Sirens of DemiMonde

by N. Godwin

  “Any?” I asked dazed and confused. “How many names does this beast have? One minute he’s Apollo then Commander then--”

  “Apollo? You named me Apollo?” he asks me with a sly smile as Schumer tries to groggily stand from the stool to escape but can’t find his footing and falls back into his stool.

  “There’s Rawly, and Harold VI,” I say counting down my fingers because my mind is muddled and this sign has left me drain, this unmistakable sign that won’t end.

  “You forgot Mother,” Schumer tells me; “rumor has it that’s what his men call him.” Suddenly his eyes flash open wide and are filled with terror. “Oh shit, Lieutenant Commander! I for--”

  “Too late!” Rawly hisses and grabs Schumer under his neck with one hand and jerks him up off the ground and suspends the frightened man in front of his face.

  But I can barely ingest any of this because all I can hear is the name Harold being whispered over and over again by the wind, tens of hundreds and thousands of times.

  Then something that Schumer says dawns on me. He said this beast was Harold VI! Six! He’s the six I’ve been warned to listen for? Him?

  “Are you frigging kidding me?” I ask the ceiling as I wipe my hands across my eyes and brow. “You’ve got to be joking, right? He would kill me!” I shout and stomp my foot, pointing to Rawly as he drops Schumer back down on his feet to watch me fuss at the ceiling.

  Rawly releases Schumer all together, and soundly kicks his butt in the direction of the door. “Who would kill you, Helen? Quick, don’t think about it, just tell me, please.”

  “I won’t listen. Go away!” I plead.

  “Harold Hawkings VI,” he leans down and whispers in my ear as I stiffen. “It’s my name that frightens you, isn’t it? What does my name mean to you, Helen?” He pauses and studies me while I try to catch my breath.

  “I told you I can unlock new worlds for you,” Rawly says, trying to pull my hands down from my ears. “Take a chance on us, Helen. Take a chance and come out with me.”

  “No!” I shake my head and close my eyes even tighter.

  “Please, Helen,” he whispers. “You have to trust me or none of this will work.”

  “No. No. No. No. No. No,” I say over and over again, shaking my head back and forth as I hear only Harold, Harold, Harold. “Please go away! No. No. No--”

  “Trust me, baby-girl,” he whispers. “I won’t ever hurt you.”

  “Yes you will and we both know it! I need you to go away right now!”

  “Alright,” he considers, “I think we’ve both had enough for one night. I’ll let you go provided you answer one question with complete candor first.”

  “Yes, anything. Anything at all if you’ll just go!”

  “Tell me that somewhere deep down on some molecular level, you can feel that we are connected. If you can tell me you don’t feel this, too, even the tiniest little bit and you don’t like me, I’ll go away.”

  “Oh, thank you!” I exclaim, all but jumping up and down gratefully. “I’d rather die than be connected to you. I don’t like you at all! Not even the tiniest little bit.”

  “You don’t like-- You’re lying!” he says incredulously as he meets my eyes, demanding my truth as I glare up at him.

  “Look at you! I could never like someone like you. You are the very embodiment of everything I hate! You’re violent and creepy and way too vain, and you’re physically repulsive to me, too, and you’re trying to trick me. I know you are!” I shout as I point to the door. “Please. Just leave and never come back!”

  “Shit! You’re not lying! You really don’t like me,” Rawly says. “You fucking hate me!”

  He takes a step backward and stares at me long and hard then he averts his stoic gaze to the ground, visibly shaken. I watch as he puts his hat back on his head. I watch as he draws himself up, all six foot eight and a half inches of him. I can only see the back of his head as he walks out the front door and the reaction of the people walking in the front door who turn to watch him go by. He is gone from my view for a moment, but then I can see him outside in the parking lot. I watch as he climbs into in a giant black Hummer and burns rubber out of our driveway.

  I bend to pick up the beer mugs I have obviously broken, silently cursing the stench of beer and the dirty floor, and my few options. I am in tears as Hobie bends down with a broom and dustpan to help me with the mess.

