I was a little behind on Inktober2020 (same as every year…) and I’m now in the process of playing a bit of catch-up. I’m really out of practice with my drawing, and inking has never been a particular specialty of mine, which I think will be evident as the month goes on. Just as I did last year, for any entry for Inktober that I draw, I want to write a short story to accompany it. And since it’s October, scary stories are definitely encouraged.
Day 1 is “fish”. I decided to draw my favorite fish, the anglerfish.
The water was cold.
Even in the suit, Anya could feel the water’s chill as if it were touching her bare skin, enveloping her from all sides. It made the hairs on her body stand on end, her bones stiffening the longer she spent there. The soft orange glow from her lamp offered little warmth, its color betraying its temperature. She felt as cold as the blackness that surrounded her, and no matter how many times she dove, she never quite prepared herself for the freezing sensation of the ocean’s depths.
Although it failed to keep out the cold, the suit regulated her pressure effectively, for which Anya was grateful. This far deep, she wouldn’t last seconds under the crushing presence of the ocean. The digital fathometer on her sleeve told her she had just passed six thousand feet, her body slowly drifting downwards at a steady pace. The slight tension in the small of her back was the only sensation that grounded her, reminding her that she was tethered to the surface world by a thick rope.
Shit.
A new wave of shivers passed over her body, the last thirty feet adding a new layer of chill to her already cold body. She raised her arms impossibly slowly, her elbows aching with the movement.
The orange light, attached to her other sleeve, illuminated the inky black around her, revealing to Anya that she was entirely alone. Perfect. She was here to collect water samples and was perfectly happy to do so without the company of any wildlife.
Carefully, she began to open the various pouches on her suit one by one, allowing them to fill with the ocean water around her. C’mon, Moritella.
The deep-sea bacteria had been a focus of her team’s research over the past several months, and Anya hoped she would be lucky enough to capture some of the microorganisms on her latest excursion. She hadn’t been so lucky the last time, and the disappointment of her team had been apparent. Feeling the numerous specimen pouches in her suit expand, she carefully began to seal them one by one, each pocket no bigger than a quarter.
She checked the pouches twice, wanting to make sure they were sealed, lest they get contaminated on her journey back to the surface, before raising her glowing arm once more. The digital screen embedded in her diving suit sleeve read just over eight thousand feet, the deepest she had dived yet, and she felt a sense of pride at her accomplishment. She’d once feared the water, as a child. Look at me now.
The swollen fingers of her gloved hand gently pressed on her fathometer screen, the finger pads able to access the screen’s tactile interface. The numbers swiped away to a new screen, and she tapped the blue button, signaling she was ready to be extracted.
The view around her was empty and unchanging, even with the added light from her lamp. Moments later she felt the tell-tale tug at the small of her back become more forceful. Aside from the vague sensation of the water’s presence fluctuating against her suit, it was her only way of knowing she was actually moving through the water and not simply drifting.
The ascent was slow, so as to avoid decompression sickness, and Anya allowed her body to relax as much as it could, the occasional shiver still tensing her muscles from time-to-time, the tip of her nose now numb. The pull from the cable at her back was constant, and she leaned into it to reduce the resistance her body made against the water. At this speed, it would take about an hour for her to reach the surface again, and she didn’t want to be exhausted by the time she got up there.
Anya forced herself not to touch her specimen pouches again, the compulsion to check on them rising in her mind as her anxiety made itself known. The risk of accidentally unsealing them was too great. What’s done is done. Rogers will kill me if I fiddle with them again.
Instead, she focused on what she could see in front of her, her glowing lamp slightly raised ahead of her, watching as the light pushed through the darkness. This quadrant of the ocean was dense in microorganisms but surprisingly sparse in all other forms of life, one of the reasons it was safe for Anya to descend so deep on her own.
She was almost falling asleep, the sensation of being dragged upwards so smoothly and the chill in her body causing her to become tired, when she caught the light from the corner of her eye, just off to the right of where her own lamp was pointed.
She turned her head, instinctively pointing her arm in the same direction, frowning with confusion. Her lamp only illuminated about twenty feet ahead of her, not strong enough to penetrate the blackness beyond.
It was my helmet light. Her diving suit’s helmet was illuminated from the inside, the visor made of tinted glass similar to a motorcycle helmet. It reduced the glare of the illumination and trapped heat better, apparently, although Anya didn’t care because she thought the helmet looked cooler with the black glass anyway.
She lowered her arm back to its forward position once more, allowing the lamp to shine straight ahead. Her fathometer read six thousand feet now, the device defaulting back to its original screen, and she reached out to tap it, wanting to see how much time she had left in her ascent-
that was definitely not my helmet light
She turned, quicker this time, her eyes now wide open and scanning the black water before her, her arm raised straight ahead now.
She had seen a light, definitely a light, from the corner of her right eye. Whatever it was, it was gone now, but she knew she had seen it, just for a moment, before it had disappeared.
