Tim Meyer - The Switch House

“No, Isabella,” he says. His mouth is dry and cottony, and the words almost don’t come out correctly. “I love you. You know I do. You have to know that.”

“You smother us with your love.”

Three shapes form in his periphery. Three women, all of them clad in the same white material, all of their faces stained the same red.

“You smother us with your affection, your ideas of the perfect life.” The closer she gets to him, the tighter his throat becomes. “But you don’t know perfection like I know perfection. You’ve never tasted the flesh and blood of men, of God’s so-called greatest creation.”

“Now hold on just a minute,” he says, barely. Feels like someone is squeezing his vocal cords. “You’re sick. I can help you. I can nurse you back to—”

“I don’t need your help,” she says, lunging for him.

Before he can react, her mouth is on his throat. A wave crashes against the ship, and a salty spray dots the back of his neck. The next thing he feels is his blood leaving his body via the gaping hole Isabella has created near his jugular. Squirts of hot blood run down his neck, underneath his attire, coating his chest and stomach.

“Good-bye, my love,” she says with such disdain.

His heart breaks in two as he’s flung overboard, and into the stormy waters below.

Means clasped his hands around his throat, feeling his way around every inch of flesh. His heart sank when his fingers danced over the open area where flesh and muscle should have been. The cavity was dry and deep. The crusty nature of the wound suggested his body had recovered from Isabella’s bite and was on the mend. But the depth and size of the cavity concerned him. It was deeper than an ordinary bite, at least by an inch or two, and about the size of a clenched fist. It wasn’t exactly the kind of trauma one recovers from, even with proper medical attention.

“Mirror,” Means demanded hoarsely.

The barkeep had one handy behind the bar and brought it to him promptly.

Means discovered his reflection. His vision was immediately drawn to the missing flesh on his neck. His breath caught in his throat upon witnessing his disfigurement. Bruised flesh surrounded the crater in his throat, the same purple-black marking that covered most of his arms and legs. He gently patted the wound and found it numb, probably why he hadn’t noticed it earlier.

The strength ran out of his fingers and he let the mirror fall on the bar top.

“Quite the wound, sailor,” the barkeep said with certain admiration. “Injury like that could kill a man.”

He’d thought about that. It was miraculous that he had survived.

“What were they?” Means asked, though he already knew the answer.

“They’re sirens, sonny. ’Bout the meanest creatures on this side of the hemisphere.”

“And you’re their what?”

The barkeep squinted. “I’m their contact. I’m their caretaker of sorts.”

The shadowy corners of Siren’s End began to move.

The barkeep hung his head. “I’m their slave.” He lifted his shirt to reveal a dozen of tiny bite marks, pockets of missing meat. “They’re so damn hungry.”

Means turned his attention to the moving parts of the room. Shadows closed in until the glow of the lantern reached their figures. They shrank back into the shadows.

“Light keeps them away most days,” he said, covering his exposed belly fat with his shirt. “They won’t kill me, though. Just feed off me when they want a little snack.”

“Because you feed them much larger meals.” Means gritted his teeth. “Men. Entire fleets of men.”

“It keeps me alive.” The barkeeper shook his finger at him. “You’d do the same in my position.”

“This town? This island?”

“Ate their way through it in a few months.” He sighed deeply. “Soon, there won’t be any ships left in the Queen’s Navy.”

“What then?”

The barkeep shrugged. “The homeland. All of Europe.”

“We have to stop them.”

The shadows hissed.

The barkeep chuckled, an almost-silent vocalization. “There ain’t no stopping them. They’re determined.” He continued to shake his finger at him like a parent dishing out a good scolding. “Men like you created things like that. Remember this. You fathered these beasts.”

His memory recalled Isabella, not the beautiful creature she was but the wretched monster she’d become. “I couldn’t have… I only wanted to love. Her love.”

The barkeep scoffed. “Love… is a two-sided coin, my pathetic friend. Can’t have unity without the other half present.”

“You don’t know me,” Means told him, as it became increasingly difficult to breathe. Spotting the creatures in the darkened corners, his heart raced. They were waiting, biding their time.

“Enough of this meandering. You’ve made your choice, captain. You’ve doomed your ship, your men, all in the name of love, or your misguided views on the subject.”

“Who are you to judge me?”

Leaning closer to the lantern on the bar, he shrugged. “No one. Just a man. Remember? Most dangerous devil there is.” He smiled and then blew out the small flame that had kept the entire establishment aglow.

In the darkness appeared several pairs of eyes, too many to count. They were a radiant turquoise, bright like the Caribbean seas he’d explored when he was younger. The ovals were drawn to him. They sped forth at once, and quick, and when they arrived there was pain.

Means screamed the only thing that mattered, his lost love’s name—“Isabella!”—as the creatures dug into him, drank his sanguine nectar, and separated his muscle from the bone with their hungry mouths.

Placing the film against the aperture plate, the old projectionist grumbled, to himself, words of indignation. He snapped the gate over the film, adjusted the framing, and then turned to face the control station positioned directly beneath the porthole. Looking out across the theater, over the Friday night crowd and toward the screen, he pushed the glowing green button in the center of the panel. The motor kicked on, drowning out the distant noise of anxious moviegoers and the collective hum of the other nine projectors. The platter system spun with life, all three in sync with one another, feeding the rollers seven reels worth of footage. The projectionist stepped away from his work, folded his arms across his doughy chest, and looked to his company, his new apprentice, the preppy-looking youngster whose face had been taken over by utter confusion.

“Um,” the kid said, his eyes darting back and forth. “That was great and all, but I have no idea what you just did.”

“Weren’t you paying attention, numb nuts?” the hermit asked, wiping his dirty, oily hands off on a shop towel. Once he deemed them clean enough, he stroked his gray-streaked beard, combing loose the speckles of leftover Doritos. Shooting the kid a steely gaze, the projectionist moved away from the machine, seemingly satisfied with the way the print was running. “I just threaded the fuckin’ thing for ya. Pay attention next time.”

Rob Garland wanted to take the timid approach. He thought about keeping hush, really thought about it, but he only had a week to learn everything the old hermit knew about being a projectionist. Instead of remaining quiet, he cleared his throat.

“I learn better when I do.” He kept still in fear that sudden movement would cause the hermit to start chucking empty reels at his head.

“You’ll do. You’ll do plenty. Patience is a virtue. Doesn’t your generation know any-goddamn-thing?” He didn’t allow a response, which was fine because Rob knew the question was rhetorical. “Goddamn millennials. We’re talking about threading a projector here, not splitting atoms. Come here. I want to show you the building station.”