Abyss

The water, a black abyss, cold and terrifying. Dim golden light flooded before me, illuminating the sandy earth below my feet. Lights. Street lights. I watched the particles of sand swirl about.

Where were they? I had come down here with someone, hadn’t I? I couldn’t recall. My brain hummed like TV static, quiet, prickling, fuzzy. Where was I? I breathed in, the tank strapped to my back lending me oxygen through my helmet. Where—

A voice cracked to life in my headset. “Can you hear me?”

“Yes, I hear you. Where are you? We need to get out of here!” A sense of panic began to well up inside me, something was coming from beyond the shadows.

“Hold on! I can see you!”

A black shape formed out of the darkness. A friend. My brother. Yes. Now it was coming back. We had dived down to these—I looked around myself, squinting to see what was farther out—city ruins. An underwater city, buried and forgotten. The skyscrapers now algae covered ocean monuments of what once was. Phone poles grew barnacles and were half buried by sand.

Trees stood in place, though their leaves had long gone, the branches now tangles of kelp and coral. To my left was a convenience store. The windows were shattered, the door, missing. Nothing was here. Not a single creature dared to disturb this deserted silence. I watched as my brother swam towards me.

A call in the distance. A roar. Inhuman. Something large and ancient.

He came up beside me, only seconds before an enormous creature, a fish with grey armor plating, shark teeth, and luminescent eyes swam over us. Danger. We hurried, swimming forward, finding shelter behind what was once a retaining wall to a building complex. The kelp swayed in the current. We waited, a hush falling over us. The creature bellowed in the distance, but it didn’t seem to be coming back. We weren’t going to wait and find out though.

“Let’s go before it comes back,” I heard myself saying. Like my body, my mind felt as though it were underwater too. Thoughts slowly trying to come to the surface for air, but not quite making it. Had I seen something?

We began our ascent, the water maintaining its inky blackness until just before we breached the surface. Nighttime. The stars above us sparkled in golden and copper hues like ore on a cavern ceiling. They outshone the moon. Not far away, our floating home bobbed gently on the water, the current rippling beneath the cedar decking. We swam over, climbing onto the deck, our wet suits slapping as we sat.

“I can’t believe all of that is down there,” my brother commented as he pulled off his diving helmet.

“Yeah. It’s a whole other world down there.” I took off my helmet as well, reclining back onto the deck, tired, eyes caught up in the stars. “Hey. Do you want to sit here with me for a bit? I’ve never seen the sky so beautiful.”

“Sure.” He laid down beside me, sighing contently.

“Where did you go while we were down there? I lost you.”

“Sorry. I thought I saw something.”

“Did you?”

Out of the corner of my eye I saw him shrug.

“This is going to sound strange, but... I really don’t remember.”

“Huh.” A cool breeze filled our silence. “I don’t remember either. For a while I didn’t even remember you were with me. It was like...”

“Like we were just there, all of a sudden?”

“Yeah. Exactly. Why did we go down there anyway? Were we looking for something?”

“Maybe. I don’t know what would be down there though. It’s just a bunch of cement and sand.”

“Yeah, I guess you’re right.” Still, my mind couldn’t help but wonder about the world of the past, the stories that were hidden under the waves and sand. The memories left behind. I hadn’t known that world, there were few left who did. I stared into the starry sky, lit up like a galaxy. “Do you want to go back down tomorrow?” I wondered about the lights. How did they have power? They shouldn’t have. Was someone down there?

I smiled at the ridiculous thought. No, that was impossible.

“Definitely.”

The waves lapped rhythmically in the silence. Tomorrow. Tomorrow we would go back down, and if there were secrets to find, perhaps we would find them. But somehow, looking out at the vastness before us, above and below, I had a feeling that we wouldn’t.