Sirens and Other Daemon Lovers

“So tell me about yourself,” you say when you sit down, and she happily goes into her story. She’s on the fast track at an ad agency—a campaign for those new quadrupedal workout areas. Your roommate Karl didn’t tell you much about her when he set the two of you up. He just said you’d been moping around too much, you needed to get out more. Only a few women do the stuff, he said, and most of the ones who do aren’t dangerous. Most of them are nice. And of course you know that, except for deep down in your gut where you remember heavy paws on your chest, where you remember hot hot breath and saliva and pointed teeth grinning inches away from your face.

Still, you let him make the date for you, because you hate it when it gets cold at night and the only warm place in the bed is the place where you are. She seems nice enough, stopping to ask you a few questions and sounding as if she’s interested in your answers. Oh the other hand, she orders the steak. She’s carving it up and popping chunks into her mouth and chewing heartily, and suddenly you feel your supper shifting inside you. She catches your look and asks you what’s wrong.

The first time you left your wife, you called a friend to come pick you up in the middle of the night. She changed back to her trueform then, standing on the lawn apologizing and begging as you drove off. She was so beautiful that you almost told him to turn around, but you could see your blood on her fingernails in the moonlight as you held your bandaged arm.

She must have rubbed some of the blood on one of the tires in the confusion. You can’t think how else she could have traced you to the hotel, later that night. She had to pay for eight hundred dollars in damages to that room, and you went to the hospital with a broken rib.

The next time, you planned your exit more carefully. You left work early, went to the bus station, and never looked back. No, that’s not true. Sometimes you miss her so much it burns; sometimes you would go back and serve her your liver on a platter, if only she would eat it and smile and tell you it was good.

Linda is very kind, she’s holding your hand as you tell her the story, and she’s telling you how sorry she is you’ve been hurt. She asks if you still want to go to the movie, and you say not really, you’d rather go home.

She parks in the street behind your car, outside her apartment. Then she leans on your hood for twenty-five minutes and tries to persuade you to come inside. I won’t pressure you once you’re in, she says. Truly I won’t. I just want somebody to talk to. I want to hear your story.

There’s something about her that still makes you uneasy: the way the moon looks over her shoulder, the way her hair moves when there wasn’t any wind, the way her nostrils flare when there is. Finally, though, you give in. She’s stroking your arm, and her voice is gentle, and the bed in your own apartment is cold.

When you get inside she offers you a glass of wine and puts on some soft music. There’s a dull ache inside you like a lump of congealed blood, and you aren’t sure whether it’s lust or loneliness or fear. You hope it’s not just fear. You want her the way you want air, the way you want your nightmares to leave you alone. A part of you is screaming no, no, we’ve done this before, but when she reaches up and strokes your cheek the lump in your gut dissolves, and there’s nothing you can do anymore. You need to touch her, need to touch someone, there’s an empty feeling in your fingertips like parts of them are missing. You stroke her arm and she kisses you. Her mouth is as hot as blood.

She pulls you toward the bedroom and you don’t resist. She pulls off your clothes and lays you out on the bed, then climbs on top of you and engulfs you. Her hands clutch your shoulders and she cries out as she forces you inside her. For this one moment you’re important to someone else; for this moment you’re her world. As she rides you and cries out into the night, you are a part of something larger than yourself, for you are hers. Even as her arms stiffen and grow hair, even as the fingers on your shoulders grow heavy and sharp, still you are hers and she is yours, and as you see her teeth shine in the moonlight you climax in ecstasy and fear.

Some women never turn all the way. Sometimes it’s just an ear pointing, a claw sharpening, a muscle that tenses suddenly with the strength of wind. “That was wonderful,” she says, and you see the loup passing from her face like a shadow; the newly grown hair fades and turns wispy and falls like snow. Her nose is still wide, though, and she sniffs the air above you. “You’re afraid, darling,” she says. “I’m sorry, I should have warned you. Were you scared that I would hurt you like your wife did?”