A Stranger on a Strange Shore

Horror Fiction Inspired by the Sirens

For this week’s Monster of the Week, I’ve written a monster/apocalyptic short horror piece inspired by the sirens. I wrote a bit about these mythical wonders a few weeks ago. This will also be my piece for this round of the Lunar Awards here on Substack. I really dig the Substack writing community involved in that award, and always enjoy reading the submissions and winners.

I am including a trigger warning on this story. There is an attempted sexual assault in this piece so please read a different story, maybe this one, if that will be a problem. It is not graphic but I don’t want to catch anyone off guard.

Photo by Guillaume Bleyer on Unsplash

A Stranger on a Strange Shore

I always yearned to travel beyond my shores. Momma always told me to never leave my isle… never leave my isle… but the water rose and rose until one day, my yearning and her warning no longer mattered, my course set by the sea.

The stench of rotten eggs and acrid chemicals cling to my hair as I rise out of the murky waters. Exhausted and starving from a most desperate swim, my legs wobble as waves crash against my bare flesh. The harsh air burns my skin upon contact, forcing a gasp from my lips. The smog’s so thick it leaves a film inside my mouth, leaving my tongue numb with the taste of metal and melted plastic. I try to lick it off my teeth and gums, but it just spreads the noxious flavor around. Through drooping eyelids, the shapes of dilapidated warehouses illuminated by yellow light blur into the industrial skyscape. A long debris-cluttered beach lies between me and this manufacturing metropolis. The act of crossing the sand to those buildings is insurmountable after my five-day journey. This place couldn’t possibly be one of the great city’s visitors to our small isle used to wax poetic about after some drink and song. I grimace, trying to reject the thought boiling my blood and flushing my cheeks… my mother was right.

Jagged pieces of slag mixed in the wet sand prick the soles of my feet as I take my first steps out of the water and onto the clay-like beach beneath the pier. My throat constricts as everything starts to go dark, my long journey and the toxic air proving too much. My body slams against wet black sand, and my dreams are instantly of my mother.

Momma begged me not to go. I begged her to leave. Our isle was almost entirely underwater. I wasn’t going to sink with it, drown before I had seen the world. That was her way. Not mine.

Uneven and heavy footsteps pull me from sleep and that last fight. I’m not even sure the plodding steps exist or if I’m still dreaming, my brain foggy from lack of food and water, every limb aching from the long distant swim. As the scrunching of boots in the sand grow louder and closer, I finally accept they are real and pose a possible threat. I groggily lift my head from the sand, licking my cracked lips, tasting iron. Still evaluating the risk, I remain silent, trying to get my bearings in this strange new world. The man’s breathing becomes labored as he stalks closer toward me, his heartbeat rapid.

“Lady, you, okay?” he slurs, out of breath.

I greet him with stillness and silence.

“What ’ya doing out here…” His voice trails off, and his footsteps stop.

His boot nudges my foot first, then my knee, and finally my hip leaving a trail of grit and sand on my skin. “Miss?”

He lowers down to his knees, and the smell of a cheap, caustic liquor wafts over my cheek, clawing at my nostrils. His rough calloused hand touches my arm first, shaking me softly.

I decide playing dead serves me best at this moment.

He begins shaking me more aggressively. “Wake up!”

I force my body to remain limp, hoping he will leave when I don’t awake.

His hand slides from my arm to my throat as he checks for a pulse, mindful to brush against as much of my bare flesh as he can on the journey. After several inspections of my vital areas and not so vital ones, he flops down next to me. “Well, ya ain’t dead. That’s good.”

Several tense moments pass as his breathing steadies. He heaves his bulky body, pushing sand and slag against my bare flesh, inching closer to me. I prepare for a fight while battling every instinct to gag and convulse as his hand hovers over my face.

Momma would want to say she told me so but wouldn’t, not in a moment like this.

His hand touches my cheek, my neck, and then my breast. For a full minute, he just leaves his hand there like a boy, breath held, maybe waiting for me to wake up or maybe just shocked he’s actually touching one. He releases that breath, and the space between us becomes sinister. He allows his body to push against mine with a grunt, moving slow, not wanting to break whatever spell he thinks we are under. “I’ll just keep you warm until you wake up,” he murmurs.

I know what my mother would do right now, what I should do.

His lips touch my cheek, and he whispers some nonsense about taking care of me as he rolls atop me, crushing my lungs as he presses his wormy lips upon mine as if he’s the prince whose kiss awakes the fair maiden. I am fully awake, but I am not that kind of maiden, and he is no prince. More boldly now, his hands move lower, and his breath is labored again for reasons that repulse me. I open my eyes, gagging, catching his surprised gaze with my furious one right before my palm rams into his nose. A large crunch of his cartilage is followed by his high-pitched squeal. The men who steal kisses always sound like pigs when wounded, smell like them too. He falls off me, clutching his bloody face, glaring at me as if any of this is my fault, stumbling and weaving, rage and booze fueling his fire. Leaping to my feet, I dodge and kick his leg as he clumsily charges me. He howls as he slams against the sand, face smashing into a large, jagged piece of slag. Blood flows from his nose and sprays from a fresh gouge in his forehead. I back away toward the lapping waves, watching him scramble to his feet, blood dripping down his face and hands.

“You’re dead!” he shrieks.

