ID 339656677 ©
Ulrich Allgaier | Dreamstime.com
I hate my life.
I have never sung so long for anyone in my life. Not even the one person in my Composer line who died since I became the Diva; he had been forty-two when the heart attack took him. Rosalynn is ninety-six. At some point, someone had turned on the light for the conference room. The sun had set long ago. Tears pour from my eyes, soaking my work blouse.
For sorrow and grief and loss.
For greatness and compassion; sympathy and determination.
For pain.
From exhaustion.
At last the keening drops to how she will die. Quietly, at home, holding her husband’s hand. The last words she will hear is how much he loves her.
The wail ends. In two days, the lady I and my sisters just sang for will pass beyond the veil.
Damn she had accomplished a lot for a peanut farmer’s wife.
The song is finally done.
I collapse.
Someone catches me before I hit the soft beige carpet.
How?
Why?
No one should be stupid enough to be here. In a room where a banshee is singing.
I had been looking forward to falling on the carpet. I never had had carpet before at the end of a wail. Falling on linoleum hurts. The carpet had looked so soft when I had snuck in here.
I try to focus my eyes on the face, squinting through the tears and exhaustion. The room swims around black eyes. The thin red line beneath them moves, but my ears aren’t working after being exposed to a banshee wail for so long. We are not immune to our own magic. Hence reason number one of why I hate my life. Insanity runs through banshee lines like the Dublin Marathon. I wonder what the person said.
A cloth runs over my face, drying it. I sniffle to get a scent. My eyes aren’t clear enough to see death right now, and I certainly can’t hear the person’s life song the way my ears feels all pressured-and-hurting. Smell is the easiest, but all I smell is snot. They hold the cloth over my nose after my sniffle, so I blow on it like a five-year old child. I feel the vibration from them talking against my skin before they lay me the super soft floor. Oh, to have money for this type of carpet in my studio apartment.
I practice breathing. I hum a note and it HURTS. No talking tomorrow.
At least, it is a Saturday.
Maybe I will be able to talk by Monday.
I’d hate to use sick leave the first week I qualify for it.
The person comes back and starts cleaning my face and neck with wet paper towels, and the cool wet slimy things feel absolutely wonderful.
I might be running a fever.
When the person lifts me up to a sitting position, I grab an arm to steady myself against the dizzy of blown out eardrums as they turn my head down so I only see the arm.
A male arm clad in really, really nice fabric. Like fabric that only comes in custom-made suits. Oops. Someone from the fifth floor.
Well, duh, I am on the fifth floor. Of course it would be one of the insurance company’s administrators. I am so going to quit from embarrassment. And I just finished my ninety-day probation!
(In case you are wondering, because people ask banshees these types of questions all the time, yes, a person can die of embarrassment. It is extremely rare, but we have a tune for it so it happened at least once.)
Are they…???
Ick…he is licking my ear!
Tongue in ear, gross.
I try to pull away, but he has a firm grip on my jaw and turns me so he can lick my other ear.
Lick INSIDE my other ear!
Oh god, oh god, oh god … wait, I can hear me whining!
That’s new.
I thought I would be deaf for a while. It’s a common-side effect after banshees use their powers. Like not being able to talk. We all learn sign language at a young age. More for others, when our voices drop into the death wail cords, but it has other uses too.
He lets go of my face and just supports my shoulders. I can squirm but breaking his grip is out of the question.
Now banshees aren’t the strongest of the supernaturals, in fact we are WAY down on that list, but we are still stronger than normal humans. Okay, maybe not me right now, exhausted as I am, physically, magically. I still can’t focus the eyes, and I can’t hear the person’s living song even though I can hear the building’s heat kicking in.
But I think I am calm enough that I am not longer crying. No, I am not certain; I’m exhausted, okay? I sniff again.
Ash, soil, stone. Specifically, crematory ash, grave soil, and tomb stone. Ash, soil, and stone smell different once death touches them.
Vampire.
Lugh-bless-it, he is one of the owners or progenies thereof.
Forget retirement, I will earn that embarrassment death tune for myself. I blush as only a redhead of Irish descent can.
I hate my life.
(words 875; first published 4/6/2025)
Ymir’s Songs series
- Fifteen Minutes (10/09/2022)
- Song for Rosalyn (11/26/2023)
- D is for Done (4/6/2025)