Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers

“No, I was the middle of nowhere. Anywhere, everywhere else was a grip on something real. I was on Temazepam by this time, for my depression and insomnia but it wasn’t working. The doctor gave me Prozac, and that was better, for a while, until I wanted to do nothing other than sit in front of my window and watch the litter being blown across the street. I kicked all that but it was like the feeling had settled into me and wouldn’t go away. I slept late, ate less, became constipated. I began to appreciate a particular kind of darkness I found in the loft. There was a cat, Marlon, his name was, that would sleep up there. Made his way over the roofs and climbed in through a hole in the eaves. We’d curl up together, flinching whenever a bird’s claws rattled on the tiles. It was almost magical. I felt safe; that thing that was looking for me wouldn’t have me here. It was just me and Marlon and the dark. Holding on to Marlon’s fur kept me real and sane. If he wasn’t there, I think I would, have just… well…”

“How long were you in Keighley for?” I asked, sensing a dangerous moment of self-disclosure if I let her carry on.

“Not long. I hitched a lift to Scarborough and did some work at one of the hotels. Cleaning rooms in the daytime, serving behind the bar at night. I liked it. Days off, I’d walk along the beach up to the amusement arcades. I met boys there. When it got dark we’d go behind the generators and I’d just let them do what they wanted to me. I went with this really gaunt, ill-looking boy called Felix. He was half Croatian. I sucked him off and when he came—”

“Jesus, Lou—”

“—when he came, there was blood in his semen. He blamed it on me, said I’d infected him—some nonsense like that—and he tried to strangle me. I didn’t fight him off. I was struck by how beautiful he looked in the thin light rising from the harbor behind us. I think he got scared when I smiled at him. He left me alone. I like to believe you were thinking of me at that very moment. My Guardian Angel, rescued me with some attention.”

I laughed nervously. I didn’t like anything she was telling me. I was jealous and I was resentful of her for keeping a hold on to me. My letter hadn’t been a cry for reunion, it had been a friendly endeavor to find out what was happening to someone I cared about. But I found myself hooked on her story. “And then?” I asked, my voice dead, resigned.

“I stayed in Scarborough for some time. A year or so. Things changed. I found that I seemed to be waking into thick air. Walking, blinking, breathing—it was all such an effort. Things weren’t right while somehow keeping a surface of normality. I’d see something odd, but everybody else’s reaction would be non-existent and it might be hours or days before I told myself that no, it was not right but by then I’d suspect that it happened at all.”

“What kind of things? What are you talking about, Louise?”

“I’m talking about the skeletons of fish on the beach flopping around, trying to get back into the water. I’m talking about sand castles that didn’t dissolve when the tide touched them. A couple kissing under a streetlamp whose heads melted into each other.”

“Tcha!” I said, rocking back on my seat and attracting a few glances from the punters sitting nearby. She’d drawn me into her story so effectively that this nonsense had spat me out, like a newborn, unable to cope with me sudden influx of normal sensations. I sighed and rubbed my eyes. She wouldn’t give up on it though.

“A dog smoking a pipe. A parrot on a smiling tramp’s shoulder picking his brains from a bleeding eye socket. Burning children playing leapfrog on a lawn.”

“Stop it, Louise.”

“I was there. I saw this happening.”

“In Scarborough? I’ve been to Scarborough. The strangest thing they have there is a ghost train that squirts water at you.”

“Yes. But, although it was Scarborough, it could have been anywhere. I was drawing these things to me. I was in some kind of midway. A lost soul.”

I necked my coffee. I could feel myself bristling under her expectant gaze. She’d always been like this, pushing the envelope of provocation and gauging my reaction till I exploded. “If you’re trying to make me feel guilty for finishing with you, you’re doing fine. Not that you’re one to hold a grudge.”

“I don’t blame you for this, Sean. I did at first. I spent all my time thinking of you. Thinking of how our child would have been two, three, four, five. You laughing and having a good time. Fucking lots of women. I played the whole victim thing. I wanted you and hated you in equal measure. I needed you. But then I realized all my misery was externalized too. It got so bad very quickly that I didn’t even notice things had changed until I started paying attention to the outside world rather than my puffy face in the mirror.