The Afterlife (Siren Suicides, Book 3)

Chapter 4. Iron Tub

What do you do when the one who's supposed to love you, betrays you? What do you do when the one you trust most yanks your trust out from under your feet with a violence you cannot grasp with your little childish brain? And what if, after all is done and you're finished crying, you're told that it was done in the name of love? How do you continue to function? How do you continue giving, loving, believing? These questions gut me as I watch the blade approaching my throat, tiny air bubbles framing it like gems. I have no answers. The only thing I know is that I have one or two seconds at the most. My eyes bulge in fear. I tighten my muscles and hear the fabric give. Not enough. Try again, yell. Do something! Hum! Scream! Sing! But I can't, so I shut my eyes tightly, not wanting to see this.

"Ailen. Please...forgive me. Forgive me...if...if you can," Hunter's voice trembles between sobs, and then my father voice barges in with its gleeful baritone, full of sick wonder.

"Look, Ailen, look," he says.

I feel my eyelids being pried open, his fingers pulling at my eyelashes. I squint harder, fighting him.

"It's a state of the art procedure; you don't want to miss it." Heavy breathing and soft crying come at me in distorted sound waves.

I have ignited my father's soul back to life but I seem to have failed to make it truly reborn. It must've gone on the wrong circuit, twisting him along the way into a horrendous creature that doesn't know any boundaries in its reign, similar to a child who thinks the center of the world is his navel.

He pinches my cheek hard and I utter an inaudible yelp. My eyes fly open, just in time. I see every single detail of what's being performed like a patient who suddenly woke up from anesthesia in the middle of a surgery and can't quite fathom what, exactly, is happening.

Hunter's hand is inches from my neck, the scalpel held firmly between his fingers with my father's fingers on top of his, in an iron grip. With one sharp shove the tip of the blade is pushed right beneath my chin and traces a vertical line down to the concave spot where my collar bones meet, cutting through remaining cotton layers, smoothly, with a whispering ripping noise. I relax a little, until another swing of the blade slices through my skin and goes deeper into the muscle, as a butcher's knife would make a groove into a chunk of meat. A crunch of parted cartilage rips through my ears. I don't know how deeply the cut goes, and I can't know, because the agony of pain overwhelms me. I spasm and shudder and thrash as much as my binding allows me, screaming a muffled cry. From a long distance—what seems like miles and miles away—Hunter cries, too.

A clear, viscous slime oozes out of the hole in my throat and floats up in a cloud of goo; it looks like a mass of frog eggs. My heart deserts my chest and hikes up to my larynx, pumping madly. This feels similar to when my gills split open into being for the first time, only a thousand times worse. Fingers reach into the cavity, probably Hunter's because they are gentle as they palpate their way around and finally stumble on what must be the tissue around my vocal cords. I can't see what's happening and I can hardly feel anything except the hot pulsing insanity of pain.

Then he touches them. He touches the two protruding nubs at the edge of my glottis—the space between my vocal folds—the very membranes that produce my voice with their vibrations.

At first, nothing happens.

Then, a mini earthquake shakes the trawler. No, it shakes what feels like the entire ocean. It starts with small oscillations and reaches a crescendo with a seismic tremor of water all the way to the sea bottom, making everything around me expand, close to exploding. Surgical instruments fly off the walls and fall to the ground in a succession of metallic clangs. Lights flicker and hiss, threatening to go out completely. The water sloshes out of the tub in rhythm to the boat rocking wildly from side to side. My body turns to liquid as if someone threw a stone deep inside. I'm a circular wave that grows amidst gigantic ripples, rising to the horizon and shimmering in its wake, a tsunami in the making.