  “Jesus, Jimmy-Sue,” he pleads. “Don’t you have any dreams? Isn’t there at least one thing you want to accomplish by the end of summer?”

  Fireworks!

  “Later, dude, I’m going gulf side,” I say stepping over Horst’s half-naked, prostrate body.

  I momentarily close my eyes as I wipe my sunglasses on my white bikini bottoms. I open them and stare down at Horst, trying to adjust my eyes to the bright glare off the water and white sand. He is laying on the shore half in and half out of the bay, his arm languishing casually over his eyes.

  “Yeah?” he asks without moving as I slide my sunglasses up the bridge of my nose.

  I stop and turn around, holding my hair back from the soft wind behind me. His inactivity surprises me. “I mean, your soccer buds from high school are waiting for you to play a game, right?”

  “I was kind of hoping you’d come, too.”

  “I remember some of those guys a little too well. I think I’ll just take a walk beachside and catch you afterwards. Besides, aren’t you going to surf the channel today with the other dudes, too?”

  “Didn’t bring my board,” he replies then breathes in long and deep with his eyes still closed.

  “Why not?”

  Horst rolls over on his side balancing carefully on his elbow and opens his blue eyes. They sweep over me until they find my face. “Just in case,” he says as he gives me a devilish grin.

  He is trying to be seductive but his baby blue eyes still can’t help but crinkle up in cherubic humor, no matter how hard he tries. I wonder if when he’s a man if he’ll still have this child in his eyes. He strikes a masculine pose as he looks me over, slowly this time, and I can’t help but laugh when I realize Horst thinks he’s somehow a sexual threat instead of just one of the dudes. I’m also laughing because he reminds me of a little boy practicing to spit or stand up and pee.

  “I’m funny to you?!” His voice goes up an octave.

  “Now, don’t get mad,” I say. “It’s just--” I break off to laugh as Horst lies there and watches me wipe tears from my eyes and try to catch my breath.

  “Will you for once tell me what you’re honestly thinking?” he says suddenly, sitting up angrily, and I stop laughing and look at him. “Like you do with Ken every single time you see him. Ooh sure, with Ken but not with me, not once. You know, Ken-honesty, where you actually have to share what’s in your head or heart.” He sounds more hurt than angry.

  “Okay, okay,” I say with a last chuckle, “I’ll give you Ken-honesty. I’m laughing because you look so cute. You must have been an adorable kid.”

  “Moi?” he says as he flexes his biceps with a slow smile spreading across his dimpled face.

  I start laughing again. “Here’s more honesty, if you want to flex your muscles and flirt you need to go play with the other girls.”

  “Muscles, you think I’ve got muscles?” He flexes his bicep again and smiles.

  “Look, you know this isn’t really a date, so try to behave. Now, are you going to go hang with the guys or what?”

  “Thanks for reminding me,” Horst says with a big fake grin. “I’ll catch up with you later about the “or what.”

  I walk ankle deep in the warm water of the bay and pause while a fresh boatload of tourists pulls up on shore and begins unloading in my path. While they step ashore I look back and Horst throws a handful of wet sand at me. I laugh one last time when it misses me.

  The locals have noticed all the anxious, tender-skinned tourists as they step off the boat onto our beach. The locals hate the tour boat operators bringing thei
r thirty-a-pop tourists over here to our island. Tourists can gladly have the rest of the beaches, all twenty-three miles of them, but this barrier island is sacred to us. It’s like finding a cockroach swimming in your bubble bath or, as in this case, it’s like celebrating Independence Day with the British. Add to that the crowded holiday factor and it’s beyond sin having anyone but your kin tag along on the 4th of July.

  Several tourists all but bump into me as they gather their mounds of gear and step off the pontoon boat and come ashore, and I stand impatiently, making eye contact just for the sheer orneriness of it, it being a holiday and all. Except their eyes are full of anticipation they’re eager to share. Look at them, happy, happy, and happier still. It’s hard to be annoyed with them for long, even if the Island is sacred and all.

  Sure enough, a surrounding group of locals pop another beer and awaken to the tourist challenge. “How big did you say that shark was that ate that tourist?” one local asks another. His friend responds with his arms stretched open wide as far as they can go.

