20 Aug The Head Siren

There’s one hard and fast rule about me. If there’s a new chick at school and she be hot, she’s mine. It’s not a matter of if I’m making it all the way with her. It’s a matter of when.

And no, I don’t mean getting in her pants. I mean getting her face in my pants. Because Mickey Banks is a god and the only prayers I’ll accept are the ones spoken directly into my skin mike. And I don’t let nobody stop praying until there’s some major feedback from my Marshall stack.

I mean, look at me. This hair? This body? These eyes? You belong on your knees if you want some of this.

Okay, that’s what I used to think. There’s a fine line between being humbled and being humiliated, and I’m still not sure which camp I landed in.

So this preacher with his helmet hair and salesman teeth moved into our little burg. He brought with him a daughter that couldn’t have been more perfect. Something told me that sweet peach had never had a worm inside it.

I was gonna change that.

I knew my chances were good because whenever I passed her in the hall, her eyes went from my face to my jeans, and back to my face. Real shy like. She was as good as mine. But I knew that you can’t just take on a preacher’s daughter like you take on your average ho.

I had to pretend that I actually liked her. Like I wanted to know more about her than what the top of her head looked like.

Her name was Olivia and she was more than happy to hear what I had in mind.

I should have questioned how easily I got in. But I was a bull, and I charged straight for that red flag instead of stopping to think about it.

She had me over on a weekend when her parents would be away longer than usual due to some Sunday Special Tent Worship Extravaganza… thing-thing-thing. She pretended to be sick, so they left her home.

Oh, man. I don’t know if it was her retainer plate or just talent, but I was seeing stars. I was a believer for just a few seconds, but then I remembered that I didn’t want to be punished for what I was doing, so back to atheism I went.

When I could see straight again, I looked around for the mess. There wasn’t any. Her lips looked real tight for a second before she smiled and winked. “I got rid of the evidence.”

Now that, my friend, was one hell of a girl. She was probably the girl of my dreams.

I didn’t know it at the time.

I did what I always did… chased after another one. And I made sure that Olivia saw it. It crushed her, to put it lightly. I didn’t feel any shame. It kinda made the next gobbling really nice. I wasn’t a good guy.

I lay in bed with Bella, the one right after Olivia. I’d have to get home before my parents raised a storm, but I took the time to marinate in the good time I just had.

I heard this siren go off outside. It was like some old-school air raid siren. Before I could think about it, I started to get hard again. That. Freaking. Hurt. I didn’t know why it was happening, so I was scared on top of being too tender.

It was probably the worst pain I had ever felt, cuz I passed out. I didn’t wake up until morning. Bella was smiling at me, but looked worried.

“You were crying in your sleep,” she said.

“No, I wasn’t.”

“Yes you were, it woke me up.”

“You were dreaming. I don’t cry.”

She looked like she was ready to argue until her eyes suddenly got big.

“Oh shoot, you need to leave before my parents see you.”

Ugh. That meant that I’d be facing my parents for sure. But at least I had a chance to avoid double confrontation.

Some other chick busted through the door. She was probably fourteen and she was straight-up ugly. She looked at me and looked at Bella.

“Awright, Bel. Gimme money if you don’t want me to tell Mom and Dad. Again.”

Dang, that little girl had hustle.

Bella began fishing for cash from a drawer when I heard that weird siren again. I looked at Little Girl, like I was waiting for her to react to the moaning wail. But she just threw me an expression like, what?

My manhood did exactly what it did last night. I got rock hard so fast that it hurt. I was still in my boxers, so the tent I was pitching was plain to see.

Little Girl’s eyes went boing and she covered her mouth. I guess that was self-defense. I turned and saw Bella, and her face had turned as red as an apple.

“Really? After all that, you’re going to creep on my kid sister?”

Every object near her began flying at my face. I decided to get dressed instead of negotiating. My pants were halfway up when Bella picked up like, the fiftieth thing to throw at me and then held back. It was pepper spray.

She sprayed me in the face. I howled.

She sprayed me in the crotch. I howled more.

She sprayed me in the face again.

I had to leave. Survival instincts threw me into autopilot. If there was ever a man that could run a marathon with his pants around his ankles, it was me in that moment. I don’t even remember how I got out of the house.

I just remember hearing cars honking and feeling my bare feet smacking pavement as I screamed at the top of my lungs. My pants must have fallen off at some point, because I was taking full strides.  My tears cleared the vision in my left eye just enough for me to see a red-tinted world full of cars swerving around me. Between breaths, I heard a kid ask, “Mommy, is Daddy that big?” before I started screaming again.

I couldn’t run in a straight line. I went into someone’s yard where a couple of little girls were having a tea party with a ginormous St. Bernard. I crashed into the table like a purple-horned rhino. An open jar of peanut butter flipped in a perfect arc before impaling itself between my legs.

Above the yelps of the little girls, I could hear the St. Bernard pounding the ground, chasing me. He was either going to maul me or get him some peanut butter. Either outcome was bad.

