Sirens

The cabin in the woods had been abandoned for years, but one night, a candle burned in the window.

You’ve been lost in the woods for days, carrying an axe, trying to find a main road leading back to town, or at least away from these never-ending woods. You have no memory of how you came to be in these woods.

You’re starving and can’t remember the last time you’ve eaten. You have no knowledge of what is edible and what is not. You saw some bright red berries, and cautiously tried one, but it was so bitter it made you gag and spit on the spot.

You approach the cabin, axe in hand. You notice a path leading from where you’re standing to the cabin. The path was not there a few seconds ago, or at least you hadn’t noticed it before. You wonder if the cabin was actually there before or not, but then shake your head and dismiss that idea entirely. You know that the cabin had been abandoned for years. It looks that way and you instinctively know that. Why question your instinct?

As you get closer, you take a swing with the axe at a nearby tree. The trunk of the tree is about four inches in diameter. Despite that, the tree is entirely sliced through and falls over away from the path. The tree makes a surprisingly loud noise as it falls over, but little or no noise as the axe passes through it.

You conclude the axe blade is quite sharp. You don’t remember sharpening it to that degree, but just accept it as is.

You notice a figure in the window, looking out towards the noise.

You can see that it’s a young woman, and she’s dressed entirely in white, like a bride. She looks expectant but she doesn’t see you.

You happen to look at your own clothes. You see that you’re dressed in what you think is sensible clothing with a red-checkered flannel shirt, blue jeans with a black belt, and a pair of hiking boots. It’s past dusk, and the light is fading fast.

You’re at the front door of the cabin, and you knock.

The door opens a crack and you see the white of an eye staring at you, partially obstructed by a wisp of mahogany hair. As the eye scans you from top to bottom, the iris appears as a brilliant electric blue.

“Why the axe, honey?” a sultry southern, richly feminine voice, just above a whisper, asks you from inside.

From a distance, you hear a banjo. The banjo is playing a familiar tune that you can’t quite place. The effect of the banjo causes you to unexpectedly stutter.

“I…I…I don’t know. I guess it’s because I’m a lumberjack, or something?” you manage to say.

“You know, sugar, I’ve seen that axe before,” she states as she opens the door a little wider, teasing an unnaturally white hand against your chest. “But that’s a long story. Why don’t you leave it outside and come on in?”

As the door opens wider, the sweet smell of elderberries and jasmine wafts out of the enclosed space and you take in the scent, and the woman, her fingers sliding down your chest as she fully reveals herself. At the back of your mind you notice the banjo seems a little louder.

Her lips are firecracker red, almost glowing. You see a splatter of the same shade of red across the front of her ivory nightgown, clasped tightly around her neck. While she appears to be very thin, she steps back and beckons you inside with a grace your eyes can’t willingly depart. Her hair is done up in a loose French twist, with ringlets dancing across her face as she smiles at you.

The walls of the room she’s standing in spill over with night-blooming flowers, and the floor is covered with corpses.

You feel the axe slipping away from your grip as she lightens her touch on your chest, the effect makes you yearn for the full weight of her fingers against you, and you take a step forward, hearing the crunch of finger bones beneath your boots. As repulsed as you are by the sound of digits cracking, you find the thrill of the full pressure of her fingertips far more enticing to your senses than your disgust.

The banjo grows a little louder. As you focus on the music, your disgust with your surroundings becomes more acute, and you find yourself wanting to step back.

You see the woman’s face twitch a bit as she hears the music. Her face goes blank for a second, and then her eyes open up wider as she begins to sing.

The melody of her song doesn’t clash, but it’s a perfect countermelody to that of the banjo, matching the crescendos and changes in tempo like it’s been rehearsed and practiced in the same room, repeatedly. As your attention wanders back to her, you find yourself pleasantly surprised by her nails just slightly hooking the flesh of your chest. Painful to be certain, but intoxicating at the same time.

You hear the axe fall to the ground as the step of the banjo player reverberates on the floor behind you. The melody of the banjo increases its complexity and draws your attention once again. You tear away from the woman, discovering five stinging wounds where her nails pierced your flesh.

You reach for the axe as the woman lunges at you, fangs first. You step back and trip over the axe handle, kicking the woman in the face as you twist around with both hands, flailing for the axe. You see the boots of the banjo player and hear her continue to play as the woman’s song stops with an abrupt gag.

Your hands grasp the axe handle as you roll back around to face the woman. You find your kick knocked her jaw eschew, and it’s hanging open at an odd angle. More striking though is her neck, now exposed as she scrambles to reset her jaw. Her neck has a distinct red line extending all the way across it, surrounded on both sides of the red line by dark stitches.

She snaps her jaw in place with a crack at least three times as piercing as the sound of the fingers breaking underneath your boots. She leaps at you once again and you swing the axe, following the same red line to the millimeter as her head falls into her outstretched hands. Like with the tree falling in the forest, the sound of the catch against her palms is louder than the axe slicing through her neck.

Her hands work feverishly, reattaching her head to her neck as she grabs needle and thread from a nearby table.

“We should get out of here,” you hear the banjo player say, and you follow her voice out of the cabin.

The banjo player has flowing red hair and a freckled complexion. She’s dressed similar to you except she’s wearing a denim skirt instead of jeans. You’re struck by her high cheekbones and bright green eyes. You find yourself checking her out, especially her neck. She catches you doing that and blushes a bit.

“I’m not…like her,” she states as she turns around and struts away from the cabin, humming a tune first then elaborating on the same tune with her banjo.

You follow her deeper into the forest, despite your better judgement. You remembered seeing a driveway on the far side of the cabin as you approached it. You figure that usually a driveway leads to a road of some kind. Something about the tune she’s playing makes you want to hear more of the tune instead of finding your way out of the woods. The more you listen to her melody, the less immediacy the driveway has in your thoughts.

The driveway is all but forgotten when you hear a waterfall nearby, and women laughing. The banjo melody has gotten even more intense and is joined by initially one woman, then all of them, singing along with the banjo.

The tune, you now realize, is exactly the same one that you heard at the cabin.

The banjo player gives you a quick once-over, licking her lips at you before disappearing through the foliage near the end of a path. After she disappears, the singing, and the banjo playing, stop.

With the music stopping, you realize you have two choices.

One, you can follow her through the foliage to the waterfall.

Or two, you can head back the way you came to this point and follow the driveway back to a road through the area.

The more you think about the second option, the more reality comes pouring back to you. Speckles of the life you lived before you came to be in the woods blow past you like cottonwood seeds. You remember things, dark truths about the world, and about your axe.

You remember there’s a reason you made the blade so sharp.

You hear a gurgle, then a hack, then you hear the woman from the cabin start to sing once again. As she sings, you find yourself beginning to forget.

You see the wall of foliage in the other direction. You step towards it as the woman’s song grows louder.

You’ve forgotten what was beyond the foliage. You don’t see it as anything beyond the end of a path.

You’re lost in the woods again as the song stops.