The worst part of hating your parent is looking in the mirror and seeing that parent in your face. In my case, my father's big blue eyes are the eyes I inherited, so are his pointed nose, angular cheekbones, and lanky limbs on a lithe body. I wish it didn't go farther than looks, but it does. Whether I wanted it or not, I was raised by him; I soaked up his atmosphere, his way of living, his teachings, his mannerisms, his way of talking and walking and even thinking. His fears are my fears, his fury is my fury, and his memories are my memories. We are one, yet we are two, like the vast sky and endless ocean, separated by a horizon line. Therein lies our constant struggle to split apart. Yet we can't, forever bound as father and daughter.

There is mumbling and shuffling below, indicating Hunter's unrest. At least I know he's conscious enough to realize that anything he says might not be to his advantage and he's better off staying quiet.

"Stay where you are and don't move," my father says to me, lowering the sonic weapon to rest on his knees in such a manner that its conical end is pointing directly at my chest. His upper torso sways slightly to the movement of the waves.

I raise my arms to push myself deeper into the seat.

"I said, don't move!" He raises the gun again, his voice mechanical, his words minimal on purpose. I can tell he's covering up his unrest, but he's not doing a very good job of it. The thought, nevertheless, gives me pleasure. And sadness.

I realize, he's weaker than me, and it's me who must make the first step, to show him that it's possible to heal, possible to extract his pain no matter how encrusted with age. We engage in a staring contest, sizing each other up. I feel like his equal, if not his superior, and I know that he senses it.

"You don't need to threaten me, Papa," I say, looking him directly in the eyes. "I won't hurt you, I promise." I want to add something else, but he jabs the muzzle of the gun in the air with a threatening force. I don't flinch, knowing he won't shoot me.

"Don't you dare talking to me like this!" His breathing comes out in sharp wheezes, blotches of red blooming on his cheeks.

"Look what you did!" Here comes his usual attempt to make me feel guilty. "My trawler. It's gone now! Do you have any idea how much it costs? Do you—" He's visibly shaken. The full extent of his loss must have sunken in just now. "You," he says, jabbing the sonic weapon at me. "You keep destroying my property. You..." At first, he searches for words, and then he proceeds to explain how much it really cost him to get it and have it all equipped, but I'm not listening anymore. What fascinates me is the fact that he's sharing this information, deeming me worthy of knowing it, which he has never done before.

"...over, you hear me? Your diddle-daddle outside of the house is over. Now, listen to me. Here is what will happen. We will go home and you..."

I tune in and out of his monologue, taken by his eyes that seem to cast me into an acidic bog of misery and elation at once. He's talking to me, actually taking to me, for real, like an adult to an adult. Does this mean I have proven something that makes me worthy of his bother? His face grimaces, spelling out each word that I don't hear. He lost his jacket and his pink shirt sleeves are carefully rolled up and wet, forming two elaborate rolls around his bulging triceps, smeared with dark lines of machine oil or some other dirt. His fingers curl around the two guns, his knuckles white from strain.

I don't know if it's the rocking of the lifeboat, the soothing patter of the rain combined with the ocean grumble, or the fact that my adrenaline—if sirens have adrenaline—is retreating, but I enter the zone of after-shock. Whichever it is, it's causing me to imagine myself as a swaddled baby, in need of a change. The sticky, moist fisherman suit adds to the illusion.

Three days since my death.

Three days since my birth.

This is my lucid dream, my one minute of fantasy that's better than nothing, worth every second, paid for with suicide.

I'm in a crib, in a soothingly swaying crib. Papa is coming to change my clothes, to swaddle me up, to sing me to sleep with a private solo, for me alone.

He keeps talking and moving his arm about, forgetting to aim the weapon at me and pointing it at the boat controls instead. I imagine him lifting me and putting me on the changing table with a soft smile, stroking my face, telling me what a bad girl I am to wet myself from head to toe. The lifeboat bobs on a wave and I hit my head on the low overhang, but I think it's Papa throwing me into air so high that I brush the ceiling with the top of my head. He points with the gun at the buckle straps and then at me, explaining that, siren or not, I need to buckle up. I daydream that he's about to give me a warm bath, gently shampoo my hair, hug me in a towel, help me with my pajamas, and tuck me in to bed, kissing my forehead good night. Something my mother used to do, but something that he never did, not once, in his life.

"...again, do not open your mouth unless I ask you a question or tell you that you can. Do you understand?"

