked toward the boy and stopped on the spot beside him. Then she gave the sculpture a long  careful look. "No, silly, I meant a story, a tale."

    "Oh." He felt stupid and also blood rising into his cheeks. "Uh.. no, not yet, anyway."

    "You must be new here then." She cocked her head to the side.

    "Yeah, me and my mom just moved in a few days ago." It wasn't a lie. They transferred places after his father's death because his mom wanted a new start. He spent the first and second day unpacking and the third one to roam around, acquaint himself with the quaint little town. Nothing very interesting except for the park where he is now. It was a bit far to what you'd call the 'civilization' and vines started growing on the rusty gates, the old swingsets and the benches. In the middle of the place was a sculpture.

    She nodded. "Well, have you taken a good look at the monument, before I start?"

    He did already, but glanced at it again. It was a lovely woman with wings that seemed as if they were rose petals that wilted. Her eyes, downcast and  miserable and looking at the man who was lying on her lap. The man seemed to be half-dead, one hand on the girl's cheek and the other at his side. "It's beautiful  and tragic, but then again those two are tied together. Everything that's beautiful is always tragic in a way that the tragedy is the thing that makes it beautiful."

    "The story itself is tragic and beautiful in its own funny way, I s'pose. Wanna hear it?"

    "Oh," he muttered, putting his hands into his jean pockets. "Sure, I've got time to kill anyways." 

    "Time to kill. Killing time." She said, half to herself. "Such a funny expression..."

    "Aren't you cold?" He asked suddenly, partly to break off her weird muttering and partly because he was concerned. Flannel was only a thin cloth and he was sure that it wouldn't warm her enough from the cold, especially now that the snow began to fall.

    "Oh, I am."

    "Aren't you scared of dying of hypothermia or something?"

    "Don't you wanna hear the story yet, my good sir?"

    He looked at her warily. She seemed like a nutjob and nutjobs were dangerous, but she was a tiny girl and she seemed delicate in a red dress that brushed just past her knees. "Okay, start it then, my dear old storyteller."

    She winced when he said old or perhaps it was just the trick of light. "There are a lot of different versions of the tale, really, like that this girl was a siren who seduced travellers and killed them then stole their jewels or that she was only interested in men who were already married. Silly things, impossible..."

    "Which one will you tell me then?"

    "The oldest one. The one least known these days, the tale that the maker of this monument told. The townspeople hated it, you know. Because the story was supposed to be something cold and scary and cruel, something to warn men from cheating on their wives. It's why they abandoned this park. They didn't like that the artist portrayed her like some sort of angel. That the girl was in love--"