Short Stories

Wicked Siren-A Short Crime Noir

A short story based on 1930's Los Angeles murder crime-noir. Enjoy!!!

***NOTE: This is written in the Australian English meaning that 'colorful' is 'colourful' and 'recognized' is 'recognised'. ***

"I remember it all too well.
When the constant sirens surrounded me. The way they crashed through her door swinging the door open and slapping the metal rings on my wrists. Anyway, I'll go from the start.

I often visited a bar just down the road from my house in downtown Los Angeles. I was raised by myself, fed by myself, housed by myself and lived by myself. You see, I'm a professor in loneliness and I never struggled with that. Though my name wasn't one rarely heard. Connor Ray, you've probably heard of it, I worked at a large company that sells plots of land but the company is more known for scamming people when doing it, but I won't get into that.

I was walking down the street, on my way to the bar. Walking along you hear all the everyday noises, sirens, yells of people being mugged, the begging of the homeless and the sound of gunshots, but the street performers playing music often tend to drown out the sound and instead leave everyone in ignorant bliss. The bar, to me, is easy to miss; it blends into every other building on the block and in LA as a whole. It was just a plain brick building like all the others. Yet others seemed to notice it well. They often were too taken by the colourful and fashionable neon lights, the saxophones and pianos making an enlightened mood for the customers and alcoholics like myself, making it strenuous to merely walk past. The bar was like any other, there was nothing special about it. Loud, in cohesive and plain.

Very plain.

Still, no matter how plain and mind-numbing everything in the city and the bar was, I still visited often. At least five times a week, sometimes more. I had a drinking problem if you couldn't already tell. But there, at that bar, the alcohol was plain, tasteless, but I didn't go there for that. I went there for her. I would sit at the same table every time and just watch her from across the room, she always sat by herself and men would often approach her and were immediately rejected with little luck, she didn't even usually look up from her drink.

She was commonly recognised as Eliza Marigold. Once, quite a famous performer. Now, a strung-out, looked down upon, downbeat actress. She had long sandstone tinted hair, dark oak eyes, pale creamy skin. She commonly wore her long sapphire coloured dress that had this split sewed into it that reached from her lower thigh to the end of the dress as well as spectral high heels. She was a rainbow in this world of black and white.

After several weeks of watching her, I finally worked up the courage to talk to her. I slowly removed myself from my table and inched towards hers across the room. When I stood next to her, she looked up, smiling an attractive smile. The type of smile people want to see when they wake up in the morning, a comforting, captivating, friendly smile. She was so much more good-looking the closer you were. Like a diamond, her importance was never truly felt so strongly until you could see how perfect and unchipped she was.

I don't quite remember what I said, it was a while ago, but it must've been decent as she invited me to take the seat next to her. We talked for a while, I followed her every word like a dog on a leash. Her voice was a symphony of angels, single-handedly different and pleasant. We talked more and I fell in love with the things she hated about herself. She gave me the opportunity to go back to her house, I said yes, of course.

I took one last sip of the whiskey sitting on the table and it tasted, lavish, had a pleasant kick to it.

We walked down the street bustling with people towards her house, we walked past people playing music loudly and joyously. Here and there dropping some coins into a homeless person's metal tin of a coin jar for the first time. She was turning everything I thought was plain and unoriginal into fascinations and creative landscapes.
This was it.

I had fallen for her, but she was a trap.

She took me to her house, a small apartment on the second floor, I stepped inside and she sat me down, we talked some more before she went for the liquor cabinet. I licked my lips when she pulled out a large bottle of whiskey and two whiskey glasses. She didn't drink, but there was no way in hell that I was going to pass up the opportunity at some expensive alcohol. It was amazing, do you know how it feels to have fallen for a beautiful woman, and actress, who invites you over and gives you expensive whiskey?

It's fantastic, or at least the start is.

Not too long afterwards, my head started spinning and everything started to get darker. Out of panic I stood up and as I did my legs gave way. I crashed to the floor and watched as she stood up, her pearlescent heels clacked at the sound of each step. I stared into her eyes as her pupils began to dilate and her lips stringing to each cheek.

A loud slam interrupts her, and she looks up in dismay. I, however, black out. I hate to say this but even the wickedness and then dismay in her face still made her look gorgeous.

When I came to, I was still in the same place I had fell unconscious. Slowly but surely, sirens surrounded me, closing in on me. They were coming from every direction. I, still laying on the floor, stood up to investigate what had happened. But I wish I didn't. I wish I could've just laid there frozen in time for the rest of my life, but I didn't. I stood up, wearily looked around and saw her. She rested on the floor, limp, covered in blood, a knife in her abdomen and the more I realised what was happening the more I realised how bad it was. I knelt next to her body, open-mouthed.

In my shock, I couldn't hear anything, or maybe I just refused to hear anything, I couldn't hear the sirens that got increasingly louder, it was like background chatter, it didn't seem to concern me until I knew that they were talking behind my back. I couldn't hear the quick heavy footsteps that approached me, when the door crashed in, when the cuffs slapped around my wrist with a click.

Then before I knew it, they threw me in here for the murder of Eliza Marigold." I said gesturing to the guarded concrete walls around me, "I don't know who actually killed her. Crazed stalker, fan taken it too far, ex-lover, random intruder? I don't even know what she was going to do with me, maybe she was looking for another fifteen minutes of fame in this miserable city. Who knows? Nine long years so far, and I'm still stuck here, I've been sentenced life in prison till they know what to do with me." One man gasps in awe, another begins telling the story of how he ended up in prison. I take a bite of the mush on the metal tray in front of me.

It tastes​...plain

— matches-and-melancholy