The Sirens Song

   for those in search of their Muse

Martin Kane is trying to find a comfortable position on his death bed and is not finding it to be an easily mastered task. He is in little pain thanks to the morphine pump which seems to know exactly when it should fire to keep his pain truly below what he has so succinctly labeled his “ouch” threshold. Martin is dying, and it is becoming a lot like having the bad flu. As he has sometimes said, “Death is no longer a terrifying guest.” He moves his head slightly on the pillow, and he seems to be more at ease than a few moments before. He feels a gnawing intensity in his stomach or perhaps in his chest. He has had it so often he is not sure if he is being teased by hunger pains or some horrible internal worm is slowly squeezing the life from him.

Martin is in his middle sixties and became a real writer at thirty-five. He began writing in high school and by the time he was in the English program at the local state university he was determined to follow his muse wherever she led him. Like so many aspiring writers he really had no creative deity to follow, so he became a highly literate flounderer.

During his floundering stage, he acquired an attractive and loving wife named Susan. As is so often the case she loved him far more than he loved her. In succession they had two children, both female and both looked remarkably like Susan.

Having a wife and children drove a wedge between Martin and his nonexistent muse. As much as he loved his wife and his progeny he loved the act of writing more. He celebrated his thirty-first birthday sans Susan and children. It was a sad day for him as he was engaged in what he felt was a brutal writer’s block. He complained vehemently that his muse was cavorting with someone else. Never, in his entire life had the thought that he did not have a muse enter his lexicon.

In the years before his finding his muse, he produced a large volume of work consisting of about twenty short stories and two novels. All of his work definitely was well written and very well structured from a writing point of view but, and this is the “but” of many writers today, his work simply did not sell. Call it really bad luck or having met an editor who had a brutal argument with his boss; whatever the reason, Martins literary life became a succession of rejection slips.

Martins life changed not even a week after his thirty-fifth birthday. He had finished his day teaching English and accelerated World Literature to a collection of high school students, some who were quite brilliant, others whom he despised were not. The high school where he taught was not even a full mile from his apartment. He would either walk or ride his bike reserving his car for inclement weather. Walking allowed him to walk through a lovely little park which he very much enjoyed. Since spring was in full blossom, Martin casually walked down the pathway which led him at a leisurely pace to the block where he lived. He saw a beautiful Monarch butterfly feeding on a slight pink flower drifting in the gentle spring breeze. The dark lines running through her wings and the dots in a row on the wing tips were not only beautiful but highly erotic. Martin couldn’t tell, but he thought she was feeding on either the nectar or the pollen from the flower. Taxing his memory of what he knew of butterflies and bees, he categorized the collection of dust as a symbiotic relationship between the flower and the butterfly. From the flowers point of view, you get my nectar I get to use you to pollinate my species.

Martin continued his leisurely walk home enjoying the gentle breeze and the smells of spring. Behind him, the monarch butterfly flitted forward and back as the breeze dictated but always within a few inches of Martins’ neck. When the breeze pushed the butterfly back further than three or four inches, she beat her wings furiously against the breeze pushing herself always within a few inches of Martins’ neck. When Martin reached his apartment building and pulled the screen door open the butterfly had already anchored her six feet to Martin’s collar. Once inside the flat she gently disengaged from the collar and drifted to the top of an Ottoman where she lowered her wings into a resting position and just sat watching, her legs and antennae motionless.

Martin consumed leftover shrimp scampi from the local Italian restaurant and then went back to working on his latest short story. As with so much of what he wrote, there came a twist in the plot where the moment of stress dissolved and what he needed to move the story forward disappeared. It turned to shit never to be recovered. He actually felt the transition. Something happened to the words he was writing. He felt it happening not only to the story but to him. A limpness; something horribly akin to Salvador Dali’s Limpid Watches. He pushed himself back from the table and stood up feeling the cold icy wet sweat of yet another failure. He felt rather than heard the thump and whoosh of wings slowly beating up and down behind him.

