If you had only a few hours left to live, what would you do? It was my favorite icebreaker question, mainly because it told you what people valued. who people valued. If I had only a few hours left to live I would spend it with the two people that mattered the most to me, of course, Jeremy wasn’t coming back from wherever he had been whisked away to. The universe is cruel. Sometimes what you want is different from what you get. I was lucky that I had Sophia with me at least.
It was like a date and a going away party all at once, there was food that had been cooked over the old wood-fired stove and a bonfire that was being held in a new firepit outside the manor. Staring into the flames sitting huddled up against each other on an old bench was the two of us.
We hadn’t said much after he left, mainly we both went off to be alone. I could understand her silence, while they bickered a lot they had known each other longer than I’d been in the picture. Sometimes I thought they were closer to being siblings than friends with how much they seemed to dislike each other. I imagined she was taking his disappearance as hard as I was.
When upset she liked to do the practical things. we just expended a lot of calories so she went about cooking burgers first taking the time to clean the old stove. I stuck to what I liked to do when upset: arson. I dug a firepit and set some old wood blazing. Now the fire was roaring, the food was consumed and we were here together thinking in the firelight, alone but together.
The silence seemed to build up, like water behind a dam until one point it seemed too dangerous to do anything but keep quiet, not that I would know how to break the silence if I wanted to, my mind was blank. Thankfully out of the two of us Sophia actually had some brains.
“You don't have to go,” she said. I stared down at her, she was so beautiful at that moment, this entire moment would have been romantic if my vision hadn't been obscured by that prompt. It was slightly transparent, I could see behind it but it was always there, always a reminder.
“He’s my best friend, you know what sort of trouble he gets in when he’s alone. I have to go, if he's still alive then I need to help him.”
“He’s the gasoline to your fire Sinbad, you two don't ever make anything better, you make messes and I always have to go and clean them up,” she looked away,” I can't clean this up though I can't follow this time, I don't know where he is but I know it's somewhere I can't go.” It was always the thing that made Sophia better than us, she had a life outside of us. She had a family, a career, and a future. Sometimes I worried her connection to us would ruin that future, Jeremy and I both were pretty reckless at times but I was worried about nothing. She was smart and knew when to back out of the game.
“If I can I'll come back, I’ll bring him back with me.”
She whispered something so quietly I could barely hear it, a show of emotion that I rarely ever see from her, “I'm scared, scared that if I'm not there you’ll both get yourselves in a mess you can’t handle.”
“Hey now, messes are our specialty, we’ll be fine.” the fire was starting to die with a free hand I tossed in a few pieces of kindling. “You’ll talk to Janice right?”
“She won't care if he’s gone,” Sophia said coldly,” do you want me to tell your foster parents too?”
“I guess you should, they’re nice enough people they should at least get an explanation.“
“You left town to find a friend.” I smiled.
“That sounds like a normal enough version of the truth that they won’t throw you in a looney bin.”
“If you find him, can you punch him for me, a nice strong punch in the face?”
“I try not to punch my friends, but in this case, yes, I think I can do that.” We were silent again. I slowly grabbed her glasses from her face and stared at her.
“Bye, Sinbad.”
“Goodbye.” She kissed me. It was a nice kiss. That singular moment burned itself into my mind and I knew I would never forget it, never forget her. her auburn hair flowed down the sides of her face, she had her eyes shut, mouth still in the shape of a kiss. Before my courage could fail me I hit yes to the prompt.
The change was instantaneous, one second I was staring at my girlfriend, then the next I was staring at my reflection in the glass. Companionship is like a bandaid, as someone walks away from you it's slowly pulled off, but the teleportation yanked it off all at once and now I was left with the pain of loneliness. Her glasses were still in my hand, I hadn't meant to take them with me, but it was nice to have something to remember her by until I got back. I tucked the glasses into my pocket.
