The Accidental Siren

by Jake Vander Ark

  Now I’m faced with the decision to play it safe (to preserve the accessibility of my memoir; to keep you, the reader, comfortable in your favorite reading chair) or to delve headfirst into the taboo ramifications of Mara’s power. Forgive me, friend, for siding with controversial honesty over benign accord.

  I tiptoed backward from the spiral stairs until my butt rammed into the couch. I extended my neck like a collapsable telescope and caught a glimpse of Mara’s head and shoulders as she danced and changed outfits on the lid of the costume chest. She wiggled. She mouthed words to a silent song. She twirled steadily like a ballerina on pointe, scanning the forest horizon from her new vantage.

  Mara emerged a moment later as a fairy. A light-green dress trailed in billows as she descended the stairs with whimsical grace; her cream legs flittered behind the black rungs as she approached the bottom step, then she slid in my arms, leaned back, and I dipped her. (I wanted to explore–to douse my senses in fleshy girl–but I held back; I bound my desire to taste the same way I sat on my hands in the tree.)

  “Action!” Left, right, smile, frown... “Cut!”

  Next, Mara became a chimera of halloween clichés; a witch’s hat over a black wig, Whit’s mad-scientist robe from last fall’s zombie movie, knee-highs with green and orange stripes, a silver-painted squirt gun in her right hand and a devil’s trident in her left (”Get behind me, Satan!” I suddenly recalled. “Tempt me no more!”). Eyeliner raccooned her sockets, white powder deadened her cheeks, and when she smiled, Dracula’s plastic fangs had replaced her pearls.

  “I vant to suck yer blood!” Mara spread her arms and lunged, pinning me to the back of the beat-up sectional in the center of the ballroom. I playfully pushed her away (if only to have a reason to touch) but she strengthened her goofy assault, stretched her mouth, and gorged my neck.

  Shoot it.

  Cut it.

  Next!

  Shorts to her bellybutton covered in neon splats of paint, and a tee, hot-pink, knotted below her chest. A zebra-print snap bracelet on her left wrist; a pony-tail stemming from the top of her head.

  Next!

  Multi-colored tights and a leather skirt; eyes hiding behind blue-tinted shades; balled-up somethings beneath a suede vest and white undershirt... a bold preview of future cravings.

  Next!

  Braided pigtails, OshKosh overalls and a simple cotton tank; a portrait of farm-girl innocence that I longed to corrupt in a field of corn, cuddling, as we try to distinguish real constellations from random groupings of stars. (The warm sensations returned and I longed to make my nocturnal passions real.)

  I forgot about the camera tests, reveling instead in Mara’s sensual personas; molding her style to my liking, sending her back to the tower for more of this, less of that (”Why don’t you try them together?”); spoiling my standards for the female form and defining–forever–my perceptions of beauty.

  “Last one,” she called before she emerged; a baroque angel with a pipe-cleaner halo and an inside-out tee (my night shirt twenty-pounds previous) hanging three inches above her knee. Strapped to her back were wings of white lace and feathers, the origin of which I cannot recall. Her celestial demeanor was so believable that my heart ached at the possibility of flight; that Mara might soar away and never return. She wore lip gloss too (watermelon flavored, I could smell it) and I recalled our touching noses in the tree and wondered where exactly these new conceptions were forming; to bend that halo, to gnarl my fingers against her scalp, to suck the shine from those pink lips.

  The reverence I showed for Roselyn’s thigh had been desecrated in less than two weeks. It was Mara’s doing.

  “I want to kiss you,” I said, an innocent incarnation of my nasty thoughts.

  She leaned against the wall. I knew I made a mistake.

  “James...” she said. “You’re like my brother now.”

  Ouch. I leaned my head against my camera.

  “If your parents found out, I’d be so embarrassed.”

  “Dad’s at work and Mom’s meeting with Fantasia’s birth mom. They won’t be back till–”

  Mara was small against the great white wall. Her wings–which seemed real only moments ago–were merely a costume mashed against the brick. Her eyes shifted to some arbitrary point across the room. “I don’t think it’s a good idea.”

