Deep, Deep Ocean

by Carter Bowman

  “I thought you’d become lost, but you did well to find your way. Now it’s time to rest.” The words came out more naturally, the monster growing accustomed to speaking out loud as Luffy had.

  The breath of the creature washed over the two of us — sickeningly sweet, but with an undertone of curdling rot, the same taste that had filled my mouth seeing my father with the fake woman.

  I followed that picture backwards into my memory. The woman did not appear remotely real in retrospect — she was as cheap an imitation of real life as this endless circle — blending into the spiral of manufactured light and colors. This thought sparked its own flame of understanding — why the machines and sounds had become more tinny and fake, why we saw less people and became increasingly unnoticed the further we walked.

  This place isn’t real. We passed from the real world to some place lower without ever realizing it.

  I felt small, trapped, and most of all, dumb. All of the pieces had clicked into place a moment too late, a lifetime of preparation culminating in one fatal mistake. A passage from my book, Big and Small Fish of the Ocean floated through my memory.

  Female anglerfish possess a luminescent organ called an esca on top of a modified dorsal fin that is used to lure prey in the dark of the ocean floor.

  It had all been a trap from the beginning. The woman, an esca herself, had been nothing more than a dangling light to lure in prey. This place, the lights, the flashing images, they were distractions from the razor-sharp teeth clamping around the unsuspecting victims’ throats.

  The anglerfish is also capable of distending its jaw, allowing the fish to consume prey close to twice its own size.

  Maybe this monster from the depths of the ocean had been small once, maybe as small as Luffy, but had eaten its way into this wretched state. It was poisoned, green, and heaving in its own pain. Pus seeped from a sore on the monster’s belly, oozing a yellow liquid that sent quivering spasms beneath its flesh.

  Luffy did not respond. I didn’t think that he could.

  “Do not be afraid. I can taste your fear — thick, a little salty. It’s good, but I want more from you, little one.”

  “Luffy,” said my friend, his voice quivering. There was a determination beneath the fear, though. I was proud of him in that moment, it was more courage than I felt. I didn’t know if I would be able to open my mouth even if I wanted to at this moment.

  “Did you not learn speech during your time here?” asked the monster. There was no emotion, only heaving and grumbling from its stomach.

  “It’s Luffy. My name is Luffy,” my friend said, poking his bald head around my shoulder.

  Something rumbled from the surface of the monster, something guttural and cruel, an earthquake that rocked the false room to its core. It was as unlike any laughter I had heard before, including the shallow chuckling of my father. It was a cold sound, without warmth or sympathy.

  “You have no more name than the food we eat. Or, I should say,” it paused, “the food I eat.”

  The veins trembled in excitement. The monster pushed itself towards us on legs buried beneath flesh. The words sank in with dull horror, impossible and true in the same breath.

  The esca is also used to call for male partners.

  The cold truth coursed from my brain to my feet, pulling me downward in a wave of nausea and hopelessness. It was too large. It could reach too far with its tendrils, more like tentacles, as it writhed in the darkness. Only the light trapped beneath the skin of the tentacles cast any illumination around the dimmed room, snapping in excitement as the monster heaved towards its prize. It was as one of these tendrils slapped, wet and slopping against its own skin, that the pattern of black sores came into focus.

  Faces.

  It would not have been a face in any other time of my life, only a contortion of shapes twisting into an expression with enough imagination. But this was not any other time in my life; I had been taken to places I’d never imagined and spent the past twenty-four hours looking at the face of a boy forced to fight for every genuine expression. The faces looking back at me from the flesh of the monster had also fought for real emotions, had drunk peoples’ dreams, and followed the call to this spot only to be sucked down the throat of their caller. They looked back now without expression or recognition. Images of images, immobilized trophies of the monster’s meals.

  “Wait…” the gasp escaped Luffy’s lipless mouth as he recognized the patterns in the monster’s skin as well.

  We did not talk, we couldn’t. We could only run. I pulled Luffy with all my strength, tearing him off his feet as we tore through the valley of slot machines. The grumbling roar behind us bounced around the metal as the monster gave chase. Machines crashed behind us, throwing noise and plastic over our heads.

  We can make it back, I thought, holding onto the shred of hope. The door away from the imaginary room was yards ahead, the light brighter on the other side. The monster could not blend in. It could not vanish into a crowd like we could, our only hope of escape. Peoples’ shapes passed across the other side of the doorway — a current of legs and bodies to hide in.

  Tentacles swirled, snapping at our heels, but too slow to wrap around our legs. A pair of squirming blue veins coiled around the door frame, making an effort to stop our progress. We were stronger than the tendrils, though, and could punch and kick as much as it took to survive.

  But the tentacles did not even move to impede our escape. Instead, with a simple flick, as though snipping a cord, they cut the doorway across from us. A sheet was thrown in front of our path, the light across the frame grew dim, and the outlines of people vanished. Our feet responded too slowly, and we crossed through the veil to find ourselves alone in another empty room.

  “Where did they go?” I cried, not understanding. I had been counting on other people, depending on the witnesses.

