Four sirens open their mouths as one. I'm arrested by their terrible beauty. There is Pisinoe, looking no more than a thirteen-year-old if you met her dressed in normal clothes; innocent and cute. Yet, her face opens into a grimace of utter malice. Behind her is Ligeia, tall and lanky like a gazelle, with delicate facial features that transform into a ghostly yawn. Next to her, Teles forms a perfect O with her lips, but there is nothing adorable about it, never mind her slightly chubby cheeks. Her mouth is open wide, her lips stretched to the breaking point as if she's about to reek audible poison. And Canosa. Canosa's skull looks like it will break in two, with every single tooth exposed, her tongue trembling, and her eyes ablaze with hatred. If you dared to lay a finger in her mouth, she wouldn't just bite it off, she'd swallow you whole. Me? What about me? I sit bolted to the floor, dumbstruck.
"Die, siren hunter! Die!" They yell in perfect harmony. Sound waves hit the air and travel outward in one gigantic circle. Walls shake, and the stall door flies off its hinges and drops with a loud clank on the tile floor, barely missing my father. Particleboard dust rises in a cloud, and faucets fizz with water. Mirrors shimmer as a pond's surface shimmers from a light breeze. I cover my ears, so does Hunter. We cower.
The sirens continue yelling at the top of their lungs.
"Lose your mind! Shed your skin! Let your bones rot in a pile! Vanish into our sweet siren meadow!"
Following each of their cries, one by one, other stall doors fly off their hinges, crowding the floor, adding to the dust in the air. The pendant lights zap above us. Shaped like tiny barrels and emitting a yellow glow, they flicker at first, then go out one by one, shattering into a sparkling shower of broken glass.
I watch it in a trance, my gaze fixed on my father. A solitary figure, he stands not more than five feet away, dust on his polished shoes, glass shards in his hair. Yet, he does not move. Only the skin on his face tightens and looks pulled back as if he stuck his face out of a fast moving train, letting the cruel wind hit him. His eyes are on me, and I freeze. He holds a sonic gun in his right hand, and he slowly moves, pointing it at me without hesitation.
Hunter raises his head and looks back and forth between the two of us. From the corner of my eye, I see beads of sweat prickle his forehead, his knuckles going white as he clasps his hands over his ears to shield himself from the sirens' shouting. I don't need to turn my head to know he's studying me, deciding what to do next.
The sirens keep yelling, deafening me.
Papa keeps standing, aiming at me.
Hunter keeps shaking, staring at me.
I feel like I'm in the middle of a terrible dream, where everything that could go wrong, did. And everything that could go right went wrong anyway, just to show me that it's no use dreaming. Life sucks and so do dreams, whether I like it or not, and I'd better get used to it. There are no hopes. Nothing ever turns out the way I want, and there is nobody to blame except myself. I'm the one who plunged into this game, starting from the moment I stepped into the bathtub full of water. Then I ran away. Then I jumped from the bridge. Then I dared to die and be born again.
Maybe Canosa is right, maybe there is nothing more to it than having fun while we can. All people die anyway, so why should it matter if they die as babies or adults? And who says your family is the one you were born into? That's utter bullshit. Who says that guy over there is my father? Who says I have no right to snuff him out like a candle? Who?
I make up my mind.
The rest happens in slow motion. Papa squeezes the trigger on his gun as I tense and jump up, my eyes glazed, my mouth opening in a scream. The skin on my forehead tightens from my eyes bulging out of their sockets. I lightly touch the ceiling with the back of my head as Papa's gun fires and hits Teles instead of me. It only touches her right side, so she shimmers for a moment, a cloud of particles ready to burst into air. Then, she collects back into herself, though her shouting dies at once.
I land in front of my father, barely a few feet away. I grip his wrist and tighten my fingers until he drops the gun on the floor with a thin, plastic-like sound. My grip must be painful, but his face doesn't show it. Instead, I'm afraid I detect a hint of pleasure, and a genuine smile unlike any other smile I've ever seen on his face. There he stands, taking numerous measurements of my body, as if appraising livestock that he wants to buy. I bet he knows I'm not easy to kill.
"Ailen, sweetie, so good to have found you." His face turns into a mask of politeness, covering the cold-hearted indifference of a true siren hunter and a strange exultation that borders on parental pride. I shudder from the thought.
"If only for one minute you didn't devalue me, Papa. If only for one minute I didn't loathe you," I say.
