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The original was posted on /r/nosleep by /u/googlyeyes93 on 2024-09-11 23:53:26+00:00.
I don’t know if it was the world taking pity on me, keeping any more bad shit from happening for a while, but I was going to take it. Though I did see the giants a few more times, and on occasion, when gazing out of the porthole, I would see the giant eye watching us in the distance.
A body drifted in near the platform three months later. Catching in one of the nets. At first we thought it was probably some drowning victim, maybe a suicide that threw themselves into the ocean. They were completely naked, long, pale body shining in the morning glow when Hap first reported it to us. Sandy and I went down in the dive suits, pulling it from the tangled safety net and bringing it up the ladder. We noticed immediately when we got to it that it wasn’t a normal person, though.
”What the hell is that?” Hap said, looking at the creature, now laid out on the platform. Sandy and I leaned over along with him and Shannon, inspecting the strange being that we found.
It was long, probably nine feet if I had to guess. Human-ish torso. Or human enough, at least. It was extremely lithe, tiny, delicate fins running down the arms and spine, though they were hardly noticeable unless closely inspected. Gills ran from the chest up to the neck, elongated and smooth as it reached the head.
Its face was close to ours, but with a smooth, almost flattened nose. Larger eyes were situated far apart, almost on either side of the head, while the lower jaw was huge, extremely wide with sharp rows of teeth visible as it jutted out from the upper half of the head. Webbed hands at the end of long arms must have been used for gliding through the water easily. The oddest thing to appear though, was that at the waist it became more leathery, long masses of tentacles hanging down from the abdomen. They weren’t like octopus tentacles, but the best I could compare it to was something like that of a Lion’s Mane Jellyfish. Long, slender, and pale just like its skin, extending maybe ten feet longer from the torso at its longest.
“Is this… is this a mermaid?” Shannon asked, in complete disbelief at what was out in front of us. My mind was flashing back to the submarine now, wondering if this was what we saw on the edge of the cameras before things went to hell. Maybe it was related to the giant eye? “Help me get it to the lab, now.”
The four of us hefted it up, heading right into the base lab and throwing it up on the exam table, tentacles falling off the end and curling on the floor below. Shannon grabbed a scalpel immediately, beginning to line it up with the center of the creature’s chest. Before she could make the incision even an inch, the creature began to scream, a horrible sound like the screams of a drowning person, sound escaping into bubbles and stifling water even here above the surface.
”Holy shit!” Sandy shouted, stepping back from the table as it swiped a hand at her, vicious needles at the end of the webbed fingers extending outward like a cats claws. Hap wasn’t so lucky, catching a couple of good slashes on his shoulder as he fell back from the creature. It screamed again, using inhuman strength to heave itself from the table. The tentacles began moving, sliding it across the smooth floor and toward the door, searching for any route of escape. I was finally able to see the wide open eyes as it looked back at us, fear in its eyes.
They were the same glowing purple as what I had seen below, closed into slits once more. It looked like it was barely able to keep its eyes open, likely because of the blinding light up here compared to the depths of the twilight zone. The look on its face was frenzied though, obviously struggling to breathe without being in its natural environment below the ocean. I’m not even sure how it was alive, honestly, but it looked like it was fighting for its life to return home.
“Stand back. Everyone stand the FUCK back!” I shouted, raising my hands in a sign of showing the creature I wasn’t going to hurt it Not sure if it got the message, because it only backed into the door more before turning to claw at the metal, begging to be let out. I moved toward it slowly, still holding my hands out but now trying to talk it down. “Hey, hey, I can help you. Stop for a second and I can let you out.”
”No! Don’t let it escape! Do you know what a discovery this is!” Shannon was huffing her way toward me now, trying to pull me back from the thing as it desperately searched for another way out, moving from the door to look out of one of the windows. “If you let it out, we can’t show anyone what we found!”