  “She cut the doorway,” said Luffy, fear trickling from his body into mine with shuddering trembles. “This didn’t go… This didn’t go how it was supposed to.”

  We couldn’t afford to stop and think. Another crash reverberated behind us. The monster was at the doorway, tendrils throwing shadows across our path.

  “Can you find another one? Can you make another door?” I asked desperately, pulling him along.

  “It’s not that easy. I’m not strong enough to make a door. I can only find them.”

  We ran down a spiral staircase, the squishing and thumping of the monster behind us keeping up at every turn. It sounded as though she was in pain, spluttering with every heave of its body. I had no doubt though who would give up first if we did not find a solution quickly. Luffy’s grip in my own was already growing weaker.

  “We have to hide,” I said.

  Back in the main room of the casino, the beeps and whoops of the machines sounded far away, as though played through the fizzling static of a car radio. The outlines of people moved around us, single bulbs hovering in the air casting shadows where their bodies existed in some other place. I watched the pulses of these bulbs bounce light back and forth, catching the beats of one another in some soundless pattern. They could not help; they were as far apart from us as we were from the safety of my home and bed. The monster’s esca-humans retained their shapes in this lower layer, still blurry around the edges.

  Another crash behind us, the bloated monster pushed through the door to the main room. Tentacles detached from slot machines, a waitress in a short skirt flew at us, hands baring claws that stretched into deadly talons. Luffy pulled me away at the last second, and the claws ripped at empty air. Down another row of machines, the bulbs of people became streetlights guiding our way. But there was nowhere to go, not unless Luffy could find another parting in the fabric back to the real world.

  One of these bulbs belonged to my father. I wondered if he could feel the danger that I was in so close to him. I knew that if he was here he would come up with some plan, that he would outsmart the monster and take us all home. He was not here,
though — not in any way that mattered.

  The thought hurt.

  “This way,” said Luffy, pulling me towards the great arch of the casino’s entrance. Outside was as dim as the monster’s lair, but Luffy’s decisiveness gave me a new glimmer of hope.

  “You know where there’s a parting we can escape through?” I asked between panting breaths. Luffy did not answer, a hard line instead forming across his smooth face.

  He’s just concentrating, I thought. He has a plan, he’s smart, he’ll save us for sure.”

  The deserted beach outside of the casino stretched a longer distance than I would have thought possible. Towels and umbrellas spread away from one another. The ocean had retreated so much farther away than it had been when we arrived.

  The monster burst through the door behind us, angry yells slurping through its gash of a mouth. “I’ll drag you back. All you’re doing is wearing yourself out. I called you here, you think you can very well run away?”

  Our feet sank into the marshy sludge of wet sand. I pulled against the glopping mess, but the struggle was only causing my legs to sink more deeply. Meanwhile, the shoreline was growing further and further away, its ocean stretching out of sight. Beside me, Luffy had lost all balance and was crawling on hands and knees through the sand swallowing his limbs.

  “Get up, get up!” I pulled at his body, but the sand was hardening like cement around his tiny form.

  Everything tilted. The world was dragging us away from the shore, umbrellas tipping backwards as gravity funneled us backwards into the monster. I turned to look down the slope of the beach towards the center of the hole, where the green form burst with tentacles and bellowing wheezes.

  This is the end. There was no plan beyond this. We were fish trapped in the net, hopeless against the pull of an inarguable gravity.

  I would never see my family again.

  I didn’t make things better, I thought, a wave of sadness coursing through me stronger even than my fear of the monster beckoning us in.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to Luffy, trapped beside me. We had said the words to each other many times over the past day, but this time felt the hardest to say. It was an admittance of defeat, a surrender to the truth that my whole life would culminate in one mistake I couldn’t take back.

  Luffy allowed a sad smile to part his lips. It was no imitation of another’s face, not something he could have learned from any book. It was his own emotion, as much an apology as my own.

  “Don’t be,” he said. Then with a free hand, Luffy parted the world beneath me.

  I felt the fabric of reality give under my feet, the sand dropping away as my body tumbled through the darkness into a deeper, distant world. I crashed into thick water, darkness enveloping me as I submerged into its depths.

  Though every part of me had already given up, I struggled to the surface of the black ocean. Nothing changed in my vision when I broke the surface, only the sensation of air filling my lungs gave any sense of relief from the water, spreading to every muscle of my body as I waded in the water. It was neither warm nor cold, and what swirled beneath my kicking feet went endlessly, endlessly downward. I was sure, wading in that other world’s ocean, that I could swim for my whole life, what was left of it, and never come close to the bottom where dark things lived.

  I could go no further down, but I could still swim. I turned in the water, looking for a shore in the distance.

  A faint line of violet against black.

  It was not the blue of the ancient road Luffy had taken me to. Perhaps it was an even deeper world still, deeper even than time’s hand could touch. I began swimming, thinking back on the lessons my father had taken me to just three summers ago. I had been one of the best in the class, graduating beyond the kick board after the first week. Swimming had come naturally, merely something that I had to get through in order to be allowed to jump from the highest diving board at the pool. I wondered what my Dad would say if he could see me now, kicking through the invisible currents of the deepest ocean with my very life in my hands.

