When he closed the garage door – having waited for the slam and for the outside to be gone, until it was just him and this trunk with a victim in it – when he opened it, the man was goddamned dead.
“Well. Took care of that part. Now I don’t feel so guilty.” He shrugged then grabbed hold of the canvas he’d lined the trunk with. There was always a plus to everything, they said. “Wait…” he shook his finger at the guy. “Wheelbarrow.”
Dumping an entire clothed body in his pool seemed almost sacrilegious, as if this was some rite of sacrifice.
Though undressing the fucker was gross. He did it, however, there in the lit-up garage, with the fluorescent lighting adding a certain crime-scene noir to the dark deed. He undressed the guy, bundled up the clothes, decided those could go in a garbage can somewhere miles away. Then he wheelbarrowed him down the outside of the house, hosed him off, ’cause grossness…
Then he dressed in his patented siren-protective gear. Headphones with sound-deadening qualities. Bike helmet. Nose plugs – because who knew what they did to a man, really? Besides the guy still smelled.
Then he went up the little used side steps to the pool, unlocked the gate there, and dumped the body on the grass strip, and ran. Wolfgang was pretty certain she’d been singing to him – she’d been sat up half-out of the pool with her mouth wide open.
His gut had also done a weird flutter as if, somehow, she had affected him.
“Mission accomplished. Surely?” Though he would have some cleaning up to do after.
His pool filter would die in the face of trying to filter out flesh and intestines and god knew what else.
So he switched it off until she did the deed and ate him. He wandered to the pool wall.
Raffaela was swimming at the bottom of the pool eyeing him as if he were a steak sandwich and a bucket of nuggets all in one.
“Fuck.” He ran a hand through his hair. After all that? This would work, wouldn’t it?
No. it did not.
A few hours later, he dressed in the protective gear again and hastily hooked the guy with a rake. He pulled the smelly corpse through the side gate, then buried the guy on the property in one of the garden plots Merrick had dug.
Hand on heart, he said a few lame words over the grave. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, you fucker, now I have to do this again.
Like that.
She had not lunged at Wolfgang, and from the mythology he recalled, maybe sirens relied on men going to them most of the time? Even so, his heart was about to lodge a protest over all the scares.
Dead did not cut it. He needed alive. More alive than that one anyway.
He had another idea. Back to the city he went. Same car but with more cash in his wallet. Bait.
Slowly he drove into the suburb he aimed for, avoiding the obvious traffic lights and main streets where CCTV might catch him. This was where the deals went down, according to Merrick who had lived here years ago.
His hunting ground, now.
He cruised, looking for the right person. This was not going to be as easy as hauling away a mostly dead guy.
Another three nights and he found a promising human. Very alive but possibly wounded.
There’d been a pop-pop of gunfire but fairly muted, low velocity or something, only one scream and he’d seen her drop something a man scooped up and ran away with. No police sirens, yet.
Rain drizzled onto the windshield and his wiper blades shooshed up and down. He parked, switched off the engine, opened the door and exited, brought the collar of his black coat up higher, settled his fake glasses into place.
Streetlights reflected in opalescent rainbows off the puddles.
There.
Wolfgang headed toward the alley where the woman had fled. Dressed in jeans and jacket, she looked more like a dealer than a hooker.
The gun was in his coat pocket.
“You okay in there?” he asked, quietly. “Did I see someone shoot you? Need a hand? The cops?”
“No cops.”
“No? Hospital? Emergency? I can drive you?”
“I can—” She coughed and in the dull light he thought he saw blood on the ground. Lungs then. Maybe.
“If you have a chest wound, we need to hurry.”
He could barely see her, leaning up against the brickwork – mostly her eyes gleamed.
“Not going to call anyone?”
“Not… tonight.”
He thought she was chewing her lip.
“Okay. You look decent, man. Don’t try and fuck me over. I got no money or nothin’ on me anymore. He got all that.”
