The Siren

My unfastened descend to madness starts the next morning. The neurotransmitters in my brain explode at dawn and I wake up to a foggy state of mind. It is early. The sun hasn't come out yet and is still cold outside. If I close my eyes and listen I would hear the loneliness of the hall. There are some shadows left in my bedroom from the night before. If I could only ask them to stay a little longer so we are not that alone. But I wake up and fight the numbness that has taken temporal residence in my brain. By this point numbness is a born citizen of the cells in my body. It feels as if I'm blinking and looking through a foggy light when I make the decision to change into some other pajamas and wash my father's clothes. My hands tremble while I push his t-shirt over my head and push down his old boxers to the floor. Slowly, as if I were exercising an old ritual of death I put a pair of leggings and a new sweater that still smells like newness and faceless strangers.

I walk back to the clothes on the floor and look at them. There are secrets splattered on the walls in a house. There are voices that still wrap themselves over forgotten microphones. There are a thousand family dinners that touch you back through the cold metal of one simple fork. And in there lies my father... in those old clothes. A fragment of his youth was encapsulated in some nondescript pieces of fabric. I tried so hard to protect his smell from being forgotten by my nose, but the fight was lost the day he died. I sweat so much last night while I tended to Emrick that my father's clothes don't smell like him anymore. Gone is the smell of books and sandalwood. I kneel and take his clothes in my hands and slowly, as if I was holding a baby I bring his clothes to my nose. I try to smell him. I try over and over until I don't smell anything anymore. He is gone. This absence feels like a missing limb. This absence really hurts.

I walk out of my room and make my way through the resting house. It is still very early in the morning and everyone is asleep. I tense when my bare feet make the floors creak under my weight. I stop and stay still, trying to listen to any signal that I woke up somebody. There's only silence licking my ears and after a couple of seconds I give up my paranoid attack and keep on walking. The washing machines are in a laundry room at the end of the house. It feels like I'm walking a funeral march while I move through the shadows lingering inside the house, carrying the old clothes of my dead father. This feels like a proper goodbye. That day during their funeral I was too far gone from this world and too lost into my limbo dreams to pay attention to the music they played or the words they said. This morning the silence of the house feels fitting somehow. As if death is walking side by side with me while I say goodbye to my dad one last time.

Slowly I open the laundry room and get inside, flipping the light's switch on and staring at the machines in front of me. The laundry room smells like clean cotton and the sweet scent of desensitization. In this room there are no memories left. Everything is a new beginning every time clothes are brought here and are washed. It's like a baptize of sorts, a baptize of the scent of my memories. I sigh and look down at the clothes in my hands. Next time I will hold these clothes again the memory of my father would be gone from them. I have the option of throwing them away, but that is too callous and impersonal. His scent might be gone, but these are still his clothes. There are memories in the fibers of the fabric. There are photos in which said t-shirt was spread proudly over my father's chest. I can't throw the clothes away. I just need to wash them to kill my insides. This deathly ritual is all mine so I will ask you to wait by the door and stay there for a minute. You can see my back tensing while I hug my dad's clothes. The artificial wind coming down from the air vents brushes the little hairs at the back of my neck. It makes me yearn for a natural breeze. It makes me yearn for another body and another story to tell. The clocks of the house announce that another minute has passed by. I need to be quick and be done with my death ritual before the living ones wake up.

I decide to do it all fast. Like pulling on a band-aid. I open the washing machine and slowly place the clothes in there. The metallic interior of the machine feels dead and stock-still, for a second I think I'm touching death itself. Slowly I take the detergent bottle and pour it over the clothes one final time. I pour the liquid until all the memories are covered by chemicals and blue color. Then I close the door of the machine and take a step back. My eyes are zeroed on that metallic button to start the machine. One touch and I will say goodbye to all the memories of my dead father. One touch and his youth will be gone. One touch and his remaining smell will disappear forever. It takes all my strength to push that button and watch how the machine fills up with water. The clothes disappear under ounces and ounces of cleanness and oblivion.

