Siren Suicides (Second Edition)

Chapter 20. Nisqually River

My wail dies, kicked out of me by Canosa's impending presence. For a few moments I'm disoriented, not fully understanding where I am and how I got here, held fast in the flow of the melody that I managed to produce with my pain. I blink,tearing myself out of my choral daze. 

Hunter.
He's injured.He died, didn't he? An otherworldly melody, piercing in its beauty, touches my every nerve and sends me into bliss. I have revived him, after all. His soul is back to its splendor of homey sounds, the comfort of shuffling slippers on a parquet floor, the banging of pots in the kitchen, a late summer wind filled with bird whistles,and laughter. Hearty laughter. And no burning. I want to give in to it, to bask in it as if it were the sun, and soak up its warmth. But I can't, not after what just happened.

Involuntarily, I let out a cry of dismay.

"Can we do without screaming, please?" Hunter croaks, as if he was awake for a while. "I thought paradise was supposed to be a quiet place, a place without headaches. Man, I'm thirsty."

My thoughts about Canosa vanish in an instant.

"You didn't die." I kneel over him, a surge of happiness making me tremble.

"Thanks for letting me know. I was just wondering about that." His lips part into a grimace of pain across his bloody face. The dusk of the pre-evening sky matches the lavender blue of his eyes.

I gasp, at once exhilarated and miserable, because all of this is so absurd, so unreal, and then I remember.

"Hunter. I need to tell you something important. I'm sorry that I don't have a properly prepared speech for this. I didn't think we'd live. But if I don't say it now, I won't have the courage to try to say it again." I pause.

He closes his eyes and groans. I can't tell if he's listening or not, but now that I started, I'm unable to stop.

"I'm leaving. And...I don't want you to love me anymore," I say quietly.

He props himself up on his right elbow and winces, but doesn't cry out. "What? Sorry, I missed it. What did you say?"

I raise my eyes at him, unable to repeat the "I'm leaving" part, and burst into, "Are you hurt? How are you feeling?"

Everything inside me trembles.

He just looks at me blankly.

"Did you seriously just ask me how I'm feeling?" He's shaking. "How would you feel if you were me? Huh?" He shakes his head. "All right, I'll tell you. I'm feeling fine, thank you very much, considering I just fell more than five hundred fucking feet off this cliff, almost smashed to pieces, and am probably crippled now. Thanks to my siren girlfriend who decided to save me. Did I ask you to? Nope. So then, why in the fuck are you the one crying? I'm the one who has every right to come apart." He's glaring at me, his bloodied face angry with fire.

I wipe my face. "Sorry."

He's on a roll, rattling off insult after insult. I'm taking in his resentment, abashed at its ferocity. I remember reading in some magazine that when you prevent someone from committing suicide, instead of thanking you, they shower you with indignation. Because in that scary moment—when they've had it, when they finally hoped to find relief from their pain by parting with life—you interrupted, and they are overwhelmed with tremendous devastation. Most internalize this new pain and never show it. But a few are capable of throwing it in your face. Hunter is certainly the latter type. Here he was, hoping to end his torture once and for all, and here I am, having broken my promise to help him.

"One minute I'm flying through the air, and the next, I wake up on the bottom of the world, broken but alive. I'm supposed to be dead, all right. I'm supposed to—cut it out!" He makes an angry face, complete with snarling and bared teeth.