Sixty Minutes Until Contact

The sun was setting in streaks of dark red and burnt orange under deepening purple. The yacht, many miles from shore, was only a speck on the calm waters of the open ocean. There was nothing else as far as the eye could see – nothing to disturb the friends as they sat on the yacht’s deck, watching the sun slowly dropping as the night rose.

Marek was sitting on a deck chair at the back of the boat facing the sunset, holding a glass of cider in his hand as the mild breeze wisped through his mussy brown hair. Ahead of him, his friend Clint was also reclining in a deck chair – though his focus was less on the sunset, and more on the girl he was snuggling with. Tall and slim, Amy was wide-eyed, bright, and intelligent, with chestnut brown hair. Little wonder that she was with Clint – he was sporty, confident, tall-dark-handsome, the works. Marek was all too aware that it was a painful cliché – but clichés all too often start from a solid basis of observed patterns of truth.

Marek stared at the couple through his sunglasses, trying to avoid making it obvious. As usual when he was around Amy, he had to push down his feelings. He took another sip of cider as the breeze blew salty sea vapour across his face. Clint said something, and Amy laughed. The shadows grew longer.

All the way in front of the trio, Marek’s best friend Peter was sitting by himself on the steps at the rear of the yacht, his feet dangling over the edge and trailing through the water. Strongly built, with an incredible head of hair that seemed permanently styled at all times and in all conditions, Peter was an unceasing hit with the ladies, though he refused to commit. Rather, Marek knew he was intent on enjoying his twenties before settling down once he’d had his ‘fun’.

Aside from his questionable ethics regarding women though, Peter was a great guy. Marek had known him since they were kids, and while they had grown apart for a few years during high school, they had reconnected at university and were firm friends once again.

That was the thread that had woven them onto this yacht – they had all just finished their university studies, and were now celebrating together. For Amy and Clint, who had both studied science, this was to be a brief intermission before they continued on with postgraduate studies, with the aim of becoming doctors. Peter had studied business, or management, or business management of some kind, and was planning to get a job in finance or something similar – although his real dream was to open a bed and breakfast one day. Marek had studied political science, for all the good that would likely do, but he had found it very interesting. Nevertheless, he had only received slightly above-average grades, had done no extracurriculars or internships, and was now facing the fact that it was going to be an uphill battle to get a decent job anywhere good. Ahead of him, Amy laughed again. The shadows grew longer still.

Forty Minutes Until Contact

Against his wishes, Marek’s mind turned toward memories unbidden. The late nights on the phone with Amy during high school, all the time they had spent together as they grew from kids into young adults. He had met her in the first year of high school and had been in love with her ever since – insofar as he imagined he knew what love was, never having been in a relationship. He had never told her of course, not wanting to put their friendship at risk, and now with Clint on the scene for the past few years… well, it just wasn’t going to happen. There was no way was he going to ruin everything for everyone. But he still couldn’t help how he felt, and now there was a deep pit of anxiety, or regret, or some other unpleasant thing anchored within him, a constant reminder of what wasn’t. Of course, it was only made worse when he was around Amy, but the thought of not being around her was not one he wanted to entertain for long. So, he compressed the pit in his stomach in order to remain close to… an idea? Some vision of an alternate life? A glimpse of a long longed-for future, perhaps. Whatever it was he couldn’t let go of, he was keenly aware of how messed up everything was. And everything was made worse by the fact that he and Amy got on so well, could be so open with each other, and had been through so much. All conventional signs pointed towards their relationship becoming more than a friendship, but it had never panned out. Probably because there’s something wrong with me, Marek thought petulantly as he took another swig of cider, now wanting something stronger. He wanted to understand why nothing had ever happened, to ask her what was wrong with him … but like always, he sat in silence while Clint lived out his dream a few metres away. And aside from envy, he couldn’t even feel any ill-will towards Clint, who was a terrific guy who didn’t know the effect he was having. Marek knew his self-pity and self-loathing was pathetic, but all the stuff with Amy just hurt. Better to live in awful limbo than lose a friend. Rock and a hard place…

Twenty Minutes Until Contact

Marek sighed. Rising out of his rumination, he noticed that the waves were getting increasingly larger. The yacht, previously steady on the calm ocean, was now beginning to bob from side to side as it was rocked by the darkening swell. Peter hoisted himself back onto the deck and gave voice to the obvious. “Guys… should we think about heading back?”

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Clint swung off his deck chair, pocketing his sunglasses as he did so. Amy retrieved her coat from nearby and put it on, visibly shivering. “Not a bad idea, Pete,” Clint replied as he studied the surging waves over the side of the yacht. He began to look around. “The shore… should be…” he trailed off. The shore was nowhere in sight. “I can’t see it.”

“No shit,” Peter chided, “we’re in the middle of nowhere.” He sighed. “Well, at least we can’t get further out while the anchor’s down.”

“Too right,” said Clint. “I’m glad you did that.”

Peter’s eyes narrowed. “I did that? No, you did that.” A pause. “Clint, tell me you did that.”

“Why would I have done that?”

“You didn’t drop the anchor?” Peter said venomously.

“No, I didn’t drop the anchor,” Clint shot back, “because you were meant to drop it.”