  “Ate him in two bites.”

  “Bet you five hundred bucks that shark attack won’t even make the evening news!” a bikini-clad local adds with a laugh then a chug off her Corona.

  “That shark was this big!” a boy about nine years old tells the gathering tourists.

  Of course several tourists look around, then back inside at the safety of their boat. “A shark, here?” A mama tourist asks as she holds tighter to her kid.

  “Happens a couple times of day in the summer.”

  “Yeah, but only over here!” Several locals say then laugh.

  “Never on our other beaches.”

  “Hey, we’re just messing with you!” one local gives in and tells them.

  I chuckle as a group steps back aboard the boat anyway and sit tight. I shake my head and laugh as I try to walk beyond the last noisy group disembarking right in front of me without so much as an excuse me. I stop impatiently again and glare at the back of their heads.

  Except I see them then, the eyes, small and sad-brown, and full of the blank stare of abject misery. It is such a jolt to my system to see that stare here, surrounded by frolicking families who could never relate, that it takes a moment to register. Brown meets blue for only a moment then the girl suddenly jerks her eyes down submissively in fear of everything. She has at least five visible bruises on her scarecrow body. My eyes assess her family quickly, the ones with the wailing kids, a baby and a little boy around four or five, far too old to be crying so despondently.

  “Naomi, shut that goddamn kid up!” I hear a man shout at the girl.

  My eyes assess the father figure under a large straw sombrero and cutoff blue jeans. His unshaven face houses eyes with the look of permanent anger, anger for the place he’s made for himself in life, anger for his wife and kids, anger because it’s his only emotion that’s constant. He is carrying a big Styrofoam cooler and his wife is trudging along two steps behind him, carrying the beach chairs and the crying baby.

  “Couldn’t leave those damn kid back home with your mother could you, Meryl?” the angry man shouts at his wife.

  Naomi, the little brown-eyed girl, can’t be more than thirteen. She is following slowly behind the man and woman, holding the crying, little, boy’s hand and carrying a crinkled grocery bag from Winn Dixie.

  “Hush!” she warns the little boy, “Else your daddy’ll wallop us again!”

  “And, Meryl, shut the damn baby up, too! We’re at the beach, goddamn it, and I want some fucking relaxation!”

  “Hey!” a local dad insists from his lawn chair, his Frisbee resting on his knee. “We’ve got lots of kids here, buddy. Okay?”

  The angry man stops briefly to regard the local with an impatient glare. I step behind to the end of their line that has now grown to include two other similar men and their women. Meryl turns and looks at her kids as I pretend I’m with a random man and woman closet to me.

  “Naomi!” she says, “You get Lance to stop his caterwauling or else you know Rudy’s gon’ have to hit you both!”

  The mother figure stops and hefts her crying baby inside the bag of groceries Naomi is carrying. Naomi’s body seems to groan under the weight, and she shifts her weight from one hip to another, and immediately drops the little boy’s hand and begins patting her bag of groceries. The little boy bursts into even louder tears.

  “Meryl! Tell your damn daughter to take hold of my boy’s hand before I lose my patience! You tell her or else I’ll have to.”

  The little girl immediately juggles the bag and the hand holding as the father swears at them and the mother cracks an obscene joke to the other women who have stepped up closer behind her. I step further back.

  These people are classics so far. Their kids are a ragged form of neglect. Naomi’s hand-me-down swimsuit is at least a size too small so any deviant can clearly see her evolving body through its threadbare material. Off-brand chips and ketchup have fallen from the bottom of the torn grocery bag and I pick them up and follow behind. The baby’s head is barely visible over the top of the grocery bag. Both kids are still crying softly as the other two men pull up their ranks.

  Naomi is making these little grunting sounds as she struggles to keep up and follow the adults, who are winding their way through the crowded shoreline along the bay, around and beyond the channel, passing lawn chairs, Frisbee throwers and sunbathers as we cut across the warm sand around to the roaring gulf side. They are walking and winding, and I hate them.

  “Naomi! Shut those fucking kids up!” Rudy’s scream frightens a flock of seagulls gathered by the large granite rocks.

