It's not air that I inhale, it's water. There is no other way to describe it except that it feels like inhaling some weird, liquid flame. It burns my throat, burns my chest, fills my ears with ringing and my eyes with dancing dots. In that instant, I change my mind. I want to turn back time, but it's too late. My larynx shuts down in one violent spasm, cutting off the flow of water into my lungs. My mouth clamps shut with an audible clicking of teeth. As if some other passage has been opened at the same time, warmth rapidly drains out of my body through it. Time comes to a standstill. I reach that moment of tranquility I've been craving all along. A land of no pain, no yesterday, no tomorrow. A land where everything exists as a single snapshot of now, then is momentarily gone, replaced by the next snapshot.
This is what I see.
A bright light blinds me, like a photographic flash that lasts only one thousandth of a second, and helps illuminate the scene. It stands out in sharp clarity, burning into my retina. It's my hand floating in the water, yet at the same time, it's a wide expanse of freshly freckled soil. No, it's not soil, it's skin, magnified, because it's right under my nose. Iridescent circles form in my peripheral vision, then another flash makes me want to shield my eyes, but my arms won't move. I see my wrist up close, with a forest of hairs shaking lightly, as if scared into dizziness by goose bumps. I bend my neck to look down the length of my body. The brilliant blue of the hoodie is too intense, making my two feet, dangling at the far end of each leg, look even whiter than they are. Then it all turns fuzzy.
I can't tell up from down anymore, or in from out. I close my eyes and listen. I hear something faint. Thump. Thump. Thump. It's my heart. That means I'm still alive. I feel confused and disoriented, yet a strange curiosity pushes my panic down and dominates my mind. Is this how one feels when dying? My father raised me an atheist, telling me I should only believe in science. I always nodded in agreement, afraid to contradict him, secretly believing in magic and wishing that Greek gods and goddesses and all things mythological were real. Afterlife or heaven or hell or whatever you want to call it; what if there is something out there, on the other side?
I want to know what happens next. Despite the overly saturated colors and a distorted sense of size, I want to keep looking around, to notice otherworldly things with this new visual perception I've acquired. But my body thinks otherwise. It says, Get the hell out of the bathtub! I want to tell it to stop shouting, but my tongue won't move, caught between rows of my clamped teeth. My body says, This is it. I've had enough of your stupidity. I'm getting you out.
Involuntarily, I bend my knees. There should be solid marble underneath to stand on, but my feet touch nothing except water as if I'm swimming in the deep end of a pool. Afraid to think about what it means, afraid to look, I throw up my arms in one desperate stroke. There should be two polished-marble rims to grab—smooth, solid, and secure. Instead, my fingers close on water.
I open my eyes and lift my head, expecting to raise it out of the water. Tough luck. I find myself vertical, drifting deeper down into some kind of murk. The liquid around me turns muddy and greenish, with flecks of tiny fuzzy plants hanging here and there.
I turn my head left and right, twist around, flapping my arms and legs madly. The bathtub is gone! Did it expand? Did I shrink? I kick and kick and thrash around, watching the greenish tint of the liquid turn ultramarine. Blue is my favorite color. Three is my favorite number.
An insatiable need to breathe propels me up. After a dozen concentrated strokes, I surface, gasping for air and coughing up stale-tasting water. I shiver, inhaling one lungful of air after another, hyperventilating and sobbing hysterically at the same time. It takes me a moment to calm down and look around.
The water is no longer green, but clear and blue, reflecting the cloudless sky. What's green is a blanket of leaves. I shake my head to make sure I'm seeing this right. I'm in the shallow end of a lake. It's overgrown with lilies, and I'm about ten feet away from the shore. I kick my feet once more and touch solid ground. Standing up to my neck in the water, lily stems touch my legs, their sweet and fruity smell overpowering my nostrils that still burn from the passage of chlorinated water.
All thoughts vanish from my brain, all feelings desert my body. I can only stare.
On the very edge of the lake, on its dirty, sandy beach full of washed up, colorless logs, sits the Siren of Canosa. My big bronze sister, the boss. Only she's not bronze anymore, and not her typical one foot in height. She's real and as tall as me. With real skin, real hair, and a real body. She pins me with her practiced, innocent gaze that I've seen so many times in the bathtub. Without realizing it, I emit a long sigh of awe.
She's a beautiful thing. Her hair drapes along her body in thick clumps, the ends disappearing into an emerald mess of leaves. The early morning sun paints her pale face a golden hue. Warm wind lifts a strand of hair to her face. If this is what afterlife looks like, I guess I scored. Yet when she smiles, a sinister feeling penetrates my core, as if something in this perfect picture isn't right. It hides rotten secrets inside. There is a lie in the air, and I feel like I'm about to buy it.
She locks her big green eyes with mine and begins to sing. At once, I know my gut was right. Yet I'm spell-bound, unable to retreat, listening with my ears, my skin, my everything that can absorb her voice.
"We live in the meadow,
But you don't know it.
Our grass is your sorrow,
But you won't show it."