It sliced a hand at the window, scraping against the thick glass to make the worst sound I’ve heard in my entire damn life. I ducked back, covering my head as it pulled a hand back again, this time ramming a huge, open palm full force into the glass, shattering it. It pulled itself out, catching tentacles and bleeding deep blue blood as it scraped along the glass. Before we could open the door, it had dove back into the sea, clearing the safety net with ease and disappearing.
Shannon was cursing up a storm, banging her hands on the railing as she screamed to the empty ocean before us. Sandy and I were trying to help Hap out, deep gashes bleeding through and soaking his clothes now. They were only on his shoulder, thankfully, and though it would hurt for a while, he would heal with some bandages and basic first aid. Sandy and I were the only ones keeping cool heads though, because he was in deep shock while Shannon couldn’t do anything but rant about her lost discovery.
I wish that was the end of it. Shannon became obsessed with trying to find one, taking the tentacles and blood samples it left behind on the window to examine every single thing about them. We got lucky when pulling it into the lab, because she found a neurotoxin secreted in the tentacles, though it seemed the creature could activate it at will to sting prey. Hard to believe this thing could be that deadly. We weren’t able to test the effects of the toxin, of course, but judging from the makeup of it, those caught only lasted long enough to see the jaws close around them.
Hap… started to change. It was subtle at first, his speech and voice becoming odd and what seemed like the development of an acute type of asthma. Trouble breathing, issues with keeping food down, and a persistent headache were the start. Then it became rapid after the two month mark, taking slow hold of him.
He came into the cafeteria that morning gurgling, saying he felt like he had aspirated water into his lungs. Then it quickly worsened, with him collapsing to the ground as he stood up to head to the lab. We called med-evac immediately, noting it was a life or death emergency this time so they needed to get their asses here ASAP.
It didn’t matter. Hap collapsed, desperately clutching at his chest for air as he tried ripping through his clothes. I noticed now that skin was coming up between his fingers, webbing his hands up to the knuckles. As he ripped his shirt off, I saw why he wasn’t able to breathe- huge, slashed gills were opening further into his chest, pulsating as they tried to breathe in through dry air. He was drowning on land, desperately gasping as the oxygen simply had nowhere to go now.
I picked him up as fast as I could, desperately trying to drag him out to the water in hopes it would help. I shouted for Sandy as I went, knowing Shannon was up in the lab where she wouldn’t hear me. As we rushed through the door, I grabbed a life preserver hanging on the railing before jumping over, Hap was barely standing as I pulled, trying to get him over the bars despite how much taller he was than me. The worst happened then.
He broke in half. More like just… disconnected at the waist. His lower body slid down to the deck, hitting the wet floor with a smack. From where his body was severed, I was holding his top half, now dangling down huge, lengthy tentacles that were writhing in agony. I was barely able to hang on as one of them hit me, stinging me on the hand before I dropped into the water, Hap falling after me.
We hit the water hard, me barely hanging on to the float as he began gasping in big breaths, voice becoming less drowned and raspy as he did. He was screaming though, face contorting in pain as his skull began shifting, taking on a more aquatic, steamlined appearance like the creature before. He was drifting away from me now, gasping while squeezing his head as eyes began to move, sockets widening and stretching outward as they went. His jaw disfigured, jutting out with a sharp snap and pop. I felt myself losing conscious then, a woozy feeling overtaking me as the neurotoxin began taking hold from the sting he gave me. I was slipping in and out, life becoming a dream as Hap’s screams faded out on the waves. I felt arms close around me, situating a life vest over my head as I went limp, Sandy’s face glowing like an angel through the sea foam as she pulled me up.
She took me into the lab, setting me down on an exam table while screaming at Shannon to fix me, now. Shannon looked surprised to say the least, and quickly went over to the case nearby, pulling a small vial out and hefting a syringe. I was trying to talk to them, I think, trying to tell them to go after Hap while they still could, but nobody was listening to me, only Sandy screaming at Shannon as she took a sample from...
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