When I turn around I see the Walsh brothers looking at me. I never heard them coming. They probably heard me walking downstairs and decided on spying on me. Emrick is only dressed in black boxers. He is hands down sporting a morning wood and I can't look away from his southern area fast enough. Maddox had the decency of putting on the discarded jeans he had been using last night. The jeans hang skewed around his narrow hips. I can see the V lines that mark his abs disappearing under the denim. Both brothers still have sleepy eyes and Emrick's hair is a mess, it's all spiky and frizzy at its chestnut tips. Maddox green eyes are looking at me with a dark shadow of suspicion. I think he knows what I was doing but he still can't decide if I'm crazy or just grieving. I don't blame him if he doubts me. I'm half crazy and my blood is too diluted. There's death running in my veins and I can't just shake it off. It's the Windsworth curse, turning me darker and lighter every passing day. Emrick scratches the back of his cordoned neck. He is a little shorter than Maddox, but he is as muscular. He clears his throat and looks at me through his messy hair. There's this worry in his eyes that had never been directed at me before.

"Are you okay?" he asks me slowly, as if I'm a wild horse about to go jogging around the house. For a moment there I think on screaming at him that it is all his fault. That if he hadn't been stupid and swallowed those stupid pills last night I wouldn't had to save him and lose the only memory left from my father. I think on screaming. Screaming from the top of my lungs at these stupid boys that preferred on spying on me before asking me any questions because they probably thought I was ratting them to my aunt Cora about last night. I think about crying. Crying for all the things that would never be the same, because my parents preferred death over me. I stop looking at Emrick when I see him flinch under my heavy stare. Sometimes I forget that silence can be as sharp as a knife. My best weapon against Emrick are all the words left unsaid. He knows I saved his life, but he doesn't know what I had to sacrifice in order to do so. That's probably worrying him. That feeling of unknown. That feeling of owing.

Maddox steps in front of his brother then and levels me an angry look. Gone is the sleep from his greenish eyes. He is rage and war, confrontation is inflaming his irises more and more until he is pure fire. Even when he knows Emrick is at fault and that he deserves my cold silence he is still protecting his brother. That's just who he is, isn't? A protector. A fixer. A fighter.

"That's enough," he says with a low tone that leaves no room to opposition. I focus my eyes on his flamed irises and try to transmit all the coldness of my heart into that one, biting look. It feels like he can taste the chilly texture of my blood but there's just so much fire surrounding him that my touch doesn't infiltrate his shields. I stop looking at him and for one last moment I stare at my father's clothes that are getting washed.

I stretch one hand and touch the cold washing machine. Goodbye for now. With that last goodbye I turn around and walk around Maddox, who's watching me like hawk about to strike. I walk back to my room and go to my bed. The moment I close my eyes I'm back to my limbo dreams.

The vibration of my phone wakes me up. I stir under my warm covers and start feeling with my hand around the mattress blindly. I'm still half asleep when I wrap my hands around my phone and place it on top of my face. I don't know for sure if I accepted the upcoming phone call or if my cheek did it for me but the next thing I hear is Amy's voice.

"What's good, Walsh's property?" she asks just to irritate me and I frown, not sure if I'm asleep or imagining things.

"Did you just call me Walsh's property?" I ask and my voice sounds thin and childlike, like the sound of a little girl trying to fight sleep. Just that I'm not fighting sleep, I'm welcoming it with open arms and a slumber party. Amy laughs a bit and then she is back to business.

"I'm sorry, it sounded funnier in my mind, I swear. I need to ask you for a huge favor," at that I open my eyes and my frown deepens. This can't be possibly good. Amy is walking that thin line between the living and the dead ones, which means she's still not as dead as me. I don't want to engage living ones today. Not even halflings like Amy. She pauses, before throwing the grenade at me and taking cover, "I need you to be my plus one tonight for Stolas's party."