The last thing I remember was running over a crosswalk where an old woman stood, leaning on her walker.

“How did you know I love peanut butter?” she squawked.

That’s when I hit the telephone pole beside her.

I woke up in the hospital. My eyes didn’t burn. My balls didn’t burn. But Jesus H. Christ, did my man bits feel raw.

The first thing I saw was the television rolling the news. The camera zoomed in on a St. Bernard that had peanut butter smeared all over its face. Then the tv clicked off and I sensed the presence of others.

My parents were in the room. Mom had several facial expressions fighting for dominance, so she was googly-eyed like a chameleon.

Dad was just beyond expression.

So my hospital room became an interrogation chamber. Once every last bit of information had been spilled, I was grounded and banned from ever getting a dog. And another thing: I couldn’t come and go to school anymore on my own. Dad drove me. Which was beyond humiliating. Relatively.

Three weeks into my grounding, the siren sound woke me from a dead sleep. It was 3 am, and the sound made my peanut butter peg swell into a Nutrageous. I cried out in pain. I’m no doctor, but when you pop a boner like a car deploys an airbag, something ain’t right.

I was moaning like dogs do when they hear sirens. The weird noise was loud enough to shatter my teeth that time. I made the mistake of looking out the window.

Now I don’t know if I was dreaming or not, but what I saw would have killed any sane man’s hard-on. So I must not have been sane.

The thing’s face was like a Jack-O-Lantern with the flesh of an old man instead of a pumpkin. The eyes were vacant, and yet burning into me. The mouth was a small, puckered hole. It had long hair like the kind you pull out of a shower drain.

It pointed at me with fingers that were jointed and folded like a mantis’ pincers.

“Who, me?” I mouthed.

It nodded. And then it held two of its fingers a short distance apart.

Despite its twisted anatomy, I knew an insult when I saw one. That was just cold.

I forgot my fear long enough to start cussing it out.

My parents both burst through my door to see who I was yelling at. They couldn’t see the pucker-faced thing out the window. They couldn’t hear its wail. They thought I was on drugs. I wished that I was. I had never felt so alone.

Dad dropped me off at school the next morning. I went inside and waited until he left. I’m sorry, but there was no way I could cope with what was happening to me without a little something-something. I guesstimated at how fast I could jog to the gas station down the street and be back with the excuse that my Dad was late.

I could usually hustle my way into some cigarettes or something. I needed relief bad. So off I went.

No sooner had I reached the station than I had to take a huge dump. So I detoured into the men’s room and there was the biggest, most tattooed and pierced gorilla with a mohawk and beard I had ever seen. He was holding the stall door shut for some reason. He leered at me and winked. I figured he was holding the door so that whoever was in there could have some privacy.

So I waited. And waited. And waited.  I looked at the bottom of the stall as nonchalantly as possible and I couldn’t see any sign of anyone being in there.

“What’s the deal? Are you holding that for someone using the bathroom?”

“Nah. Just waiting for my appointment to show up.”

Just as soon as he had finished talking, there was the sound of that damned siren. The top of my dick poked up from the top of my jeans like a dog that heard a cheese wrapper.

“Well hey, I didn’t recognize you. You’re even cuter in person,” the giant said.

“Wait. What? Me? Oh no, I’m not…”

“Come ‘ere, sweet thing. Gunther wants to grease your cookie sheet.”

I shit myself as I was sprinting away. Warm turds slid down my pant leg and tumbled free. I think that only cranked up Gunther’s excitement. “Attaboy! Make some room!” he bellowed. I reached the school without touching the ground more than three times over the whole five blocks.

I tried to clean up in the boy’s room, but I was going to stink past any hope of hiding it.  I leaned on the sink and stared into my eyes for a long time. I did my best to not picture Gunther right behind me.

Something was wrong.

I mean, wrong on a cosmic level. Between the time I got what I wanted from the Olivia and the time that a six-foot barbarian wanted a quickie in the men’s room, something was all screwed up.

It had to have been Olivia.

I couldn’t take it anymore. I had to find out what she had done to me. I wrote her a note with my phone number on it and dropped it in her locker.

I thought that I would be in for a huge game of cat and mouse. She replied so quickly that it was as if she had been expecting me to reach out.

I was shocked. She was willing to talk. I asked her if I could meet her in public. She floored me a second time by saying yes. I asked her where we could meet. She chose the school basement.

Her face was as emotionless as a gravestone, but I swear I saw some whisper of satisfaction in her eyes when she saw the condition I was in.

“Did you curse me or something?”

“There’s a coven in our church congregation. It’s just me and a few of the other girls.”

“So you’re seriously a witch?”

She nodded.

“And you’re not even gonna try to deny it?”

“Of course not. What are you going to do? Tell my dad that his daughter is a witch? We do everything online and it’s all encrypted. It’s not like you can tattle. Besides, if you try to, I can make things even worse for you.”

I raised my hand and shook my head. “I get it. I get it. I just want to know how you did it.”