“Sure.” Wolfgang stepped away. “My car is this way.”
He led the way, heard her follow. There’d be blood on the seat, so he’d need to clean that up. He’d stop in a street he knew, in a dark spot where the lights were out, pull the gun on her, zip tie her wrists, put her in the trunk.
“I’ve been doing naughty things tonight, myself,” he tossed that back at her, laughed. “I’m going a back route to miss the CCTVs. That okay? If not, maybe we will just call for an ambulance?”
“It’s fine.” She stopped to cough again. “Keep fuckin’ going. And hey, thanks.”
“No problem. Karma comes around, goes around.”
If this was love, if this was romance, it was a very effed-up romance.
It wasn’t quite the same, he discovered, catching a living and conscious person. Especially one who was coughing and bleeding all over your car.
By the time he reached the house she was almost done for, but not quite. Getting her into the trunk had been easier. She’d been mobile but weakening fast from shock. He drove fast.
When the garage door was shut, he popped the trunk to find she’d sprayed copious amounts of blood everywhere. He’d have to scrub his car for a year to get it all out. Her breathing was shallow, bubbly. And he needed her alive. He pulled her and the canvas out, took off her jacket, the shoes, the jeans, then he stopped. Her lips looked bluish, and she barely reacted to anything he did.
Such a pretty woman too. Crewcut black hair, black nails, studs in her ears, her nose, and probably her nipples from the bumps in her shirt. So many tattoos, so many gorgeous tattoos.
He shook himself out of the appraisal.
Throwing her in with the rest of her clothes on would have to do. If he tried to undress her, she might die before Raffaela reached her. Wolfgang bundled her into the wheelbarrow and took off down the side path, hauled her up the side steps.
Still alive. Still alive. She’d rolled her eyes toward him. Thank god.
Quickly, he donned his gear, and tossed her into the pool enclosure. Then did the usual slam-shut, lock, and run.
Different. This time was different. He heard dragging noises, a shriek, then splashing.
By the time he was inside the house and had run up to the pool wall, the woman was in the pool.
The water was decorated with intertwining spirals and puffs of blood. He didn’t shift from his spot. The kissing, the nakedness – as Raffaela slowly stripped off the rest of the clothes – the downright eroticism as the stranger died in ecstasy with his mermaid’s mouth on her below.
God.
Shaken, he stepped away and could not look at the very last of it.
That would be engraved on his brain.
Once he had gathered his wits, Wolfgang trailed back up the steps, boots splashing in the water spilling down them.
At the top, mouth agape, he observed that a small hurricane had hit the pool area. Water was everywhere, the white seat was overturned, as was the table. Feet balanced at the pool’s edge, he looked into the depths. Raff stared up at him from below, eyes wide and green. The water roiled with pinkish hues and the woman lolled about down there also, clearly dead, leaking only small amounts of deeper red. He fished out the clothes with the pole, left them in a sodden heap.
This could not go on.
He could not keep doing this – which was a shock to him, as he’d always tho
ught himself practical.
Merrick would’ve aced this.
He shut that down.
No more fucking thinking about Merrick. His temples were aching from the loss he knew he must suffer.
“Come!” he croaked, beckoning, then said it louder, “Come!”
She swam underwater, body wavering from the refractions of light, and surfaced to lock her arms over the edge. Without saying more he walked to the ramp and she followed. Kneeling there brought her even closer, close enough to cup her face in his hand.
“I have to let you go, my mermaid. Do you understand? I cannot keep on doing this. Thought I could but… I can’t.”
She nodded in his hand, laid her face to the side and rubbed against him, her brow furrowed.
“Now. It has to be now while I am strong.”
He scooped her up, with difficulty. Her tail made balancing her weight awkward. Most of the times when he’d carried her, she’d been shifted.
He did not dare to make her shift. It would devastate him, he thought, to see her again as a woman, and he might stop dead and falter.
