My mind, memories, and soul came into being—like waking up, only somehow, I was already awake. My dim cabin aboard the Samsa was more dilapidated than I remembered: rust and barnacles plastered every wall and fitting, the sink black, the mattress on which I lay threadbare. Aghast, I sought light, retrieving a matchbox from my front pocket and striking, yet the cardboard crumpled as if sodden, the match flicking from my fingers and floating away. I clambered for the window. Blueish light filtered in. There was no glass in the pane, no wind in the air. No air at all. Abroad lay a wasteland of sand, ruinous ship-waste, and ocean. The seafloor greeted me with visceral indifference.
I assumed myself to be dreaming. Thirty or so metres above, the waves churned like a mosaic ceiling, and I knew such detail alien to all except divers and spear-fishermen. It could never be imagined so vividly. This was real.
The previous evening had been wonderful and ordinary: I took whiskey and flirted with a young French woman in the dining room. A pianist played a fine tune, the girl touched my arm; I retired cradling a bottle, knowing my Australian ventures would be profitable. Now, that bottle floated along the ceiling, an inch of whiskey remaining, sealed away and out of reach.
I marched for the door. It would not budge; something had fallen against it, or maybe the pressure kept it in place—I was not a learned person. I tore off the curtain, seeing only blackness beyond. "Hello? Is anyone out there?"
Light swam through the darkness, illuminating stray particles floating in the corridor. A rainbow of cyan and magenta. "Hello?" a voice answered, accompanied by colours.
"Yes! Hello there! What ever is happening?"
"Well, we’re inside a sunken ship. Nothing particularly is happening," the voice said, each syllable accompanied by prismatic light. I faltered.
"What of the crew?"
"Crew?"
"Of the Samsa, of course. Are they alive?"
"No," it said mirthfully, "they’re quite dead, given that we’re on the seafloor."
"Well, that is the crux of my question, my friend: how is it possible that we are living— speaking as we are—whilst stranded without air?"
"Oh," the voice of cyan bid, "you ate something, didn’t you?"
"I ate nought but peanuts and drank only whiskey."
The colours ceased. Fear flooded my lungs—to what did I speak? I stepped away from the door, striding for the window, refusing to swim, as if it’d rob me of my humanity. A school of silvery fish glided by. I stuck my head out, but couldn’t squeeze my shoulders through the porthole. My cabin was a cage. Something knew I was in there. ‘Hello?’ I tried again. A dark, mighty shape took form in the distance, fin sweeping back and forth. I slunk inside and sat on the bed. My bed. I pulled the duvet close and opened my copy of Treasure Island. The same copy I drew in as a boy, the one Mother bought for me, and Father read to me. The pages released bubbles. Ink floated free.
A sound echoed from the door, meagre magenta light creeping in. "Are you in this one?"
"Go away."
"Your window’s broken—just swim out."
"I’m too big for it."
"Come here," it bid. I closed my book carefully, as if it could ever be saved, and came as bid. In the door’s window drew an eye, wide and unblinking, filling the entire view. The gaze of limbo.
"I want to return," I said, hoping Death would heed me if I was one step ahead. "I’m dying, aren’t I? I drank too much. This is a warning. Well, I hear you, mighty God. I want to return home."
"I’m really sorry," it said wordlessly, the lights somehow communicating in place of a tongue, "but you’re dead. Well, no—you’re alive, but..." The great pupil affixed to the mirror above my sink. I did not wish to see.
"Did anyone make it out? The nice French girl?"
"I don’t know. The lifeboats are missing, so, maybe."
I laughed; pink light shone through my eyes. "If I wasn’t drunk..."
"Please, look in the mirror."
"I do not wish to see, Reaper."
"I am not Death, and you are alive. You’re just not living the life you think you are."
I discarded it with a flicking wrist, sneering, laboriously dragging myself where it heeded. I wiped away the barnacles and beheld myself.
Upon a well-dressed skeleton latched me, a tentacled monstrosity. My beak was buried in his skull. Ichor trailed by my lidless eyes, dispersing by my mantle and fins. I tried screaming. A sucker pulled open the jaw, puppeteering shock. I stepped back, abhorred—my tentacles pulled the legs up and down, mimicking walking like a child playing with a doll. "What?" I cried through light, my mantle shifting iridescent blue, flashing wondrously.
"That’s what we look like," the one at the door said. "Well, I’m not attached to a skeleton, not anymore. I had my fill a few hours ago—I didn’t think there were any good bits left. Disconcerting, isn’t it? I saw all sorts of memories, but you’ve done more than see, you’ve become, haven’t you?"
"This isn’t real. This is a nightmare. I want my mother and father."
"Unfortunately, I doubt they’d recognise you, or care much. After all, you merely ate their son’s brain."
I hid the skull’s empty eye sockets beneath its picked-clean fingers, not quite realising my eyes weren’t there. "I am their son. How could I not be, knowing all I do? Knowing my first kiss was with another boy under the bridge by West Side? Knowing all those stories I told myself I’d one day write? Knowing my secret plan to name my firstborn after my father? How could I be anything else but me? No, please, God, save me. Let me live."
The squid at the door floated without input. I became aware of the taste of his brain, sweet and metallic. His skull released a final puff of brown-red as we decoupled. The corpse floated to the floor, his skeletal hand landing in the direction of Treasure Island. I darted from the window.
Josephine G Cambridge is a biologist from the United Kingdom who abates the horrors of STEM with scary little stories. When she isn’t spacing out in a laboratory or recommending people read Shirley Jackson, she enjoys history and all things fantastical.