A Writers View

You awaken to the sound of a siren wailing. No, not an alarm siren. Not one of those ‘look out there’s a tornado coming!’, or the cold war ‘seek cover the Russians are bombing us!’ sirens. No – A Siren siren.

The mystical murderous cousin of the mermaid.

What do you do?

Do you follow the mournful sound to its source? Do you cover your ears and start humming as loud as you possibly can, in the vain hope of driving out their miserably hypnotic notes? Or, do you simply roll over and go back to sleep?

What do you do?

Well, here’s what I did.

“Jessica, will you stop?” I shouted from the mass of blankets I was cocooned in. “It’s 2 o’clock in the morning.”

The wailing stopped.

A minute later my roommate Jessica traipsed back in, feet squelching on the tile floor, and flopped fishlike back onto her bed, falling asleep instantly.

That was the thing about Siren’s. Sleepwalkers. All of them.

You know how it goes, you’re just having a nice little sleep (or maybe your awake cause you’re an insomniac, or a crazed student cramming for exams, I don’t know!), it’s the middle of the night and out of nowhere you hear this most entrancing melody. Or, you notice your friend Jim pouring himself a glass of milk, only he hasn’t got any glass in his hand, and so all of the milk just spills out onto the kitchen floor, and then you’ve got to try to get him back to bed without waking him, or having him kill himself by slipping in the aforementioned spilled milk, and the next morning he doesn’t remember a thing. But, he’s miffed that there’s no milk for his cereal.

Yeah.

When a Siren sleepwalks, which is e.v.e.r.y. night, they have the unfortunate habit of luring poor unsuspecting souls to their, more often than not, watery grave. I’ve told Jessica time and time again “I’m not fishing out another body, ok? I barely revived the last one. You’re lucky that I’m a nurse. Without me, do you have any idea how long your kill list would be?”

Unfortunately, most of these conversations have happened in the heat of the moment – when she was still asleep. So, of course, she the next day she has no idea about anything that happened the night before. Conveniently.

I thought about what I was going to say this time as I poured my morning coffee. Jessica was still asleep, as per usual.

“Look Jess,” I mumbled aloud, “there has to be something that you can do to kick this habit.” I turned towards the large tank in the corner of the room under the window, addressing the rest of my argument to Jessica’s pet shark.

“I mean, I’m sorry, but I just can’t do this anymore. I love having you as a roommate, but if we can’t get things to change then I don’t know if we’ll be able to continue living together.”

Mount-Pierre, the shark, dealt me some serious side eye as he swished away from me. I lost my train of thought as I found myself wondering, once again, just how Jessica had done it. How had she managed to wrangle and shrink a giant great white shark down to the size of a large goldfish? I’d never heard of Sirens having that kind of power before. Then again, I’d never heard of their sleepwalking curse neither, not till I’d started living with one.

I was just draining the last of the coffee from my cup when I heard Jessica stir and the doorbell ring at the same time.

“Coming,” I shouted unnecessarily. It had the desired effect though. Jessica shot bolt upright with a loud ‘huh?’, hair wilder than a gooseberry bush and eyes rounder than cherry pies.

I answered the door, ready with a ‘hi!’, but the delivery man had already disappeared, all that was left on the stoop was a small brown box with flowing cursive handwriting on it. I picked it up and brought it inside, meeting Jessica in the kitchen.

“It’s for you,” I said, handing her the mysteriously wrapped package. She took it from me with the slightest of frowns and rapidly unwrapped it. Inside was a piano tuner and a notecard with the same beautiful curling script. Jessica picked up the note, read it one go and tossed it back into the box with an angry scoff.

“What?” I asked, as she stomped away.

“That Marlene,” she raged, “I swear, if I get one more snarky comment from her then I’ll – I’ll – I’ll – I’ll just go and steal her man, yeah? That’ll show her!”

Feeling totally confused I picked up the card and almost snorted on the pastry I’d just bitten into. It read:

“Dear Jessica, I hear you’ve been having trouble sleeping lately. I’m sooo sorry. I wanted to send you a little gift to help you out. This way at least maybe you’ll be on key the next time you throw yourself at a man. XO – Marlene.”

Well, there goes the end of my speech. I’d been planning to suggest that Jessica reach out to Marlene. Marlene was the mermaid that Jessica had roomed with previously. They’d had a bad falling out and it was at that time that I’d offered Jessica a temporary place to stay. Emphasis on the word TEMPORARY.

That had been three months ago.

I scrambled to mentally revise my suggestion and was just opening my mouth, ready to deal out the bad news, when Jessica, who’d been busy tapping away at her phone, suddenly squealed and addressed me first.

“Carey,” she proclaimed, her eyes shinning with what looked like tears, “I’m so sorry to have to tell you this, but I’m moving out.”

“What?” I said without thinking. This was too good to be true. Was this really happening? “What do you mean?”

“Well you see,” she suddenly looked down, all shy like, “it’s Jacques. Jacques has asked me to move in with him!”

“Jacques,” I frowned, “wasn’t – he the one from the other night? You know, the one with the football jersey and – ?”

“And the dreamy green eyes,” she gushed, “yes, yes that’s the one! He just texted that he hasn’t been able to get me out of his mind and that he wants us to move in together right away.”

“He does know that you’re a – a siren, right?”

“Oh yes, yes,” she nodded enthusiastically, “and it’s so great, you know why? Because he’s a dwarf!”

“A dwarf?” I said, totally lost as to why this was relevant information.

“Uh huh,” she beamed, “he said that he’d only wanted to verify it the other night but that it’s true that he is immune to my songs.”

“B-but,” I stuttered, “but, he did follow you into the water. He almost drowned. I resuscitated him.”

“Oh, that wasn’t because he was enchanted, that was just cause he couldn’t swim. You know that,” she chided me. “You know dwarves can’t swim”

“Oh, yeah, you’re right.” Who in god’s name would know that?

Suddenly, a car horn tooted from outside.

“Eeee, he’s here,” she squealed rushing for the door, “oops,” she paused, turned back, twirled her hands in the air and magically scooped Mont-Pierre out of his giant shark-tank, shrunk him down to the size of a minnow and slipped him into a salt-water filled water bottle that she’d summoned from across the room.

“Ciao bella,” Jessica blew me a kiss from the doorway and then, with a wink, she was gone, a stream of bubbles left airborne in her wake.

But, what was I supposed to do with the rest of her stuff?

The End.