I looked around, I was in a capsule, similar to the ones used in a bank's pneumatic tube system. It was a cylinder in shape, the walls were made of glass while the ceiling and floor were both made of metal, the capsule was hanging suspended from a metal ceiling that was seamless except for an occasional light poking out. There was an endless amount of similar-looking capsules hanging all around me, they had to be welded together because there wasn't a single bolt or screw to be found.
“Well well well we meet again my longtime nemesis…heights.” There was no bottom, no floor, just blackness for as far as I could see beneath me. if my capsule was anything similar to the thousands of capsules around me then there was no support column rising out of that blackness to attach to my capsule from the bottom meaning the only thing holding me aloft was where the capsule was welded to the ceiling and if any of the welds on the ceiling of my capsule gave away I would go hurtling to my unfortunate demise.
“And I already hate this,” I said, my gaze fixed on the endless abyss below me as I tried not to hyperventilate.
“Sqrrck chika,” something said to my right. I turned around to see a far capsule was inhabited. inside was something that looked like floating black seaweed. Black was a bad word for it though because the black in front of me seemed to be darker than the abyss below me, it make regular black look like a bright color in comparison. Even stranger was that it had an outline of white light surrounding the darkness.
It moved, swimming around in the air like an octopus would underwater, I waved to it and it waved one of its tentacles back at me. What was this thing?
More of the capsules were empty rather than full, but quite a few had other creatures in them. CREATURES! Not humans, there was only one other human and he wasn’t Jeremy but an Asian-looking man that was sipping from a cup looking very calm. He waved to me and I did the same back to him. I wanted to try and talk to him but we were several capsules apart and I could barely see him as it was. The rest of the capsules had all manner of species, one capsule was filled with water and had some sort of fish creature. There was another one that had a furry creature that was thrashing against the glass of its capsule so ferociously that I couldn't make out any of its features. There was another creature that was nothing more than a pile of jelly that was reading a book, for some reason even though it didn't have eyes it was wearing a pair of reading glasses.
My mood immediately brightened, either I was trapped in a room full of amazing special effects or I was surrounded by a whole host of creatures never before seen by the likes of mankind. I stared at the Asian man again, okay so maybe seen by some of mankind but it was still cool. My mind raced at what sort of excitement I might be in. Were they some evil scientist's creation or perhaps mythical creatures that were being kept hidden by the government? My fear of heights started to recede as the wonder of my situation dawned on me. I squatted down so that my head was about level with where the seaweed creature was floating and studied it with my eyes. If I touched it would it feel slimy or soft like fur? Did it have poison? It did resemble a jellyfish in some ways.
“Hey, my dude what's up.”
“Chlo ooo ooo chika,” it responded. I crossed my arms and nodded. I had no idea what it said but I'm just imagining that it was something along the lines of, “I'm just peachy, we’ve both gotten ourselves into quite a pickle at the moment haven't we?”
“Indeed we did,” I replied.
“Commencing scan.” A voice like a chain-smoking trucker sounded from the ceiling, the light of the capsule turned blue, and for a few seconds I felt something like every single one of my atoms was being tickled with a feather.” scan completed, biological impurities found, designation: food.”
“Yeah, I could go for some food right now,” I replied to the voice.
“Installing Gills,” red lights shot into my sides burning them, I wanted to thrash or get out of the way but as soon as the light hit my body I froze, unable to move. The searing pain lasted for a few more seconds and then it stopped and with its end, I was able to move again. I slumped onto the floor sweating and panting, I reached my hand up to where I had been hit. On both of my sides, running up a little below my pecks were two sets of fishlike gills, one of the gills wiggled open and then close at my command, it felt natural like I’d had them my entire life.
“That’s neat,” I said admiring the new addition. Could I now swim in water without needing to surface for air? I remembered reading that gills on humans wouldn't work since humans needed a greater quantity of air than fish, so maybe it wouldn't help me breathe underwater indefinitely but just help for a short period?
“Directing subject: 1092-93470274930, starting transfer, dropping hatch.”
