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The SirenThere was a dead body on Sandie's back porch, and it was trying to get in.

She wrung the coffee out of the front of her shirt, made damn sure that all of her doors and windows were locked, and called Mike.

"Mike."

"Yeah? Sandie? That you?"

"You don't know anything about this, do you?"

"About what?"

"The zombie."

"Come again?"

"Mike, there's a zombie on my back porch. It's leaving smears on the glass door. Is it yours?"

"I... Could you repeat that?"

"Zombie, Mike. It's a dead body in a puddle of nasty, and it's leaving more nasty on my door. God, I can even smell it. This is one thorough job, man."

She edged away from the door, keep
The Siren - 2In the dream, Sandie was weightless. She had dreamed that sort of thing before, though, and understood that it would not last. When she dreamed that she was floating, it was only a matter of time before she dreamed that she fell.

It was an odd sensation, floating there in the dream. She could hear the world – cars and a dog and the rumble of a jet passing overhead – but there was nothing to see. She tried to raise her hand in front of her face, but she had no hand, either.

I'm a Presence, she decided. A Presence floating in space. That was comforting, because a Presence could not fall. She listened to the sound of the highway.

da
The Siren - 4Mike brought a pizza for lunch, and the crew piled into the back of his minivan to enjoy it. He disconnected the battery to keep the interior lights from eating up the juice and opened all of the doors to invite a breeze. Even so, the sun turned his car into an oven. At least the pizza was hot.

The sign on the Baptist church down the street flashed: "Pray for Rain."

"You feeling okay?" Mike asked. He had on a red plaid shirt that almost managed to hide the pizza-sauce stains. His collar was curled up in the cup holder in the front seat.

"Better," Sandie said. She bit off a string of cheese and helped herself to an orange soda from the cool
The Siren - 3It was only reluctantly that Sandie went to work on Friday morning, but she had to admit that her nails looked awesome. She had settled on neon blue, and Connie had loaned her an eye shadow to match. It gave her a tiny bit of extra confidence, just enough to face a steady stream of coffee-hungry commuters. She flitted between the espresso machine and the rows of syrup bottles, filling orders while she deflected curious sympathy from her co-workers.

Connie was the worst.

"So, he didn't take anything?" she verified for the twentieth time. She popped her gum and flipped her glossy black mohawk to the other side of her head.

"Nope. At least, I
The Siren - 5All Sandie learned from her very expensive blood tests was that there was no reason for her to have paid for very expensive blood tests. She did not have leprosy, or hepatitis, or any of a number of different anemias. The news was a comfort, but the check was not.

Sandie bought a book of stamps and sent a stack of poems away to the offices of Lead Soldiers, thinking that a small royalty would at least begin to fill the dent that a new door and a medical bill had left in her bank account.

"Maybe you could take up a special collection for me," she told Mike as she got him a glass of water – root beer was an unnecessary expense.

"Meh," h
The Siren - 6The rest of the night was quiet, and so was Sandie's morning. If the alarm went off, she never heard it, and she slept hard until nearly ten, when her phone rang.

"I think it's gone," she told Connie. "I mean, I don't want to jinx anything with optimism, but at least it's gone on vacation."

She drank her coffee black and supervised the installation of a new door. She picked up the phone to call Mike, but remembered belatedly that he had a noon Mass, and set it down again to wait until later.

Local news entertained her until the thump came from the new door.

A person's silhouette was visible through the frosted glass, standing still and da
The Siren - 7The thing sat still and silent on Sandie's couch, swathed in the oversized black shirt and faded jeans of some long-ago boyfriend. Its white hands rested, motionless, on Its denim-clad thighs while Its expressionless eyes stared through the wall into nothing. It had not moved in more than half an hour, not even to breathe – which only made sense, Sandie thought, since It had been dead and rotting the last time she had seen It.

On the other hand, it was hard to be sure that this visitor was the same one that had shattered her window. The faces were so different, and this one was not dripping, but the voice in her head was the same. It fe
The Siren - 8There was a dead body in the back seat, and it was staring at Mike.

"It's not staring at you," Sandie told him. "Actually, I'm not sure that it can see."

"It?"

"Well, it's not a he or a she. I… didn't exactly check, but it was kind of hard not to notice…"

"I don't think I needed to know that."

And still it stared.

Mike kept a firm hold on Sandie's hand until they got on the Loop and she needed both hands to drive. She looked grim and determined in the green glow of the dashboard lights. It talked to her, she said, talked to her in dreams the way angels were said to do sometimes. Whatever was riding in that weird, hairless body
Chemical Attractions, Part IWe can learn a lot from salt.

The chlorine atom is fundamentally lacking, longing to fill that gaping hole in its valence shell, and those bright bits of energy dancing in amorphous clouds around a sodium atom are just too tempting for the poor chlorine to resist. Chlorine probably knows that it has no claim to those electrons. It might lie awake at night for days or weeks in a fit of conscience, seeking alternatives before sending out tentative feelers and inviting Sodium to join it for coffee... It's a romantic comedy in minature, and I think that we can skip over the montage of dates and dinners and late nights on the couch in front of a
Chemical Attractions, Pt IIWe can learn a lot from hydrochloric acid.

Not the whole dangerously-corrosive part, of course, though I admit that a lot of people probably find us two a bit hard to stomach. A dynamic duo we are not.

