The Siren

THREE

THREEIt was only reluctantly that Sandie went to work on Friday morning, but she had to admit that her nails looked awesome. She had settled on neon blue, and Connie had loaned her an eye shadow to match. It gave her a tiny bit of extra confidence, just enough to face a steady stream of coffee-hungry commuters. She flitted between the espresso machine and the rows of syrup bottles, filling orders while she deflected curious sympathy from her co-workers.

Connie was the worst.

“So, he didn’t take anything?” she verified for the twentieth time. She popped her gum and flipped her glossy black mohawk to the other side of her head.

“Nope. At least, I haven’t noticed anything missing yet.”

“Nothing?” Connie asked again. She leered and winked. “Nothing at all? I mean, you don’t think he snuck in and ravished your unconscious body?”

“What the hell? Where do you get this stuff?”

“From Padre. Not that last part, I mean. He just told me you had a break-in. Bo-ring. Doesn’t make a good story to say some guy broke in and then just ran off.”

“Yeah, well, said guy didn’t have a whole lot of equipment, if you know what I mean. Might not even have been a guy. I couldn’t tell.”

“Ooh, that’s cool. I could dig that. I mean, not the felon part, but androgynous is hot.”

“Connie, please shut up.”

Sandie handed over a mocha latte, extra foam, to a customer who left more quickly than they usually did. No tip.

Connie leaned against the counter and adjusted her nose ring with an expression of intense concentration. She had chosen dark brown at the manicure session the day before, and her lips and eyelids were the same color.

“Come on, mama,” she said. “You were swearing up and down yesterday that you wouldn’t even come in today, but here you are. What gives? I’m gonna bug you until you tell me, and you know it.”

Brandon stuck his head out of the back and adjusted his managerial pin with a self-important air. “Look,” he said, “would you two just go on break already? You’re grossing out the patrons. Not to mention me.”

Indeed, there was a banker by the trash can, trying desperately to get his muffin out of its wrapper so he could leave, and two nuns by the window with their faces purple. A harried-looking woman wearing sneakers and pearls had curled her lip up so far, it was in danger of disappearing into her nose. Only the guy with dreadlocks and a hennaed face looked vaguely amused.

“I’m traumatized,” Sandie protested. “Doesn’t that come with some venting privileges?”

“Not when you’re venting on open comestibles.”

“Ew. Point taken.”

But the sensation of being watched did not diminish as Sandie shuffled into the back to hang her apron from its peg and washed the last of the flavored syrup from her hands. She looked around and saw Connie tapping a cigarette into her hand with intense concentration, and no one else present. Brandon had gone up to man the counter during the mid-morning lull.

“God, this thing has me so frigging paranoid…” She slapped on another coat of lipstick and refreshed her smudged eyeliner.

“What, you think this guy’s following you?”

“I don’t know. I doubt it. But look, you can’t go telling anyone about this, okay? I went downstairs yesterday and there was this zombie – dead body – on my back porch. I thought it was some asshole pranking me, you know? So I called Mike, because you know he’s got those friends from college. But then it breaks the window in and knocks me out, and now every time I close my eyes, there’s this voice…”

“Excuse me? And you haven’t been to the hospital yet because…?”

“Because I’m not hurt. I think I’m just freaked out, but my stupid Freudian subconscious isn’t doing anything to help that.”

“You’re hearing voices. That’s not a good thing, mama. Come on. Now you’re freaking me out, and I gotta smoke.” Connie picked up her purse and a bottle of water out of the employee’s fridge and went out back into the alley.

Sandie followed, but the alley looked like an ideal place for a zombie attack. She hung back in the doorway while Connie lit up.

“Not voices. Just one voice, and it’s more like I’m dreaming it. It was all last night, and then it woke me up, so I watched some TV, and then it was again when I went back to sleep. First it was trying to find me, and then it got distracted by something and like wandered off.”

“Do you think it’s… you know?”

“It’s what?”

Connie flicked the accumulating ash from the end of her cigarette and ran her tongue across her teeth. Her tongue-ring made a clicking noise as it passed over her incisors.

“You know. Part of your thing. Maybe you’re picking up something extra.”

“I’m good at reading faces, that’s all. If I’m reading minds now, I need a psych ward more than I need an MRI. If I’m reading a zombie’s mind…”

“So you do think it was a zombie.”

Sandie shrugged. “Mike asked me the same thing. I don’t really know. That’s what it looked like, but I can’t really believe it. I mean, I think I did. For a moment. It freaked me the hell out, but now, in the light of day…”

A car alarm went off at the end of the alley. Underneath the sound of traffic from the Anderson Loop, there was a whisper.

hungry…

“Crap.”

“What?”

“Nothing. I’m going back in, now.”

gone where? coming now.