“It’s best for you.” He maneuvered down the side steps with his wet, heavy, very sad-looking girl. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. It’s best for you too. I can see that. I remember human things. I’ve made you murder someone. Sort of?”
He grunted at that, refusing to follow her down that path, down into his past actions. Fuck today.
The sand sank under him, shells dug into the soles of his feet. The soft crunching made by his passage across the beach to where waves ebbed and flowed reminded him of far better days. He’d spent so much time here. So much wonderful time.
Today was overcast, grey and dismal, and appropriate for this ending.
He must let her go.
But what if.
What if he only…
All the possibilities railed at him, and none of them were both kind to her and right, or even good science. To hope to be made into her species, a merman, and what an odd word merman was, it was his best dream. Such a strange hope.
To be lost in the ocean with her, forever, exploring the deep trenches, chasing fish, seeing things no human could ever quite see in the same way… It would be glorious. And yet, one thousand or more men she had drowned. None had become merfolk. A vital ingredient was missing. Why her? Why had she changed?
There should be an answer.
He did not know it and had no one to question. So, this was what he must do.
“You must never return, Raffaela. Never. I would keep you forever if I could. I would not ever let you go again. It’s who I am. Weak, if pushed.” He smiled wanly. How well he knew the truth of that.
She nodded, brow and mouth pinched.
Wolfgang waded out until waist-deep then lowered her into the water, only to find her arms locked about his neck.
“My love,” she whispered.
My love – an arrow to the heart. Painfully so.
He should’ve strangled Cupid.
She kissed him, and he sighed, returned the kiss for long enough to feel a stir.
Then he broke away. “No. Don’t do this. If you shift… if you do, I may forget what I decided. That would not be good.”
“No. I guess not.” Her mouth twisted in regret. “I will never forget you, my Wolfgang.”
“Nor I you, my precious girl. You woke a part of me I thought long-dead – my heart.”
“Is that a line from a play? Romeo and Juliet?”
“No. But it should be.”
“Write one for me.” She pawed his dampening shirt – the sea was climbing up the cloth – put her nose to him and inhaled. Her lips trembled. Then she met his eyes. Already the ocean tugged at her hair, fanning it out into languorous scarlet curls.
Sadness passed across her irises, fashioned by the wavering reflections of sea and rising sun.
Gently, he pulled her arms from him, released her, then moved away. “Go, my love.”
He’d never said my love to anyone. Because I’m a bastard, he reminded himself.
“Goodbye,” she whispered then turned and did a shallow dive. With a strong push and swirl of tail, she dived deeper, and was gone. Only her shadow was left, flitting in the dull gray-blue sea, heading outward until it too vanished.
He blew a last kiss into the wind. “Find the edge of the world for me, find dragons and whales, pet the seals in Antarctica. Swaying palms, coral reefs. Everything I cannot see.”
His imagination went elsewhere for a while as he stood there, pants soaked, waves shushing against him.
This was the hardest thing he had ever done, and that was saying something. Such suffering and pain he had, once upon a time, seen and caused, and yet this was the hardest ever.
“Pussy,” he muttered. “Fucking pussy.”
Eventually, he returned to the house, walked up the beach, dripping. He sat down in the sand, with his back against the concrete below the pool wall and stared out to sea for a bit longer.
Regrets, he had more than a few.
An hour, two, passed by. All his recriminations and regrets wound down to nothing.
He shoved himself to his feet, brushed off the sand and nodded at the ocean, to her. “I never deserved you. Always that was true. But I guess trying is better than not trying.”
Then he went into the house, retrieved the woman from the bottom of the pool, and took her down into the garden to a different place from the homeless guy. Not being terribly enthusiastic about this, he planned to bury her in a fairly shallow grave. Then, at the bottom of the hole, his shovel pried loose a corner of red cloth with a familiar red button on it.
Another Merrick memory floated by.
“Damn you and shut up.”
