Lawrence University Creative Writing Club Spring Serial Story
I awoke with a terrible headache, still not sure if I was alive or dead. Mechanical hums and clanks surrounded me.
Down to the deep. Down to the deep. Down to the deep. Those ghostly sailors’ chants still rang in my ears. I checked my limbs. They still ached, but they were all flesh, no wood.
“Iiiit waaaaakessss,” a slimy voice gurgled beside me. I leapt up swinging. I heard the beast whimper and slither away. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, all I could perceive was a fearsome beast. Towering twice my size, its body was a grotesque gelatinous mass, and tentacles hung from its face like willow branches. The beast cowered half in the blackness, half out.
“Back, you kraken! Foul beast of the deep!” I bellowed like Poseidon brewing up a stormy sea. “Back to Davy Jones’ Locker! Back to the wretched depths whence you came!”
“Iiiit ataaaaacksss,” the creature groaned as it shuddered.
“Do not be afraid, sir!” piped a tiny voice from behind the beast. I saw a curious light swim around its side to greet me. It was a tiny fish, no bigger than a minnow, with a bright and brilliant light coming from its head. It was liable to be accidentally swallowed, should I continue shouting.
“You’re perfectly safe, sir. I, Lumen, am merely an assistant of Doctor Morga here, the most brilliant doctor of the seas.”
“But…it’s a beast! A kraken! It was about to eat me!” I stammered.
“…………….Iiiit stuuuuupid.”
“Now now, Morga, the surfacers just brought him down yesterday,” the tiny fish explained.
As they bickered, I tried my best to remember the events of the past few days: the shipwreck, drifting, those pirate spirits, that strange glowing fish I had eaten. I looked around the underwater office. Flames flickered safe and dry inside small, round lamps. Beside the operating table on which I awoke, there were bone saws fashioned from sawfish heads, seaweed being used for tourniquets, and curious bottles of glowing tonics and medicaments crowding every shelf. Fish medical and taxonomic charts lined the walls.
“Where am I?” I asked.
“Thheeee Deeeeeeep,” Morga groaned.
“Indeed,” Lumen nodded. “We welcome you to our sea kingdom; the Trenchside neighborhood, to be precise. Don’t worry,” Lumen said, shining his light on one of the taxonomy charts on the walls. There was a kraken, no doubt, and creature that looked just like Morga; distant, but sharing the same branch.
“If Morga here was a true kraken, you’d no doubt be in Davy Jones’ Locker by now.”
“Yooouuuu diiiisrespeeeect,” Morga murmured.
“Yes, yes, of course. I meant no disrespect to our king. It’s an expression these human sailors are fond of. The surfacers say it all the time. What is your name?” Morga dragged a slimy clipboard out from beneath his great tentacled mass.
“Lennerd…Lennerd van der Veen. I was on a ship, the Zeedraak. We set out from Amsterdam with a cargo of wine. We left Lisbon three days ago, then the storm came up and…”
I put my face in my hands. I was breathing underwater and talking to fish. Life on the sea teaches you to expect the unexpected, but this was unthinkable. It’s exactly why my mother had wished me not to return. If only I had listened.
“Well, Lennerd, you’ve already answered our next questions, so let’s move straight ahead to the medical examination, shall we? Are you in any pain?”
“My arms are tired and sore, but I’m still ready to fight if any of you creatures try anything,” I warned.
“It seems an examination of your throat would be hazardous to my health, so I’ll leave that be for now,” the tiny fish said, dimming his light.
“I need to go back to the surface,” I demanded.
“Of course!” Lumen chimed. “Those ghostly surfacers are a little overeager to add new sailors to their ranks. As soon as we finish, we’ll give you a special concoction to clear your memory and wash you ashore. Would you prefer Lisbon or Amsterdam?”
Before I could answer, I heard a deafening noise. Across whatever landscape lay outside, enough trumpets to topple a thousand Jerichos blared a frantic warning.
“SHIPFALL! EVERYBODY TAKE COVER!!” Lumen screamed. Morga moved faster than I thought possible. I knew not where to hide, or what we were hiding from. All I could see was the dark blue windows turning black as the faint sunlight from the surface was blocked out. A great noise moved closer. I ducked under the operating table.
CRASH
The hull of a ship smashed through the structure with a deafening noise. Stone and splinters drifted everywhere through the dusty, churning water. When the chaos had settled at last, I was but two feet away from familiar, freshly-painted letters, ZEEDRAAK. The memories came flooding back fiercer than ever before, the very same ship returning to me to stare me down, as if taunting me.
“Lennerd!”
I saw Lumen’s light weaving through the rubble.
“So glad you’re unhurt! These shipfalls happen every so often. Morga’s office has been lucky for a couple decades now, but his luck had to run out sometime.”
“This ship…” I murmured, “It was mine.”
“I see,” Lumen acknowledged, studying the wreck, until he stopped with a gasp. His light flickered nervously.
“These…these…t…tentacle m…marks,” he stuttered as Morga lumbered into view.
I strained my eyes to see what had got the fish spooked. Then I saw it. Timbers smashed clean through and smoothed with strange circular marks, like a grindstone had been taken to them. It was damage unlike anything I had seen. If those fine, sturdy timbers were brought to such a state, I scarcely wanted to imagine what they had done to my shipmates.
Morga let out a deep, grumbling, and bubbly sigh.
“Iiiit kraaaaaaaken,” he muttered.
“This is bad…this is dreadful…” Lumen squeaked. “Lennerd…I’m sorry, but you can’t go back. We simply can’t afford to let you go.”
“What?!” I bellowed, blasting Lumen off course.
“The king will want to see you…and there’s no refusing the king.”
I felt a chill run through my veins. If they meant who I thought they meant…
“We have to get you to the ladders right away; you must tell him everything. Thank Neptune we’re so close!”
“Ladders?”
“Trenchside lies on the edge of the Deepest Dark, the Blackest Black, the Hadal Abyss, the realm of Jones himself. We must take the ladders down; they’re only a short swim away. Follow us.”
One of Morga’s great tentacles blocked his path.
“Iiiit skiiiiitiiiiiiishh,” Morga said, gesturing to me.
“Oh, for Jones’ sake, fine, but not too tightly!” Lumen said.
Morga grabbed some old ship’s rope and bound not my hands, but my legs. I had no hope of swimming away now. With another rope attached, they simply pulled me along.
“Are you ready for your first taste of Trenchside?” Lumen asked with cheer.
“I demand you to unbind me! Let me go!” I shouted.
“We’re dreadfully sorry—Morga is too, trust me—but you could help save us all.”
“Why me?! From what?”
“It looks like we have a kraken on the loose.”
Days of oxygen left: 6