literature

Sirena: Part One

Deviation Actions

AtraLilium's avatar
By
Published:
837 Views

Literature Text

The gray door loomed ahead, glaring down at him like an angry sentinel.
He could almost hear its hateful, grating voice rasping at the back of his mind.

Traitor.
Bastard.
Spineless.

Leave.

But no, the door hadn't been cursing at him.
It was simply the screeching of the old screen door, struggling against its rusted hinges as he pulled it open to knock upon the more formidable gray one it concealed beneath.

The screeching of its hinges, and his guilty conscience.

Pulling back for a moment, the young man tried to regain control of himself.
Taking a deep breath, he uncurled his clenched fists, only to find them coated with a thin layer of sweat.

Stop it, he told himself.

You're acting like a child.

It's just a door.
It's just a house.
It's just a girl.

Yeah...

Just a door he had stood at countless times before.

Just a house in which he had given and taken things that could never be retrieved.

And just a girl whom he had all but ruined and left for dead.

A sigh escaped his lips.
He couldn't believe he was back here.

Not only would it be the first time he had seen her in seven years...
The first time he had seen her since he left...

But she still lived in the same house.

She still had the same phone number.

She still had the same curtain hanging in the window next to the gray door.

But the door was different.

Last time he had stood before it, it had been brown.
And the lawn, it had been green.
The screen door had been white.

But no more.

Truly, though, the colors were the only difference, and that was merely because time had a way of eroding forsaken things.

And if this was the state of her previously immaculate home, then he could not help but wonder about the state of his first love herself.

But the young man did not have to wonder for long, as the gray door chose that very moment to swing open.

"Alex?"

Green eyes shot wide open and he staggered back in shock as she appeared out of what seemed to be thin air.
Blue eyes laughed back at him from within the gray frame.

"I heard the screen door. I figured you'd started to chicken out."

Regaining his composure, Alex straightened up to find a young woman of twenty five looking back at him.

She was a stark contrast to her house; both sleek and flawless.
There was not so much as a wrinkle on her clothes, let alone her pastel skin, like his overactive imagination had been envisioning.

Her unforgettable eyes watched him from behind long bangs that were as red as ever; a flame in the crumbling house.

"Aria..."

But as he gazed back at her, his mind registered that something was wrong.

Her eyes...

Those deep, dark blue eyes that had haunted his dreams and etched themselves into his mind...

They were darker than they should have been.

Not only were there shadows of dark circles beneath her lower lids, but...
There was a trace of something else lurking in the pools of azure; something he didn't remember.
Something that didn't belong.

But Aria, either unaware of or uninterested in his paranoid state of mind, interrupted his thoughts by smiling at him and turning back towards the interior of her house.

"Well, did you come out here to stand at my door, or are you going to come in?"

Alex paused.

Was he really going to walk in, just like that?

What could he say?

Why hadn't her smile reached her eyes?

Shaking off this last thought as another paranoid delusion of his unreasonable mind, the twenty five year old man reached out to the redhead, wrapping his hand around her arm as delicately as he would something both fragile, and dangerous.

"Ari, wait..."

He stiffened as the old pet name slipped past his careless lips, but the girl only turned enough to glance at him, a faint smile on her face.

"Alex," she started, shaking her head in what seemed to be slight exasperation, "it was seven years ago. It's quite alright."

"Yeah, but..."

How could it be alright?

Seven years ago, he had abandoned her with no explanation, both crushing and betraying her eighteen year old heart in the process.

All the vows of love and promises of forever had amounted to nothing more than him leaving her with hateful words and never returning home, as he had sworn to her he would.

And now, here he was, returning to her for the first time since then...because he needed her help.

Help; the thing she had always given him.
The thing that had driven him away from her.

But again, Aria was either unaware of or uninterested in his thoughts.

"But nothing," she cut in, using his grip on her arm to lead him into the house, "we were kids then, and we're adults now. What happened doesn't matter."

Somehow, as he crossed the threshold of the door and shut it behind him, he didn't believe her.

As Alex stepped inside, a wave of dust rose up to meet his movement, and he released Aria's arm to wave it out of his face. She smiled guiltily at him.

"Sorry about that. I hope you're not as obsessive about cleaning as you used to be. I work a lot, and don't have too much time for household matters..."

The brunette scanned the hall, and what he could see of the living room, kitchen, and upstairs. They, too, were identical to how they had been seven years ago, save for the colors, faded by time, and the dust, which lay thick across almost everything he could see.

Did she honestly live here?
It looked all but abandoned.
How much could she possibly work?

Resisting the urge to spout such questions, he slowly lowered his hand and chose the polite road.

"Oh, really? What do you do?"

"Freelance photography," she answered simply, turning and entering the room to her left.

At first, Alex was slightly puzzled as to why she had ignored her living room, but soon realized that it was because the kitchen had only a thin layer of dust covering its surfaces, opposed to what looked like inches in the other.

Guess she did live here after all.

At least her food wasn't dusty.

Following her inside, he found Aria with a rag, brushing off the table and chairs.

"That's why it's such a mess in here. I'm hardly ever around."

She paused, looking up at him from her bent position.

"You want anything? I mean, I'm sure my water hasn't gone bad."

Eyeing her cheesy smile, the man couldn't help but allow a small one to form on his own lips.
It was the same smile she always used to get while teasing him.

Maybe, he had been wrong...
Maybe everything was alright.

Shaking his head, he followed her lead as she rose and sat in one of the almost-clean chairs, tossing the rag off into a corner behind her.

