by Nas Magkasi
SIREN BLOOD
20,000-word Novella
Chapter One
10 Years Prior
The townspeople of Tetro stared with their mouths agape. Five of the most beautiful women they had ever seen drifted to shore on a bamboo raft. Each one was more beautiful than the next that the men didn’t know where to look.
Their bronzed skin shimmered under the sun, which lit them from above. Long wet hair, ranging from mahogany to raven black, reached their waists, barely covering their full breasts. With their big eyes, button noses, full lips and high cheekbones, they possessed the faces of angels and the expressions of demons.
The wives felt obliged to remind the men that these otherworldly creatures were not women. That was obvious when the gaze shifted below their waists. They had tails like mermaids, mythical creatures who were half-human and half-fish. But mermaids didn’t exist and even if they did, they would be eaten by sirens, who did exist. As luck would have it for the creatures under the sea, sirens had a taste for human flesh.
The five sisters were sirens of the worst kind. They might’ve been the only five sirens in existence. They were natives of Tetro, or at least, by the waters of the tiny fishing village and neighboring towns. For centuries, the humans were blind to their existence. Men would sporadically vanish at sea without a trace, and no one knew why; the deep sea swallowed any evidence. Until recently that is, when one fisherman had swam away from the feeding frenzy of his two colleagues and lived to tell the tale. When the existence of sirens was revealed, men learned to repel them while at sea.
From a combination of anger and hunger, the siren sisters stepped onto land for the first time in more than a thousand years. They never had to, until now. Their mission: vengeance and the taste of human blood that they had been cheated from since their discovery. For months, they had no choice but to eat everything from jellyfish to white whales, and their meat tasted nowhere as delicious as that of a human man. Preferably men as human women tasted too much of tears, which they abhorred.
Each sister had already set her sights on the man she would consume. They locked eyes with each man, looking deep into their eyes, as if to their souls, which the sisters themselves lacked. At once entranced and revolted by the sight of these beauties, the men tried to look away. They gripped onto their knives, their swords, their fishing rods, bows and arrows, and whatever else they had to defend themselves in case of an attack.
The day prior, the sisters had written a message in big bold letters across the shore. It could have been written by a giant.
Meet us here tomorrow for lunch.
Aside from the odd citizen who had seen one of the beguiling faces at sea before their fateful consumption, this was the first time the villagers came face to face with one. A trait more fatal than their physical beauty was the seductive and hypnotic power of their singing voices. And it was the mouths that the humans kept their eyes on, their pillow-lipped pouts, which caused more destruction over men than their heavenly bodies.
As the raft slid onto sand, the sirens and humans came to a standstill. They stared, waiting for the other to make a move. The women had rounded up the children and headed back inside their homes, where most of them had decent views of the shore from the windows.
The siren with the darkest hair smirked and opened her mouth. Before she could get a word out, one of the fishermen, Luciano, began to chant.
“Sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua…”
Her smirk shriveled into a grimace. She emitted a high-pitched, bird-like screech that reverberated through the main hill where the village houses wrapped around.
Luciano, considered the best fisherman in town, didn’t back away like the other men when the sirens slinked their slippery tails on to the sand. He was a brave man with a slim build, square jaws and strong eyebrows over warm brown eyes. He was as kind as he was ruthless, especially when it came to protecting his family and his village.
Luciano gripped his hand knife, which he usually used to gut fishes. He assumed this wouldn’t be any different. He stepped forward and the other men, embolden by their leader’s courage, followed, including his brother Gio.
“Sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua…”
They all chanted the special incantation that the wizard had given them.
“Where is Zannan?” one of the men asked.
“Go find him!” Luciano shouted.
The man scampered off in the direction of the forest where the wizard lived secluded from everyone else. He was a hermit and often refused to meddle in human affairs. But this was a special occasion. The town needed him.
The whites of the sirens’ eyes turned black. Their skin bubbled and took on a black leather-like sheen. Long yellow beaks grew from their noses.
While the men were startled at what was transpiring before their eyes, they stood their ground and continued to chant.
“Sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua…”
They watched the beautiful sirens become unrecognizable as they grew five times their size and into the most hideous monsters they’d ever seen. And “monster” was the closest term to describe them. They didn’t know what they were. The things had the slippery dark hide of a seal, the head of a bird, the legs of an ostrich and arms similar to batwings. The more the men chanted, the more agitated they became. They didn’t screech anymore – they roared, somewhere between a lion and an eagle.
While the sirens moved with grace and used their bodies to more than one advantage, their monster versions could barely take a step without unsteady wobbling. Despite their jerky movements, they were out for blood. The monsters hadn’t tasted human flesh for too long, and at their new height, humans were ripe for the picking.