What I mean is that dance they do - shy glances across a crowded room (beaker?) as Hydrogen and Chlorine each quietly regret their incompleteness, feeling that hole where another electron ought to be, but never willing to resort to online dating... They were probably lab partners in high school, and then a couple of years later found themselves across the table from one another in that sophomore Shakespeare class, then side-by-side in Differe
The Siren - 9The creature slumped in a corner of the kitchen. Sandie had told it to sit, and it could not seem to distinguish any practical difference between sitting in a chair and sitting on the floor, so it sat on the floor.

Mike kept an eye on it while Sandie paced. Somehow, it seemed even creepier now that he knew it was both a dead body and a vaguely person-shaped amp. Dead things should not be that loud.

"Okay," Sandie was saying – very loudly, since two thirds of those present were still half-deaf. "Okay, weird is not necessarily bad, but within limits, you know? That was bad. No, trust me. Attracting attention for being weird is a recipe f
The Siren - 10Sandie made an effort to swallow her shock before Brandon could see. Connie was not as subtle.

"Holy crap," said Connie.

"Holy crap," said John Doe.

"What kind of problems are we talking about?" said Brandon, backing a step away.

"What kind of problems are we talking about?" said John Doe, recoiling from the sudden rush of mistrust.

Please, please stop, Sandie begged silently. The thing met her gaze expressionlessly and set the napkin down on the table. It touched one white forefinger to the sugar shaker, and Sandie could feel a question rising in the mind behind those flat, black eyes.

Later, she whispered. Not now, later. Please, just
Pirate MoonA bloody moon rose, hungry, through the mist
to wash his crimson glow across the waves
and froth the surging whitecaps with the kiss
that sent ten thousand sailors to their graves.

Beneath that vicious moon, a sail was set –
as was the fate of some poor, hapless crew
oblivious to the impending threat
that drifted ever closer through the blue.

The moon smiled sweetly, bathing naked steel,
as cannon shuddered through the velvet night
to rend the sodden trader, hull and keel
and put an end to her frenetic flight.

The captain's grin shone redder than his sword
As he o'ersaw the booty brought aboard.
Swing BandPlay your trumpets louder, boys -
Let's hear that trombone sound.
You're gettin' paid to make some noise;
The dames are crowdin' 'round.

The chaps have finished sippin' gin
And now it's time to dance.
They want a tune to dip and spin
And kick up some romance.

A young thing needs a break at night
From white barrage balloons,
From broadcasts, blackout drapes, cordite,
Junkers across the moon.

The music's really pickin' up.
The piano's lost a string.
There's no one in a smoky club
But loves a chance to swing.

It's hard to hear the sirens wail -
The saxophone is grand -
For death is sorry, weak and pale
But life's a big swing b
The Siren - 13A half-step behind Sandie, Mike heard it, too.
And it was mind-blowing. It sounded like angels, he thought, but he knew better than that. There was a far more down-to-earth explanation sitting on the couch – or at least, a more tangible one, he corrected himself. There were goosebumps on his arms and a shiver deep inside his spine, a sense of something not quite right. Still, he let himself stop in the doorway to listen, and for a moment, just a moment, he let himself fly.
Then the sound stopped, and that thing was standing at the end of the hall, its bald head cocked to one side, staring at them through impassive black eyes. The elation began to ebb, and Mike shook himself, entertaining a sneaking suspicion that John Doe was sucking up his happiness like a sponge. That was fair enough, he supposed; it was not really his in the first place.
“Shit,” Sandie whispered with a kind of dazed reverence.
Mike looked over to see tears in her eyes. She wiped them away hastil
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I slammed back down into something that was sort of like self-awareness. It was unfamiliar, and it was uncomfortable. I had gotten used to watching without being, seeing without feeling, slipping away quietly when even watching became too much to take. This isn’t happening to me, it’s happening to him, and he’s not even real. I wasn’t ready to be real again.
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ProclamationBeneath the spangled, auburn sky,
the silence of cathedrals swells where once
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A hush grows ever deeper in the mouths
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Six-word Shenanigans

:iconquiestinliteris:

Thorny throws great parties; arrests followed.

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28 16 0
:iconquiestinliteris:

Six-word Shenanigansby =QuiEstInLiteris

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For ^thorns' six-word birthday-stuff contest.
©2012-2013 =QuiEstInLiteris
Category: Literature / Prose / Fiction / Humor / Flash Fiction & Vignettes

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August 7, 2012
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:iconselimeia:
~Selimeia Sep 4, 2012  Hobbyist General Artist
:D :D :D
Reply
:iconfaithhopeandlove:
!FaithHopeAndLOVE Aug 12, 2012  Student General Artist
Lol, this is great. Sometimes less really is more; it applies to words too! =) Brilliant
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:iconkartiksharma:
Mood: Love ~kartiksharma Aug 11, 2012  Student General Artist
Amazingly done! :D
Good Job! ♥

Have a look please: [link]
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:iconrodtheworm:
~rodtheworm Aug 9, 2012
Only six words
Yet very evocative

=p
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:iconangelofgod87:
~AngelofGod87 Aug 9, 2012  Hobbyist Writer
Nice one my friend... :thumbsup:
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:iconzippydsmlee:
*ZippyDSMlee Aug 9, 2012
Neat!
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:iconmrs-freestar-bul:
*Mrs-Freestar-Bul Aug 9, 2012   Writer
I hope you win :la:
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:iconnotensmsk:
~NotenSMSK Aug 8, 2012  Hobbyist Writer
This is actually funny :) without reading the description it wouldn't have made much sense to me but now... it is really good :D
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:iconbrokenrose80:
~brokenrose80 Aug 8, 2012  Student Traditional Artist
lol
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:iconlizardhound:
~Lizardhound Aug 8, 2012  Hobbyist Writer
Hehe :D
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