Sirena
Catharina tightened Jonas’s tie, pulling the knot harder than necessary. The thought of the previous night would not leave her mind. She imagined him coming home drunk from another party, the collar of his shirt stained with burgundy lipstick. The image made her furious.
She was only nineteen, and already it felt like a nightmare. Her husband drank too much and cheated on her constantly. The jealousy burned inside her, mixing with anger and humiliation.
They were too young for any of this. Too young to be married, and too young to be parents. From the next room came the thin, restless cry of their baby, echoing through the small apartment.
Jonas had never truly belonged to this country. He was a foreigner, sent here quietly to work for a government that preferred to remain invisible. Their marriage had been convenient for his cover, and necessary for his survival.
He had hoped for a son. A strong boy who could carry his name and perhaps one day understand the strange life he lived.
Instead, Catharina gave birth to a small, dark-haired girl with bright eyes and a stubborn cry. They named her Sirena.
Catharina finished adjusting the tie, and Jonas stepped back, already prepared for his departure. Another business trip, he had said. There was always another trip.
Catharina never knew where he was going or when he would return. Jonas never explained.
From the next room the baby’s crying grew louder. Jonas frowned, clearly irritated by the sound.
“Make her stop,” he said sharply. “That noise is unbearable.”
Catharina did not move at first. Her hands were still near his collar, fingers trembling slightly after tightening the tie. For a moment she looked at him, as if expecting something else from him. An apology. A softer tone. Anything.
The crying from the next room grew sharper, the thin voice of the baby filling the apartment.
Jonas glanced at the door with irritation. “Did you hear me?” he said, already reaching for his coat. “Handle it.”
Catharina turned slowly and walked toward the other room. The wooden floor creaked under her steps. Behind her she heard the rustle of Jonas putting on his coat and the metallic click of his watch clasp.
By the time she lifted Sirena from the crib, the crying had turned into quiet hiccups. The little girl’s dark eyes were open, unfocused, still wet with tears.
From the hallway came the sound of the front door opening.
Catharina stepped into the doorway of the nursery, the child pressed gently against her shoulder.
Jonas was already leaving.
The door closed without a word.
Fifteen years later, Sirena was no longer the restless baby who filled the apartment with crying. She had grown into a quiet but determined girl with the same dark hair and sharp eyes she had as an infant. Most mornings she left for high school with headphones around her neck and a worn backpack over one shoulder, walking quickly through the narrow streets as if the world ahead of her was waiting.
Catharina often watched her from the kitchen window before leaving for work. Sirena reminded her of herself at that age. The same curiosity. The same impatience to grow up.
That was what worried her.
Sirena had recently started spending time with a boy named Adrian. He was impossible to miss in a crowd. Black boots, faded band T-shirts, long what color hair that fell across his eyes, and a constant smell of cigarette smoke and guitar strings. Adrian lived for music. Local rock shows, basement concerts, small stages in noisy bars. Wherever a guitar was loud enough, he was there.
Sirena loved the energy of it. The crowded rooms, the pounding drums, the feeling that the music could shake the walls apart. Adrian would stand near the stage, head moving with the rhythm, and she would watch him with a mixture of amusement and admiration.
Catharina noticed the change in her daughter almost immediately.
“You’re seeing that boy again tonight?” she asked one evening while setting plates on the table.
Sirena shrugged, trying to sound casual. “We’re just going to a concert. It’s a local band.”
Catharina paused for a moment. She remembered being nineteen and believing that feelings alone could hold a life together.
“Just be careful,” she said quietly. “You’re still young. Don’t rush into things the way I did.”
Sirena rolled her eyes slightly, the way teenagers do when they believe adults are worrying too much.
“It’s just music, Mom.”
But Catharina knew that life rarely stayed “just” anything for very long.
And somewhere in the city, the sound of electric guitars was already warming up for the night.
By the time Sirena reached high school, Jonas was no longer part of their lives.
Catharina had divorced him years earlier. The marriage that had begun in secrecy and tension eventually collapsed under the weight of his absences, his drinking, and the endless lies. By then there were two children in the small apartment. Sirena and her younger brother, the son Jonas had always said he wanted.
But even that had not been enough to keep him.
One afternoon, when Sirena was still a child, Jonas appeared at the door without warning. Catharina remembered the uneasy silence that followed his arrival. He looked older, thinner, as if the years had worn him down faster than they should have.
He carried a small leather bag.
Without much explanation, he placed twenty thousand dollars on the kitchen table. It was more money than Catharina had ever seen at once.
“Keep it safe,” he said. “I’ll come back for it.”
He stayed only a few hours before disappearing again.
