Bad Breakup: Siren Girlfriend

CRACK!

The sound of her own voice was a hurricane trapped in a glass jar about to shatter and it —wasn’t enough to fill the void where love used to be. The melody was jagged, dissonant, a sound that didn’t belong in her throat. Born of feelings that didn't belong in any Siren's heart. Her voice, usually a weapon, now faltered and cracked like ice under pressure.

She screamed the building snarl, the tidal shift tearing between roiling currents of incoherent and conflicting emotions.

rejection

abandonment Betrayal

RAGE

LONGING

NEED

While the sound was beyond words, they sliced through the air to carry their meaning clearly.

"What's next, more betrayal? Have I not suffered enough? You made me feel so ALIVE Now you're just killing me, KILLING me"

Her voice slammed the jetty rocks, sending a crack spider-webbing across the jagged stone. The kelp-wrap clung to her hips, its iridescence flickering like a dying bioluminescent bloom. She dragged clawed fingers down his chest, scales warm under her touch but cold beneath in the absence of a lover's embrace.

"STOP! My gills ache in the air where your breath doesn’t stir— The silence is louder than any song I’ve heard, All I want is your pulse against my teeth, BUT YOU’RE GONE—"

The last word twisted into a growl, low and dangerous, the kind that could make the ocean itself recoil. She could still feel the echo of the presence—like a shadow in the water, something she could never quite catch. The memory of hands, voice, clung to her like barnacles on a shipwreck.

The song wasn’t a lament. It was a tsunami. Her voice dropped to a subsonic rumble, the kind that could make the air itself tremble.

"Before you walk away.. Don't forget to turn the KNIFE!!"

She exhaled, and the air smelled like brine and the faintest trace of —something resonant, something else, something she couldn’t name but could never forget.

The lighthouse groaned in sympathy, its walls trembling under the weight of her grief.

Somewhere below, the waves whispered fool.

She bared her teeth, eyes gleaming with fury.

Then she sang the chorus again.

Louder.

Because sirens didn’t drown.

But this?

This felt like drowning.

Moonlight bled across the churning shore, silvering the wave-caps like shattered teeth gnashing against the jagged teeth of the promontory. Perched on the highest, slickest spire of black basalt, she was a silhouette against the bruised horizon. The wind tore at her long, seagrass-green hair, tangling it with phantom seaweed and the tear tracks that dried instantly into salt trails on her scaled cheeks. She wouldn’t cry. Not really. Sirens didn’t weep; they raged. But the ache behind her ribs was a cold trench deeper than any she’d ever swum.

"Lily," the name mocked her, landed like a barnacle on her tongue. Insignificant. Terrestrial. Wrong. Yet it was the only name her lover had ever used for the storm within her. The storm that had, apparently, been too much. The crumpled note tucked inside a small, waterproofed pouch against her hip – made of thin fish bladder – felt heavier than an anchor chain. You’re too deep. The ocean inside you drowns everything.

Too deep? Her? Wasn’t depth precisely what had lured? A marine biologist, fascinated by her kind, drawn to the abyss... until glimpsing the true depths lurking beneath the mystery. The cowardice tasted like tar on her tongue, thick and choking.

A tremor, not from the cold, started deep within her core. It vibrated up her spine, humming in her gill slits. Her thin kelp-wrap, shifting from teal to bruised indigo in the weak moonlight, rippled against her scaled thighs. The fins along her forearms trembled slightly, flaring for a heartbeat.

It began not as a sound, but as a pressure. A low thrumming that made the rock beneath her vibrate. Pebbles skittered down the cliff face into the foaming maw below. The cry of a circling gull overhead cut off abruptly, the bird flapping wildly away as if physically struck. Then, the note bloomed.

She opened her mouth, and the song poured out.

It wasn’t beautiful. Not yet. It was raw, jagged, a subharmonic growl scraped from the ocean floor. It rolled across the turbulent water like the advancing edge of a tsunami. The salt spray leapt higher, violently. A rusting buoy bobbed far offshore shrieked as rust flakes showered into the sea. Inside the kelp pouch, an old ceramic bottle shard she’d kept vibrated frantically and cracked clean in two.

She sang of the cold in her hollow bones, colder than the deepest trench. She sang of the crushing pressure within her chest, the weight of discarded promises settling on her scales like sediment. The melody dipped and writhed, becoming a keening that scraped the cliffs like talons. Somewhere in the nearby fishing village nestled against the rocky coast, window panes – old, brittle glass – sang an answering whine. A dog’s frantic barking choked off into terrified whimpers.

Part of her aimed the sound inland, towards the clapboard house on the headland where her lost love had lived. Hear this, coward. Feel it in your marrow. This is the depth you feared. This is the ocean inside me. Come back. Come back and face it. Or choke on my silence.

But another, traitorous part of her almost let a different note seep in. A fractional vibration, warmer, softer – instinctual, hated. It fluttered near her throat. A note that would soothe, that might heal even her shattered heart. She choked it back violently, the sound cutting off in a guttural rasp that sprayed fine droplets of seawater from her lips. Shame burned hot where her scales met her flank. Healing was for prey. For weak things. She was predator. Ruin.

Her fists clenched, knuckles white beneath the shimmering green scales. She leaned forward, the wind whipping her hair like angry serpents. Her song surged again, louder now, tearing at the fabric of the night. Below, small crabs scuttled frantically into tide pools, fleeing the destructive resonance.

She sang until her own lungs burned, until the gills along her ribs fluttered frantically for air she didn’t need underwater but felt was being stolen here on land. She sang the despair, the fury, the predatory need to possess what she’d thought she owned. She sang the impossible desire to just be... held. Without drowning her lover. Without breaking her love.

The final note tore loose – a whip-crack of pure sonic fury. Across the water, miles away, a wave slammed into a sheer cliff face with unnatural force. A small rockslide tumbled into the churning sea.

Silence rushed back, profound and ringing. She swayed on her perch, breathing hard, the faint bioluminescent streaks in her hair pulsing erratically with her fading adrenaline. The moon glinted off the unshed tears trapped behind her nictating membranes, turning her pale eyes into liquid silver moons. Her song hung heavy on the salt-laden wind, a lure and a warning, drifting inevitably towards the shore. A song of vengeance and a plea, woven into one terrible, irresistible chord. The air vibrated with the aftershocks. She waited, scales flushed dark with emotion, a predator poised trembling on the edge of the world.

[have I sparked your imagination in a different way entirely? Here is where you can take the intro into your own hands.]