When I saw on Melissa’s Fandango Flash Fiction Challenge this photo of what appears to be a giant bioluminescent octopus, my Sci-Fi muse woke up and motivated me to write a deep sea horror tale. Writing such stories is not something I do very often, so please forgive me if I stretched the bounds of plausibility. I suggest putting aside your inclination for disbelieve and go with the flow.
The emergency sirens had been silent for three hours when Captain Cal Morgan finally convinced himself to look at the viewport again.
The thing wrapped around Deep Station Osiris shouldn’t exist. Not at this depth. Not at this size. Certainly not glowing with that impossible bioluminescence — electric blue suckers pulsing in rhythm with something that might have been a heartbeat, might have been a distress signal, might have been worse.
“It’s still there,” whispered Lt. Sarah Chan from the communications terminal, her voice hoarse from disuse. Of course it was still there. They’d tried everything: flood lights, sonar bursts, even venting heated water from the reactor coolant. The creature hadn’t moved. It had simply tightened its grip, those massive tentacles cinching around the station’s spine like a vice.
The captain pressed his palm against the reinforced glass. The skin beneath those luminous suckers rippled with a texture that reminded him of human muscle tissue under a microscope — striated, purposeful. Wrong.
“The supply ship arrives in six days,” Lt. Chan said, though they both knew it didn’t matter. The hull stress indicators were climbing. They had maybe forty-eight hours before something critical failed.
Sarah finally turned from her screens. “I translated more of the signal.”
“And?”
“It’s not random. It’s… counting down. Has been since it attached to us.”
The blue lights pulsed again, hypnotic and patient. Cal noticed for the first time how they seemed to sync with the station’s own lighting. How the rhythm matched his breathing. How Sarah’s fingers tapped the same beat against her console.
“How long?” he asked.
“Seventeen hours. Seventeen hours until it reaches zero.”
In the viewport’s reflection, Cal saw his own eyes catching the blue light, holding it. He wondered if the creature was outside the station at all, or if it had been inside all along, waiting in the deepest, darkest parts of them to finally surface.
The countdown continued. The deep welcomed them home.
Image credit: Sigmund @ Unsplash.
It had been a while since Grant last used his treadmill and he though he was settling to a decent rhythm when he slipped and fell off. Oh the horror!
Facts, Fictions & Fantasies 