Whalefall

by Daniel Kraus

positive that humans were to blame. Probably true, but it’s also humans who invented the BCD, and without it, Jay would be under the kelp already, a place thick, dark, and confusing.

Hate this

Jay feels decapitated.

Mitt was as curious as a monkey.

Mitt taught him color loss due to light reflection. Another way of intuiting depth. You lose red at twenty feet, orange at twenty-five, yellow at thirty, green at forty. Jay’s in the violet, past sixty feet, past seventy.

He wanted to dive sleek and didn’t bring a flashlight, didn’t intend for this level of descent.

He's so stupid and it's making me mad

Brick-red in actuality, midnight-blue down here, Architeuthis is thirtysome feet long from mantle fins to tentacle toes.

is the moon, pale blue, mottled, massive, dream, legend. Rising. A ship of gods from primordial tar, yard after yard of wrinkled black bulk, a farce of size displacing the entire ocean. There’s an Omega shape in phosphorescent white, and Jay’s stupor permits the dull understanding that this crescent is a mouth, twenty feet of closed mouth, and this obsidian skyscraper is no surfacing Atlantis. No colliding planet. It is a living thing.

Oh shiiiiiiiit

The lords lived below.

YOOOO

Sperm whale clicks are the loudest sounds ever made by a living thing.

and with the largest brain of any animal in history,

the joke being that baleen whales are toothless.

bro u dont have to explain EVERYTHING

Then the whales don’t shit where they’re supposed to. If they don’t shit right, they don’t fertilize the water for the plankton. Plankton offsets more CO2 than the fucking rain forests. Then we all die.

Architeuthis died. But it left behind a gift.

He’s going to be cooked alive.

Ur so dumb like DUH what did u think was gonna happen

GO BACK)))) The whale’s right.

DUH

That’s the sharp gravel beneath the chamber’s slime. So many things died here. Are still dying.

Brain bad. Not think good.

Hell, whale stomachs are full of it. Methane is filling Jay’s lungs right now.

How is this mf alive

Big clouds of bubbles in the water, you can tell right away. So I’m going to help you out, okay? Can you listen?”

rare Mitt W

Maybe Dad’s pride has always been there. Maybe Jay needs to slow his furious breath to see it.

Jay has a thought. Nothing seals to skin like neoprene.

metal asf

might be what Jay needs now. He’s seventeen.

OHHHH

“Here’s how you have to think of it, Jay. The teachers giving you a hard time? They’re the predators. Now, in the ocean, predators have all the advantages. They’re faster than you, they can track you, they can get at you from any angle. What options does that leave for prey like you? Do you know?”

this is an autistic man if i've ever seen one

“Option Five. The prey becomes so dangerous the predators let him go.”

(We miss so much) (We miss the air) (We breathe it only in gasps)

Sharkheartcore

Off the map, lost, no compass except Dad, Dad, Dad.

flotsam

Always has been. Food, oil, devil, god. Inscrutable monster. Only a father.

why is this good

Jay smiles. Good memories are all around. It only took dying for him to rub the sleep from his eyes and see them clearly again.

New Testicle.

With a burly twist, it halts the dive that should have ended Jay’s life.

wut

“Orcinus orca!”

Plot convenience goes craaaaazy

cheerful faces, orcas look like malevolent clowns, so embroiled in the religion of death their markings resemble skulls.

what a BAR

Save the whales: not just an outdated slogan anymore.

Sperms are as social as dolphins, but the adults in their pods are almost wholly female, twenty or thirty caring for their young, rotating babysitting duties while others dive deeper than the calves can manage. Around age four, the male children drift away, form bachelor groups, until the largest males fade into the isolation of polar waters, wandering alone.

On how whales have been known to fill their stomachs with rocks—probably chunks of concrete, too—to weigh themselves down so they drown. Because their lives, without predator pursuits or the limitless expanse of an ocean, are no longer worth living.

Even after the throat widened, Jay’s ride down it had been tight.

oop-

fold flaps louder, a flag in full gale.

Jay’s shoved back down the gullet.

duuuuuuude im over it man

He embraces the heart.

Ur joking :l

Every consumed morsel of your body, your wisdom, your kindness, your art, is another bid for perfection, a chance to get it right this time, or next time, or the time after that.