Does he feel the effect of my voice on him? I wonder and nod, feeling the poison of self-hate seep back into my veins. "Excellent," my father says, lowering both guns to his lap again, glancing down. He hangs his head, knowing he has no choice but to believe me, and I can almost feel his hysterical outburst leave him, yield to a sense of being lost.

At this point, the nausea caused by my father's barely audible soul, and my sudden hunger, overwhelms me. I draw a deep breath and convulse in a series of coughs, each threatening to tear me apart.

Any noise I make irritates Papa to no end and makes him yell at me to be quiet. He yells at me to stop and slaps his knee in frustration, but it doesn't have the typical desired effect on me, nor does he have the conviction. We both follow our routine scenario, the behavior that's been practiced for years and years, but we both know it doesn't work anymore, and it's on its way out.

He's like a little child throwing a fit because his favorite toy has been taken away. I watch with a mild smile playing on my lips, which he notices after a while, falling silent.

"I'm tired of you being noisy. Can't you keep it down? Is it so hard to do? Always fidgeting, always talking, asking questions, scratching, coughing. I can't stand it! Can't you be quiet for a minute? It irritates me, you know that. I need you to stay put, to let me concentrate on making it back to Seattle," he says, and I'm stunned again.

He talks to me like I'm a teenager, as if nothing happened. We simply ended up in the middle of the ocean for some odd reason and now we need to make it home. The whole siren hunting thing evaporated.

"I can hum. It'll make us move faster," I say, before I can stop myself.

"Did I give you permission to talk? No." There goes the gun again in my face. "And, no, no humming. I forbid you." He clears his throat. "No humming on this lifeboat, no talking, no singing. I just told you this. Unless I ask you a question or I tell you it's okay to talk, you're not allowed to open your mouth. Nod so that I know you understood." The metallic coldness is back in his voice, he's recovered from his lapse into vulnerability and is no doubt mad at me for being the catalyst.

I nod.

I won't cry, I won't cry, but I almost do.

"Good. Remember this." He shakes the gun at me and falls quiet. It's like he lost his ability to threaten me and express his anger clearly, sounding mechanical and broken. He reaches up, closes the hatch cover, and then leans forward to study the controls.

The waves drone on, licking the lifeboat. Papa pushes a few buttons and shifts a long stick that's got a round black grip on it, and a motor comes to life. He grabs on to the steering wheel with one hand, places his guns on his lap with the other, gives me a meaningful look, and tilts his head down, glancing at Hunter.

"Are you all right, son?" he says.

Considering it safe, I lean a bit more to the right and peer down to see better.

I'm sitting facing the round windows of the upper level of the boat, but Hunter reclines in the seat below in the opposite direction, so I can make out his face in the shadow. It has a dead look about it. He lifts his eyes to both of us as if to merely register where the voice is coming from, seeing nothing, glazed over and passive.

"Yeah, fine," he says.

"Good." The upper sides of Papa's cheeks pull his muscles into a grimace that's supposed to look like a smile. He's back to his nasty self, but not owning it like he usually does, forcing it. I have changed something in him, I think. Yes, I'm positive. And him calling Hunter son doesn't bother me anymore, either.

His attention is on Hunter right now, and on steering the boat. Its engine purrs quietly, and he shifts gears to pick up speed.

"It's unfortunate. Your failure," he tells Hunter without looking, turning the steering wheel and occasionally glancing at me. "We will have to try this again. Three times is a charm."

My heart falls. So he made him do it once before me, and is now planning to remove my voice, even after everything that's happened. It's like he possesses some kind of stubbornness that gives him reason to go on no matter what. To hold on to, so he doesn't fall apart.

I want to pinch myself. Do I really understand my father's motivations now? What will happen if I simply ask him? I'm still not sure, afraid to inflict pain on Hunter in the process. So I keep my thoughts to myself, looking out the window into the gray expanse of the Pacific.

Despite everything, I still love you, you know, I want to tell Papa, studying the low hanging clouds and the brightening day.

My father jams the wheel in a set position and turns sideways to face me. His gray hair glistens in the growing light, his eyes sunken.

"Well, we're on our way back, which will be another four to five hours, possibly more. I take it you're both comfortable, because we have a lot to talk about. Let's start with an explanation of your behavior, Ailen. Please. I'm listening."

This is the father I know and I automatically flare up.

"What? What behavior? You were about to kill me, and you're asking me for an explanation of my behavior?" I say incredulously. This sounds so much like our discussion over his sunken yacht in the siren meadow that I almost want to pinch myself to make sure I'm not dreaming.

