I often felt guilty after singing. The feeling took me, and I’d sway with the rolling tides, ebbing to tunes played with the sounds of the sea and sky.

Out in the horizon, I’d see them, though. A poor crew of men—hopefully just men anyways. I mean, I felt bad enough when they were just men, and it’s not like I wanted the ships to wreck.

Some might have said I had a problem. That I heard sounds that weren’t there. I liked to call it creativity. The sounds came together just for me, alone in my head. Strange that the ships turned as I sang on the cliffs. Their voices always haunted me as they crescendoed while the ships sank at the rocks below.

And as time passed, so many voices cried for help I just couldn’t take it anymore. I tried stopping at first, but it was instinct. My body had to sing.

I woke while sleepwalking under black clouds, the lightening flashing the sky fantastic with thunder not far behind, and rain falling in drops big enough to beat your skull cold and numb. The cliffs set themselves like a stage. They called to me with the aria of a young girl. I often wondered if it was a memory of my own voice from long ago.

I could keep myself away during the day, but my nights were filled with worry and dread.

I fought it for so long, I installed a set of chains. I slept with them on, but found myself at the cliffs— a tune being pulled from my mouth like a force beyond nature, and a ship of pirates asleep below, crashing into the cliffs so silently— so gracefully that I wept despite their crimes.

And that’s when I decided that the cliffs would always call to me, yet I didn’t want anymore blood on my hands.

No more blood. There was only one way to end the wrecks. And that’s was to join them. And that’s when I ran, fighting the fear as hard as I could, then leap to the rocks.