"Don't talk to me like that. Why do you have to be so harsh? Let's discuss this like civil people. I'll give you one minute to get ready, all right? The car is parked downstairs, right by the market entrance. It's waiting."
Suddenly, tears cloud my vision. He doesn't hear me, he never does. This time I'll make him, whether he wants to or not.
"No, Papa. I told you, I'm not coming home. I hate it there, don't you understand? It's not the same without mom. Never will be. It's empty." The echo of my voice reverberates across the walls and I immediately shrink. Did I dare to yell at him? Asphyxiation grabs my throat and poisons it, makes me mute. I begin to hyperventilate.
As if to confirm my suspicion, he rolls out his big, horrible eyes, perhaps knowing what power they hold over my thoughts, my movements. Over my very being.
"I said, we're going home," he says quietly and begins wiggling out of my grip. My fingers slacken, my knees grow soft, and I want to hide from his gaze, all my siren powers forgotten.
I notice that the shouting has stopped. There is an eerie silence, as if we're observed by a breathless audience, waiting to see what will happen next. Then everything erupts into action.
"Lovely, Ailen Bright. I knew it. You've got talent, silly girl. Do them like that, fool them, twist their psyche around your words. Oh, this is so entertaining," Canosa says behind my back and pushes me to the side. Within seconds, we're surrounded by sirens. Teles, anger and hurt in her eyes, circles her fingers around my father's throat, and Ligeia and Pisinoe each take an arm and twist them, pulling them to the sides, making him look like a flattened eagle.
"We'll leave his mouth to you, big sister. As always," says Ligeia with a gleeful smile.
"So that's what it is. It's all a game to you both, isn't it? There is some history behind it, I can tell. And you're using her as bait to get back at each other. Nice." I hear Hunter hiss as he walks up to us, his sneakers crunching over broken glass and wood chips. "But you don't care. Man, you don't give a fuck, do you? If she dies or not in the process, it's not your worry."
I see a shocked expression flash over my father's face, as if Hunter touched on a painful button. But he can't talk, gasping for air as Teles playfully chokes him.
"You close your mouth and listen, Hunter Crossby, boy. Use your manners and don't interrupt me. Didn't your mother teach you that it's rude to interrupt? What a pity." Canosa seizes a handful of Hunter's hoodie and pulls him closer to her, so that their noses almost touch.
"You leave my mother out of this, you stupid, bronze, bathroom bitch." Hunter's soul melody shifts up a notch, and I know he's angry. "Come to think of it, your mother abandoned you, I'm sure. What was her name, let's see here, Terpsichore? Melpomene? Sterope? Can't remember."
Canosa snarls and throws Hunter to the ground. He meets it with a sickening crunch. And then there is movement to the left, by the entrance into the restroom—some slaps, some grunting, some whispering and squealing. The first head peaks around the corner. The spectators have arrived.
"Hunter, son, pick yourself up. We've got a job to do," my father manages after taking a raspy breath, free from Teles's clutches. She circles her fingers around his neck again, giggling. At the word son I bristle. Hunter, the son my father never had. Forget the daughter, who needs her? She's just an idiotic, worthless girl. The weak kind, the kind who can't defend herself, the kind who was made to haul water. Yet, there is pleading in my father's eyes as Teles strangles him lightly, and I can't help myself. There is something left in my heart for him and I'm torn.
A rush of souls hits me in the chest with their sound, but it's nothing compared to Papa's silent plea. It's full of pain and agony, his gaze unbroken as I watch him turn blue in the face. One of us has to make a move, and I know it's me this time. I breathe in, deep. Yet, instead of making a move to free him, I crumble completely.
I hate this. I hate this! I hate this! I want to scream, mad at my own indecision. Furious inside, timid on the outside. Enter wishful thinking, Ailen Bright style. See if you can slap me to make me act.
What I want is to perform one swift frog-leap, with both feet high in the air, kicking sirens and watching them fly. What I do is drag my right foot to take a small step. A step back. What I want to feel is Papa's Ralph Lauren polo shirt roughing up the palms of my hands as I grab him and shake him and yell in his face everything I have ever wanted to say. What I do is take another step, this time realizing which way I'm moving. Backward. I'm retreating, ready to flee. Because I don't know where my allegiance lies anymore, who my family is, exactly—my father or the sirens. Or Hunter. Someone else, or nobody at all?
A blinding thought hits me. Unless I lose control when I'm angry, I can't hurt people.