His fear of me is gone, or suppressed, and the sonic gun is no longer wavering in his hand, its aim is steady. He has this pained expression on his face, then a shudder of disgust, as if digging in a pile of rotten fish with his bare hands. We're back to ground zero.

"Shhhh. Talk quietly, please, you give me a headache with your voice. Where do you get your ridiculous ideas? It was an operation to be performed for your benefit, which you, as is typical, made into a mess. We will get to that part. Now, answer my question."

I gawk, unsure of what to say, and glance at Hunter for support. He shrugs, looking at me and through me at the same time.

"Come on, Ailen, it's just a question," he says. I think I hear a trace of tears in his voice and such finality that it makes me shudder. Like he's decided on something serious and doesn't give a damn anymore. It wasn't me who sucked the life out of him. It seems as if he's feeling the impossibility of getting out of this predicament, and that he's given up.

Without thinking, I turn and look Papa in the face.

"How about you answer my questions first? How about you explain to me your behavior? Your incessant need to hurt. Where, exactly, does it come from? How about you open up and admit that your mother never loved you, she hurt you, she yanked your trust right out of your little chubby hands, just like you yanked out mine, when I was little. Because you don't know any better, because everything has been taken from you by force and this is the only way you know. You don't know how to give, because nobody has ever given you anything, have they?"

His eyes widen; I press on.

"Wait, I don't need you to explain anything, I got it. You simply never grew up. You stopped maturing at that age when grandma hurt you. You're like this little boy forever stuck in his childhood, playing with expensive toys, making rash decisions, enjoying your games, feeling entitled—like a proper asshole. No, wait, it's worse. At least assholes mess up their shit. But not you, oh no. You don't like to do the dirty work. You always hire someone else to do it for you. Am I right? So tell me, how much did it cost you, Papa? Your heart? Your soul? What will it take for you to wake up and admit your pain and stop running away from it? It's what you do. It's what you taught me how to do. You taught me to suppress it, and I grew up a coward, just like you, afraid to face it. So how about it? Did I get this right? Why don't you explain my behavior to me? I would very much like to hear your perspective." I pause to catch a breath.

As soon as I'm done talking, terror raises its ugly head in my chest. I dared to talk back to him. I watch his face, frozen.

He winces as if in pain, but he never interrupted me. He tightens the grip on his gun, but I think I detect a flash of surprise and a hint of fear.

"Are you finished?" he asks, his face ashen.

"Yeah, for the time being," I say, licking my lips, suddenly afraid I hurt him.

"Alright. Let's go through this again. Here are the rules. I talk, you listen. I ask, you answer. What part of the word answer do you not understand, Ailen? Take a lead from Hunter, now that's a smart boy right there."

I glance at my father, no more than a tired, shrunken man, resigned to doing the only thing he knows how to do. Mechanically, he raises the sonic gun and points it at me.

I stare at the muzzle, wondering how many shots I can withstand at will, realizing that even if I can last for a while, Hunter won't last after a single blow. I steal a glance down and lower my arm, inconspicuously, I hope. Hunter shifts forward and grabs it, clasping his fingers tightly around mine. He squeezes three times, as if trying to pass a message. My mind reels, but it doesn't make any sense. Three is my favorite number, that's a start, but there's nothing else I can think of.

Papa's voice drones at the end of the tunnel.

"...again. Remember, noise is akin to chaos. You have to organize your mind, learn to obey. Now, one more time, answer my question." He makes himself say it, stubbornly pressing on.

I drop Hunter's hand and sit straight as a rod. A stream of words pushes its way out of my mouth in a stutter, before I can arrest it or even realize what I'm saying.

"That's it! It's what you did to mom, didn't you. She loved you, so you brainwashed her, to control her. Because you couldn't stand the idea. No, you couldn't understand it. Nobody has ever truly loved you before, so you didn't trust her. You thought she had some kind of a hidden agenda to make you lose your mind and then use you and dump you, right? So you decided to protect yourself, to..." I reel with words, stumbling, not knowing what to say first. It makes perfect sense.

"You..." I begin again, staring at him, shaking from sudden understanding. "You pathetic piece of shit, you thought you could—"

Bam!

I get my answer. A sonic shot fires in my belly and I'm momentarily deaf, sliding down into the reclining seat, clasping its side to prevent myself from falling. The lifeboat rocks wildly side to side and I think we will turn upside down.