Like a siren on a beach rock Who: Ursula the mermaid, OPEN (multiple responses welcomed). What: Do you hear the music? Where: The shores of the Hudson River When: Friday night Warnings: Possible disturbing content, minor sexuality, recreational murder attempts. Let's do this in the right journal this time.
The shores of a river held a special, certain charm. The seductive water-girl's normal haunt was the vast and lusty ocean, but rivers- ah! Quaint little diversions inland and freshwater, all; they were alien and so, so lovely to her. Small and gentle and confining they were even in their lullaby-softness, but there was a special chance, for how often in the ocean could she swim right up to the edge and sit and call to someone from a mere dozen yards away? In such a perfect, perfectly-seductive vantage point she could spin out her song lowly and conserve, conserve for to snare all the more victims in one moon-drenched night. She was a creature of quantity and of quantity; the more she could bring down to her lovely world of water and murk, the more she could swim down with her with arms tightly-wrapped (and clasping tight to cut off escape, because why did they keep fighting, didn't they know this was the best thing to ever happen to them?) the better she could look up at the distant stars and feel good about her honest day's work.
Tonight was far from different. Time had marched on from the simple armor-clad days of yore, but private jets and apartments had only replaced steeds and hidden coves of old, with little functional difference in intent and inlaid pattern. There were screaming cars all alight with road noise and steel-shined road rage, homeless smelling of new and deadlier diseases with sadder and bigger reasons for their plights. There were iPods on the joggers and chemicals in the disgusting waters and light pollution clouding the stars, but nothing changed.
Still, she laid on a large outcropped rock, her tail just out of sight under the water line, and still she sang. Ursula knew this time was different, in its own small way: rather than the ballads of old, she latched onto a ditty already laden with the power of a siren and darkly seductive mermaid. She knew it to be a song from movie, but as she sang her a cappella version of it, it trembled in the air with a darkly underscored power that beckoned to all around it, come. Come inside (the water's great), and swim with me. Forever.
In this city, this grand place of pain and oddities, it was all too easy to sit and braid her luxurious red hair, to sing of cotton and the corn and alabaster stones and to wait. Her song spun constantly from those ever-moving lips as she sang darkly, and enticing power drifted from her slick body. It was only a matter of time before her work was drawn in on its hook.