“Just a little ritual with some of your DNA.”

“My DNA? What, one of my hairs?”

“No, I had indigestion and kept burping after you left.”

I blinked and shook my head.

“Look. I’m sorry. I’ll do anything if you make this stop, whatever this is.”

“First, you can apologize.”

“I’m sorry.”

“…like you mean it.”

“Okay, I’m really, really sorry.”

“Words don’t mean shit.”

“What do I have to do in order to convince you that I’m sorry?”

She smiled at me in a way that was unsettling.

* * * * * *

She cast some sort of illusion spell so that my parents wouldn’t notice that I was gone. She made me use my allowance to buy her dinner at the fanciest-ass restaurant we could walk to.

She was wearing a dress that was as burgundy as the wine that they served in the joint. Not that she could have any since, you know, we were underage.

She was running up a real bill, and I knew that was the point. Nobody can put a price on a broken heart, but she sure damn well was going to try.

The sourest part was how smoking hot she was. I thought she was a piece to look at before, but she cleaned up to a fine shine, looking every bit as expensive as her daddy’s Rolex. She looked like a million bucks and I was starting to think that I had let something really good slip through my hands.

“What?” she said, raising her eyebrows?

“Huh? What’s wrong?”

“You were staring.”

I shook my head and muttered an apology.

I wrapped my lips around my knuckles, trying to think of something that wouldn’t sound pathetic.

“I’m just really good at making bad decisions and not holding on to good things,” I said.

“And what’s that supposed to mean?”

The little brat. She knew. I could see it.

“For starters, I never guessed that I’d ever meet a preacher’s daughter that was a witch at the same time. Second…Ugh. Okay. You look amazing. And it’s got me thinking.”

“That you fucked up? I know.”

I must have looked like I got slapped in the mouth, cuz she immediately commented on how good the food was.

My pride usually kept me from learning any ‘lessons’ that chicks tried to teach me, but this one was getting past the gates of my ego thanks to the shame I was feeling.

“Yeah, you nailed it. And there’s realistically nothing I can do to make it up to you. This might pass as a kind gesture, but it doesn’t fix how badly I’ve hurt you.”

“And you’re saying that just because you didn’t realize how pretty I can be.”

I rolled my eyes so hard.

“Say it. Say it.”

“Come on.”

“It’s the truth, so say it.”

“…and I’m saying that just because I didn’t realize how pretty you can be.”

God, that smile was so smug. But it was real.

“Fine. Once we’re done eating, we’ll go out and talk about your problem.”

“Thank you for dinner,” she said once we had stepped outside into the balmy evening.

“Okay, cool. About this curse…”

“She is Fellatianathagoroth.”

“The hell did you just say?”

“Just call her the Head Siren. She won’t respond to that name, but it’s what we call her. She can be summoned to harass anyone who has expended a lot of sexual energy in ways that won’t result in a new life.”

“How do I get her to go away?”

She looked at me with eyes enlarged by the night. “We need to perform a spell of abjuration. We’ll go to my place, since my parents are away again. I’ll go down on you… again…”

I was starting to like this abjuration stuff.

“…and then you have to take it back from my mouth and swallow.”

“Say what? Oh, fuck that!”

She smiled a smile that screamed gotcha.

“You want Fellatianathagoroth to go away?”

I was cornered. I was desperate. I agreed.

We went to her place and I got gobbled. It felt clinical. Like it was a business transaction. Which made me feel like I was soliciting a hooker.

The moment came. Well, I came and then the moment came. She stood up with her cheeks puffed out and before I could tell her that I needed a moment, she smashed her lips against mine and… Ugh. I don’t want to talk about it.

It all happened so fast that my gag reflex was too late. I prayed that I didn’t burp. Anything that came up wasn’t going to go back down again.

When I could breathe without retching, I looked up at her. She was smiling.

“So now what?” I said.

“That’s it.”

“The spell of agile-germination is done?”

She grinned in a way that sent shivers down my spine.

“There is no spell of abjuration.”

My heart sank. “Then… that why did you just have me—”

She struck me across the face with a slap like thunder and I hit the floor hard.

“Get out! Get out before I call the cops!”

She kicked me in the stomach and I thought I was going to spit myself all over her floor.

The more I tried to talk, the more she screamed at me to leave.

When I finally got out the door, her laugh rang out through the night air, cruel and jagged and triumphant. It wasn’t loud enough to mask the sound of the Head Siren. It was the first thing I heard when I reached the end of the block.

Between the betrayal, disappointment, and the realization of how much danger I was in, I broke into a blind sprint.

I was hit by a car.

I went to the hospital where I was in a full-body cast for far too long.

It would have been easier to endure if the nurse assigned to me wasn’t Gunther, the burly guy from the gas station bathroom. He somehow recognized me through all the bandages, and it just made his day that I was all wrapped up like a Christmas present, just for him.

He said that once I had healed up some, he was gonna drill some holes in my cast so I could be his “pokey pinata.”

Don’t ask.