If there really is a soul inside me, it trembles now, its edges brushing against my ribs. My mind rejects the tune. It categorizes it as fake, sorrow—pitched a little too high, a quarter note off, a hairline away from a genuine song that makes your heart beat faster with its beauty.
You're not real, I want to say. You're just a bronze bathroom figurine. Your song is fake, it's a tool. You don't care for me. It's your job to transport me to the other side, right? And you probably hate your job. When was the last time you got a raise? But the sound of her voice silences my mind and I keep listening, mesmerized.
"Give us your pain,
Dip in our song.
Notes afloat,
Listen and love.
Listen and love.
Listen and love."
I notice other sirens now, my marble sisters, also at full human height. They crawl out from behind bleached logs and join Canosa, singing together with her. I want to drown in their melody. Its thrilling notes reach to me, as if a stretched out invisible hand, pulling me closer. Lily stems tangle my legs as I stumble through the lake toward the beach, wanting more, drinking in their sorrow, gorging upon their gaze.
"We wade in the lake.
Why do you frown?
Our wish is your wake.
Why do you drown?"
They stop singing and watch me stumble forward. I drop to my knees a couple feet away from Canosa, my mouth open in admiration, my eyes teary, my troubles forgotten. All I can feel is a sense of calm emitted by their eyes, their voices, their bodies. It's not the comfortable calm of a clear, happy mind, but rather a chilling calm of violently suppressed pain. I don't care how it works; as long as my pain is gone, I'm cool with their method.
Canosa takes my hands into hers; they feel cold and slimy against my skin. Her breath washes over me in a thousand-year-old stink covered up by water lily sweetness.
"Ailen Bright, silly girl, what took you so long? I've been waiting and waiting and waiting." She purses her lower lip and shakes her head.
I look at her, unable to comprehend that she's really talking to me, and her four sisters are really nodding their heads behind her. There is Pisinoe, the youngest, clutching Canosa's left arm, peeking from behind her mane. Next to her is Teles, the perfect one, cupping her chubby cheeks with both of her hands, studying me. Raidne sits by Canosa's left side, braiding her long, curly hair—the envy of my life. And behind her is Ligeia. I quickly look away so as not to see her breasts.
"How rude! Don't you know you're supposed to say 'Hi!' and 'How are you?' and 'I loved your song, it was so pretty?'" Canosa pushes me away and drops my hands.
I open my mouth to say something in my defense, but she's faster.
"Go away, silly girl." Her lips press into one hard line, her hands propped on her hips, her elbows stuck out like the wings of an angry bird. "I kinda don't like you." At this, the other sirens begin to protest, but Canosa shushes them with a low hiss. They fall silent and peer at me. I feel uneasy, as if I'm food being studied for ripeness.
"You really exist? I mean, I thought you were just a bronze faucet—" I begin.
"Fine, I forgive you. Let's start over." She dashes at me and grabs my hands. I nearly fall face down into the sand as she pulls me toward her. The other sirens circle us, their knees and hands in the sand, their hair falling over their faces. They lick their lips and, suddenly, I want to break free of them; yet I make no move, like a wounded animal being eaten alive by a pack of predators, paralyzed by primal fear.
"It's no fun to be dead. Booooring. Right, girls?" Canosa says, looking around for approval. The sirens nod, silent, their eyes not leaving me for a second, their circle tightening around me.
"Am I dead already? What is this place, anyway?" I croak, suffocating from the overpowering stench of rotten fish that slides out of the sirens' open mouths. I realize their skin, so clear and white from a distance, has a greenish tint to it when looked at up close. It reminds me of a molding orange.
"You guys, it was very nice to meet you, thank you very much for the song, but I think I've changed my mind." I tear my hands out of Canosa's and edge backward toward the water, leaving an imprint in the sand with my butt. They lunge at me. Ligeia grabs my feet. Canosa clasps my chin and raises my face up, her nose inches away from mine.
"I can give you something you want, if you give me something I want in return." Her green eyes open wide and I feel like falling into them, into a peaceful meadow where no pain exists.
"What's that?" I say.
"Stop asking me stupid questions, silly girl. You know what I mean." Her lips string into a hard line again.
"But—"
"Are you deaf?"
I blink. This is so bizarre, I don't know what to say.
"Listen to me. Over hours and hours of sitting in the bathtub, you asked me a thousand times to help, telling me about a thousand tortures, all aimed at hurting your father. Don't you remember any of it?"
I blink and feel my face turn red, hating how my blood flow betrays me when a lie would be my preferred answer. I swallow and say nothing, hoping that, somehow, if I pretend I didn't hear her, the topic of the conversation will evaporate and we will start talking about the weather.
"All I need from you is your soul. Just a tiny, little thing. You don't need it anyway, do you?" The other sirens hiss at this, their eyes ablaze with hunger.
Hunter's words flash in my mind. They find you dead in the morning. They can't say what happened. It looks like your heart stopped, so they conclude that you died from sudden cardiac arrest, you know, loss of heart function. What's creepy, though, is that you're smiling. Dead, but smiling. Like you were your happiest just before you died.