Did someone else come down with me? There were only three other people up on the boat, not needing a large crew for this routine collection. She couldn’t fathom one of her teammates diving down with her, especially without telling her. I don’t think Rogers even brought a second suit.
There. She was looking directly at the light now, and in a reflex reaction, she moved her arms as quickly as possible, turning off her lamp. She was suddenly overwhelmingly grateful for the tinted helmet she was wearing, allowing her to see out with its illumination whilst still being practically invisible. She wasn’t sure what she was looking at, but the need to hide was immediate and instinctive.
Anya stared, eyes focused on the small, circular light straight ahead of her. It was yellow, almost white. She had deep-dived with others before, and she knew what her lamp looked like from a distance. It was the wrong color to be another diver from her team, and she highly doubted there was another trained deep-sea diving research team here at the same time as hers. It had taken them months to finally get clearance to dive here.
The small light began to sway slightly, drifting back and forth from left to right, it’s size never changing. She focused her eyes on it, following its movement, wondering if a Nav-light from the boat had fallen all the way down and gotten stuck in a current somehow. It would have shattered, it’s too deep down here.
Her entire body was tense as the light began to sway faster, almost as if it were the tip of a pendulum that was speeding up gradually. The light was strong enough for her to see in the otherwise opaque water, but not strong enough to illuminate the light’s immediate surroundings. If it was attached to any machinery, she couldn’t see it from here.
She was just about to raise her hand to tap her screen and contact her team when the light slowed its swinging. The circle of white light began to get larger, almost imperceptibly growing in size until she saw it wasn’t a circle at all, but almost more of a teardrop shape. It took her a moment to register the light was growing because she was getting closer to it. Or it’s getting closer to me.
Wait, am I-
That was when she realized the tugging on her back, the one that signified her being slowly pulled to the surface by her team, was gone, and she had no idea how long it had been gone for.
“What-” She gasped inside her helmet, the shock of her realization piercing her insides with panic as she fought to remember when she’d stopped being pulled to the surface. She had no clue, unable to pinpoint when she had stopped paying attention to the sensation of it.
Her fingers were tapping her fathometer now, tapping the red button on the next screen. Please get this please get this please get this. She continued to tap furiously, silently praying that her boat could receive the message even though something was obviously wrong with the cable.
“No no no no-” Anya could feel herself beginning to panic, the claustrophobia of the suit and the impenetrable ocean darkness around her making her feel trapped. She couldn’t even feel the cable on her back anymore, feeling as though she was completely untethered and drifting aimlessly.
The was definitely closer now, the blurred white edges now distinctively tear-shaped and yellow. She still couldn’t make out what it was, or where it was coming from, as she squinted into the dark, but it was enough to make her feel truly frightened.
Anya tapped her screen once more, and then tapped the red help button another six times, just for good measure. Even if they don’t get this, they must know something’s wrong. Surely they were notified that she’d been disconnected from the boat somehow, right? The pod would be able to reach her in no time. She couldn’t imagine she’d drifted that far off course.
Whatever the light was, it didn’t look like it came from a machine. Its color was strangely luminescent, almost glowing as opposed to brightening like the LED-types used this deep. It reminded her of bioluminescent algae she had seen in South America, the natural light unique in its fluorescence. Maybe it’s rare algae I can colle-
When she looked up from her sleeve, she froze.
The light was gone, familiar blackness ahead of her once more. Anya frowned, squinting hard again, but couldn’t see anything ahead of her. It was all uniformly dark, unmoving, unchanging.
It was there, she told herself, staring directly ahead of where the light had been. The lack of pressure against her lower back told her she had definitely stopped ascending, at least with the assistance of the boat. She was certain she hadn’t imagined it.
Anya blinked, seeing the faintest purple spots still in the center of her vision. It was the only hard evidence she had that she’d been staring into light with her sensitive eyes.
She raised her arms, fumbling once more with her sleeve to turn her lamp back on, wanting to see where the light may have gone, ignoring the alarm bells ringing in the back of her head, telling her the dark was safer, the dark was better-
Click.
She came face to face with rows of hundreds of sharp teeth, an enormous, gaping maw attached to a brutish, scaled body, less than ten feet ahead of her. The creature opened its mouth, as if it were roaring silently at her, easily reaching fifteen feet in height.
Anya screamed, her mouth opening to mirror the creature before her, and she tried to swim backward, her frozen limbs stiffly moving through the water. Tears streamed down her face as she trembled. The fish swam swiftly towards her, closing the distance between them with ease.
She kicked her legs and threw her arms outwards, the bulkiness of the suit and the cold temperature not allowing her to move her body the way she needed to. The teeth were around her now, on top of her, in front of her, below her. She tried to swim away, screaming inside her helmet, knowing the sound wouldn’t escape the impenetrable material. As she kicked out once more, her boot coming into contact with a stone-like tooth, something caught her eye, reflecting off the glass of her visor.
Dangling in front of her helmet, attached to the purple lips of the creature around her, was a small, glowing light.