written by still_just_me

*****MATURE AUDIENCES ONLY*****

watch/listen to the audio book on YouTube

https://youtu.be/mPU-04ewWjU

Despite mankind's dependence on them for sustainable life, eighty percent of the world's oceans are unexplored. Less than ten percent is mapped by sonar.

And, at the rate we're heading, all of it will become a fucking landfill.

For once, the altruistic cause I center my life around means nothing under the icy grip of the very ocean I attempt to clean up. Kicking and flailing my arms through the invisible resistance, I burst through the surface. Sputtering, I gasp a salty breath. My tongue stings with brine, burning to the point I want to scratch it off with my nails.

Blinking through the burn in my eyes, gray, blurry shapes come in and out of focus. Seven ragged letters appear.

Hustler.

"You've gotta be freaking kidding me." I groan at the folded over remnants of a dirty magazine. This one features a busty blonde shooting her legs in a V for victory.

A constraint shackles my right ankle, compressing it in a vice that prevents me from swimming higher than my chin at the water's edge. Assuming I'm snagged by a fishing net, my numb fingers fumble in my pockets for the Swiss Army knife I pray I haven't lost.

The relief when my fingers brush smooth metal is short-lived. Sucking in a breath, I resubmerge into my unwanted ice bucket challenge. My hair separates as if I touch a Van de Graff generator, the flyaway strands tickling my forehead and puffy cheeks. I curl in and slice through the gray murk, stabbing at the thick cords until cutting myself free.

Kicking with all my might, my lungs burn when I breathe air again. My chin trembles as I tread water and take inventory. My boat - my crew - are nowhere to be seen. The uncertainty of whether they've capsized or sank seizes my heart with the same chill that turns my limbs into lead.

Coarse, gray wood passes my line of vision. Grasping onto a floating pallet snagged in a fishing net, I ignore the pricks of splinters in my palms, hoisting myself up in a ragged heap of stringy hair and heavy, soaked clothes.

Blusters of wind, almost as cold as the water rocking the pallet in rhythmic bobs, lick at my skin. Throbs in my ankle bring me to sit and peeling back my socks and pant leg reveals perfectly round, circular red imprints. They're swollen and tingle with sensitivity when I brush over them, but they're absent of pain.

"What happened?" I whisper to my leg, as if it would answer me.

Shivers start at the base of my neck and trickle down my spine. My teeth speak their own language, clattering vibrations from my jaw into my ears. Rough, salty wind slaps my cheeks and forehead, drying the skin into leather and stinging my eyes. A hopeless scan shows nothing but an endless wasteland of what we intended to remove here.

Oh, this is bad. So, so bad.

As a child, I grew up on the New England coastline. The pull of the sea had nothing to do with childlike dreams of the unknown, the lure of the deep, dark, unexplored expanses. Trident, Poseidon, fuck even Godzilla's origin stories didn't bring me out here, in a small, three-crew vessel.

Technically, we were here for fishing. Our catch didn't involve crabs, seafood, and certainly not those ugly fish turned into square fried patties and mass produced by a fast-food conglomerate.

Our catch was much bigger, as disgusting as it was embarrassing, and surrounding me more than clear, open waters.

We were scooping up the island in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch that I now sit in. And we were fighting a losing battle.

Five years of research and ten million in equipment, all down the Pacific drain.

What I wouldn't give to see Daniel, my bright-eyed colleague from the Oceanic Institute with his skin green from motion sickness. Or Sean, the craggy, sarcastic sea dog whose beard is his own landfill of crumbs. Closing my eyes, I imagine his raspy laugh, labeling Daniel's chucked overboard stomach contents, "Fish food."

Closing my eyes, the icy tips of my fingers press into my forehead. Flashing images zing through my brain, but I only tap into mere fragments.

Grey skies turn black. Howling winds push us across the bow. Rolling seas sway us side to side.

A slammed contact smashing the port side, long, black cords slicing through the -

Wait, that can't have happened. Right?

By the pounding in my head, I probably smashed it in the wheelhouse. I'm not sure how long I have been out, but one question presses itself into top priority.

Where is everyone?

My eyes open to calm waters, swelling around me in rolling waves. I'm unsure of which chills me deeper, the air exposure on my skin or desperation seeping into my bones. Curling my knees to my chest, I hug them.

A dark form slipping under the water captures my attention. Scuttling back from the edge, I stare down for signs of a shark. Instead, large bubbles rise up and gurgle as they pop. The overhead gray clouds reflect in the rippling surface as another black form passes under it.

"I'm hallucinating," I whisper, shaking my head and licking my dry, cracked lips. "Dehydration."

'You're not hallucinating,' a warm, baritone voice rumbles through my brain, jolting my spine.

A form rises, swelling the water into a bubbling cauldron. He - was it a he? - glares through viscous eyes. Dull, glowing yellow eyes the size of my fist are cut with curved, black irises. Three slits ripple and flare on each side of its neck, moving with its expanding and contracting torso cavity.

