The Alluring Voice

There are nights in every man’s life he will never forget. I, like many others, have several that come to mind. However, it’s the traumatic nights we remember the most vividly. We also tend to seldom talk about those fateful evenings.

I can still see the lonely street in Los Angeles that was filled with the comforting sound of melodic metal music. The doors of our favorite bar, The Carousel, were wide open, gracing lower California with the presence of elegant, heavy tunes.

Although we had visited the venue dozens of times since we were legally allowed to enter, The Carousel was far from anything special. It was a small building that was just big enough to fit in a bar, a small stage, and a surrounding area for drunk fans to cheer on their local heroes. To the average person, it was nothing but a simple dive bar. However, it was everything a metalhead of LA was looking for in the 90s on a Saturday night.

I sat at the bar sipping my Jack and Coke while watching my friend on the stage in front of me. Marco, my ex-bandmate, was on lead guitar as well as supplying the vocals. The drummer and bass player had names, but I’ll never remember them. They were a crucial part of the band but stood in the limelight of the lead man.

Marco had piled together a compilation of six new songs he planned on putting on display in front of the town locals. He had killed the first two pieces of material, and he was about to break into a thrash solo on his third.

He raised his picking hand in the air signifying that his guitar was about to unleash some serious shit. The crowd intensified by screaming and jumping up and down. Rain drops of cheap booze fell all over my body. The solo lasted about thirty seconds, just long enough to make every woman in the establishment fall in love with Marco.

He had told me in advance the solo for the third song was the moment he had been waiting for. It was the musical piece he had dedicated himself to the most over the past month. Evidently, it sounded beyond amazing. It was a great composition of licks heard by everyone in the bar and everyone in a half mile radius. It was heard by everyone except me.

#

The accident happened three weeks earlier. I had been working at a menial job for about two years at that point. I’ve never had many skills, but I have great tolerance for boredom. That’s why I’ve always worked on an assembly line for a motor company.

For two eventless years, I simply picked up engine blocks with a claw-like machine and placed them in dunnage pallets. It was the ultimate rinse and repeat process for eight hours every weekday. One day, however, it changed the rest of my existence forever.

I don’t really remember it, but from what I’ve heard, it went like this. I picked up a block at about eye level. Instead of just guiding the big piece of metal to the dunnage next to me, I somehow managed to slip and drive the block directly into my head.

I woke up at the hospital with the worst headache I had ever felt. A doctor eventually entered my room and spoke to me, but I couldn’t hear his words.

Cortical deafness is apparently what it’s called. It happens when the brain is damaged in a certain area, and the ability to hear is suddenly taken away. The doctor said I could get better, but never fully functioning.

That was the day Marco and I broke it off as bandmates. It was the end of my music career. It was the end of music. The accident killed the only thing about the world I truly ever loved.

#

Marco was finishing up his final piece and now was surrounded by a group of horny women in their twenties. All night I tried watching his fingers, attempting to guess what his new music sounded like. I came up with a few good ideas, but I was far from a new-age Beethoven.

As the crowd cheered on Marco’s brilliant performance, I wanted to cheer harmoniously, but a hole in my heart wouldn’t let me. My friends and family had tried to cheer me up after the accident, but nothing helped. Watching the band on stage for the first time since losing my hearing only seemed to be a reminder of how much was taken from me.

After receiving a few high-fives from fans, Marco walked off the stage and up to me. He pulled out a pad of paper and began to write on it. I had only been deaf for a month. My knowledge of sign language was nonexistent, and my lip reading was just developing.

“Do you want to help us load the equipment in the van?” Marco mouthed to me while holding up the pad of paper.

“Yeah,” I said without hearing my voice. “Just unlock the doors to the rig.”

I stood up and accidentally side stepped to my left. It was evident over the previous week that alcohol was helping relieve my emotional pain. However, at that moment I realized maybe I had too much relief for one night.

#

I teamed up with the other band members who turned out to be horrible workers when it came to loading up their own gear. It’s not that I couldn’t easily handle it at the age of twenty-one, but it was quite an arduous task with seven alcoholic beverages in me.