  He would probably be proud of me.

  I didn’t feel very proud of myself. Luffy was still back on that beach, a distance away so great that no amount of swimming could ever bring it back into view. Not that it mattered anymore. The violet shore was growing, illuminating a strip of something solid that rose from the black water. My feet touched ground, and, sopping wet, I pulled myself onto the quiet shore.

  There wasn’t a point in taking my soaked clothes off without anyone here to tell me I would catch a cold if I left them on. There wasn’t a temperature to catch. It was flat here, far from anything that could be considered my world. Sitting on the deep shore, I looked out at the black ocean, counting the ripples that lapped at the stoneless beach.

  There isn’t a way home.

  There was no door, no one to take my hand. I’d been led this whole time — driven, pushed, and pulled every which way, and it had all come to a screeching halt with nowhere left to go.

  I did not know how long I stared at that ocean, allowing sadness to roll in tides over me. I did not have enough energy in my limbs to lift myself. Without a point, without anywhere to go, I could only sit, watching an indistinct shape swell on the water.

  It may have been as my vision adjusted to the deep world, or perhaps I was simply sinking into the perspective of the place, but I could see a ship floating closer to the beach. The boat slid across the water — a silent thing, very old, and clearly dead. It was a wooden ship, the kinds in stories with a great sail that now hung in tatters around the mast, no longer pulled by the windless sky. Some current of that black ocean was dragging it towards the shore after how many years lost without a single star to guide it. I wondered how long it had been abandoned, how long ago the ship’s inhabitants had died while searching for a way home.

  Something moved aboard the ship. It was only the smallest flicker of life, but I was sure that something moved across its deck.

  “Hey!” the cry escaped my dry throat.

  You didn’t see anything. You wanted someone to come for you on a boat and you imagined it.

  But what if?

  I ran splashing into the sea, my legs finding new energy as I kicked up heavy water around me. It was still a few hundred yards away, but it would see me. It had too.

  No voices called back from the boat.

  That’s okay, I reasoned, they’re still far away. They’ll save me. They won’t leave me alone.

  Through what hole in the fabric had they fallen? How afraid must they have been when the world had gone dark. Maybe they hadn’t noticed at first, maybe I would be the first sign of life they had seen in a long time.

  Something slimy swirled around my body as, all in a moment, the ship collapsed. What had been a great mast burst into tentacles, its hull detaching as the false ship vanished beneath the black ocean. It was too late for me to fight back, the swirling around my submerged waist became a solid vise as something invisible dragged me beneath the surface.

  Water filled my mouth and nose as whatever created the ship pulled me into the ocean. I kicked and screamed, bubbles rising up and away from me to the surface. I clawed at the slimy tentacle wrapped around my waist, begging for release. Its grip was strong, but the years alone had left it brittle and rotten. My fingernails dug into its fleshy surface, causing the thing beneath the waveless ocean to spasm in pain. At first, its grip tightened, pulling me further from the surface, but I managed to catch a fold in its flesh and tore with the last my meager might.

  A low rumble came from somewhere deep below me. The murmuring thing shifted in the depths, slow and old in the lightless ocean. I ripped again, pulling at loose skin as its grip slackened. A pitiless laugh rumbled from the fathoms as the tentacle holding me retreated and I struggled for the surface.

  Without light to guide me, only the breaking of the ocean’s surface and the stale air of that world filling my burning lungs acknowledged my escape. I scrambled for the shore,
my feet catching the beach once again.

  I ran.

  I ran from the water and the evil things beneath its surface. My feet carried me into the hues of violets and greens that dotted the deep place. I ran because the moment I stopped, another tentacle would wrap around me and I wouldn’t have the strength to fight. I knew the moment my legs gave out, they would never get up again. I was too far away from my family to ever be found. They could drive all they wanted, travel straight through the night, and it would never become dark enough to find this place.

  Jutting shapes rose and fell from the ground — promises of buildings and houses full of holes — wrapping their frames into contorted arcs. A hollow mountain curved across the horizon, no more than a distant crescent. I changed direction towards it, needing any landmark to make a destination.

  The mountain rose too quickly to meet me. After a few short steps, I realized it was no mountain at all. What had seemed like a great structure was nothing more than arch barely larger than a house. It could be the hint at anyone’s home back in that other world I had called mine, a place that provided comfort and safety to people who had never been reckless enough to leave. I tripped, falling headlong before the hollow arch. The ground was hard, the scrape on my knee recoiling angrily at the impact.

  What do I do now?

  The quiet world looked down on me, and I looked back at it. There were no stars in the sky. I wondered if there were no worlds beyond this one — no moons to explore and no galaxies to rocket away to. Or if there were, they must not have any light of their own. I thought this was what the view from the bottom of the ocean must be like. I thought about Luffy, who’d come so far, swimming from the depths to my world filled with stars only to have his journey cut painfully short.

  He did let you escape, though, a small, new voice thought.

  But it doesn’t matter, the familiar, older me responded. You’re too little to do anything by yourself.

  But without him you wouldn’t be here at all. Luffy is smart, he didn’t save you for no reason.