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The human mind is a very developed, genius machine. It goes to depths I can’t even imagine. It comes in many layers, so that we can deal with a million small things at the same time. We always keep other matters stored somewhere close to the surface, so that we can pull knowledge or memories out when we need them. Our subconscious is one of these layers. Sometimes, things that are too overwhelming to deal with stay hidden in our subconscious. It starts treating a problem before we even realize that it existed. Humans have the big advantage that they can deal with a problem in their dreams. They can fight fears and relive traumas while safely waking up the next day until there is a solution. Dealing with problems in your dreams takes a load off your mind during the day, I can tell you. I now realized what a blessing it was to be able to dream. Because the only time I dream is when I’m awake and fall into a daydream. I don’t sleep. I don’t have a subconscious that deals with my fears and pains while my body and mind rests. I have to go through everything in reality. Perhaps this is why so many Sirens are driven into suicide.
When I couldn’t bear the silence any longer, I went to Alex’s apartment, but of course, he wasn’t there. I went to the uni but couldn’t find him either, so I returned to the apartment, where I found his sister. She told me that he had been acting weird and said that he would go camping. She had thought I knew about this and the fact that he hadn’t told me worried her. Of course, he hadn’t told her where exactly he went camping. Thus, I started to search all the forests around Massachusetts. Like I already mentioned, there are a lot of forests around Massachusetts.
Luckily, he used the same tent we slept in, and it wasn’t far from his father’s house. By the time I had found him, I was too upset to think straight. I just walked up to the tent and found him sitting in a chair in front of it, his face turned to the sky with his eyes closed.
“What do you think you are doing?” I asked not hiding my anger and confusion.
He opened his eyes, startled.
“I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that you found me, should I? There probably is no way I could hide from you.” He looked at me almost with an empty expression. That look made my heart freeze all over again. Where was all this love and desire with which he had looked at me before? I couldn’t detect any of it.
“What do you mean?” I stuttered.
“Exactly what I said.” He sighed. “What’s the point now in hiding? You’d find out sooner or later anyway.” He breathed out. “I know who you are. I know everything about you and that family of yours.”
“What do you mean?” I played dumb, but at the same time, I thought feverishly how he could have found out.
He hesitated for a moment.
“You are Sirens. I don’t know how Luke fits into the picture because from what I’ve read, there are only females in that group. But your parents both have that same unreachable beauty about them, which you have too. And with you, I am certain that you are a Siren.”
I stared at him in shock with my eyes wide open. So, he continued.
“You don’t even have to confirm it; I collected enough clues. Not that it matters anymore anyway.” He exhaled sharply. “When I first found you, I was really excited. I couldn’t believe my luck. For months, I had been trying to find proof that would support my theory. Or that I’d find an actual hint toward a new medical breakthrough. I wasn’t completely honest with you what my project was really about.” He apologetically raised his shoulders. “I wanted to show that it’s possible to freeze certain cells in your body. Bad cells like from cancer or cells that make you age quicker. At the same time, the rest of your cells still functions, and you can live a normal life or even a longer life. Yet, my professors thought that my work had a weak point. Which is that I based my theory on mystical characters, such as vampires or Sirens. We all know the stories. They are forever young, have special powers and are beautiful. I believed, that with all the newspaper articles about unsolved mysteries where whole villages were slain by beasts, stories about mysterious people or whole families disappearing, there had to be some truth in it. It can’t be that all over the world, the same stories were invented. They couldn't have exchanged it via the Internet or telephone.”
I felt sicker with every word he said. I had to sit down on a big rock, as he continued.
“It was a long shot. Nobody believed me and at first, my professors didn’t want to let me write it, but I insisted. Nobody has ever gotten anywhere or invented anything by giving up. But so, you see, I had to find some kind of proof. Otherwise, my paper would have been regarded as a fictional story not pleasing the academic standard. And the night of my car accident I was the closest ever to giving up. I felt like there was so much proof around me and yet, I would never be able to actually prove something. It would all stay fiction, and I would be completely ridiculed. Plus, I’d have to abandon my paper and all my hours of research work. But then, I found you. Or rather, you found me.” He hesitated a moment. “Where every normal person should have lost an arm or be dripping in blood, not a single drop of blood appeared on your arm. I thought my shocked mind was playing tricks on me. Despite that, I had to stay on it. I had to find you and find out more about you. He paused, which gave me some time to process the information he’d just given me.
“So, you were not actually interested in me at all you used me as a project and now that you’re done you can drop me?” I was disgusted, hurt, and embarrassed all at the same time. An involuntary tear escaped my eye. I saw our relationship crumble. I was convinced that it was stable, that we had something wonderful. But now he was telling me that it was all a big bluff from his side.
I don’t know whether he enjoyed seeing my pain because he went on. “Once I found you, I wanted to see what was actually true from the myths and whether I could find anything interesting medical wise. That’s why I tried to keep our relationship so distant. Believe me, it was hard for me, to resist you.”
I gasped for air.