For the next thirty minutes, I was forced to leave the warm air of The Carousel, lugging expensive equipment that wasn’t mine into the parking lot. It was impossible not to notice the other band members being lethargic during each trip. Several times I entered the bar with an uncomfortable cold sweat glistening on my skin as I gasped for air. As for the bassist and drummer, they would both have a beer that would never leave their hands during each trip. It was quite relieving to bring that last piece of equipment into the barely functioning band vehicle.

I slammed the van doors shut, presumably causing a large echo in the alley. “We’re ready to go, guys!” I yelled, wondering how slurred and dumb my words sounded at the time.

Walking back to the bar entrance, I peered inside one of the windows. The band was nowhere in sight. With my muscles exhausted and my heart racing, I decided to take a short walk down the alley and smoke a cigarette.

I regret my years of smoking, but it seemed to be good etiquette for every metal head in the mid-1990s. Only bad things ever come from smoking, or so my grandmother always told me. They did indeed negatively affect me before I eventually quit, but not in a way I would have thought.

If I would have thrown out the cigarettes a year earlier, I might have never strolled down that alley to the next street. Maybe I would have just gone back into the bar and had another drink, but I didn’t. Instead, I created my worst memory.

When I reached the crosswalk, I looked to my right to see nothing but the dim glow of ‘closed’ lights in the windows of other establishments. Eventually I turned to my left; that’s when I first laid my eyes on her.

She stood at the street kitty corner from me. Her height was about five feet tall with long blonde hair down to her breasts. She was wearing a long, white dress that looked more like a pajama outfit than something you’d wear on a night on the town. Her body was facing away from me, but I could already tell that it was a figure I wouldn’t mind taking home. I gazed over her body when she slowly turned toward me.

A rush of adrenaline came over me as we made eye contact from afar. She wore a blank expression with two streams of blood coming from the corners of her mouth. We stared at each other for several seconds before I spoke up.

“Are you ok, Miss?” I yelled, once again wondering how stupid my words might have sounded. “Has someone hurt you?”

Her lips moved. This I could see, but it was a useless attempt at communication, of course.

“I can’t hear you!” I yelled while pointing at my right ear. “I’m sorry, but I’m deaf.”

I began walking over to the woman to ensure her safety, but I was stopped in my tracks when I realized she was one step ahead of me. When I say the word ‘step’, I use it loosely. Her feet didn’t appear to move underneath her gown. She instead appeared to float across the empty street. It was a creepy sashay of sorts. All the while, her mouth was moving without projecting any sound to my ears.

I turned to the alley to see if there was anyone else by the van. When I turned back, the woman was directly in front of me. She strangely seemed to change. Her hair had gotten darker, and she appeared to grow in both height and girth. The two lines of blood that came from her mouth were now oozing out like waterfalls.

My hand instantly reached for my holster. I pulled out my pistol and turned off the safety. All smart men go out packing. It wasn’t exactly legal for me to do so, but my pistol had saved my life before.

The sight of my weapon startled the woman, causing her to retreat with wide eyes of terror on her pretty face. “It’s okay,” I said. “I just need to know who hurt you. Did someone jump you?”

With a fear-filled woman in front of me, I pointed my gun in every direction. There was no one else in sight. The woman once again began moving her blood-filled mouth.

I tried to take a deep breath and read what she was saying. It took a few seconds, but I eventually figured out that she wasn’t talking. She was singing. Her lips moved similar to how Marco’s had minutes earlier.

The woman slapped her hands on my chest. I instinctively pointed the gun at her stomach. There was a strong surge of coldness as her palms moved to my neck. Eventually, she began stroking my scalp. She breathed lightly in my face with each word she sang, causing my nostrils to fill with a foul odor. They were the worst smelling lyrics ever.

I took a few steps back with the gun still pointed at her. At this point, I wasn’t sure if I was protecting anyone anymore. Perhaps I was looking like a prowler myself.

The woman’s bloodied face stopped singing. Her flesh turned a beat-red color as she began grinding her teeth. Seconds later, she began biting her bottom lip so hard that more blood began joining her chin area.

“What the fuck?” I mouthed to myself. I had enough; I ran down the alley.

After only a few steps, I ran into Marco. With a solid accidental shove, I knocked him off his feet. He began talking to me from the ground with a scowl on his face. It was impossible to know what he was saying, but I could tell they weren't happy words.