Something rolls from under my foot and I almost stumble. Papa's sonic gun. I bend and pick it up, seeing it up close for the first time. It's cool to the touch and reminds me of transparent water blasters, made from smoked-gray plastic, with wires coiled inside and a black, conic tube facing me like a tiny loudspeaker. Except there is nothing ergonomic about it. It's two simple cylinders welded onto each other. The big one acting as a barrel, and the small one, stuck out at a slight angle, as a handle. A small, blue button with blue wires leading to it acts as a trigger.
By some blood related impulse, I aim it at Canosa, her eyes widen. A pulsing of emotional exhaustion circuits through my head, ready to explode on anyone or anything, just so they will leave me alone and give me time to make sense of everything that's happened since this morning.
A hint of a smile alights Papa's features.
"Get off my father," I say and shift the gun to point toward the blown up stall. Canosa silently nods and Teles lets my father go, so does Pisinoe. Ligeia is last, hissing her contempt at me.
"That's my girl. Show me, Ailen, show me what women were made for. Show me what you can do, come on." Papa's eyes look like they're growing, until they fill my world with one penetrating stare. The blue of his irises is so different from Hunter's, faded, possessing a clarity of ice, his pupils looking as if two tiny holes were drilled by an auger. And that's where I'm about to drown.
Sawdust odorizes the air, when the rest of the mob bursts onto the scene, complete with screaming women, the police officer with his beer belly, and the fishmonger. I hear their souls behind me, retreating toward them without turning my head, my gun pointed and ready.
"Do it, Ailen," he licks his lips, "show me."
And I want to scream, Why did you marry mom, did you even love her? Did you, ever? But my tongue won't move.
Papa smiles with terrible knowledge. He knows he has power over me, no matter what shape I'm in. I know it too. And this knowledge makes me want to kill myself all over again. I can't bear it, it poisons my soulless cavity with emptiness. No soul will ever fill that void.
I wish to scream at the top of my lungs, Why did you decide to have me? Why did you let her go? What did you do to her, you sick fuck! What I do is take another step back, angry tears rolling down my cheeks. Shame cooks my face, and I hate it. I want to smash him with the back of my palm, scream in his ear, yell and holler and sing. What I do is keep moving. It's as if my body betrays my mind and does its own thing.
The room's temperature drops a few degrees. Thick fog coils around my feet. Canosa starts singing, her eyes looking straight into Hunter's, his body in her grip, his face ashen. She is aiming to suck out his soul.
"Hunter!" I yelp and step into a puddle that formed from the faucets' fizzing water. I flail my arms and plop down on my ass, letting go of the sonic gun that flies out my hand and makes a peculiar arc, landing in Papa's hands. He clutches it, backs off from the sirens, and runs toward me. He kneels and presses it to my chest, into my ribcage. Freshly-brewed, expensive coffee breath puffs over me through his perfectly whitened teeth, at six hundred dollars per visit. Not covered by insurance.
"Show me what you can do, Ailen, sweetie. Prove yourself to your father. Go on." Then, with power, "Do it!" There is expectancy in his urge, yet I can't bring myself to hurt him. What does he want me to show him? What is this all about? Him waiting for me to resist? To hit him back? All those face-slapping sessions while I grew up have served this sole purpose? The idea sickens me, and all of my suppressed confusion and hurt and hatred and disappointment want to exit at once.
Without a second thought, I direct them where my body tells me to. Primitive instincts take over. After all, I'm nothing more than a hungry siren.
My muscles groan as I push hard into the floor and propel myself toward the restroom's entrance, collapsing with the fishmonger, the one who asked to call 911.
"There she is, officer! I saw her myself! I saw her throw that bike. I tell you, whatever it is, it isn't normal. She needs to be locked up. She—" We collide and he folds over me. I hold his body and twist him in the air, slapping him on the tile floor and directing my anger toward him. His thirty-something soul chants at me with its Seahawks' Super Bowl cheer, barking dogs, and lonely strums of a guitar. I stare directly into his pupils and see them widen. There is something else that's like an echo of an afterthought. A feeling, a presence of a girl, tucked behind his eyes but not quite by his heart, and a swarm of beautiful lies. I hear every single one. Faker. It makes me outraged, and then hungry, ravenous, famished.
I'm like a smoker who quit just a few days ago, after smoking for twenty years, and is dying for a drag. I'm surrounded by the smoldering of that impossible soul aroma, acrid, almost musty. In other words, stinky, yet irresistible.
If I don't feed right now, I'll die.