Don’t ever let them see you before they hear your voice, my daughter.

Enough is enough. I open my mouth to counter his threat, but no words came out. My hand fly to my lips then my throat, and I try to speak again. Just a rasp of air in and out. I can’t speak, singing will be impossible. My voice fails again and again as he charges toward me. My voice never fails. In the dark, this staggering bulky man galumphs like an elephant seal toward me, comical and terrifying. He closes in, heaving his body toward me. I turn and sprint into the white frothy waters, still clasping my throat, hoping the water will return my voice. His fingers brush my heels as he falls into the surf.

The isle is your home. You can’t leave.

Momma’s words chase after me alongside the drunk as I dive into deeper waters to drown them out. Waves knock him over again and again, but he keeps getting up, sputtering and swaying as he flails and flops further out, refusing to give up on his fresh catch.

Treading water, head bobbing up and down in the waves, I watch as he struggles more and more to keep his head above water with each wave that slams into him. I keep eye contact when he finally realizes he has followed me out too far and can no longer touch the sea floor with his feet. I ignore his screams for help but hold his gaze, bearing witness as his body rolls over and disappears into a large wave for the last time.

The ocean has never been a place for man.

Staring back to the shore, I hear my mother’s whispers travelling on the wind.

This land is no place for you.

Two large hands grab my ankles and rip me beneath the surface hard and fast, clawing up my legs as I descend to meet the drowning drunk’s desperate eyes. I struggle to rip his hands off me but his grip is iron-clad and his eyes are mad, panicking, trying to get to the surface for air. The heft of his clothes and boots are only pulling us both deeper. I let my knee find his soft belly, and he releases the last bit of air in his lungs, bubbles emerge from his mouth and race to the surface. His hands clutch my arms as we continue to sink, something I swam all this way to avoid. I did not leave my home and mother to drown in these toxic waters with someone who has never heard my voice. I kick furiously as the waters get darker around us the further we sink. We’ll hit the bottom soon. I free one of my arms as his body jerks, the lack of oxygen starting to do its work. I claw at his face, kicking at him as his grip loosens. His body jerks again, and I’m free. I turn and look down as his body convulses and then goes limp. Instead of continuing to surface, I circle him like a shark, watching as the last bits of life leave his eyes, making sure he remembers his sins while leaving this world. Finally, his arms droop as his heavy boots hold his swaying, limp body to the sea floor. Stomach rumbling, I dive back down, still famished from my long pilgrimage.

Manic seagulls caw incessantly and roaring waves crash. The morning air smells just a bit better than the night air. The rays from the rising sun begin to warm my skin that’s covered in a thin layer of drying sand. A new set of footsteps, less heavy than the drunk’s, trudge across the sand getting louder as they got closer.

I need to find a new place to sleep.

A smaller set of boots stop a few feet away. “Jesus, where are your clothes?” a woman’s voice squawks like one of the nearby gulls.

My kind don’t wear clothes. We’ve nothing to hide.

The footsteps resume and speed up until a boot once again is nudging my hip, swaying me back and forth. “You can’t sleep on the beach!” The voice is now a sharp hiss. “Especially naked.” The words are followed by warm breath on my cheek, menthol and tobacco slip into my mouth, tickling the back of my throat. Coughing, I pull myself up.

This woman removing her green rain jacket looks my mother’s age, but rather than lean and tall, she is short and stout with a muscular jawline, stern frown, and no-nonsense gray eyes. “You’re lucky I found you before one of the boys did,” she drawls, slapping the jacket around my shoulders, as if the boys being a menace is somehow my fault. “I did find you first, didn’t I?” Her frown softens, as she takes a drag from a silver tubular device.

I don’t make a move to cover up with the jacket, rather I remain still, returning her inspection as she exhales smoke, working hard to keep her eyes off my exposed flesh.

“You from here?”

No. I’m from an isle ruined by places like here.

“Can you speak English?”

I can speak all languages... usually.

She grumbles a few unsavory curses about illegals, eyebrows knitting together as she takes another drag.

“You really need to cover up. I got a blanket back in the car… is that blood? Are you bleeding? Hurt?” Her voice speeds up, fearful, maybe even concerned. She leans down to get a closer look but stays out of arm’s reach. She wears a brown uniform with a shiny badge, two bulging holsters, one on each side of her belt, possibly a threat.

I decide to communicate, shaking my head. I’m not hurt...

“I’ll take ya to the station, and we’ll get this all figured…” Her voice hitches as she gapes at something behind me.

…but that is blood.

She rushes past me toward a damp, bloody lump cloaked in a drenched trench coat and boots being pushed and pulled by the breaking waves. Cawing and diving sea birds peck chunks from the body’s flesh, ravenous for the sea’s offerings.

Momma’s voice whispers… No one takes us anywhere. We take them, my daughter.

I turn back toward the shore as the officer bends down next to the bloody trench coat, swatting at the diving birds, covering her nose and mouth. Her voice travels on the wind, “Mother Mary, what did this?”

I study the debris cluttering the beach and floating in the ocean, inspect the smoke coming from the factories, and the smog blanketing the city. What did this indeed? I wipe dried blood from my chin and adjust the officer’s rain jacket to conceal my form, deciding a little cover will be necessary. Moving toward the birds and my fresh morning’s catch, I vow to make this place a home and find my voice again, even if it takes centuries.