Little Siren Girl

Here's my newest short story!  I did a dramatic reading of it on YouTube, with the music of Derek Fiechter (He has fantastic music!), and I got permission by messaging him on YouTube...then Facebook, because I'm obsessive and also have a distrust for YouTube messaging, as I don't really understand it...wow, way to sound old.  ANYWAY...here's the dramatic reading, as well as the written short story if you don't have time to listen to the dramatic reading, even though it's not even four minutes.
Derek Fiechter's Music
Dramatic Reading of "Little Siren Girl"

            No creature, human or otherwise chooses to be born, or chooses to be born what it has been born.  Cats don’t ask to be cats, dogs don’t ask to be dogs, and sirens don’t ask to be sirens!

            I can’t help what I was born, or my abilities.  I look at my hands, slightly webbed, and know that they have the ability to pull a man into the water…to…to drown him.  Any time I open my mouth, I am very cautious, because I know that to hear a word from my lips or a song from my mouth could easily drag an innocent man into the water…to never again breathe.

            My mother says that humans are terrible creatures…perhaps it’s true.  But…are we any better?  They plunder and kill…we lure and kill.  Are we any different?  I have a tail, they have legs.  They admire our cousins, the mermaids…but warn against us when at sea.

            I am dark….  My scales will never shine iridescently like a mermaid’s…instead they gleam a beautiful grey.  I dress in dark jewels.   I wear a necklace of human fingerbones that my mother gave me for my sixteenth birthday…and I shudder each time I touch it.  But I can’t remove it…because it was a gift.

            My eyes are silvery gray, and my lips are always stained black.  My hair is the most colorful part of me…it’s red…red like blood.  I must be beautiful…sirens always are, so I hear.

            I sit on a rock and watch ships of humans.  I long to sing for them…because my song must be beautiful…sirens are always beautiful singers.  But I dare not open my mouth…because one note of my song will bring them to their deaths…and I don’t want that!

            Or do I?  Sometimes…I think about the dark side of me…and I feel it pulling at my soul.  I want to sing.  Maybe I want to sing for them, maybe for me.  But I want to sing. 

Sometimes I want to lure them to me, hold them in my embrace…then plunge with them to the bottom of the sea, holding them tightly…and when my songspell has worn off, I see their eyes widen…as they realize it’s too late.  Then I rise to the surface, laughing, smiling…and do it again…and again

            How can there be two sides of me so different?  Has every siren felt this way?  This battle inside?  The desire both to love…and to drown?  I often wish I was born a human.  Humans aren’t much different…but don’t they still have more choice?  Surely humans don’t scream within themselves.

            I sit alone, shivering.  I long to sing.  I have never sung…I barely speak.  Surely no one knows of my struggle…and how could I share it?  Sirens feel no remorse.  Sirens kill.  It is a way of life.  And…and I was born into it….

©2016 Katie Holm