Siren Song Symphony

The four figures that had stood guard, the two at the door and the two at the corners of the stage, had thrown off their cloaks and were revealed to be bulky satyrs all, almost identical to the one plowing the tenor on stage. They moved around the rim of the hall, picking and choosing as they watched the teeming, steamy mass of young male flesh rising and falling in a loose pile of urgent need and passion in the center of the hall.

The four pulled away, however, as Count Schlange slowly descended a shadow-swathed staircase from the gallery, cloak swirling about him and circled the writhing pile at the center of the hall. His discerning eyes honed in on the most beautiful, perfectly formed man of the island, a fisherman named Andro. The count pointed, and the four satyrs descended on the chosen one, separated him from the teeming mass, and carried him, struggling now in recognition of some sort of danger, back up the stairs to the gallery. The count glided up the stairs behind them.

Andro moaned and nearly swooned as the Schlange dropped his cloak as he reached the top of the stairs. The young man was facing an alien monster, both frightening and awesome. He had a magnificent man’s physique of god-like proportions. But his skin had a green, scaly tinge to it. His face was flat and handsome and ugly all at the same time—nostrils, but practically no nose. And as he reared back from the initial reaction of his prey, the alien’s almost-lipless mouth opened and a red, forked tongue darted out.