My pinhole of a vision excludes all light. My focus shifts from looking to igniting, sensing life on the other end and willing it to crawl out of its cave and come to me. I squat over the fishmonger's chest like a vulture, scavenging for his essence, at once oblivious to everything that's happening around me. I vaguely remember that Papa has the gun now and can blow me up at any second, but I don't care. Nothing matters except food.
The Fishmonger's resin apron squeaks under me. His plump face turns pallid with terror. His sweat overpowers that distinct after-shave lotion that single men wear thinking it will make them more attractive. His hair, fluffy and flaky, peaks out from under his cap onto his scrunched forehead. He emits a groan. I lower my face to his, ignoring his strong garlic breath, and give away to instinct.
Nobody taught me how to feed, but I know now why I failed to kill Hunter. We had no eye contact. This time my victim's eyes are open, and that's key. They beckon me with magnetic force.
I lick my lips, widen my eyes, and exude a strange glow that reflects in fishmonger's eyes, the electric blue of a fluorescent light bulb. It comes off hot, a degenerating siren glare, the one that corrupts—as my father likes to say—men's very spirits. Eye contact, that's my lighter. It explains what Hunter said about the real siren, the killer kind, the girl next door whose gaze never sits still. Locking eyes with her can mean only one thing. Death.
I imagine myself as a DuPont lighter, the fancy, expensive kind. Flick open the case, ping! I open my mouth wide. Twist your thumb on the igniter. I inhale, ready to sing. My innards are cotton-soaked in lighter fluid. My stare is a flint that creates a spark. My tongue is my wick, I flick it over my lips, wet with anticipation. The first notes that come out of my mouth are the fire.
"Why can't you let go of me?
Whispering in my ear,
Pulling on my skin."
I sing the Siren Suicides' song that I'd always sing in our bathroom at home after yet another violent tirade from my father, my cheeks swelling, hatred fueling my voice. It's called Let Me Be. It's a song for him, and I know this time he can hear me.
"Let me be happy, let me be happy.
And I will be, I will be."
The fishmonger's cheeks are stained with tears, his eyes forever open to his death. His soul, ignited, makes its first tentative appearance out of his mouth, a trail of smoke, a shadow. I inhale slowly in case I'm too sensitive. It does taste musty, just like I thought. I don't care. As a first siren meal, it tastes beyond delicious. It gives me a buzz, a drowsiness, and then a sharp euphoria that spreads through my ribcage, full of his sounds—Seahawks and dogs and guitar—crammed into one bubbly tumble. I hold it in and it makes me want to float. One second goes by, then two and three. Thick fog uncoils all around me, streaming from my skin pores.
"Why don't you believe in me?
Cradling my hopes,
Strangling my dreams."
I take the sharp breath of a maniac, of a druggie getting high on coke, and one thought passes through my mind. Man, this is the best shit ever.
"Let me be happy, let me be happy."
More tendrils of fog waterfall from my skin, like I'm a freezer opened on a hot summer day. While I sing, the soul inches into my chest, burrowing into it until it's fully ingested. I inhale another whiff.
"And I will be, will be."
The song is not done, but already the fishmonger's face loses color. His soul is mine now, it buzzes inside me. The room's temperature cools down to about fifty degrees. I feel a first pang of fever. I hold my breath, and let go.
"Why can't I leave you?"
Another inhale. Vapor slinks out of his mouth in creamy streaks, uncoiling into a smooth ribbon. Silky. I suck on it, gulp it up. It stinks of cowardice smeared with cold sweat, and it's still tasting musty. I want to taste different souls, to gorge myself up on flavors. There is a faint commotion behind me.
"Stumbling in my steps,
Thrashing in my haste."
Before I can inhale again, Hunter's on my back shaking my shoulders. I send him to the wall with a mere arm-shove. Slam! Nothing matters now except food. With more than half of the monger's soul inside me, I'm still ravenous. It seems like I absorb him as I eat, the void rumbling through my chest so loudly, I think the entire market will hear.
I inhale and close the song.
"Let me be happy, let me be happy.
And I will be, will be."
"Got you!" Papa's voice breaks my trance.
I flip my head to the left. Something happens at the end of some faraway tunnel. Insignificant. I blink, trying to get back. Papa's on top of Canosa, her writhing body in agony. Ligeia and Teles are at his feet, his shoes are off and they are pulling at him, hissing. The sonic gun lies on the floor under the sink, a few inches from his grasp. Hunter wrestles with Pisinoe, and turns to look at me. The tunnel closes. This is not important right now.