"Are you saying you want to kill me?" I manage, confused. As soon as it comes out of my mouth, I feel like I said something stupid.
"If we wanted to, we'd have already done that, don't you think?" Canosa cackles; they all cackle. Little hairs on my neck and arms stand up at the sound. "No, we want you to become one of us, right girls?" She turns to the other sirens without letting go of my chin. They nod their approval. Pisinoe begins clapping her hands like an excited toddler.
"Why?" is all I can say. "Why would you want me to become one of you?" A childish hope to belong grips me and suppresses all logical thoughts with a simple yearning. I don't care if they are dead or alive or real or not real. I've never belonged anywhere, always an outcast. At home, at school, even when I rode the bus, people wouldn't sit next to me, as if my aura itself was stained. I'd spent hours dreaming, only to have five sisters tumbling, one over another, in an attempt to form words and throw them at Canosa. How can I explain how badly I've wanted this to happen my entire life? I can't believe that someone, at last, wants me. Someone else other than Hunter. My real friend, my only friend.
"I'm tired of repeating myself. Once again, stop asking stupid questions. Use your brain. Think, silly girl, think." She taps my forehead with her finger. "Your father hates women because they make him lose control, doesn't he? They are these beautiful things to him, to own, 'cause he doesn't know how else to love them. 'Cause nobody taught him how to love. Am I right?" Canosa says.
"I guess. I don't really know. He's just an asshole."
"It's never as simple as that, and you know it. He must have been a very sweet little boy at one time in his life, don't you think? Large blue eyes, long eyelashes." She smiles and inches even closer to me. "Someone must have hurt him, and hurt him badly. Maybe it was a woman, maybe it was his mother. Why do you think he never visits her grave? Why do you think no family ever comes to your house on holidays? Why do you think you never go to visit anyone?"
I sit quietly, puzzled by her questions.
"I don't know, I never thought of it this way."
"Well, I did. There is only one way to think about it. He's not a sweet little boy anymore. He is broken beyond repair. There is only one thing you can do—hurt him back. Simply dying won't do it, it would only make his life easier, don't you think? How about you become a siren and torture his soul with your songs, almost kill him, hold him by the thread, close to death, as long as you want to. Watch him squirm and plead, like a worm." As she says it, her entire body trembles, her eyes gloss over with a type of feeding-frenzy fever. "Hurt him, for hurting your mother. You know you want it badly, don't you?"
Hate fills me to the brim of my being. My mother's face floats up in my memory, and stabs me with pain. Every single blow and insult I endured from my father's hand strikes me at once. Every joke and ridicule and mocking at school for being flat-chested, a recluse, a bookworm, stabs me under my ribs. I look at the sirens, all standing on their fours, gazing at me, waiting for my answer. They want me to be their sister, girls who are much more beautiful and powerful than those stuck up bitches at school, more powerful than even my father. Unable to contain the urge anymore, I cry out.
"Yes! My answer is yes!"
Canosa shakes my hand, greedy.
"Good. I want you to come close, look at me, look me in the eyes and open—"
At this moment, the sky amplifies a cracking noise as if something heavy has fallen somewhere, shaking the ground in a mini-earthquake. The sound shock sends big waves across the lake and I feel as if I'm being pulled back into the water with one of them. The lake comes alive with lily stems. I hear the sirens scream. They run toward me, raising their arms above their heads to dive into the water, but the lake's waves are faster. Lily stems pull me under the surface and I propel down into the murk, from clear water to blue to green, stuffed with floating, fuzzy plants, until I reach complete darkness.
The water turns warmer, my chest feels heavy and my muscles tighten. I raise my head to the light, blinded by its intensity, as if being spit out by the lake—a foreign object that doesn't belong to it, not yet.
I gasp for air.
The green water turns clear, and rolls off me. I sit.
I'm back in my bathtub, waist-deep in warm water, yet chilled to the bone as if covered with snow. I'm shaking and hyperventilating, coughing and convulsing from the pain in my lungs. They burn with each breath, and I know I must still have water inside from inhaling it. As I cough, I look at the faucet. There she is, the Siren of Canosa, back to her faucety self.
I must have hallucinated her into a singing fiend from Hunter's story, yet it felt so real. I just had a near-death experience, that's all. I'm alive, I'm okay. A surge of happiness makes me jitter. I try to remember how many joints it took me for courage this morning. Oh, Hunter, where the hell did you get this weed? I'm having a bad trip. I see tiny specks of indigo dance in front of my eyes and remember that I also dropped a tab of acid on top of it. Great.
I reach out and stroke Canosa's bronze hair, to make sure she's really made out of bronze, when sudden silence makes me feel as if someone is watching me. I glance to my left and notice a layer of dust on the floor and a few scattered woodchips. I look farther out and see the bathroom door, its hinges still covered with plaster from having been torn out of the wall. My happiness vanishes in an instant, sucked away by the sheer terror of what I've done and what punishment is about to follow.
I turn toward the opening where the door used to stand.
My father steps on the door and walks toward me, his face set, his hands curled into fists.
"Papa?" I say and see his hand raised in the air, ready to strike.