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BIG FISH

This weeks writing prompt is here! Do you have a story about a fish? Then leave it in the comments!

I have to say I would not want to get this monster on my hook!

My Work in Progress has a scene where the hero (heroine? Do we still say that?) Allegra is in a diving-bell, and then the meet a giant fish bigger even than this one. Let me know what you think.

In To The Deep

When the creature entered our little bubble of light we saw if for the first time. It was huge. Bigger far than any whale we had seen. Bigger than a sperm whale, bigger than a blue.

“What is that?” I asked, but Captain Bligh remained silent. How can I describe it? It was as if the ocean was given form. A whale perhaps, we could not know for sure, but if it was a whale, how had it stayed so deep and for so long? The giant circled around us and it seemed to take an age for the vast bulk to cross past our window. Its eye stared at us. It was a large as the diving bell, larger, and when I looked into that eye, what did I see. A window to the soul they say, but what kind of soul was this, more ancient than anything. How long it must have lived to grow to that size? A hundred years? A thousand? Was this was the oldest thing alive? What did I see in that eye? I had seen wisdom and gentleness in the eyes of the whales, and thought to see that here. But I looked in vain for any sign of commonality. And such a search should be in vain. Why should I seek to find the qualities of mankind in something so clearly not of our world but of another world entirely?

Captain Bligh gasped. “Look over there.”

If it had not been for the presence of Leviathan, we would have been amazed to see a colossal squid. Even so the Squid was as nothing compared to the great sea creature. No doubt our light had attracted it. The Leviathan twisted towards it with a speed that belied its great bulk. The turbulence of the movement sent the bell swinging like a pendulum. The creature’s vast jaws grabbed the squid and just for the briefest instant the squid wrapped its arms around the sea creature to resist. There. We heard the sound for the briefest moment. I scrambled to transcribe the noise, but more remarkable was happened to the squid. First it vibrated and then went limp, finally it collapsed into a pulp. Leviathan then sucked the pulp into its mouth. The squid was gone, devoured. And now the sea-creature turned its attention back to us.

When I could speak again I turned to the captain. The creature had begun to circle us again. And in that eye I finally recognized an emotion: hunger.

10 thoughts on “BIG FISH”

  1. In college I went on snorkeling cruise with a fellow teammate from the swim team. Needless to say, we were good at it. We could get down pretty deep and stay there much longer than any of the regular tourists. Melanie and I were rather silly and had worked ourselves into nervous Nellies at the prospect of running into a shark.

    Sure enough, after two dozen dives, we disturbed a long, muscular, grey beast partially hidden under rock formation. I screamed. Yes, you CAN hear screams underwater because Melanie jerked her head toward me, and we both shot upwards as fast as our streamlined arms and propulsive kicks could carry us.

    We broke the surface in a school of jellyfish. I didn’t feel the stings until much later. Melanie screamed, and we both spun, looking for the boat. One of the tourists surfaced ten yards away and said, “You weren’t scared of that grouper, were you? Hey, are those jellyfish?”

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    1. That sounds like you had a great time Pricilla. Was it a shark? And Jellyfish stings are no fun. When I was a boy we visited my grandparents who lived by the beach and the was always full of jellyfish. I think I stung half to death every time I went in the sea.

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  4. Dr Felicity Spencer worked the kinks out of her neck as she waited for the next round of footage from project Deepsea to load on her computer. The state of the art camera had only been in operation for a handful of months and already she’d witnessed giant squid hunting and a rare species of shark feeding on the bottom of the ocean.
    What would she see today?
    The black and white images resolved on the screen. Some small fish swimming past. An unusual crab scuttled along the sea floor.
    Dr Felicity Spencer held her breath. There was the giant squid again. She paused the video and moved on frame by frame. As she marveled at the Arthiteuthis Dux, a shadow filled the screen. Something even larger than the 43ft squid pursued it. A huge snub nosed head, reminiscent of a shark, tried to grab the squid, who retaliated by wrapping its tentacles around the shark.
    Was the living island a megalodon, or perhaps something like the enormous supposedly extinct shark? It was so hard to tell as the monsters of the deep wrestled in the monochromatic screen, but Dr Felicity Spencer couldn’t help but squeal in delight at yet another discovery she’d made.
    The battle over, the squid subdued, the shark opened its mouth. What was that, hiding among the gargantuan teeth? Dr Felicity Spencer readjusted her glasses. Were those people swimming out of the shark’s mouth and dismembering the squid into easily portable packages of meat which they carried back down the shark’s gaping throat? They certainly looked humanoid from the waist up, but instead of legs they seemed to have some sort of strong, stream lined tail.
    Mermaids? Living in a megalodon? Were they some sort of parasites or did the body of the shark serve as a vessel?
    Dr Felicity Spencer shook her head. This was going too far. She’d be the laughing stock of the scientific community. She carefully excised the offending footage and went out to tell her lab about the other things the camera had recorded overnight.

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