AN ABYSSAL ENCOUNTER Erin Price, Year 10
The water grew colder. Colder and darker as he drove deeper into the abyss. Icy fingers of fear gripped his heart and pulled him deeper into the sea. His initial idea was to head back up to the surface when get got confirmation through his earpiece that it was safe to do so, however, all he could hear was the occasional static in the deafening silence. Fear soon crept up on him and attacked him like the plague. Every movement of his limbs became sluggish and cumbersome as though the water had thickened to a gelatinous mass, dragging him down into its suffocating embrace. His oxygen tank began to weigh against his back pushing further and further into the deep. No sign of life. Completely desolate. The flashlight began to falter; he looked down at it with great concern plastered across his face and smacked it against his palm repeatedly to try and surge some more light out of it. A flicker. Two flickers. Pitch black. His breathing intensified rapidly, fear had overcome him completely now, still, he thrashed the flashlight against his palm to no avail. There was no sense of direction now, no up, no down, no left, no right. Just the darkness that had engulfed him. Anxious and paranoid he waited, waited for something, waited for anything. Nothing. No sound whatsoever, no voice through the earpiece giving him any instructions. Nothing. He frantically swam, hoping he was headed upwards, towards the boat that he had departed from. His heart pounded in his chest. But then, suddenly, he saw it. A slight glimpse of light in the void. A small glowing orb beckoned him closer. He swam towards it slowly as he regained his breath. He watched the light as it glided through the vast expanse of darkness and he became almost transfixed by the spectral atmosphere it carried with it.
Some comfort came with knowing he wasn’t the only thing that far down in the ocean, however, that comfort became swiftly displaced with fear and dread once more as he got close enough to see where the light had come from. A grotesque fusion of nightmare and reality was face to face with him. Protruding teeth ejected from its gaping mouth like stalactites and stalagmites that would be found in a subterranean cave, its fer ociously ginormous body was made up of mottled rusty hues and its busted up fins moved with a petrifying elegance. It swam closer to him. Ever so slightly closer. He had become paralyzed by fear and he wondered over and over in his head how something that seemed so beautiful could have spawned from something so hideously ugly. The angler fish’s foggy eyes, full of malevolence, gazed upon him as though it had laid eyes on the most delectable meal one could imagine. His entire body trembled with fear but at the same time, he remained frozen. The angler remained frozen also. A loud whirring blared in his ears, somewhat knocking some sense into him. The phosphorescent glow of the angler fish’s lure gave him a better understanding of the way back up to the surface, and so he swam – swam like he had never swam before. The static tat came from the earpiece had died down and the crackly sound of a voice could be distinguished. He kept heading upwards. The water began to lighten more and more as he returned up towards the surface. He could see his arms, stretching out in front of him and holding the dead flashlight. He looked down to see his feet, cloaked by sleek, black flippers, and beyond his feet, the deep blue from which he had escaped. Relief was the only thing he could feel as he heard the instructor’s voice over the earpiece again, clear as day.
Jelly[fish] A piece of writing by Rhianna Ellinson, Year 12, inspired by this photograph of a fish trapped inside a beached jellyfish.
Is that true? It's what I've been told. It's kind of nice here. Quite dry, but nice. Peaceful. Still. I'm glad I'm not alone. You never will be again. Do you have a family? I did, once. I do. Seven kids, can you imagine! I dread to think of it. What happened to your family? Where are they now? On a plate. There's a restaurant over there, where humans eat. Apparently, we're a delicacy in this region. I'm sorry. Why did you stay here then? The tide told me to. And you followed her, blindly? What use is fighting the tide? She is as certain as death, as definite as life. She holds all the answers and keeps all secrets. Only a fool would dare to defy I would. You? I would fight the tide. If it meant I could see my family again.
I think it's the sky I can see, wispy clouds and diving birds, although you can never be too sure. Is that an aeroplane, is that the sun, is that the irrepressible hand of death come to finally wrap me in her clutches, or just a kite flying softly in the summers breeze? Is that pain I feel, an odd sensation, like minnows burrowing through my scales? Is that buzzing a real sound, are those crackles real, or just some feeble attempt of my consciousness to keep me remaining here? Are they grains of sand? Is that laughter or tears? Is this the afterlife? Will I see my family ever again? When will there be an answer?
I don't know. Who are you?
Everything. Nothing. I am all around you. You are a part of me, forever. We will never be separated, in life or death. Is this death? I don't know. All I know is fate has bound us together. Why? That's another answer I don't have.
How do we find out? We wait for the tide. She holds all the answers.
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