With my free hand, I helped him to his feet while still holding the firearm in the other. Upon regaining his balance, Marco pointed at the pistol and shrugged.

I pointed to the woman and attempted to explain what I didn’t even understand myself. Before I even got a few words out, Marco made eye contact with her and froze like a statue.

The woman once again seemed to have physically changed. Her hair was now blonde again and her face was clean of blood.

“Marco,” I began, “I found this girl out here. I don’t know what’s going on. I pulled my gun because…”

I stopped talking when it was clear Marco was no longer listening. The woman was once again singing. This time it was to Marco. His eyes became blank. He trudged toward her like a zombie.

I screamed his name several times, but it was useless. He had fallen underneath a trance. His brain was now under the hypnotic spell.

Marco eventually placed both of his hands on the woman’s hip area and looked into her eyes as though he had just found the love of his life. The female grabbed her white gown and began tearing it off her body.

You would expect that with such a beautiful face you would see a body that followed suit. However, what was underneath her clothing was shockingly disgusting.

Instead of an hourglass female figure, there were now bloody feather-like structures jutting from her torso. When her gown was fully off, a large set of wings emerged from her back. They too were dripping with what I now think was human blood.

The last thing that changed was her face. It turned from an innocent woman to a hideous beast. The head grew twice in size with a jaw that had large razor-like teeth.

My body slumped to the ground, petrified. I pointed my gun at the monster in front of me, but I was shy with the trigger. I didn’t want to accidentally take Marco’s life. It turns out the beast had intentional plans for doing so instead.

A quick lunge forward and the being tore at my friend's neck with its fangs. I screamed in terror as his blood decorated the ground around us. To this day, I could only imagine the horrific sounds Marco and I filled the alley with.

The creature's wings began to flap. Marco and his murderer began hovering in the air.

Shoot! I thought to myself. Pull the trigger!

I stood and took aim, but it was no use. Before I was able to use my weapon on the creature, both bodies disappeared into the night sky.

#

My strange tale happened just over twenty-three years ago. Marco would have been forty-five today. His headstone is in a graveyard not far from where he was last seen. Parts of his body were later found scattered around the city, but nothing they were going to bother to bury.

His case will forever remain one on the unsolved list. After temporarily discarding the illegal weapon I had been carrying that night, I called the police. They showed up to The Carousel where I told them what had happened. As I fed them the facts, I feared they would blame me for the missing body and throw me in an asylum for the rest of my life. It turns out that my words were only damning enough to get me thrown in a holding cell for a few days. I was briefly a suspect in my friend's death. This ended when authorities failed to explain how I could spread parts of his flesh across several miles within minutes of when he was last seen.

My unbelievable account of Marco’s death was written off as a fabrication brought on by a combination of intoxication and brain damage from my recent accident. It was just a bullshit excuse to explain something they couldn’t.

I now live in a small beach house that overlooks the Pacific Ocean. I work at the same plant, talk to most of the same people, and I just try to live my life with little to no change.

There has been a recent aberration in my life, however. It turns out that the doctor I spoke to at the hospital years earlier was correct, my hearing has slightly returned. When friends and family heard the news about it, they were ecstatic. Afterall, it does seem like a good thing, but I’m really not so sure…

At dusk three weeks ago, I was walking along the shore of the beach. My brain was partially able to process the noise the waves were making. That’s when I heard a foreign sound. I guess all sounds are weird when you haven’t heard anything in decades, but this was different from anything I ever remembered.

There was a distant singing voice coming from the ocean horizon. Inside I was calm and mesmerized. It was a high similar to what drugs used to give me back in my wild years. I’d imagine it was virtually the exact same thing that Marco heard seconds before he died.

Every night now I sit at the edge of my bed staring off into the ocean. My pistol, the same one I owned years ago, is always loaded in my hand. It saved my life once before the incident with Marco, and I hope one day it will do the same again.

It’s impossible to explain, but I know there’s many of them–the creatures that took the life of my dear friend. I hear them. I think they know I hear them, and they will come for me in time. I’ll be here with my loaded gun, waiting. Waiting for the Sirens of the sea.