Nick Sweeney’s stories are scattered around the web and in print. Laikonik Express, his novel about friendship, Poland, and getting the train for the hell of it, is out with UK independent publisher Unthank Books. His 20K-word ‘novelette’ The Exploding Elephant was published by Bards and Sages in 2016. He is a freelance writer and musician, and lives on the English coast.
(First published in the Urban Strange Anthology – print only – January 2018)
The House of the Siren
Mum’s usual route down to the seafront avoided the House of the Siren, but Dad took us past it if we were seeing him off when he shipped out. Mum looked the other way. Dad kept his eyes forward, on the mercantile sea that would claim him. Only I stared into the siren’s painted eyes, caught the pucker of her gleaming lipsticked mouth. I saw a sailor come out one morning, but usually the only daytime sign of life was the siren. She had once graced a funfair awning, older local boys said, winking, adding, “She’s more fun, now.” I never saw Dad exit the House of the Siren. Mum said it was his first stop ashore, a man caught between the sea and the sirens, distracted only temporarily by the call of home. It burned down. Its last sirens were those of the fire engines. Protection was mentioned, and money, the lack of one causing the lack of the other. I forgot about the siren – forgot all the sirens Dad knew – until Dad was buried in the cemetery halfway down the hill between the House of the Siren and the sea. Tattooed old men and faded, painted women saw him off. Mum looked straight ahead. I avoided the sirens’ eyes, but sensed the pucker of their gleaming lips, and the memory of all those kisses they’d placed on Dad, signalling with silence that I’d see their daughters one day when I was back on dry land, distracted from home, divorced, and diverted.