  I don’t have the talent to describe that feeling of rejection, nor the resulting urge to take what I wanted from that girl, the ultimate tease. My only desire stood an arm length away; lonely shoulders propped against the wall, a smudge of mascara below her left eye, mysteries hidden beneath angelic garb that could only be explored in the flesh, not in some encyclopedia illustration or my father’s cold speech.

  Before you judge me, understand that these desires were not selfish. The concept of mutual exploration was the only concept that excited me. If a first kiss or experimental foray made Mara uncomfortable, it would defeat my purpose and defile my pleasure. All I could do was sit on my hands and wait for the angel to let me in.

  But was it too late? Did I already screw things up? By asking for a kiss, did I prove I was no different than the boys she called ‘ferrets’ or Ms. Grisham or everyone else who fell slave to her charm?

  I won’t describe that itch again in this book, but as you continue with my story and read about my interactions with Mara–even in the tenderest moments when a dirty thought would be sacrilege–it’s reasonable to assume I was battling these same feelings.

  What separates me from the real perverts? The fact that my fantasies grew as I did. Today, when I think about Mara as a child, I recall her playfulness; her ability to connect instantly with the plight of a Saturday-morning cartoon; the way she called refrigerators “Frigidaires” and butterflies “flutter-bys”; her kindness...

  Today, my feelings toward that child involve a savage need to protect–to keep pure–but, as a little boy with limited knowledge of the developed female form, Mara Lynn was eighty-five pounds of goddess perfection.

  * * *

  (Judge that boy if you must; for debauchery, for objectifying innocence... but before you finalize your verdict, oh innocent reader, I beg you to scan again that last stanza. What you and I overlooked in our cloud of perversion and nasty objectification was the unrestrained joy of a little girl playing dress-up for the very first time.)

  * * *

  When left unsatisfied, lust becomes violence.

  Enter Danny B.

  Somewhere in the valley–well beyond The Great Divide–A.J.’s father was working with friends to plow a firebreak through his acreage. Every few minutes a man would shout and the tractor would stop. Sometimes they laughed, and the sound would bounce and multiply through the trees, personifying my forest with the illusion of masculine camaraderie. If the bullies were down there with the adults, then they were either helping with the firebreak, or playing at the end of a short leash. But I left my camera at home, just in case.

  Mara sat in a swatch of grass among tall purple flowers that smelled like onions. She recited her lines to a raggedy Cabbage Patch Doll as I followed along in the screenplay. The distant hum of the plow never left my consciousness.

  “Dorothy, you look horrible,” Mara said to the doll. “Your hair is all messed up, your dress is wrinkled, and your arm is about to fall off!” She pulled Dorothy to her ear and pretended to listen. “I’m sorry I was rude. You actually look nice. We’ve just been havin’ a bad week, haven’t we?”

  My dialogue never sounded so good.

  Mara dropped Dorothy and looked at me. “Why am I talking to a doll?”

  “Well,” I began, “this is the first scene in the movie and I want to show that The Girl is just a little kid. So many things are gonna happen on her journey and by the end, she’s gonna be all grown up. I wanted to find a way to show that she changes. If the audience doesn’t see somethin’ change, the movie’ll be boring.”

  “Where’d ya learn all this stuff?”

  “Parents go
t me a screenwriting book last Christmas.”

  Mara pressed her elbow on her knee and her chin on her fist. “Maybe I should wear pretty makeup for this scene.”

  “Yeah?” I patted my jeans for a pen.

  “Pigtails too. That way, as the movie goes along, the makeup can come off and my hair can get messy and I’ll look really different by the end.”

  “Darnit!” I said. “Whit’s got the notebook. You have a pen?”

  Mara pulled a naked red crayon from her pocket. “The twins keep leaving me gifts,” she said. “Yesterday it was a baseball card and a rolled up tube of toothpaste.” She tossed me the crayon.

  “The makeup thing... it’s a really good idea.”

  “Don’t you think the doll is a little boring?”

  I looked up. “Boring?”

  “Maybe we could get something real. Maybe the girl has a pet! I see kittens in the newspaper all the time. Sometimes they’re free.”

  “Real animals...” I muttered. “Holy production value!”

  “I always wanted a kitten,” Mara said. “Ms. Grisham never let me have a pet.”