“What!” There was no reply though, instead one of my greatest nightmares came true as the metal floor swung out and I dropped. My stomach felt like it was about to fall out of me and my scream was the only thing that helped distinguish if I was still alive or not as the darkness was so enveloping I couldn't even see my hands. My heart thumped in my chest like I downed five shots of espresso and if the fall didn't kill me surely a heart attack would. I fell to my death with a very dignified and manly,” fuckfuckfuckfuckfuckfuuuuck-!”
A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.
There was light. Finally something other than me in this unending darkness. I rejoiced until I realized that I was falling towards that light at record speed, Is this what they meant when they said don't go into the light? Well unless I learned to fly, no chance of me not doing that. the light got brighter and as I got closer I could make out something blue. I clenched my everything shut and prepared for impact.
I hit something, not something solid as I didn't turn into a puddle of red goop, but something similar to what id imagined cartoon clouds would feel like. it was springy and soft and still managed to surround me like a liquid. I could feel my kinetic energy die down as I slowed and then I was underwater having stopped completely. I was alive? I didn't even feel hurt, no broken bones or hurt skin even though I'd done what should have been the world's deadliest belly flop.
I breathed a sigh of relief, and yeah that was a bad idea. I can't breathe the drinking stuff. Water flooded my mouth and instinctively I started coughing and thrashing as my brain freaked out. I might have remembered I got gills just a few moments ago and could in fact breathe underwater but my brain was well past thinking and instead panicking. Thankfully the gills seemed to be as ingrained in my subconscious as regular breathing was so even though I didn't tell them to my gills were already hard at work flooding my lungs with air as my regular mouth flooded them with water. The sensation felt wrong, like I had several closed mouths on my chest and I was sucking in air through the gaps in my teeth. As air filled my body I finally calmed down enough to shut my mouth and spit out any water that I had swallowed.
In a few minutes, I was fine. Well okay so maybe not fine, In a single minute I thought I was either going to either fall to my death or drown, but I was alive and that was good enough.
As I got over the horrible experience of falling, an experience I NEVER wanted to go through again, I settled on the fact that I had been wrong. The gills apparently were enough for me to fully breathe underwater, never had it felt so good to be wrong about something. I mean I was breathing underwater. I WAS BREATHING UNDERWATER! This was amazing, there were so many hidden things to uncover in the ocean!
Water for whatever reason has always irritated my eyes to the point I started to dislike swimming and it appears in the few years since I've fully gone swimming that fact hasn't changed. I blinked rapidly trying to get my eyes to focus. I could tell only one thing for certain, this wasn’t the ocean, it wasn't salty so it had to be a lake of some kind.
All around me, there were cloudy patches of what had to be some sort of bioluminescent algae, as the water was glowing around them, they lit up the area quite well. I could see there was a rock cliff face to my right, a patch of coral below me, and bodies floating all around me drifting in the current. Out of sheer horror, I grabbed one and turned it to face me. It was some green-tinged species with no hair that actively glared at me. I smiled and let go of them. Okay so alive bodies, that was definitely a plus, maybe things weren’t so bad after all.
Then something devoured the person next to me. It was large, wider than a house and longer than a train, faster than a train too. As it passed I could only make out gray flesh and the sound of crunching. A leviathan! It turned around in the water and swam back towards me, towards the group of people. Well, that's not good.
People all started to scatter and not to be an outlier I followed suit swimming and kicking with as much fervor as my body could manage. I propelled myself down but I wasn't fast enough. My foot caught on the Leviathan’s side as it zoomed past me, and the momentum sent me spinning away, I tried to get ahold of myself but my vision was swimming more than I was and I couldn't make anything out. The only thing that I knew was that the creature had found another snack as there were more sounds of it eating. Still disoriented I tried to at least swim away from the sound. I was failing though the crunching sound instead of diminishing was getting closer. I was about to panic, the only thing that stopped me from doing so was my forehead suddenly and painfully smacking into something. I'd swam into something? Something hard and sharp so I could rule out the creature.