“No, you were –”

“It doesn’t matter!” Amy shouted, interrupting the bickering duo. “It doesn’t matter,” she said again. “It’s done. Let’s just… just think of something to do now.”

“The compass!” Clint exclaimed. “The compass will point us in the right direction, at least.”

He darted into the yacht’s small cabin and emerged a few seconds later, shaking his head. “It’s just… spinning around in circles.”

Amy groaned.

Peter was anxiously rubbing his forehead with his fingers. “Where the hell is the shore?” he muttered. “Where the hell is the shore?”

Clint looked increasingly panicked. “I don’t know.”

Amy was the first to see it. There was something to the left of them now, far off on the horizon, crossing left to right. The shoreline. She pointed to it just as everyone else noticed it too.

“Thank God! That way!” Clint yelled, grabbing the wheel and swinging the yacht around on a trajectory for the shore.

Ten Minutes Until Contact

After a few minutes of optimism, they sailed close enough to all see the same thing, and their moods dropped. Instead of the shore, it was a wall of fog that lay before them, growing ever higher.

“What the fuck!?” Clint yelled. Amy sat down quietly against the railing. They were all realising the same truth now – they were completely screwed. Instead of heading to the shore, they were now almost certainly even further away, and sailing blindly to top it all off. Marek felt his anxiety rising. This was now, to put it mildly, really bad.

Clint turned the wheel, but nothing happened. He looked around at the other three, bewildered. The yacht sailed onwards toward the fog, as if drawn by an unseen force.

Contact

The fog enclosed them, and they were covered by a shell of cloying grey vapour. No one said a word, and there was no sound except the gurgling of the yacht, cutting onwards through the increasingly rough waters. Sheets of cold rain began to lash across the group as the yacht pushed onwards. Night had well and truly fallen now, with only the crescent moon to illuminate their path, although the fog heavily reduced visibility. Yet despite the worsening conditions, and the fact that they were lost, there seemed no reason to lose all hope.

Then a deafening groan split the air, like some kind of deep, unearthly siren. What the hell was that? Marek thought, as his eyes widened. It had sounded like… an animal? But at the same time, far too loud to be any normal animal. Thunder rumbled from above, only a lesser echo of the otherworldly sound they had heard just before. Then a burst of lightning flashed, illuminating a colossal black shape in the mist, right next to the yacht. It was some kind of towering creature hundreds of metres tall, and appeared to be walking along the ocean floor on several huge, gangled legs. The rain was sending cascades of water sliding down off its body to the sea below. Languid and sedate, it seemed almost formless somehow, and Marek couldn’t make out the entirety of the thing as its body extended backwards to merge into the dark fog. He couldn’t even be sure he had seen the true height of it in his brief glimpses during the lightning. Both the yacht and the creature were heading through the fogbank in the same direction, pulled by some force.

After a few minutes, a glow appeared in front of them, which soon became a swirling vortex of radiant green and blue and purple. The creature and the yacht were travelling right towards the heart of it. As they got closer, Marek noticed that the eldritch maelstrom was giving off some kind of strange radiation; like heat, but slightly off-kilter in a way. The four friends stood motionless as they drew closer and closer to the source of the energy, or whatever it was, all mesmerised by the spectacle in front of them. Then Clint’s eyes exploded, showering Amy with a gooey paste. She screamed as Clint’s body was picked up and hurled against the yacht’s side railing. Marek heard him grunt slightly as his ribs snapped against the metal bars. An instant later, he was flung in the other direction, and disappeared over the side of the yacht and into the fog without a sound. The whole thing was over before any of them could think about reacting.

“What…” Peter began to murmur, eyes wide, before trailing off.

Marek was frozen, unable to process what he had seen. One second Clint had been standing just over there, then…

This was bad. Really bad. Thoughts began to race through his mind, haphazard and random at first, a desired outcome in search of a strategy.

“Dive,” he mumbled after a few seconds.

Amy turned to him, terrified. “… what?”

Overhead, the yacht’s mast creaked and groaned, then exploded into shattered shards of splintered wood.

“Dive!” Marek yelled, snapping out of his paralysis completely. He knew they had to get away from the vortex, or they would all end up like Clint, and whatever the hell had happened to him would prove to be their fates as well.

Peter nodded resolutely, and took a running dive off the back of the yacht.

Marek grabbed hold of Amy’s hand and led her after him as he began to run after Peter. He took a deep breath as their feet left the deck, and they plunged into the cool sea below.

Immediately, he lost his grip on Amy’s hand, and pivoted through the swirling waters to try and find her.

There, against the dull green glow of the vortex, he could see her drifting towards it, a diminishing silhouette, and the smaller figure behind her had to be Peter… they were all still being drawn into the vortex.

Marek’s stomach dropped. The strange energy, though apparently weaker underwater, was still present, and Marek’s head was beginning to hurt more and more as he too was pulled towards whatever end awaited them all. His lungs were burning for air. The vortex drew closer.

Marek gritted his teeth as a resolve took hold of him.

I’M NOT…

GOING…

TO DIE HERE!!!

He felt a rush of air in his ears and his vision went black as the world swung.