"No, I'm all set, thanks."

"Alright, have it your way. But it won't be mold-free for long," she stated, resting her elbows on the table and leaning her head against folded hands.

While the redhead's actions seemed innocent enough, he recognized the move.
From behind those long bangs, she was studying him with those blue eyes of hers.

The eyes that still looked wrong.

As he caught another glimpse of them, a chill spread over Alex, sucking away the small warmth and sense of comfort he had been developing.
But Aria began talking again as he kicked himself, drawing him away from his self-berating.

"So, what is it you need, darling?"

The word, though said in all innocence, made his stomach squirm. He didn't know how she could be so comfortable when he, who had always been more reserved, felt so awkward.

Cocking an eyebrow at the look of unease that had washed over his face, Aria removed a cigarette from a pack that had been resting on the windowsill next to her, and raised it to her lips.
Alex eyed it as she reached into her pocket and withdrew a lighter, and she paused for a moment.

"You don't mind, do you?"

Of course he minded.

She should know it, too.

He'd always hated her smoking.

When they had been together, he'd spent a full year trying to get her to stop.

It had worked, too.

But he supposed he had forfeited his right to tell her what was best for her when he'd walked out on her seven years ago.

And he wondered what else she had resumed after he did.

"No."

She gave him a half salute with her hand before lighting it, and a moment of silence passed before Alex found his voice.

"Ghosts," he choked out, and Aria raised both of her slender eyebrows this time.

"Ghosts?"

"Yeah..."

Sighing, the man rested his arms on her table and slouched in his chair, shrinking his tall stature.
He had been so nervous about seeing her again that he had almost forgotten why he had come.
But now that she asked, it all came back to him.
And so did the exhaustion.

"Well, I decided to move back into town. My father's gotten pretty sick, so I came back to help out my mother."

She nodded, silently signaling him to go on.

"I ended up buying that old mansion up on the hill."

The embers of Aria's cigarette flared red as she inhaled once again, and her eyebrows rose up even further. Alex wondered how much more she could do that without having them disappear into her hairline.

"And why would you do that?" she questioned, exhaling a cloud of white smoke up towards the ceiling while resting the paper stick between two fingers.

Seeing the ring around the end that had been in her mouth caused him to realize both her nail polish and lipstick were the same shade of crimson.
He shook his head.

"They were selling it for dirt. Said no one would buy it."

The woman across the table chortled, a sound much darker than her normal giggle echoing in the back of her throat.

"You bet your ass they won't. And for damn good reason, too."

Alex sighed, nodding in defeat.

"Yeah, I've found that one out. But it was cheap, and it's amazing, even in its dilapidation. I figured I could buy it, restore it, and then sell it for a huge profit. I wanted to buy a house by the ocean, you know? I've been inland for a long time."

"But things aren't working out quite the way you'd planned, are they?"

The brunette hung his head, slumping even further into the kitchen chair.

"Not at all. The place, it's insane. Nobody will work there. I have so much shit I wasted money on. And, I have nowhere else to live!"

He raised his head, the desperation that had crept into his voice matching that which was reflected in the green of his eyes.

"Please, Ari. You have to help me. I'll beg if I have to."

Sitting up straight, the redhead put out the remaining half of her cigarette with a strange look on her face. She was silent a moment longer before fixing her gaze onto his.

"What do you expect me to do? I'm no construction worker."

"That's not what I mean, and you know it."

She smiled a bit, leaning back into her chair.

"Yeah, I know. But really, what do you want me to do? Perform an exorcism? You know how I feel about priests."

Alex shook his head, straightening up once again.

"Do whatever you have to. I know ghosts have always been your...thing."

Aria gave him a small smile of amusement.

"My thing, huh?"

He knew that face.
She was looking for a challenge.
Well, he'd give her one.

Spreading a smirk across his face, Alex raised one of his eyebrows instead.

"Remember what you used to tell me?"

"I used to tell you a lot of things."

"True, but remember what you used to tell me when I'd get freaked out by those horror movies you constantly had on?"

She paused, closing her eyes and drumming her crimson nails against the tabletop for a moment.

"Hmmm... Wasn't it something like, 'Don't worry, you've got a psychic fiancée'?"

He gave her a hopeful smile, and Aria laughed, sitting up and resting her arms on the table again to look him in the eye.

"Well, I guess an ex-fiancée is just as good, right?"
Okay, so, uh...
This would be the first part of a "short" story that I'm working on.

I use quotes because, for a short story, it's getting pretty damn long on me.
Which is why I have posted just a part, and not the whole thing.
I hope you like it?
If so, then I'll keep posting parts...

For literary notes, I know it's a bit strange.
The formatting is probably all sorts of incorrect, but it's intended to be that way to go with the point of view, which would be third person with selective omniscience.
Selective meaning Alex only.

I have it set up this way so I can let you into Alex's mind without using first person, and without giving away Aria's mystery.
It too is weird and probably incorrect, and for sure far from perfect, but I hope you can enjoy it anyway.

Oh and, don't let the beginning fool you.
It is indeed a horror story.
© 2009 - 2024 AtraLilium
Comments25
Join the community to add your comment. Already a deviant? Log In
xXGoldenSandXx's avatar
I love your storylines, let alone your videos. <3 Very amazing, and I've been waiting forever for thefinished video to come out. Love it, hopefully more is on the way! (By the way, reading this was enough to give me the creeps. *Shivers.*)