Rising higher, his large form is muscular, yet slippery as dolphin skin and glistening with trailing droplets. Four webbed fingers and a detached thumb, more dewclaw than an opposable thumb, hang at his sides.

"Ahh!!"

My scream tears my vocal cords as I scoot back. Clawing behind me, I search for something, anything. Goosebumps scatter across my skin, fear renewing the blood that's pumping warmth through my veins.

Clutching a chunk of metal, I hurl the object forward. Red and blue flash before his arm - appendage? - snaps up and curls around the Red Bull can I throw at those glowing snake eyes. He bats it aside as if it were an annoying gnat, which I probably am to him.

My aim using a dented Starbucks thermal mug is better. It bonks him on the side of his head, tilting as if I'm amusing him. My hands search again, curling around a rough edge of textured rubber. Climbing onto my knees, I grab the heavy object with both hands. Spinning on my knees for momentum, I hurl it at the side of his head.

The tire lands with a thunk, rounding to morph around the side of its head. It blinks, twice.

'Did you just... throw a tire at me?'

I'm out of large garbage items, but my hands hurl everything they touch. One piece of trash at a time, from plastic food containers to a gross pair of abandoned dentures to, yes, the Hustler magazine, my arms slug over and over until my chest heaves and my breath is spent.

'Are you done?'

"How..." I rasp through my labored breathing, raising a hand as if the gesture keeps him at arm's distance.

He crosses his... arm-thingies. Rogue drops of blood dribble down from a wound on one of them and his tone shifts.

'I read your mind. Don't worry, it didn't take long.'

Flinching at the impossibility, I recoil. "What? That-that's not possible."

'Not for a species as primitive as yours.'

Great, rude and stomping boundaries.

'I heard that.'

"Get out of my head, Aquaman!" Wrenching my hands through my hair, I take slow, deep breaths.

It's a hallucination. I am not talking to a fish man.

'I am not a fish man,' he replies in an indignant tone.

"Look, Squidward, I... This is not happening," I'm mumbling to myself at this point. "This can't be happening. I've swallowed one too many gulps of polluted seawater."

A cold, wet texture slides over my left hip, threading under my shirt. Warmth pulses over my ribs, vibrating the bones and squirming me on the spot.

'Don't believe me? You are Karen Eileen Waters, age twenty-four, a geeky engineer at the Oceanic Institute in San Diego. Single as a pringle after a lackluster college relationship with Greg, who couldn't find your clit if it sat on his face, enjoying only getting yourself to orgasm levels with -"

"Woah, woah!" I raise my hands and swat at the wet appendage, which pops off with a slight sting. "Little consent, please? Keep those wandering hentai tentacles to yourself."

I yank my shirt down with a huff. "My name is not Karen. Ugh, that's the worst possible name ever. Have you seen my friends? My boat?"

'Dead.' He blinked with no remorse in his tone or... yeah, he didn't have an expression. But his words struck me like a knife to the heart.

Dead.

Daniel. Sean.

My coworkers, friends are... dead?

A look beyond him reveals nothing but debris. Pieces of somethings shattered into nothings. Broken forms carried by the restless sea.

My mouth wrenches into a painful contortion. Pain ripples under my skin, crying through every cell of my body to be released. I crumple inward, surrendering all resistance with slacking fingers. An invisible compression squeezes my lungs, and I gasp for breath. I feel as if I'm being dragged under the water, not floating buoyant on it.

I want to scream. Or cry. But I-

'As irritating as this conversstion has been, it's your turn, Karen.' His nonmoving mouth is... not humanoid. Especially when his eyes darken and muscles clench into definition.

My blood chills at his words. When I take a sharp breath, not the events of my life, but the absences of my future hopes flash through my mind.

I never scooped up our ten million pounds goal.

I never saw Venice.

I never orgasmed while -

Rising up higher, a large cavity opens in his chest, expelling a whoosh of air and a roar that rattles my bones. It drowns out my scream, sending me rolling backward.

Hearty laughs follow. His shoulders bounce, jiggling his skin.

'You should see your reaction. Priceless.'

"What?" My mouth gapes at his audacity as he roars out a laugh.

'Did you think I would... eat you?' More laughs make me wonder if he's ever held a conversation before. 'I don't eat junk food.'

I couldn't be less amused. "Where are my friends?"

'Tossed where they belong.' At my gasp, he adds, 'On shore, filthy land polluters.'

"Polluters... Wait a moment." I narrow my eyes. "You smashed our boat! You... guppy idiot! You turned ten million dollars of recycling equipment into sea trash! We were trying to clean all of this... this!"

His hesitation confirms I'm speaking the truth.

"Ha!" I depress my finger into the squish of his chest. "Who's the lesser species now!?"

Each word is a knife poke into my ego, 'How is that a question? Jellyfish are more intelligent.'

"Oh, that is it!" Climbing to my feet, I lunge at the creature.