He sighed, hauled the woman into the hole and covered her over with soil. It left an obvious grave mound. He was no good at this. Merrick would’ve been better at all of this shit. That man was better at everything, as well as ruthless.
Fuck him.
He should do something useful with the rest of his life, and he thought he knew what it should be. He would tidy up some loose ends.
Before he left.
CHAPTER 12
Raffaela never returned, of course. She obeyed him.
Her decision both satisfied and frustrated? If frustration was the word for this bone-deep numbing ennui. He was tired of the world. What he’d had with her could not be surpassed. How could it be – an enthralling, obsessive, mind-blowing relationship with a siren?
She was correct. Siren was the better word. She had burrowed into his sexual psyche, his id, his soul, and left her mark there, and he hoped he’d left some sort of mark or memory on her heart and soul too.
Memories. Wolfgang spent many nights up on the pool level, sitting in the white lounger with a glass of whisky in hand, under the starry sky or the stormy sky, with the rest of the bottle at his feet or cuddled to his side like a baby.
All that research? It had been an excuse toward the end. None of it had been leading him anywhere. He needed a whole team and years to get any answers – if any answers were possible? He suspected a mermaid simply could not change back into being a human, permanently.
He wrote a memoir, a sort of late diary of their weeks together. Every event he could recall was detailed. He did sketches of her, especially of her tail because of its uniqueness, and of her face because she compelled him. The scales on her tail would have made perfect jewelry and it seemed such a pity none of that had been left to him. Not one single scale.
He sketched all of her in black and white, and never could he do her justice.
He wrote obscure love letters to her in the pages, and only realized that he’d been subconsciously doing so when he reached the date she had left. The day he set her free.
His pen had risen from the page. This was so personal.
He was right too, about what he had told her.
If she returned now, he would chain her up and keep her. Properly, this t
ime.
A freshly bloomed red rose waited for him to use it, cut from a garden shrub. One of Merrick’s. The whole flower would not fit inside the book. He fumbled over the side of the lounge, searching for the memoir.
Petal by petal, he plucked them to place one every few pages, then he closed the book and dropped the thorny stem to the grass. A gust blew it, and it rolled onto the pavers until it toppled, stilled, thorns up, with spiky shadows formed by an overhead light.
He took another gulp of whisky, surprised the ice was melted. The sea was quiet tonight, barely murmuring as it swept in and out. Yesterday he thought he’d caught a glimpse of a mermaid, or mer-something – one could not exactly sex them from that far away, and he was done with leaving drones in the ocean. He did not want to know.
If it was her after all, fuck her.
He threw the square tumbler into the pool where it sank immediately.
“Fuck everyone!”
The next morning he woke in the lounge, arm numb, head throbbing, with the morning sun creeping into the sky.
Did he go on writing in diaries? No. He tongued his inner cheek, his teeth. His mouth tasted of dead things. His breath would likely kill a dog at ten paces.
It was time. Been a month or more and lately something inside him had been niggling him. His conscience? He did not think he had one of those. Maybe he had just had enough.
Enough, yes.
His resignation from the Institute had been sent long ago. Since he’d made a point of pissing off everyone there, repeatedly, nobody contacted him anymore. Wallowing in his aloneness was what he had wanted. Saturate himself in sorrow. He had cried his heart out to the sea, some days.
Shameless. Stupid. No one had seen. No one cared.
He did not deserve one jot of anything from anyone.
Time.
Though he dreaded the task he had set himself that first day she’d gone. After all, this was the beginning of the end. He meant to walk into the fucking sea once he was done. That was going to be bad.
Digging in the garden though… pretty sure it would be worse.
CHAPTER 13
He rose, walked toward the steps that led down into the house and felt lancing pain in one foot. Discovered the rose stem stuck to his sole. He laughed and enfolded the stem in his fist, crushing it to his skin. Blood seeped from his fingers.
Sacrificed to the Sea: mermaids .. monsters .. men Page 11