I’d opened my eyes and found myself in almost total darkness, but what was scarier than that was the fact that I was still under water, in some kind of cavern. Suddenly, there was a flash of green light, and the monster appeared in front of me.
I made the mistake of gasping, and when I did, my lungs started to fill with water all over again.
Now, before this, I’d always said the worst way to die had to be dying in a fire, but now…
I flailed around, trying to swim away, but the monster held up a webbed hand and my body was frozen like glass. The water still flowed into me, though, setting my insides into the most pain I’d ever felt all over again.
“Would you like to breathe?” a sweet, high-pitched female voice whispered, and my eyes shot around the cave, looking for who the voice came from. “I said, do you want to breathe?” The monster lingered in front of me, floating effortlessly with its solid white eyeballs. It lowered its hand and I could move my body again, so I nodded furiously. “Very well, it will come at price, though…do you take my deal?” The thing was an inch away from my face and I nodded again. Anything to get the pain to stop. “Good,” the voice whispered, then the monster in front of me opened up its black-lipped mouth and blew a bubble out, watching as it glided across the water between us.
The second the bubble popped against my mouth, air suddenly filled my lungs again. The pain stopped instantly and I swam in place without using any real effort. “What’s going on?” I asked, backing into the cave wall to get away from the thing, and holding my throat when my voice came out completely normal. “Where am I?”
I looked around the cave and saw all the little potion bottles that filled the thousands of holes in the rock walls of the cavern. In the center of the space, there was a giant, green glowing orb of light that just floated there, drawing my eyes in to look at it. The light inside it seemed to pulse and I leaned away from the wall, pushing mindlessly towards the light, until the monster swam in my way, cutting me off. “Now, now,” It whispered. “We need to talk first, don’t we? You wanted to know where you are….” The voice echoed in the room. “You’re in Culliver’s Cove,” it said. “I’ve brought you here because you and I need each other.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked skeptically, not sure at this point if I was in the middle of some kind of sick dream.
“Let me ask you a question…Serena.”
“How do you know my name?” I asked quickly, my heart hammering in my chest.
The monster shook its head at me, the tangles of black hair getting wound around its ugly face. “Do you think I’m beautiful?” it asked me, swimming out towards the light where I could see it better. The green hue did nothing for its hideousness. The upper body was thin, but the skin was sickly-looking, hanging loose and soft. The shoulders seemed to hunch over, making the back looked humped up. The tangle of hair swept away from the face and I could tell it almost had a human-looking face if it weren’t for all of the scaly patches across its skin. The most disturbing part of it, aside from the tiny little dagger teeth, was its lower half. It looked like…tentacles? But there weren’t eight of them like an octopus. Instead, there were six black and grey sludgy-looking tentacles flailing around in the water slowly. “I know you don’t think so right now,” the voice came again. “I could be, though, with your help.” I floated there, speechless, caught between staring at the thing or the orb behind it. “Will you help me?”
“How?” I whispered, shaking my head slightly.
“Oh, my darling, it’s simple,” the sweet voice cooed. “Do you want to go back to your life?”
“What?”
“Just what I said…Do you wish to return to your life?” it asked. “I could help you. I could give you your life back. You could live again, go home to your wealthy parents and friends…You could go back to Asher.”
The mention of his name made my heart leap. “How do you know about him?” I demanded.
“I know all sorts of things, Serena.” The voice came to me as the monster swam back and forth in a path in front of the orb, its blank, white eyes seeming to glare into my soul as the thing’s mouth opened up, revealing its teeth again. “I know that you’d do anything to get back to your life, and I want to help you.” The monster stopped moving and turned its head to the orb and I followed its gaze, happy for another opportunity to stare at it. The green light faded and it was replaced with Asher’s face. I gasped and swam closer, my body shaking slightly. Asher and my friends were standing on the edge of a dock, all of them crying while search crews were out in the water…divers looking for the body they wouldn’t find. I went to reach my hand out to touch his face when his image faded back out and the green light reappeared. “They miss you.”
“What do I have to do?” I asked, pulling my eyes away from the green light and staring into the white of the monster’s eyes.
“Give me two years…” it whispered. “Two years, and 100 souls.”
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