  “Hey, buddy,” two dads say from their lawn chairs as our group passes by. “Hey, we’ve got kids here!”

  Rudy and his two buddies step up to the men and stare them down with one daring glare as if the dads were trespassers on their opium patch. The big one with the tattoo of a naked woman on his forearm kicks one of the local’s beach chairs.

  “Mind your own damn business!”

  The locals breathe a sigh of relief and watch as our line moves quickly away from their perimeter, one catches my eyes in surprise, no doubt wondering why I am closely following this angry group. I have to ask myself have far I am willing to go because even I know that if these awful people go too far beyond the last large group of revelers then I can no longer follow them because my stupidity factor only stretches so thin.

  We are gulf side now and the last partyers we’re passing is a group of about fifty people barbequing, sunbathing, playing volleyball and rugby with a battalion of futuristic wave runners resting on shore. There are good-looking women everywhere and pumped men drinking beer and playing with miniature, remote-control, dune buggies or helicopters, and it looks like a toy store exploded down there because they have so many gadgets to play with.

  I stop in my tracks.

  God really does try me, doesn’t He? True to the nature of my luck, I spot Commander Harold Hawkins VI down on the shore, surrounded by a gaggle of women. There must be ten of them in thongs and bikinis fawning all other him and giggling like school girls. They’re rubbing their bodies all against his as they pretend to fight for a remote control device he’s holding over his head. Yuck!

  I step in closer to the morons, hoping Harold won’t notice me in the crowd as we move beyond them. I look back to make sure and he is still playing with a dune buggy, keeping the women at bay, oblivious to our bickering group.

  “Rudy, my damn feet hurt!” Meryl finally huffs. “What’s wrong with right here? Nobody’ll mess with us!” She drops her lawn chairs to the ground.

  You can tell by the way Meryl holds herself that she is a home-grown, weed of a woman with no goals beyond sitting down this very moment. She believes she is a normal person and her kids are lucky to have her as a mother. She believes her husband is her own special gift from God, and so do I.

  Her husband turns on her and studies his wife through squinting eyes. “Boo hoo!” Rudy smirks.
“Kids, take a good look at your fat mama. Her feet hurt. Boo hoo!”

  His buddies begin to laugh as their women scurry to make camp. The men reach in the cooler for another beer while their women set up their chairs and blankets and crank up AC/DC. Someone throws Rudy a beer and as he belts one back he spots me and stops in mid-chug.

  “What the fuck?!” he says as his group grows suddenly quiet and I cringe over their catcalls and whistles. “Well, lookie here, boys. I think we got ourselves a groupie!” Rudy says with a cruel laugh. As the others join in his laughter Rudy’s hat is caught up in a gust of wind and goes wafting toward the water.

  “Can we keep her, Rudy?” a man who looks like a younger version of Rudy asks.

  “Bet them ain’t real,” I hear one woman observe to another.

  “You lost?” Meryl wants to know because my proximity angers her.

  “Go get my Goddamn hat, Meryl!” Rudy yells and kicks her in the direction of his hat. “And put your fucking shirt back on!” he shouts at her back. “Are you trying to scare the kids?”

  As his friends laugh Rudy’s eyes zoom back to me. I can feel them traveling over my body slowly and I cringe.

  “Um,” I say. “These fell out of your grocery bag.” My eyes find Naomi’s face and I hand the ketchup and chips to her. “There’s a hole in the bottom of your bag. It’s not your fault. Anyway, I thought you’d miss them sooner or later.” I smile warmly at her as she looks at the groceries in my hands with horror.

  “You stupid little bitch!” Rudy explodes.

  “I didn’t drop ‘um!” Naomi cries out to the man. “The baby done it. I swear!”

  Rudy’s arm flashes beyond me. The next moment Naomi and the bag of groceries with the baby inside are lying in the sand. Naomi holds her cheek while the baby screams.

  Nobody seems to notice the baby so I pick him up and hand him to one of the wretched women, who in turn give me the finger.

  Oh Lord, that you would enlarge my territory and grant me just one little zap, God, just one right out of the clear blue sky.