“The only thing, though, I ever could compare was a hair that got caught in the guitar strap. You never seemed to lose any skin or fingernails or anything else. But there were other things that enhanced my suspicion. Your accent, which is very cute and seductive by the way, and overall, you radiate a strong attraction to all the men around you. I see the way they turn their heads at you when you walk past them. Furthermore, there is hardly anything I know about your past; you wouldn’t want to present me to your parents and so on. I don’t even know whether anything of what you have told me is true at all. However, I’m pretty sure you don’t actually study in the city. I haven’t found your name on any of the websites.”
“You are crazy. I should call the hospital. I have simply a very reluctant personality. I don’t trust people easily, and now again, I’m reminded why.”
He swallowed and then continued: “Then why doesn’t your arm heal? You are still wearing that splint. Which I’m really sorry about. My theory is that you aren’t aging. Nothing in your body is... Plus, you don’t eat,” he exclaimed. “You were always so uninterested in food and threw a lot of it away, and then that weird thing you did at the Chinese restaurant.”
I was shocked at how many things he found out about me, but I didn’t want him to see that.
“And why on earth did you come to the conclusion that this makes me a, what did you call it, a Siren?”
“You’re not a vampire because you don’t care at all about whether the sun is shining on you. But since that would be a little far-fetched, I also kept an eye on the mysterious deaths in North East America. It’s good to have access to the hospital labs as a bio student. There weren’t any with weird bite marks or without blood in their bodies. There are some others where the cause of death is not clear. But there is one small group, where the heart shrank to a dried plum and all the vessels as well. Thinking about mystical creatures in the back of my head, soon a bell rang. There was one beautiful female creature who hunted hearts. I had to be correct. This attraction which radiates from you can’t be human. I’m very affected by it as well.”
I only shook my head.
“To measure whether you were eating or not, I did another test.”
“Wow, I really was your Guinea pig.” I glared at him. “Well, what did you do, since you think you have me all figured out?”
“Actually, no, it doesn’t matter.”
“No, seriously, if you checked something on or about me, I should at least be allowed to know what it is.”
He almost blushed.
“Remember when I was feeling ill after the sandwich lunch we had about two weeks ago?” he asked contritely.
I nodded slowly.
“You’re not going to like this at all,” he sighed.
“I do not like any of this, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“I put a strong laxative into both our sandwiches. If you had eaten even one bite of it, you should have felt some kind of rumbling in your stomach. But you were fine. Hence, you didn’t eat, as I suspected so many times before.”
“You purposely wanted to poison me? And I trusted you and thought you loved me.” I smashed these words at him.
“Not poison. It would only have lasted until your stomach was empty. And because I felt bad about it, I put the same amount on my sandwich too and see, in the end, it was only me who suffered.” He looked at me with huge eyes, almost fearful.
As if that made it better.
“I’m just never very hungry. I have so many allergies that eating is no fun for me. I only eat when my body tells me that it’s really necessary.” I shook my head. “I can’t believe you did all this. That all this was a lie.” I felt the anger rise in me. “Why did you have to pretend you liked me if I was a simple project?” Then I added: “If indeed I should be who you are saying. It sounds extremely ridiculous.”
“If you saw your eyes, you wouldn’t think that it was so ridiculous. I’ve never seen you like that. You look as if you are one second away from killing me,” he gulped. “Which I’m sure you could do in an instant if you wanted to.”
Damned, I lost my composure. I tried to breathe and calm myself, which was impossible with the emotional hurricane that was going on inside me.
“If I don’t kill you, I’m sure others will. This isn’t a joke, Alex; you have no idea what you are dealing with.”
“Yeah, maybe I don’t, but at least I have a small idea. Plus, from the beginning and even still now, I thought that this was amazing. That you exist.”
I didn’t listen. “And to turn me into a project. Into a guinea pig. Don’t you see that now, everybody will want to know more about us? They will throw us in cages or labs like rats or we will be in the public eye and reporters will hunt us. We might fight back, and it will be messy. We won’t be able to have a normal life anymore. This is above my power. I have to tell somebody, and then I don’t know what happens to you and the people you have told.” I pressed my hands against my head.
“So far, I haven’t told anybody,” he sighed.
“What about your project? I bet you have it all documented in great detail and that it’s with your professors now.”
Silence.
“I didn’t hand it in. The only copies are on my laptop and USB stick. I wanted to go through with it and show it to the public. I finished it; I was done a whole week before the deadline. But then, I started to think about what that would mean for you. And for us. I knew I couldn’t see you anymore after that but either way, I knew it was wrong to reveal all I knew about you.” His voice grew weaker. “Now, I’m the joke of my professors. They are disappointed that I wasted their time or laugh because they didn’t expect anything different. I won’t get any money toward the next tuition and therefore, I don’t know how I can go on with my studies. Neither do I have the energy at the moment. And I don’t have you.” He added quietly in the end. “I gave it my all and I pretty much lost everything.”
“So did I,” I pressed through my teeth. I was very angry and hurt. “I can’t handle this now. I don’t know what to do. Just don’t tell anybody.”
“What are you going to do now?” He asked
“I don’t know. I have to go.” I turned on my heel and darted away.