"No, big no. No a thousand times. I hate parties, I hate socializing and going outside. I'm fine in this bed of mine and that's that. Bye," I try to disconnect the call but the phone resting on my cheek falls and Amy keeps talking.

"If you come with me I will tell you all that happened last night at Landon's house. It was crazy. Emrick totally tapped Cindy Parker and she had sex with Maddox only last Wednesday. There was a lot of drama from her part. I hate that bitch. Maddox ended almost killing this guy from Portland Presbyterian College that was selling counterfeit drugs to the kids and..." I groan and push my covers down, stopping Amy's verbal diarrhea.

"Not my problem. Bye."

"I need you Violet," she said then and I stop. There's this note of desperation in her voice. I don't know this girl, but I know desperation when I hear it. Desperation is a whore that sells easily to the ears. It's always fast to propose itself and hangs like a question mark in people's throats. Desperation always beg and always need. I hate to hear Amy's desperation, so I stop and let her explain herself, "I know we don't know each other that well, but I feel like I can trust you. Today is Stolas's birthday and I need to be there, even if we hate each other and even if there's nothing happening between us. I need to be there for him even if it kills me to see him with another girl. And I need you to be my rock and my designated driver."

"I thought you hated the guy."

"I hate Stolas probably as much as I like him," she recognized with a small voice, before clearing her throat and sounding strong again, "what do you say? Are you up for a night out with the kings of Broken Falls?"

"No...but I will do this for you if you let me sleep another hour. What's time is it?" I ask, not sure why I care about the time. Only that I'd lost all sense of time. I haven't left my bed, not even when Cora tried to wake me up so I could eat something. I've been sleeping and sleeping, lost to reality. Maddox hasn't come to wake me up after our little face-off this morning, but something tells me he will if he senses I'm getting lost in my sadness. He probably doesn't want to deal with me after I gave Emrick the silent treatment. Only that his rage will take him as far as he lets it. Whenever he calms down he will come to me and try to control me again, as he likes controlling everyone and everything. There's silence and then Amy laughs, her tone unbelieving.

"It's almost five in the afternoon. Have you been sleeping all day long?" I yawn and that's all the confirmation Amy needs to start laughing again, "Okay sleepyhead, I will let you sleep until six in the afternoon but then I'm coming to your house and we are getting ready to go out partying."

"The excitement is killing me," Amy laughs again and I end our call. I try to get back to sleep but for some reason I can't stop thinking about what Amy just said. Emrick had sex with a girl that Maddox had also sex with? Is that a normal behavior between brothers? I think back to that faceless girl that Maddox fucked in the garage the first night I stayed at this house. He was so angry then, fucking her so hard and so fast, so...controlling. It didn't make sense that a man like Maddox, who was always so possessive and autocratic would like to share his women. Unless he didn't see his conquests like his to protect. Unless fucking was something he did just to scratch an itch. Maybe that was why he didn't like to see the faces of the girls he was fucking. Maybe Maddox just wanted the sex, but not the intimacy that came with making love to a woman. I wondered if that was a result of his controlling tendencies or just a consequence of abandonment issues. Then again I didn't know if he had been abandoned or not. My aunt had said Maddox's mom had done terrible things to the Walsh brothers but never abandon them. My mind was stuck in that memory of Maddox, while he subdued that girl under his power. He had fucked her so thoroughly, as if he knew exactly what that girl needed from a lover. Was he like that with all the girls he fucked? Did he give so much of himself to all of them? Even those that he didn't mind sharing with his own brother? If that was the case, would he give all of himself for the one girl that he couldn't share with others? I tried to imagine that mythical girl that could be able to make Maddox lose his head and came out with nothing.

Maddox was too possessive, too controlling and too angry. There was simply no girl in this world who could deal with all his fire. Not unless there was an ice queen with enough snow in her veins to match the angry god. I shook that thought away and jump out of the bed on my way to take a shower and get ready for the night.

Apparently, I was up for a night out with the kings of Broken Falls.