Before I could look I felt more than saw the creature approach, it swam over me blocking out the sun, like some sort of figure of doom. my eyes managed to focus just enough to see it swim over to a group of two pink-haired creatures swallowing them in an instant, it then whipped around to approach a creature that was trying to dig itself into the sand.
While it was preoccupied I tried to calm down and think things through rationally: there was no fighting or outswimming that thing, that meant hiding. What I had swam into was some coral, there was a decently sized coral forest down here on the sandy floor. It might make a good hiding spot but the coral was brittle and if that leviathan found me then nothing would stop it from killing me. I needed a better hiding place. I tried to look all around me. Besides the coral there wasn't anything more viable, a stone was jutting from underneath the sand and a person was clutching to it, and there was a patch of seaweed that went up to my knees. In that case, the coral would have to do, I had to think of some escape strategy, sneak away when it's gone or sleeping?
The leviathan shifted turning back around coming my way and I clung onto the coral hoping it hid me enough for now. As it turned I could see behind it was a cliff wall. It looked like it rose up for miles, and on that rock wall was a series of cracks that ran along its surface. A few cracks looked big enough and deep enough that they could have been mistaken for crevices and it appeared big enough to fit me inside.
The Leviathan plunged into the sand swallowing both the stone and the person that had been clutching to it, as it pulled its head back and around to chase another target I could see where the person had been was a bunch of teeth marks. It was a sickening image but the thing was facing away from me now, if I was going to swim over to that crack it had to be now.
I launched myself off of the coral and kicked out against the water trying to muster as much strength as I could in my legs. I should have rested a bit before I came here, my legs were still sore from the hike I had gone on not too long ago. My muscles burned with the overexertion and my lungs felt like they were going to give out. I really needed to work out more if I survived. I wasn't out of shape but I definitely wasn't fit enough to be swimming away from a huge sea leviathan. Thankfully the thing hadn’t spotted me yet, and as the feet from me and the crack diminished, my hope started to soar, I kept thinking that any moment the leviathan would be behind me to swallow me whole but I finally passed the entrance of the crevice and made it to safety. I stopped to catch my breath as I looked around, it was just big enough that two people could fit in and went 6 feet back until it ended in a pointed groove.
I peeked outside, the leviathan wasn't anywhere to be seen. I could spot a little bit of movement past the coral reef but that was the only other sign of life other than the man right in front of me. He was wrinkled and gray and had the same idea as I had to try to swim toward the crack for safety. As he swam he stretched his hand out and I grasped it. His face flooded with relief as I started to pull him in and then he was gone, replaced with a wall of flesh as the leviathan dove down upon him. I stumbled the leviathan pulling me forward with its momentum until I managed to pull myself back inside the safety of the crevice. it took a few moments for my mind to understand what had happened but then I looked down to see I was still holding the man's hand and everything clicked all at once. It looked so human. It was the only thing left of him, a gray wrinkled arm that was severed around the shoulder joint. It sank to the bottom of the crack as I tossed it away in horror, that had been someone's arm, a living person's arm. A living person that had died while I held on to them.
The adrenaline that had been pumping through my veins this entire time was starting to die down and in its wake, I was beginning to really comprehend what was happening. That voice had said Designation: food, had we really been sent here to feed this thing? We were the food. that pissed me off, who the hell had the right to toss these people's lives away! I wanted to punch someone but I doubt the person involved would suddenly show up to help me realize my goal so instead I tried to bottle my anger and focus on helping anyone else that I could.
The leviathan was attacking some people over a past reef and besides it and the fish, there wasn't any other movement. There had been so many people but I couldn't see anyone anymore. I hoped they were hiding like I was so I stayed near the edge of the crevice in case anyone else had the idea to swim over here, this time I would be faster. No one moved though, no one moved beside the leviathan who swam up high enough that I couldn't see it, I could see its shadow though rolling across the ground never leaving. Waiting.
