114—Sirens, Part I: Odysseus

He tasted that salty spray taste. He thought of the music of the spheres heard by Pythagoras. Now he hoped to hear something divine on Earth.

He called upon the strange gravity that poises those who choose to live unanchored to the firm ground that restricts others to shorelines.

His vulnerable ears—open, inviting, and en garde--heard the nautical wind. His men toiled at their duties on his ship, fearful of their captain’s expected madness.

But they obeyed when they were ordered to discard the last of the hot wax before pouring it into their captain’s ears. They obeyed when they were ordered to tie their captain to the mast as they neared the island of the daughters of Melpomene.

And they disobeyed when he ordered them to release him so as to be willingly consumed by the Sirens singing to him divinely.

The wet binding cut painfully into his ankles and wrists as he flapped and thrashed impotently on the mast like crying ropes in the wind. His ears heard the honored invitation--a request to rejoin the Divine.

The rest of the world had no importance! He must go, he knew.

He heaved against the mast, its creaking added to his own as he hoped to snap it--he must snap it. Even his men, wide-eyed with horror and amazement, thought he might succeed.

He slumped in defeat, disgusted with his traitors, scorning them for having only wind blowing through their heads. Knives cut him away from his crucifix. A final harmony drifted through him from afar.

“Is it safe, Captain?”

“Finally, it is! For me!” he cried, each flexed elbow carrying a man with him overboard. Falling with them, it seemed so beautiful to him how their howls harmonized with the song from the island.

The concussion was his final defeat. When his crew fished him out alone, with no remorse for his friends who had died, he knew their deaths--and all tragedies--were jokes compared to the miseries of the Sirens’ lure unrequited. Unless one heard what he had heard, no one could conjure the shame and self-loathing that befell all who refused their seduction.

He was doomed to forever long for this consummation.

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THIS SUBMISSION

Companion piece to Sirens—Part 2: Orpheus

For Tuesday, April 23, Day 114 of the Story-a-Day Challenge. Now well into triple digits!

364 WORDS

All pictures are AI-generated, but the musical strains are not!

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