Cecaelia pt.1 (Patreon)

It was really strange to have him back in class. It had been decided he could continue his bachelor's degree in his old class, take the missed classes on the side and graduate at the same time. He was smart, so if anyone could, it was him, but she was unsure what they were to each other now. He had almost been her boyfriend when he disappeared. They saw each other often enough that many made that assumption at least, but she had been too shy to actually ask if they were more than friends. She suspected he had as well. Then that horrible night, the search, the divers, the wait, the memorial. It was scheduled just after class on a Thursday, so everyone had showed up, even those who decidedly had not been his friends.

And now, almost a year later, he shows up. “Please don’t ask me about the past year”, he had said when he held his small, awkward speech for the class his first day back. Someone from the police had leaked to the Beachview Mail that he had been held hostage the whole time, but he wouldn’t even tell me anything about it.

We met for Asian food about a week after he came back, before he was back in school. I was so anxious to meet him again that I even imagined his voice saying hello in my head when I saw him across the street. Once seated all he wanted to talk about was me, the school, our friends, the world. Nothing about him. He sat there silent with his sashimi, and pierced my soul with his dark eyes. Much darker than I remembered them, and filled with much more wisdom than you should gain in just one year.

But if we are talking about changes, that’s the least of it. Wherever he had been, they had worked him hard. Washboard all over and sprouted quite a few more inches. I’m guessing they locked him up in the forest or something, because now he’s spending all his time by the sea, surfing almost every afternoon. Like he somehow is reclaiming something he took for granted before. He never used to surf, barely even swim. According to Andrea he turned down the swim team because “it wouldn’t be fair”. He probably thinks they are just allowing him to join out of sympathy, but he totally got swimmers bod now.

The tide was at its highest and the wind was picking up. By midnight fresh gale was forecast. Martin didn’t know why he had decided on the detour to the old pier, but something had lured him there. Some nagging thought that this was an important thing to do.

Large waves pounded the timbers, occasionally spewing frothy waters all over the cedar planks, turning the wood black and the green patches slimy. The pier was sturdy, but ancient, and Martin knew that it was ill advised to walk there in the darkness. The sun had set and the cloudy sky blocked out the moon and the stars. But there was something alluring in the fresh, howling wind and the deafening white noise of the black water.

He was standing near the edge at the tip of the pier. To the right, in the distance, was the industrial plants giving a faint yellow sodium light. To the left, and way behind him, was the more modern white light of the city. But in front of him and below were just vast, dark, black.

Well, whatever he came down here for wasn’t there, he decided. He turned around to walk back to the well lit streets when his foot caught something in the dark, and his other foot just slipped away on the wet board, sending his head backwards crashing into the old boards.

Hitting the cold water took him back to consciousness, but knocked the air from his lungs. It was cold and dark all around him, and he didn’t know which direction was up. Suddenly something started to tug his leg. That was down, he quickly decided, and started to struggle to get loose. His lungs were burning and everything was fading away again.

His first thought wasn’t relief of being alive, or fear. It was one of confusion. There was something in his mouth. Something large. It felt much like the inside of his cheeks, but it was covering his mouth, preventing him both from closing it or opening it further, and it reached down his throat. His nose was plugged with something, but he was somehow breathing through his mouth.

As he was coming to his senses the feeling of relief came. He was saved. But it was still dark, cold and wet. Then came the fear. Something was grabbing both his legs and at great speed dragging him along under water. He touched his face. There was nothing obstructing his vision. It really just was pitch black. He could however not feel his nose and mouth. Instead he touched something cold and fleshy attached to his face.

He tried to kick lose his feet. It didn’t give, but whatever was dragging him stopped. He could feel something moving around him, and he felt a pair of human hands on his shoulders. Then a sharp, quick pain in the neck, and everything went foggy. *Don’t fight* he thought. Or someone thought for him. He tried to touch it, whatever it was, but his limbs were barely twitching and getting numb.

Martin wasn’t sure if he had lost consciousness or if the vast darkness around him had just not given him any sensory information to latch on to. He could barely feel his body and the sound was a constant low, dull noise. Pressure in his ears however indicated that they were deeper than he would have dared to free dive, not that it was something he was proficient in. He could however see a blue shimmer below him. Not far down, when the body turned that way, he could see rock formations dotted with what could possibly be bioluminescent life. Or radioactive stones. Do they glow?

Suddenly they slowed down, close to the ocean floor, and he could faintly feel the hold on his legs let go. As he began to slowly rotate, he could for the first time see his abductor. If his mouth hadn’t been covered with something reaching down into his wind pipe he would have screamed in terror. In front of him, moving a large boulder, was a large, octopus-like creature. The upper body looked like a female human, head and arms and everything, but waist down was
just a bundle of tentacles. Once she had moved the rock and turned around, he could see that she had two holes on either side of her chest, opening and closing. A not quite human face with short, green hair and big, black, unblinking eyes stared at him.

Martin was near panic as the monster approached him again. Would she keep him alive while she fed from his flesh, or would she kill him in one blow. No need to keep him alive at this point just to kill him later. No, that’s not it. This is sleep paralysis! I can’t move or speak, and I see an evil presence. Typical sleep paralysis, he thought. Just try to keep calm and this will all go away in some minutes. Then stock up on zinc tablets or whatever deficiency lead to this.

The creature grabbed his legs again and pulled him into a dark, narrow cave opening that had revealed itself under the boulder. As they entered the small tunnel, Martin worried he wouldn’t fit like the octopus creature, but he was expertly handled and only brushed close to the rocks on his way in.

Inside the cave, more bioluminescent microbes coated the walls, bathing the room in a bright light, almost like a LED display. The space was as large as an apartment bedroom, and with smaller tunnels leading elsewhere in all directions. The room was roughly spherical with uneven surfaces with a somewhat flattened floor. Apart from a few boulders, Martin couldn’t see any lose objects in the room. The creature let go of him again, and Martin watched as it moved like silk through the water.

With strength greater than any human, the creature moved one of the larger boulders over to the cave entrance, lodging it in the opening. It did the same with a second boulder, making the opening only slightly bigger than its head and shoulders. Then it gracefully flowed back to Martin, stopping face to face.

It was the first time Martin had a really good look of her. She was gorgeous. Her face was almost completely human, if you ignored her green hair and alien eyes. His body was still almost completely immobile, drifting in the water, but even if it hadn’t been he wouldn’t have dared look away from her face, down on her naked body.

Whatever she was contemplating, she appeared to have made up her mind, as she quickly swam around him. Again he felt something press against the back of his neck, and then an explosion of agony. He wanted to scream, but whatever was stuck in his airways prevented it. As he could feel the venom spreading in his body and his vision went out of focus, he could see her slipping out through the hole to the outside, leaving Martin alone. Immobile, trapped, and in agony. As he started to slip into unconsciousness again, he was pretty sure this wasn’t sleep paralysis.

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