It didn't have to wait long. Within twenty minutes there was a group of bubbles that came from the coral area, big enough that I could spot them. Seconds later the water near the coral turned a reddish hue and a humanoid swam out being chased by a large flat sand-colored fish, the fish tore into the thing's leg and he let out even more bubbles from his mouth. In an instant, both the man and fish were swallowed whole by the leviathan.
So it wasn’t just the Leviathan I needed to worry about? Other things could harm me here. Sure the leviathan would never get me where I am but those fish might be a problem. I hadn’t changed out of my hiking gear when I teleported so I was somewhat prepared. I had cargo pants, my first pocket had been filled with salt(for spirits and ghosts) which was all but useless having dissolved into the water. My other pockets were useful at least I had some jerky on me, a flashlight that most likely wasn’t working, Sophia's glasses, and a pocket knife, which would hopefully be enough to defend against smaller fishes.
The leviathan rose up and then did sweeping movements up and down like it was a sort of roller coaster, it swam around the whole area in a wide circle, swooping down to brush right next to the coral before disappearing to the left. For several seconds I saw nothing and a part of me wanted to poke my head outside to see where it was before a giant eye rose slowly to cover the entrance of the crevice. Just the eye itself was larger than I was tall and it had both the look and danger of a black hole. A black hole was unthinking though, it was just unfeeling destruction. This eye was staring at me, piercing me with its intelligent gaze.
I grimaced, it would have been easier to sneak away if the leviathan didn't know I was here. it would have eventually dropped its guard or maybe left the area letting me get to safety. Now though it might try to get to me, try to wait me out, it made escaping a lot more difficult.
I touched my head. there was a foreign feeling similar to when I had touched the device that brought me here, this time though it felt different. like a tentacle was perversely touching my brain.
A voice came from nowhere,” Ahh so something managed to hide in the cracks.” Was that the Leviathan talking? As it spoke its body drifted away from the crevice so that I could start to see more of it than its eye. ”The moment you were brought here your fates were sealed. Surrender your lives now and I shall make their ending as painless as possible.“ It sounded deep and male, it was sexy in a ted bundy type of way. So it wasn’t some mindless beast, I wanted to lash out at it with all my hatred but my emotions wouldn't hurt it, they would just get me killed, I had to stay in control of myself. It had drifted out enough that I could fully see it and I dropped to my knees, my mind roaring in outrage back towards the voice.
“You’re ridiculous,” I spat. It seemed to chuckle at that.
"I'm patient and have nothing but time, your death can be a slow painful thing if you wish.”
“You killed all those people, and you look so…silly. The least you could do is look the part of a scary sea monster, imagine how embarrassed those people in the afterlife are going to be finding out that they got killed by you.” I could feel through whatever linked the two of us together that my words meant little to him, he was sort of bored actually.
“You're not the first to try and insult me, when the weak have their weapons and technology stripped away, the only thing they have left is their words,” it said,” and what a hollow thing those are.”
“I wasn't trying to insult you, I was just stating a fact,” I said honestly, and well he was ridiculous. He looked like someone had taken a dolphin and then stretched it out to make it look like a Chinese dragon, it looked just wrong.
I looked out past the leviathan to the empty ocean, was Jeremy there-had Jeremy been there in the group of people? “Why are you doing this?” it didn't respond though, not with words but feelings I could feel a deep uncaring urge to kill, to hunt, to hurt. It was so strong for a second that I nearly puked. Then the connection cut out as it started to swim down slowly descending.
I leaned back into the crevice until I was as far back as I could go and stared at its eye. It wasn't looking at me, however, I could sense that it was looking downward, focusing on something else. I didn't have the energy left to care. I felt so tired just then. The hike, no sleep, and then fast-paced swimming had sapped out any energy I had left. I picked up a heavy rock that had been lying on the bottom of the crevice and then placed it on my lap so I wouldn't be swept outside the crevice in my sleep. It was the most uncomfortable place I'd ever slept but I was out in seconds.