Siren Call

Pristine waters, mesmerizing sea caves, garigue landscapes … Oh the romanticism of tiny idyllic islands in the Mediterranean Sea! So alluring are they that even legendary authors could not help but fall to their enchantments and immortalize them in epics which to this day remain some of the best literary works of art. One such island is Ogygia, where the Greek hero Odysseus, the sole survivor of his ship’s wrecking encounter with the wayward island’s jagged coastline, found himself at the wrong end of a sea nymph’s lustful infatuation and her quest to quench her endless nymphomaniac thirst.

For centuries, Calypso’s legend was believed to be nothing more than a myth brought to life by the committing to paper of a literary master’s fictional conjuring. Then came that accursed dreary day in April, the one when, more by fate than chance, I happened to lose my way during a solitary trek in Ogygia—the quaint island better known these days as Gozo—and I found myself at the cave bearing the mythical sea nymph’s name.

The first sign that something was amiss was the fog. It crept in from the sea, an arcane nebula, dense and frigid and damp, its saltiness all but burning my lungs. Then came the euphonious voice, a muffled song from somewhere far and deep, a rapture for the ears. And then came my walking, a mindless and involuntary shamble through the eerie fog.

Resistance was futile; my feet became detached from the conscious part of my mind. The ethereal voice singing in a long-forgotten language had latched onto my soul and commanded my feet towards it. My consciousness began to drift, the beckoning song acting as its lullaby, and I felt it slip into an eldritch prison that transcended my physical being. I became an observer in my own body, able to feel and think but not act, a prisoner in a body controlled by forces beyond human comprehension.

On and on I walked, deeper and deeper I descended, beyond sea level and deeper still. Until I reached an underwater cavern. Until I reached her: the singing woman dressed in white, weaving on her loom with a golden shuttle.

How it came to be that I had reached the cavern I had no idea and dared not surmise, as the prodigious sea cave bore neither entrance nor exit save for a deep pool in its midst. I did, however, observe my shivering turn to shuddering as my soaked clothes clung to my wet, goose fleshed skin, hinting at having swam my way into the cave despite walking being my only recollection of the journey.

“Welcome, my beloved,” the woman sang in her melodious voice, stopping her weaving and walking with regal grace towards my immobile body.

“Who are you?” I asked in a dreamy voice, enthralled by her beauty.

“Concern yourself not with who I am,” she sung, “but rather with what.”

The woman had by then reached me and began caressing my cheek. Almost as if on command, I tilted my head, resting it in her palm, reveling in her sensual touch.

“And what is it that you are, my lady?”

“Exactly that,” came her melodious reply. “Your lady.”

She looked into my eyes with golden ones and serenaded me with yet another of her songs. My body once again began to move of its own volition, undressing itself and lying on the ground. Still singing her sorcerous spell, the woman removed the straps of her own dress and let her sole garment slide down her naked body. I basked in her feminine curves, feasting on every inch of her pale body, the nymph with a beauty not even Aphrodite could match.

Calypso, the daughter of the Titans Atlas and Tethys.

She lowered herself on my body and there I lay, unable to protest let alone struggle, defenseless against the raping will of the nymph. She planted her hands on my chest and tilted her head back, and her long, golden locks danced in the stillness of the cavern as she thrust and moaned in ecstasy. Then her moans also turned into song, and the song increased my arousal, forcing my unwilling body deeper inside her, until I grunted my climax and she intoned hers.

Calypso rose and walked away, resuming the weaving on her loom with a golden shuttle, her sexual thirst having been satiated.

“You may leave, my beloved,” she sung, “but you shall return upon my call.”

Obeying her desire, my body rose from the ground and dressed itself. It dived into the pool and, after a short swim, guided my feet back through the arcane fog and out into the bleak April day, where at last I regained full control of my body and ran away.

To Calypso’s abode I vowed to never return.

Alas, such a thing was not to be, for Calypso had long ago learnt her lesson. After the gods had forced her to release her beloved Odysseus, Calypso adjusted her enslaving ways. Instead of the body, the sea nymph began to dominate the mind, allowing her victims a modicum of freedom until her needs became unbearable. And so, I would return time and time again, my lady’s siren call pulling me on spectral strings she had tied to my mind.

Now here I am, a thirty-five-year-old man in the cursed body of an eighty-year-old, for with every raping, my body aged by a number of years. Years gifted forcefully to the sea nymph so she could retain her eternal youth and beauty. It is with much dread and more horror that I can now hear the beginning of a new song in my mind. My feet will soon guide me to her for one last time, for such this shall be. The song that summons me is no longer euphoric but solemn and speaks of things that come to pass. From Calypso’s cave I shall no longer emerge.

There, the final remnants of my essence shall become spent.