Writing Snapshots

bewitching

I flapped my wings, beating against the surges of the winds that pushed me back to my prison. Any time I tried to cross the magical invisible boundary that trapped us sirens to our little island, it zapped me with this shock that sizzled through my body and hurtled me fifty feet through the air and made me plummet to the sand floor. However, through repeated shocks and practices, I managed to avoid it and land gracefully amongst the rotting carcasses of men lost forever at sea. I could not keep a small smile from erupting across my face as the magic of the island coursed through me. Apart from singing, this shock of sorts was the one thing that made me feel alive in this gloomy, mist-shrouded land.

I didn't know how for how long now the sea had become my home but it had to have been for many years now. I didn't even remember what it felt like to be mortal anymore or any home but this. The time for escape was over, for there was no escape until a man could cross our isle without hearing our music and being lured in by us. Even then, our only escape would be death and not mortality again.

My fate was to know only how to sing and how to fly and the dead faces of the men that surrounded my rock.

Once, their grotesque rotting flesh would have made me scream and cry. But now, as I watched the insects of the island wolf on their flesh and then the worms wiggling through the pockets of the remaining flesh to decay their bodies, I felt a grim satisfaction. I had done that, that life was taken away by me. The eyeballs hanging out of the sockets of their skulls, so lifeless and still--all of it was because of me.

Most of them had their hands around their stomachs when they died and even in death that posture remaining, for every one of them had starved to death. We had seen them claw at their stomach as if they ached to relieve the hunger through pain, claw at their throats for water that wasn't salty. Eyes had become holes of desperation. Their words from their dry tongues begged us to let us go home. And all we sirens did was watch desperation turn to anger and then resignation. Desperation even made some men even try to capture and try to cook us—after all we were half-birds so surely, we could be eaten. Raidne, the usual siren who was targeted for her more hideous birdlike human features, had clawed him to death with her legs.

A sharp, haunting wail-like screech pierced the thick mist, rolling towards me. It was the call of our leader Molpe to assemble at once. Our next target was here. I dug my clawed feet into the sand beneath me and then pushed against it, spreading my wings out as I glided through the air to the other part of the island. The cool air flushed through me once more and I let it caress me with its feather-light touch against my skin. My golden hair billowed around me and for one moment. Another screech had me plummeting to the rocks below and moments later I was beside the other handmaiden sirens.

Molpe turned towards me, her fierce auburn hair and matching fire wings radiating resentment. "How many times must I beckon you Thelxiope? I've sighted a ship on the horizon." Before I could apologize, she grinned, her white teeth sparkling even in the dim light. Rustling her feathers, she said proudly, "It's time to sing, my ladies."

I could see the ship on the horizon, the hull with a mermaid figure piercing the fog. As soon as I saw it, from some primal part in me, I started singing. Like how it was when I was a mortal, the world seemed to disappear as I sang my heart out. The music, an ocean of its own, carried me away on its waves and made me transcend into a plane that was almost ethereal. All of our five voices fit together in perfect harmony, a melodious cacophony.

We could see the ship slowly change its course, heading towards us instead of on the straight path that would have guaranteed their safety. Our voices had successfully lured the men aboard the ship who were oblivious to the dangerous rocks that awaited them. The usual thrill shot through me, but somehow, every time, it was a novel experience too. The waves crashed against the jagged steeps of the rocks below as our voices crashed against the men's ears. Up and down the notes went and up and down crashed the waves.

Closer and closer they came to being shipwrecked. Both we sirens and the rocks smiled at still the blissfully unaware sailors, waiting for our prey to reach home. We reached the crescendo of our song and for a moment the world seemed to still.

Moments later, we could hear the bells clanging on the ship. Every time those mortals would ring that bell as if it would save them. But by the time they realized they were on a collision course and did so, it would always be too late. As I continued to sing, I attuned my ears to the screams and prayers of those aboard letting it add into my haunting hymn. The usual morbid satisfaction settled within me. They were all going to die. They were all going to die because of me.

The first sound of the hulk of the ship crashing into the rocks made a satisfied shiver snake through me. The sound of the wood splintering and pieces spraying everywhere amongst the sea foam, the deafening crack that bellowed that the air, the splashes of men try to stay afloat? Beautiful. A myriad of screams, so many screams, followed. Our song comes to an end but the screams keep the ending notes still alive for long after we returned to our trees. We fell asleep to the sound of screams, begging and mercy awaiting the next target already. 

Word Count: 1032

Prompt: Write from the perspective of a mythological siren stuck on the rocky shores of an ocean, trying to lure unsuspecting sailors to their deaths.

A/N: This was a recent piece I wrote for my school magazine, the only fictitious writing I have done in a while haha. Clearly I am super rusty but do leave your thoughts below! <3