In 1987, a cassette tape emerged which contained the last known recording of the Song of the Sirens. The origins of the tape are uncertain: it was found abandoned in a secure deposit box of a bank in Gibraltar by an officer in the British Navy. Though the box was registered in his name, he insisted that a number of artifacts discovered inside, including the tape, were not his own.
Together, they gazed into the galaxy of colorful orbs behind the glass. “Every gumball dreams of growing up to become a planet,” the goddess told him. “They are child worlds, waiting to be adopted by a sun; but, as you might imagine, almost none among them will survive long enough to see their dreams come true.”
“I specialize in the process of hypercamouflage in marine animals.”
“Hypercamouflage? How is that different from the normal kind?”
“Well, you could learn about that by signing up for my class,” she smirked. “But I don’t mind talking to students about my favorite subject. Hypercamouflage is a term for any process by which an animal becomes so well concealed that it is physically indistinguishable from its surroundings. When achieved, no known scientific equipment or sensory organ is able to detect the creature’s presence. It is as though they no longer exist.”
Remoras are responsible for carrying dreams from shark to shark. Their hosts lack the creativity required to produce dreams independently, as their cravings for blood drown out anything resembling an imagination. For them, the unreal is nothing more than a distraction that cannot be killed and digested.
The hollowfeather crow curls its neck inward. It then reaches its beak through its own chest, plucks out a pulseless heart, and devours it whole once more. Once it has been swallowed, the extracted organ can be seen from outside as it tumbles downward through exposed, translucent ribs, and eventually snaps back into position. The crow does this again and again, restlessly staving off its own endless hunger.
Elliott found the first piece of his death under his fiancé’s pillow when he was only eighteen. It was a cogwheel of sorts, wrought from black iron, and he knew what it was the moment that he found it. Once he felt its weight in his hands, he walked out the door while she was still asleep, and left his ring behind.
“Excuse me, sir?” I’m usually more resilient when it comes to strangers with clipboards, but I couldn’t bring myself to look away from her perfect, silver eyes. “Do you have a moment to spare for the immaterial?”
An irregular grid of clouds formed in the evening sky, simultaneously violet and orange.
“They’re killing us,” she told me. “The jets are spewing cancer out of their tails.”