The men charged forward, following Luciano’s lead. The one with knives were the most brash as they dove the sharp metal into the monsters’ flesh. But the effect was minimal, and seemed to produce mere paper cuts on the thick hide.
Luciano climbed up the leg of one of the monsters. From the top of the fuzzy leg, climbing the skin next would be slippery, but he had loved climbing up trees as a child. He would make his way up the monster the way a mountaineer would an icy mountain. He’d cut a piece of the skin and grasped onto the flap with one hand, while the other hand held the knife to cut his next flap.
His original plan was to make it to the head and stab its eyes, but from the slow and mechanical way the monster moved, it would not make a big difference to blind it. All they did was flail and squeal and tried to step on humans. He would have to to slit their throats and stab them in the heart.
The siren monsters grabbed whatever human body they could, dead or alive, and took bites from their bellies, chewed off their heads, or tossed the whole body in their beaks. Halfway up the beast’s belly, Luciano witnessed a claw swooping down on the injured village baker, who had made it up one leg. The thing shoved him into its mouth, chewed a bit, and then pulled him out. The baker was completely devoid of flesh; he was all bones, a complete skeleton. The monster just tossed him aside, to the heap of Tetro’s brave, but dead citizens. The remaining ones who were alive did all they could, shooting arrows of fire, stabbing away at the feet, and some teenage boys were brazen enough to sling rocks from afar.
Alberto the carpenter couldn’t run fast enough. He became flat against the ground, an imprint in the sand. Dead. Everybody was dying.
Luciano was proud of his neighbors for all their bravery, but knew that there wasn’t enough people to fight off all five of the monsters. He prayed that Zannan would come with a spell that worked. He could barely injure one of them, no matter how much he pierced. He couldn’t even dig deep enough to leak any blood.
His son Do
menico was watching him. He wanted to do him justice. He wanted to protect him, and all his neighbors. But he was only one man. The muscles of his body contracted from lifting himself up. He might as well be climbing a giant.
He knew he was doomed.
***
Little Domenico, despite being ten, had the courage of a man. That was what he was trying to convince his mama as he watched his father fight from the window of his house.
Tetro’s shore was in chaos. The sand and the foaming waters of the sea were tainted with blood. He watched the five monsters scoop up and eat many of his neighbors.
He watched his uncle Gio run up one of the beast’s arms, but the other arm managed to seize him. Gio kicked and screamed. It bit off one of Gio’s legs and was about to gobble up the rest of him, but an arrow struck one of its eyes and it let go, sending Gio down into the sand. Gio didn’t move and Domenico was afraid he would get trampled like the rest of them.
“Mama, please!” he wailed. “I have to go help papa and uncle Gio! Please let me go!”
His mama shook her head.
“No. You stay right here.”
She was a lovely, but firm mother whom Domenico loved and didn’t dare disobey. She peaked out the window with him every so often, but she couldn’t watch for long. Too much blood was being shed and her husband was out there. There was nothing either of them could do except to stay put and wait. His mother let him watch his father fight because she wanted to expose him to the bravery of men and knew he would have to grow up and learn how to fight should there be a similar war in his lifetime, but she would not and could not bear the sight of anyone being injured.
Domenico was confident that if anyone could kill one of these monsters, it would be his papa. Luciano rode on one’s back, almost reaching the back of its neck. He was a skilled climber, and Domenico was looking forward to the day when his papa would take him mountain climbing when he was old enough. He had promised him he would.
Zannan, the wizard, whom Domenico had only seen twice in his life and had been in utter awe of, was running to the shore. His gray robe trailed after him on the sand, and he had a big maroon book under one arm.
Zannan opened the book and began to try spells. With each one, a burst of gold light would emit from the palm of his right hand and strike one of the monsters. It did little; at most the monsters considered them a nuisance.
His papa had reached one of the eyes, and he stabbed the eyeball over and over again.
Domenico cheered.
The monster roared, its arms flailing helplessly. Two of the other monsters crowded him from behind and one of them swatted Luciano into the air.
“Nooooooo!”
Domenico screamed, startling his mother. He couldn’t obey anymore. He had to help papa. As fast as his little legs could take him, Domencio ran out the door before mother could do anything to stop him.
Another monster had caught Luciano and shoved him into its mouth. It swallowed and let out a loud burp.
“PAPAAAA!”
Domenico dropped to his knees and sobbed.
Then he saw all the dead men with their mangled bodies spread out on the sand before him. He was a brave little boy, but all the courage in the world didn’t prevent him from feeling ill at the sight of a bloody battlefield.
Gone.
His beloved papa, gone, just like that. His mother had to come and pull him away. Even as Domenico cried, she was sorry that she had to come and see what he saw up close.
