Sirens
Too many sailors had lost their minds and lives to the songs that echoed on these shores. Every sailor that came near in fact…
I was determined not to become a statistic.
The waters thus far had been shades of the brightest blues and greens, and glistening fish had leapt through the waves on either side of our vessel. But the closer we got to the famed shore, the waters grew murky and grey and no fish accompanied us. The waves grew angrier and louder as they slammed against the hull of our ship. The sky dimmed and the sun faded in the distance.
Amidst the creeping dark, my sailors and I were prepared. Every man and woman was tied to a mast or a bedpost in the cabin. To the best of our abilities, we plugged our ears with beeswax and torn sheets. I was tied against our figurehead, the phoenix’s feathers seemed to blossom from my spine.
A mist started to form before our eyes, clouding our view ahead but slowly through the mist we could see figures on the rocks of lore, the rocks where no man or woman had returned from. Yet. The figures looked human till you looked below the waist, black glittering scales that reflected rainbows off of each other gathered into mesmerising tails and in their hands were instruments made of what appeared to be stained ivory and the strings were a fleshy pink. Around the rocks, I could see what looked like people resting but the closer we got: they were covered in blood, with bones exposed and some of their limbs missing. Many a gut spilt from the carcasses. Their eyes were wide open but blank and grey. The instruments were carved from the missing sailors, sailors whose families were still weeping over a framed photograph or forgotten coat.
I swallowed and tried to make out the figures’ faces. I could see that they each had eyes, hair, a nose but I can’t for the life of me describe them to you but to say that they were bewitching. My sailors would say the same. Their murky features were never clear, only in your memory for a second before you had to look again and once again forget what you just saw. The only features we could clearly see were their mouths, curved into sinister smiles with faintly red-stained daggers for teeth, and their fingers as they lifted their instruments. Their nails were long and claw-like and I watched, unable to take my eyes off them as the first note rang through the air, like no note I had ever heard before. It was sharp and clear and sang in your ear even as the next ones followed it. And the same happened for each one. None of the notes that escaped their lips and strummed from their harps and refined fiddles was like the ones we had heard in our travels around the globe. No instrument had produced such music, no voice produced such sound. It was wordless to each of us but the songs they played seemed to outline every dream any of us had ever had and every desire we had ever desired, our every secret thought was manifested in their chords. The waves flooded their rocks and swayed our ship dangerously.
Beeswax and torn cloth worked to no avail as they inexplicably unwinded from our ears and the music cut through each of my sailors’ binds, one by one, slowly. Each of my sailors dragged their feet across the dock of the ship with a dazed grin and glazed eyes. I screamed and screamed and so did whichever of my sailors that were yet to be captivated, trying to stop our mates from diving to their deaths, diving to be carved and moulded and eaten. But they still proceeded to the top of the deck and some gripped onto my feet and the wings of our phoenix as they climbed and stood upon our ship. One by one, almost in a line, to the beat of the bewitching creatures’ song, they dove into the murky waters and floated to the sirens. They climbed the rocks and sat at their captors’ tails, eyes closed and rubbing their faces against their fins humming to the wordless song. My first and best mate diving in and sitting with her clothes soaked through, humming their song as they gazed down at her predatorily is the last memory I have before blacking out. The sailors who followed after me say that I was unbound right after her, and followed my sailors to sit at the sirens’ tails joining the dreary chorus.
From what I have gathered, eventually, all 58 of us sat in the same trance while each faceless creature stroked our paling cheeks and sang into our ears, instruments laid aside.
That is until they took turns dragging a claw across our throats and we each drowned and choked in our own blood.
I failed. We became a part of the statistics.
Now, I sit here on the same rocks where I met my fate, but you can’t see me. You can’t hear me. I’m invisible, I’m the wind that brushed past you unnoticed as you walked in a trance across the deck of your vessel or I’m the wave that tugged at your feet as you swam to your bloody death.
I sit here telling stories to every sailor that passes, unheard. Our bodies are now the very instruments that played us to our ends.
The prompt: ‘Write from the perspective of a mythological siren stuck on the rocky shore of an ocean, trying to lure sailors to their deaths.’ When I started writing this, I switched the perspective.
