Warren Murphy: Shock Value

"Enchantress," he said, lifting her gently.

He carried her through the French windows to the grounds outside, breaking easily through the wire fence surrounding South Shore. The clouds had passed, and the night sky was again illuminated by the sparkle of a million tiny stars.

He took her back to the cave where they had loved together. Inside, he dug a grave deep in the cave's recesses, where the scents of moss and the sea belonged.

"Good-bye, Circe," he said, and kissed her on her cold lips. For a moment they seemed to come alive again, warm and loving. But the sensation vanished, and he laid her body to rest.

He covered the burial mound with colored stones and a starfish he found at the ocean's edge. Then he stood back, proud of his work. The grave was a small enough monument to the girl with no name, but it was for him, too. For one day, he knew, he would also be an unknown body with no identity. Like Circe, he possessed none in life. His death, surely, would be just as anonymous as hers.

And so he buried her for both of them.

He walked out of the cave slowly. At the entrance, he thought he heard something and turned back, but the place was silent. Fitting for a tomb.

It was not until he was well away, walking through the mild surf of the darkened beach, that it came to him again, soft but unmistakable, the work of the wind and the sea in the echoes of a rocky inlet marked by a starfish: music.

The cave was singing, and its music was a siren's song.

the end