On their way back to the house on the hill, they heard a thud.
“Get back, men!” Zannan commanded.
The men who could still move ran. Many had to jump down. For some, it was too late.
One of the monsters had fallen. It lay stiff as a board and foaming waters lapped over its feet, carrying some of its blood into the sea.
Zannan shouted the same spell in Latin. Another beam of gold light struck another monster. This one became stiff as a board and fell back too. Men cheered and clapped.
Zannan was able to strike a third monster, the one that had eaten uncle Gio’s leg. The other two monsters had enough time to move toward the sea and transform back into their siren selves before Zannan could get to them too. As quick as they came, the two sisters vanished into the sea.
Domenico escaped from his mother’s hold and ran back to the shore, once again braving the route of dead corpses that lay at his feet. He searched around the place where one of the monsters had consumed Luciano until he found his father’s knife, the one with the initials L. S. carved onto the wooden handle.
He asked the other men to help him cut the monster open. Perhaps his father was still inside, alive and well, like Pinocchio when a whale swallowed him. His mother had read him that bedtime story when he was younger.
The men with longer swords agreed to help him, but Domenico asked them to be gentle. He didn’t want them hurting papa by accident in case he was alive like he hoped.
After considerable effort, the men were able to slice open a big flap of the belly. Undigested human flesh spilled out: blood, guts, bits of clothing, hair. Then a face floated down on top of the rest, a bloodied face that Domenico smiled back at every day.
His papa.
The rest of him had been eaten away, and only a mutilated face remained. Domenico sobbed.
On numerous nights after the day of the siren battle, Domenico dreamed of his father’s bloody, disembodied face.
Chapter Two
Domenico woke up at dawn with a throbbing in his head. From his bedroom window, he could see the dark coast, dead and calm. As it should be.
He hadn’t dreamt about sirens for so long. The battle was ten years ago, long enough for him to purge most of the traumatizing events from memory, or at least try. Scars inevitably remained. The dead men, including his father, and what remained of them, were buried in the village cemetery at the entry of the forest, and a big stone cross was erected on top of the hill of houses to honor them.
His mother was buried in the cemetery too. She was never quite as happy after Luciano’s death, and two years ago, she succumbed to an illness and died. Domenico believed that she wanted to die, and she had really died not of a nasty flu, but of a broken heart.
Domenico brushed his teeth, still thinking about his nightmare. He’d dreamt of the battle as it had happened in reality, except for the end. He and the men were about to slice open the monster’s stomach when the thing began to transform back. Instead of one of the dark-haired sirens, the monster became Adriana. Beautiful Adriana with her spun gold hair and sky-blue eyes. Her belly had already been partly sliced and blood gushed out of it. One of the men pulled on the open flap of skin, despite Domenico’s protests, and they found a dead fetus.
He was used to having nightmares about Adriana, ever since she disappeared six months ago. They had been in love - still were in love, very much so. Adriana was still alive as far as Domenico was concerned. Both 20, they had planned on getting married.
Then one day, she simply disappeared. Nobody knew where she went. A two weeklong search was held all over town, and in the forest. The villagers turned up with nothing. They’d even had some searches and investigations in the nearby towns. No one had seen her.
Adriana wouldn’t have gone into the sea. She was afraid of the waters. Her father had died in the siren battle ten years ago as well. Like him, she witnessed his death from her window on the hill and she’d been scared of the sea since. After all, that was where the sirens lived.
Domenico had been sick with worry ever since Adriana left. He’d felt as helpless as he did when he saw his father die. Nightmares about Adriana were so frequent that he’d dread going to sleep, expecting them. In the last one, he’d found her in the forest, asleep and dying among the mushrooms. When he tried to hold her, she crumbled like sand in his arms.
He loved her so much and sometimes he felt that he, like his mother, was slowly dying of a broken heart too.
After putting on his slacks, Dom
enico went out to sea. He was never hungry in the morning and skipped breakfast. He carried two fishing poles and a box of baits down to their dinghy. His father’s knife hung from a leather carrying case strapped to his belt, rain or shine, fishing or not.
He was a fisherman, and six days a week, he set sail with his uncle out to sea. Uncle Gio was always late, or Domenico was always early. It didn’t matter because Domenico grew accustomed to waiting every morning. It was a ritual to sit on the dinghy that was still on the sand as he waited for him. He liked to look at the waters with the sun behind him and clear his mind before a full day’s work.
It didn’t happen today. He thought about the dream, about sticking his knife into Adriana’s belly, killing not just one life, but two. The fetus had been covered with so much blood that the skin looked red. And what a face – all snarling and ugly – a real devil. When the thing was placed in Little Domenico’s arms, it turned into black stone and crumbled. He wondered what the nightmare meant and what it signified