  “I’ll talk to Mom. Betcha she’ll go for it.” I scribbled the new ideas in the margins of my script and said, “Boy oh boy, Whit’s gonna love this!”

  “You’re always talkin’ about Whit,” Mara said. “When do I get to meet him?”

  I shrugged. “Maybe someday.”

  In the valley, a man yelled and the plow sputtered to a halt.

  “Wanna run it again?” I asked.

  Mara nodded and picked up the doll. “I’ll pretend it’s a kitten.” A robin’s whistle punctuated her smile.

  “Ready?”

  “Mmm hmm!”

  “Annnd, action!”

  “Good morning, Dorothy the Cat! Isn’t it a beautiful day? Maybe the most beautiful day I’ve ever–”

  “Eeeeoww!” The scream quivered with violent elation. My head jerked like a startled prairie dog and I recalled A.J.’s shriek when I rammed my knee into his back.

  Mara looked at me, confused, then A.J., Danny and Trent emerged from the brush behind her like a trio of post-apocalyptic cannibals.

  “I told ya!” said A.J., shaking a can of Pam cooking spray. “Gosh-damnit I knew I recognized that voice!”

  Mara scrambled toward me leaving Dorothy alone among the purple onions.

  “What. Do we. Have here?” Danny stepped to the head of the pack with my camera slung across his shoulder.

  “I told you it was her,” A.J. said again. “Didn’t I tell ya, T? Huh?”

  T (or “Trent” as he was known before turning to the Dark Side) was a girthy man-child who smelled like B.O. since the day he was born. Patches of razor burn littered four of his chins. He carried a sword he assembled from discarded two-by-fours; a row of nails protruded from the face of the blade. As he trampled the grass with his buddies, his enormous foot landed directly on Dorothy’s head. “Lookit that piece of ass,” he said, his sagging eyes set on Mara.

  Danny narrowed his brow. “Fancy meetin’ you here, Fatty. Where’s the cripple?”

  I helped Mara from the leaves and brushed her off.

  The bullies stepped closer; Danny in front. “We were cuttin’ tracks for the four-wheelers, but thought we’d take a break to burn some lego men for my new camera.” He rubbed the case as if he was polishing a brick of gold. “Didja know cooking spray is flammable?”

  A.J. twirled the can and hopped like a leprechaun. “I knew it,” he said. “I knew it! I told you it was her!”

  “We need to go,” I whispered.

  Mara nodded and backed away.

  “You can’t escape,” said Danny.

  I tugged Mara’s shirt. “Run,” I said. “Now!”

  “Get ‘em!” A.J. shouted and Danny bounded three giant strides before we could turn around. He grappled Mara’s forearm, twirled her, slammed her back against a tree, and pressed his wrist bone against her throat.

  “Let her go!” I yelled.

  “It’s her!” A.J. said. “It’s her!”

  “Who?” Danny asked.

  “Mara.”

  Danny shot his friend a confused look and I made my move, planting my feet in the dirt and charging–elbow first–toward the bully who had my girl. “I told you to let her–!”

  But T cut me off like a cannonball to my gut. His girth outweighed mine and his barreling momentum carried me into the trunk of another tree. My stomach lurched and my lungs popped and when Trent pulled away, I fell to the ground with tears in my eyes.

  “Sit there, faggot,” he said and pointed the sword at my neck, “and don’t mess with a football player again.”

  I heaved for air. I could only see the back of Mara’s shoulder behind the trunk to which she was pinned... and Danny’s lupine eyes.

  “Age,” Danny said. “Who. Is. She?”

  A.J. meandered toward Mara, but his eyes were locked on mine (he remembered that night as well as I did). The can of cooking spray tilted back and forth in his hand; the marble inside ticked like a methodical time bomb. He snapped his head to Mara and hissed, “Sssing.”

  Mara squirmed but Danny tightened his grip. “A.J., if you don’t tell me what the hell is going on–”

  “Sing for them, Maaaraaa.”

  “Cut it out, Age!” I shouted and T’s sword pressed deeper into my neck.

  “If you sing for us...” A.J. dropped the spray, reached into the neck of his shirt, and pulled out a gold chain. “I’ll give you back your necklace.” He dangled the charm in front of her face.

