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Siren
Tyler Conrad stood on the corner of Fifth and Vine waiting for the light to change. He could hear a chorus of approaching sirens. He turned in the direction they were coming from. They seemed to stop a couple of blocks over. He relaxed...a little. Living in Cincinnati was still new to him and he reacted to things that the people around him ignored. The light changed. Tyler crossed the street to Fountain Square with the crowd.
People were out in force this Saturday morning. Some wearing suits and sipping coffee. A larger group belonged to the shorts and tank tops tribe. Teenage boys and girls with tattoos and piercings were trying hard not to look interested in the horse-drawn carriages pulling up to the Square to start their daily tours of the city. Tyler could only imagine the reactions his Mother would have if she found herself near such a group and smiled. It would do little good to explain that most of them were probably good kids. To his Mother, they would be devil worshipers looking for virgins to sacrifice.
Little things about living in the city were astounding to Tyler. The number of people on the street at any given hour. The height of the buildings. The clothes the women wore or didn’t wear as the case might be. And the number of attractive women. The woman approaching him was the epitome of all those women. Even from a distance, she was breathtaking. Tyler stopped.
Her hair was dark and shiny. As she walked Tyler saw flashes of the tight red dress she wore beneath a black trench coat. Her legs were an answered prayer. The woman was still quite a bit away but Tyler felt he was looking at her through binoculars. Every detail about her stood out in astounding clarity. The only thing that he couldn’t tell was the color of her eyes. They were hidden behind sunglasses. Tyler decided that the only color those hidden eyes could be was green. The green of an emerald sitting in the sun. When she was close enough he would reach up and…
Tyler bit his tongue when his teeth clamped together as his shoulder hit the streetlight. Fresh blood assaulted his taste buds. What in the hell had he been doing? In that state, he could have walked into the street and been run down. His shook his head in disbelief. The woman was still approaching him and seemed not to have noticed.
Not wanting to repeat the mistake Tyler turned his head away from her and toward the street. Only then did he realize that he wasn’t the only person she was having this effect on. The other side of the road was filled with men and women standing motionless as they followed the woman’s passage. Not everyone was watching her. It only took moment for Tyler to see why. Those people were talking on their phones or someone walking with them. They were on auto-pilot and weren’t seeing the woman at all. Amused and uneasy at the same time, Tyler looked toward Fountain Square and saw the same scene playing itself out. For the first time in his adult life, Tyler began to feel something like real fear.
There was something wrong here. Something obvious. But somehow it was slipping between the fingers of his mind. Something he should be seeing about the woman passing on his left. Everyone that looked at her, was spellbound. But why? Everyone had different tastes. Some liked blondes, some redheads. Some liked athletic builds and others, big women. What was it about her? Tyler pulled his attention back from the scene around her to really see her.
A car horn squawked not far away. It wasn’t important. Looking at the woman as a whole Tyler saw what was wrong almost at once. Her shadow didn’t quite reach her feet. Her feet blurred where they touched the ground. Tyler wiped his eyes and looked again. Nothing changed. He couldn’t make his eyes focus on her it seemed. Tyler looked at her face. Somewhere Tyler could hear what sounded like the horn section of an orchestra warming up. Then the sounds were forgotten.
Really looking at the woman Tyler saw her for the first time. Tyler felt his jaw drop as his muscles went limp. The lamp post in front of him was the only thing stopping Tyler from hitting the ground. Her face shimmered and shifted like the tiny bits of colored glass in a kaleidoscope. Spinning, separating and combining once more. Again and again. So fast that the motions were a blur that hurt his mind. Understanding washed over him as he heard several flute-like wails flutter out from among the ongoing horns. A disjointed part of his mind understood that the wails were screams. Tyler assumed that the others were seeing the “woman” as she really was. Still turning Tyler managed to draw in breath to add his voice to the chorus of shouts.
The yellow cab’s front end jumped the curb with a coughing bark of metal on concrete, it’s front end rearing up into the air like a frightened pony. The bumper, still pristine having somehow missed the curb, slammed into Tyler’s thighs. The sharp crack of breaking bone was followed a millisecond later by the sound of rotten fruit hitting concrete. Tyler’s face slammed into the hood. The steel lamp post folded ninety degrees, pinning Tyler to the hood. Red lightning bolts erupted on yellow steel. The smell of antifreeze and blood filled the air.
The last thing Tyler saw, in the fading light of his dying eyes, was the cabby turning his head to the left. Even now, the driver couldn’t pull his gaze from the “woman” walking toward Fort Washington Way which led to I-275. She didn’t look back. Never broke stride. Tyler tried to warn the gathering crowd, but his voice, like his life, was gone.
THE END