I'm back to my feeding frenzy. I have to finish it, I have to. The monger is dying. I push his eyelids apart to make him look at me, to establish eye contact again. Hunger twists me inside out, and I inhale.
"Why can't you let go?"
On the word go, the last of his soul slips out and settles into my mouth.
Pop!
Our gaze breaks. His eyes glass over, lifeless. He's gone, and I'm afire. I'm as warm as I was when I was a girl, like I'm back to normal with hot blood rushing through my veins, giggly and excited.
"I said, do her now, idiot. Shoot her!" Papa shouts to Hunter. Hunter rolls with Pisinoe under the sinks, reaching out to the gun. Now she's on top of him, all sweetness and questions about what kind of pet he wants forgotten, grabbing his hair and beating his head against the wet floor.
Body heat drains from the monger. I look down and it dawns on me. He's dead, and it was me who killed him. My giddiness evaporates. My stomach drops. What was I thinking? I try to retch it all back out, coughing. Tough luck. It's gone, absorbed into my seawater blood now. My first feeding is over.
"How could I. How..." I stiffen and tumble off his body into the receding fog, now like a thin layer of tracing paper over the hexagon-tiled floor.
"Ailen, behind you!" Hunter breaks into a shrill. I turn my head to see Pisinoe begin her song and watch Hunter's eyes become transfixed. I want to stand up, but my legs are mush. The classic stoner's relaxation at the wrong time.
I open my mouth to shout, but my father finally reaches the sonic weapon and, with his stomach flat on the floor, he points at me and pushes the button.
Blam!
A focused beam of sound misses me by a foot and sends the air into visible waves. A second later, he fires at the sirens next to him. Canosa roars and the combination of her voice and the sonic blast shakes the ground and every little tile piece in the walls, every mirror, every sink. Toilet water shoots up, pipes break into a shower, and faucets uproot and spray us all with a fierce drizzle of chlorinated water.
My eardrums erupt with pain; I clutch my head and stoop. Ligeia and Teles join Canosa, shrieking. I back off toward the window by the entrance, sliding on the wet tiles.
"You don't understand, Ailen, this is not a game. This is real. I'm trying to teach you something. If you let me," Papa shouts over siren cries and erupting water, his pink polo shirt turning reddish from getting wet.
Remorse floods me with such a force that I begin singing out my pain, not knowing how else to respond, replaying in real life what I wanted to do so many times while sitting locked up in the bathroom.
"Why can't you let go of me?
Whispering in my ear,
Pulling on my skin."
"Where do you think you're going?" Papa asks. I realize I made a step toward the exit, where a breathless crowd is transfixed. I catch myself in the mirror. My reflection looks scary; I'm a bleached-out version of Ailen, with translucent skin devoid of color, pasty, matted hair, and unnaturally blue eyes, bluer than Hunter's rain jacket hanging loosely on my shoulders. My face splits with the grimace of a sea monster, some ghostly beastie. How is this supposed to be charming?
"Let me be happy, let me be happy.
And I will be, I will be."
"I don't think you're going anywhere, you hear me? I think you're going home." He aims at me, standing amidst incapacitated sirens. They're breathing, but not moving. Hunter crawls from under the sinks, particle board dust covering his hair.
He reaches for my father with what closely resembles tears in his voice, "Fuck you, man! She is your own—" but gets kicked in his groin and folds down, moaning.
Watching this hurts worse than a thousand sonic blasts. "Hunter!" I lean forward.
Ka-blam!
My father hits my legs. My head explodes with brilliant pain. The tissue in my legs screams and threatens to separate into a million atoms, yet somehow holds together. I drop to the floor, ignoring the ringing pain, and continue to sing.
"Why don't you believe in me?
Cradling my hopes,
Strangling my dreams."
Bam!
He hits my side now. I slide across the wet tiles leaving a trail with my butt. It's like he's aiming at me, but doesn't intend to kill me.
"Let me be happy, let me be happy.
And I will be, I will be."
I make it to the open frame of the tall window, now slightly ajar as if it had been left open to let in fresh air. The sweetness of the rain greets me. I pull myself up on the windowsill.
"Why can't I leave you?
Stumbling in my steps,
Thrashing in my haste.
Let me be happy, let me be happy.
And I will be."
Another blast sears my torso with pain.
"I will be!" I nearly shout, then hoist myself up into the opening, roll over the windowsill, and drop twelve feet down.