  Mara tilted her head to study the jewelry and I could see her profile. “Where’d you get that...” she asked. Her eyes were wet.

  A.J. slipped the chain back in his shirt. “We figured out you moved,” he said. “Three nights ago. One of dem boys brought a ladder.”

  Trent lowered his mouth to my ear. “I’m gonna eat your girlfriend,” he said. The threat barely registered in my brain; I was too focused on A.J.’s story.

  “I was number five up the ladder,” he said. “The first boys already got to yer bedroom and closet, but I’m a quick thinker so I went straight to yer bathroom. Found some headbands in a drawer and a green washrag in the shower. I keep it under my bed at night and sniff it.” His lips thinned and curled. “Got yer necklace too,” he tapped his chest, “but that ain’t my biggest find.” A.J. cupped his hand around her ear and whispered a secret.

  Mara slouched. She pressed her cheek into the bark and found my eyes with a melancholy gaze.

  T spoke more to himself than to me, but I could still smell the rot on his breath and the peroxide on his chin. “I’m gonna start with her toes,” he said. “I’m gonna suck ‘em one at a time. Then I’m gonna eat ‘em.”

  Danny ran his fingertips across Mara’s cheek. “Think she’s hotter than Roslyn?” He looked at me. “What do you think, Fatty? Sexier than Ros?”

  “I’m gonna eat her legs,” T whispered. All that pretty skin–I’m gonna gobble it right up...”

  Danny looked at A.J. “Why didn’t you tell me about this? I’m you’re fricken leader.” (Age didn’t tell Danny about Mara for the same reason I was avoiding Whit.)

  A.J. ignored the question. “Make ‘er sing, Dan.”

  “Why?”

  “Just do it. You’ll see.”

  “I’m gonna cut off her hair and I’m gonna smell her breath, then I’m gonna eat her face, piece by piece.”

  Again–slowly–Danny ran his fingers down Mara’s cheek. His eyes burned with new intensity as the dark magic took hold of his thoughts. “Sing,” he said.

  * * *

  My anger reached its peak and my veins were primed with adrenaline–

  “What the hells goin’ on up here?” The man was skinnier than a sapling with a pickaxe in one hand and sweat-rag in the other.

  Trent hid the sword behind his back and A.J. slipped behind a tree.

  Danny released Mara to the ground and said, “None of your beeswax, Hank.
”

  The man took ten strides with legs like a spider. He clenched the back of Danny’s neck and held the boy’s face to his. “You know that man’s payin’ me a hundred bucks to help dig his trench? I brought you here to help, boy, not to play with yer friends. And you call me Uncle Hank, you hear me?” He let go of Danny’s neck and smacked the back of his head.

  Then he noticed Mara. He wiped his forearm across his lips and stepped forward. “Did you hurt dem kids, Danny?”

  “No, sir,” Danny replied.

  Hank’s eyes were hooked on the girl. “Age,” he said, “yer dad’s lookin’ for ya.” He glanced at T. “Whoever the hell you are, go home an’ leave dem kids alone.” He smacked Danny again. “And you... get yer mangled head back down that hill and help pull some weeds.”

  Danny looked at me. His final glance said what his lips couldn’t: we’ll finish this later.

  T whacked a branch with his sword and plodded away. A.J. and Danny crossed the patch of grass, then disappeared into the brush from whence they came.

  Hank nodded to Mara, tipped the rim of an invisible hat, lingered for a moment too long... then followed the boys into the forest.

  I clutched the tree to pull myself up, then limped to Mara. I sat beside her and held my stomach. I hoped she would crawl to my lap–I could comfort her there–but she remained in the dirt and rolled to face me.

  “You okay?” she asked. Her cheek still held the imprint of jagged bark.

  “Got the wind knocked outta me. Otherwise, I’m fine. How about you?”

  “Feel a little sick, but no scratches.”

  “What did A.J. whisper to you?” I asked. “Unless you don’t wanna tell me...”

  “He found the tape of me singing... the one I played to keep Aunty asleep.”

  That scrawny little hillbilly had a recording of Mara’s voice! I was jealous–furious–but I also felt sad for her... and that was the side that Mara needed to see. “I’m sorry those jerks stole your stuff. If I could get it back–”