Siren Suicides (Second Edition)

Chapter 11. Dry Lab

It feels like my body is burning at the stake, my spine nailed to its post, my misery its fire. The darkness is overwhelming. I can smell my hair singed from heat, hear my skin crack as it starts to blacken and curl and split. What's happening? Is this some sort of siren hell and I'm stuck in its hottest room as punishment? It's certainly not siren heaven. Perhaps I'm balanced in that divine fold between life and death, the one that rips open as soon as you enter. The afterlife. One of the three destinations where Canosa is supposed to bring those who pass.

The only thing I know for sure is I'm hot. Before my vocal cords dissolve in this brilliant blaze, I want to utter one final cry. It promptly dies on the back of my tongue, stifled by a wall. I'm gagged.

My whole body shakes in a burst of dry coughing. I'm certain that if I was dead for real, coughing would be the last thing on my body's agenda. My throat constricts in another spasm and I make funny whooping sounds through a bundle of cloth stuffed into the cavity of my mouth. My lips sting, stretched out to the biggest O shape they can make; the gag pulls the skin tight all around my jaw, unhinged to near breaking. There is tape over my mouth, and the odor of its glue tickles my nostrils.

I groan, breathing through my nose. It feels like I'm passing fire as each inhale and exhale burns with blistering air. My chest is aflame and my gills feel cracked and dry.

I'm laying on my back, on the floor of a room. My eyes hurt from being dry, so I close them, take another hot breath, and look again, determined to find out exactly where I am.

On my second try, I understand a simple truth that chills me to the bones. It's not just any room I'm in, it's padded. There are a series of square pillows covering walls the color of washed-out sand, reeking of synthetic leather. I concentrate on one thing at a time. I have to focus on the facts.

The room. It's the size of a typical bathroom, or a prison cell, depending on how you look at it. At least it's not dark. On the ceiling, a single round fluorescent light shines through a net of protective wires. The light it emits is soft, as if filtered through a cloud. Everything about this room is soft—the foam on the walls, the floor under my back, even the sound. Rather, the lack of it. Each of my coughs comes out hushed and disappears into the dead silence.

This room, no, this cell, is soundproof, perhaps specifically designed for locking up sirens. Yell all you want, nobody will hear. Not like I can test this theory, thanks to the gag.

I wheeze.

The floor shifts and I sway. Does this mean I'm still on the boat? I suck in air through my nose and cringe at the stench of fake leather. Breathing rapidly, I turn my attention to my fingers. They're stuck tight against my elbows in a cup hold, yet I don't feel like I'm holding them. I try to move one, then another, and can't; they all feel numb. My whole body is numb, as if it's not there. Shifting my gaze down doesn't help either, my eyeballs burn like they're about to turn to lava and I can't see anything beyond the faint outline of my nose and jaw. There, in the distance, blurry, are my feet that I can't feel. The length of my body is shrouded in the semblance of a cotton sheet, several cotton sheets, layer upon layer.

Great, I'm the first siren pupa.

Off-white cotton, perhaps the same material that fills my mouth, holds me in a cocoon. I flex my hands again, finger by finger, like I'm playing a piano. Imagining who did this, how long it took them to wrap me up like this, and whether or not I'm naked underneath, makes me want to puke.

My father...his face was the last I saw...where?

"Let's see here," I mumble into cloth, but it comes out more like, "Uhuhuheee." I keep talking, to feel sane.