He turned and saw what he knew to be the loveliest woman that walked the earth. She looked to be easily almost six feet tall. She had the most beautiful wings he had ever seen or imagined. The border of her wings was surrounded by bright white dots which looked like tiny glowing suns. Looking somewhere between gold and brown with black veins running from the base to the tips of her wings. There must have been seven or eight such lines of total darkness which he assumed to be flowing blood. She wore nothing. She was the color of her wings but slightly darker. Her breasts were large and full. She looked like she was ready to nurse. Her nipples were golden brown, swollen and erect.

Martin could not see her face. It seemed to be enveloped in a storm of golden particles that whirled faster and faster around her head. Looking at her he was not only incredibly aroused but felt a stirring of virulent fear. What he was smelling was almost overpowering. It was the most powerful sensual scent he had ever experienced. He felt captured by a combination of surprise and absolute lust, but this was incredibly different. He was gripped by the absolute need to fuck. On numerous occasions, he had tried to write about characters in the grip of fierce emotion, but now that he felt it, he was not sure he wanted it. The perfume not only inflamed him with need it took all control away from him.

She seemed to have not moved, but he was approaching her. He was as naked as she and he knew he was completely engorged, swollen, and in desperate need. He had no memory of pulling off his clothes, but he knew he had. They had fallen, almost in a perfect line, behind him. At some moment he was touching her, and she mounted him, locking her legs around his waist, and her arms seemed to grip his back with intense ferocity. He felt her limbs like hooks gripping his flesh like the victim of a beast of prey. He could taste the golden dust in his mouth like the remnants of moist, crumbled, honey graham crackers soggy with an intense cloying sweetness.

The perfume permeated his senses. He felt his lips being forced open. Her tongue tickled the roof of his mouth. The first wave of terror struck him when he realized her tongue was far down his throat, and her limbs had gripped him to her like he was nothing but a vase held by a mad potter. He felt himself spasm in orgasm just as she seemed to reach a zenith of sensation. He felt or imagined her arms and legs releasing him just before he passed out.

The doctors at the hospital all seemed to agree he has suffered a mild psychotic episode and kept him for temporary observation which had been extended to a months worth of treatment. He left the hospital in a state of generalized wellness.

From then until we find him on his death bed, Martin has led a good, highly productive literary life. He has produced nine successful novels, four of which have also been released as well received movies, many equally successful short stories, and a small volume of poetry for children about butterflies.

Martin has finally accepted a sense of finality, and he likes it. He has written well. His works have impacted people. His name is reasonably well known. When he passes, he will leave with a certain feeling of satisfaction. His span of life has not been entirely wasted chasing idle dreams. He had indeed chased and found his muse. Life, in his mind, has not kicked him in the balls.

He coughed, tasting the copper tang of blood, and knew he was finally ready to leave this life. He willed the pump to hit him with another splendid dose of morphine. He couldn’t tell if he succeeded or not. He didn’t care very much either.

Margaret, his Hospice aide who waited for him to die, saw his eyes rapidly flutter and then just stop moving. She knew he was dead. She reached for the phone to call her supervisor. Once done, she would be able to relax until the body transport came for the body and then home after that. She picked up her cell phone and then froze with a small smile on her face. When the detectives arrived, one of them swore she had died from fright.

Martin, who had passed in peace, stared at absolutely nothing. From his mouth crawled a perfectly formed woman all of two inches tall with beautiful golden brown wings, and the head and limbs of a butterfly. As she crawled from between Martins open lips another perfectly formed woman, just like the first began creeping from his mouth and over his lips. Her sister had already anchored herself to Martins’ nose beating her wings as her wet body dried. And from his mouth they came, perfectly miniaturized good-looking men and women, all with mostly human bodies except for their heads and limbs. They climbed from his mouth in what seemed an endless column of insect Lilliputians. They came in such numbers they broke free against his teeth and then they crawled from the corners of his eyes, from his nostrils, and his ears. All of them dripping wet and all struggling for a grip on his body where their wings could pump, and their bodies could warm and dry, and then they rose to the ceiling where they adhered and waited.

At seven in the morning, when Margaret’s stand-in arrived and opened the door with her key She heard and then she saw what looked to be thousands of butterflies taking to the skies. It was, for her, indeed a beautiful sight. Some flew for the writers. Some flew for the artists. Some flew for the singers and others flew for the dancers. All flew for those who needed and craved them the most.

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2000 words