From Below

by Darcy Coates

“It’s kind of weird, right? The ROVs go out. The main camera and backup camera go out. Our navigation system glitched and sent us twenty miles off course…”

“There won’t be any sharks down there,” Hestie piped up.

The black holds them in its hands. The void, beautiful, voracious. They want more air but there’s none to take, just the deep thick water. Skin turns white as they try to hold their breath inside. They can’t. The bubbles vanish from their gaping mouth. You watch as they drown.

“Yes. Yes.” Fitz nodded, his shimmering eyes too large for his head, his sweaty face painted in the off-yellow glow of their lights. “The tapping. Yes.”

Ship construction was a dangerous sport. A liner that hadn’t tasted blood of some kind was a rarity. Fitz looked at his drink for a second time and then, for the second time, put it aside. “Maybe not. But this beast chewed through them like they were candy. And I think that’s got to do something to a ship, yeah? It’s got to leave a mark of some kind.”

“I’m saying maybe those lost souls are wanting retribution.” Fitz rose, jaw working as he shambled toward the exit.

“Nothing big was ever achieved without a little risk.” Roy took another deep breath and let it out as a languid sigh. “That’s basically my life motto, bud.” “I thought your motto was eat five Hot Pockets or die trying.”

She lifted her head to visually chase the bubbles toward the ceiling, and that was when she saw it: the ragged end of the broken walkway, still attached to one of the upper walls. And connected to that, a door. Their way out.