For months the money remained hidden in the apartment, wrapped carefully in cloth and placed inside an old metal box. Catharina never touched it. She did not trust it, but she also did not dare to throw it away.
Then, just as suddenly as he had appeared the first time, Jonas returned.
He did not stay long.
He took the money, closed the bag, and walked out the door without explanation.
This time he never came back.
Sirena grew up remembering her father not as a man, but as a shadow that occasionally passed through their lives and then vanished again.
ne evening, after returning from school earlier than usual, Sirena found her mother sitting alone at the kitchen table. The apartment was quiet except for the distant sound of her younger brother playing in the other room. Catharina had an old metal box open in front of her, the same box Sirena had seen many times growing up but had never paid much attention to.
Inside were a few papers, a faded photograph, and an empty cloth pouch.
Sirena leaned against the doorway.“What’s that?”
Catharina looked up, slightly surprised, then closed the box halfway as if out of habit.
“Just old things,” she said.
Sirena stepped closer anyway. She picked up the photograph before her mother could stop her. In it, Catharina looked impossibly young, standing beside a tall man with sharp features and a distant expression.
Sirena studied the man’s face for a moment.
“That’s him, isn’t it?” she asked quietly.
Catharina did not answer immediately.
“Yes,” she finally said. “Your father.”
Sirena placed the photo back on the table. She had never really known what to feel about him. To her, he had always been more like a story than a real person.
“Why did he leave?” she asked.
Catharina exhaled slowly, as if the question carried years inside it.
“Because some people live their lives like they’re always passing through,” she said. “They don’t stay anywhere long enough to belong.”
Sirena nodded but did not fully understand.
Later that night, as she walked through the crowded hallway of a small rock club with Adrian beside her, the music already rumbling through the walls, she thought briefly about what her mother had said.
The guitars started screaming from the stage.
Adrian smiled at her, pushing his long hair away from his eyes.
Sirena smiled back.
For the first time in her life, the world felt loud, alive, and full of possibilities.Top of Form
Sirena did not stay long that night.
Her mother had asked her to come home early to help with her younger brother, and the thought lingered in the back of her mind even as the music shook the walls of the club. Adrian barely noticed when she leaned closer to him between songs.
“I should go soon,” she said.
Adrian looked surprised. “Already?”
Sirena nodded, though part of her wanted to stay. The crowd was alive, the guitars loud, and the energy in the room felt almost electric.
On stage, the lead singer had just stepped into the light.
Her name was Elara, a girl a few years older than Sirena. She had long red hair that fell over her shoulders and striking blue eyes that caught the glow of the stage lights. Dressed in dark lace and heavy boots, she carried the unmistakable style of the gothic rock scene.
When she began to sing, the entire room seemed to pause.
Her voice was powerful and clear, almost operatic, rising above the guitars with an intensity that reminded people of symphonic metal bands like Nightwish. It was the kind of voice that filled every corner of the club without effort.
Sirena watched for a moment, impressed as always.
But something was different tonight.
Between verses, Elara’s eyes drifted toward the crowd. For a brief moment they rested on Sirena and Adrian standing close together near the stage.
The look lingered a second too long.
There was something sharp in it. Something that felt almost like jealousy.
Sirena frowned slightly, unsure if she had imagined it.
Elara turned back to the microphone and continued singing, her voice even stronger now.
Few people in the crowd knew that she was already married, though she rarely spoke about it. She had no children yet, and most nights her life revolved around the stage, the music, and the restless energy of the small rock scene.
Sirena glanced at Adrian one last time.
“I really have to go,” she said.
Outside, the cool night air felt quiet compared to the thunder of the music she had just left behind.
That night Sirena waited for a message that never came.
After leaving the club she walked home through the quiet streets, the echoes of the music still ringing faintly in her ears. The night felt strangely empty without the noise of the guitars and the crowded room.
She checked her phone once. Then again.
Nothing.
Adrian had not texted.
For a moment she wondered if he was annoyed that she had left early. But the thought passed quickly. It was more likely that he had simply stayed at the concert. Adrian rarely left early when there was music, especially when the band was playing well.
The show would probably go late into the night. After that there would be drinks, friends talking loudly outside the club, maybe another small after-party somewhere in the city.
Sirena placed the phone on the table beside her bed and tried not to think about it.
Across the apartment her younger brother had already fallen asleep, and the hallway light cast a soft glow through the open door. Catharina was still awake in the kitchen, quietly washing dishes.
The apartment felt calm, almost too calm.
Sirena stared at the dark screen of her phone one last time before turning the light off.
Somewhere across the city, the music was probably still playing.
The school building looked completely different in the morning than the rock club had the night before. Bright corridors, the smell of chalk and cleaning solution, teachers already moving between classrooms with folders in their hands.