Wet, slippery skin brushes my cheek as I wrap my arms around his form in a plan better formulated in my head. As soon as I make contact, his arms extend, fingers lengthening and extending into gray, elongated forms, prickling with half-circles. Wrapping them around me, I'm shocked into stillness.

Electric pulses charge my skin, warming it from the inside. A crushing, weighted compression tugs at my skin as pulsating currents spread to the tips of my body like grounded lightning. My lips part under the rush of energy coursing through me. It swirls in my chest, shooting tingles that tighten my nipples before dropping lower into my belly, navigating lower to -

"Enough, Jazz Hands."

'Don't act like you didn't enjoy that, Karen.'

"Stop calling me Karen!" I push my hands into his, umm, chest, frowning at the glowing areas on his body at our contact points. Tingles collect in my palms, then zip through the tips of my fingers and bolt through his torso.

Curling my fingers, the skin is smooth. No more splinters.

Warm pulses caress my forehead, softening my furrowing brows. I look up to a smug gleam in his eyes.

'Don't act like you didn't enjoy that either.'

"How? Why do you talk like you know me?" Shaking my arms out of his grasp, I frown again. No longer cold, I'm glowing warm as if I'm sitting at a campfire and not the freezing Pacific

'Like the others... You're not ready.'

The heat on my forehead increases, darkening my vision. Heaviness lulls my eyelids shut. My limbs sag with drowsiness. In less than a second, I'm overwhelmed by the need for sleep.

***

I'm floating on a cloud of ecstasy.

This better be what death feels like.

Wrapped in warmth and security, I curl into the heat source for this comfort. Softness brushes my cheek, caressing a line down my jaw. It curls around my throat, releasing the dryness scratching my windpipe. The continuous paths of soft touch trace the contours of my body, sliding in a trail of warmth and heat. One of each curls around my thighs, another brushing over my chest as it encircles my waist. My wrists and ankles are bound, holding me in weightless suspension. Heat and warmth chase the tingles, parting my lips in short breaths.

I'm either dead or having a wet dream.

My heart is beating out of my chest. Constriction coils around me, prickling my skin with soft tugs. It's not painful but it squeezes me to the point of restraint. Slacking my body into stillness, my racing thoughts cool into serenity in his confinement. I squeeze my arms around fluttering movements, cool breaths fanning over my forearms.

Heat chases the tightening sensations, warming my body with an inner glow. I release a low moan, humming against the squeeze massaging my throat and coating my tongue with dryness. Pulsing beats throb into central aches of tension, tightening and arching my body into pliant submission. My skin is burning, and my mind obsesses with the growing tension inside me.

Every touch, every stroke elevates me beyond my own awareness. Bolts of electricity erupt at each contact point, too many stimuli for my foggy brain to count. Rounding my lips, I release cry after cry under each wave of ecstasy he wrings. He's strumming my body to his tune, delving deep into areas of untouched pleasure. Arching against his beautiful restraint, he's tearing me between craving this heightened state for the rest of my life and desperate for relief.

In a flash, our connection clicks into place. Moaning through the throbs of aftershocks, his vulnerability humbles me with one fleeting glimpse. Flooded with light and warmth, I'm falling through memories that aren't mine, prickling my senses with the awareness that they are.

Endless, clear oceans offer blissful, natural beauty. Rays of light ripple through depths darker than pitch black. Centuries of peaceful, quiet, and undisturbed coexistence pass. Bountiful environments flourish with unimaginable life, from single organism autotrophs to skeletal fish to gigantic, gentle mammals. I touch none but feel them all, humming with a continuous, interconnected flow of life energy that burrows deeper than time or distance can measure.

In shrouds of gray, the water thickens into soup. Poison seeps into my skin, microplastics. Pollution chokes my lungs, burning them as if I swallow oil. The weight of 1.8 trillion contaminants swirls into a land mass overhead, ensnaring and suffocating life with each circular path it loops between land masses.

Different countries point fingers at who is to blame. The culprit is obvious: humanity.

Clawing my throat, I cough against the drowning sensation pulling me down. Unable to see surface light, I'm suffocating under my own silent screams. My skin and lungs burn and my life force, like my will to endure this toxicity, glimmers dull.

I'm dying.

Fluttering my eyes, I blink them open. Blue skies, hung with puffy white clouds, blanket me overhead. Extending my heavy arms, my fingers thread through coarse grains of cold, wet sand.

"Eileen!"

I choke to sit up, familiar forms treading across the sand at me.

"You're alive! I can't believe it." Hands squeeze my shoulder, tears pressing into my cheek. Relief fills Daniel's eyes, a sharp contrast to the hollow of my stomach and dread filling my heart.

"Yeah..." I whisper, awareness prickling up the back of my neck as I stare ahead.

From the glimpse he gave me, the soul-wrenching pain... We're all fucked.

Cupping my throbbing head, I shift my gaze over the curling whitecaps. One after another, they crash and break in rolling, continuous laps to the shore. Glinting in the sunlight, a single plastic bottle is carried to the sand level.

I can't see him, but his presence covers more than the ocean. He's out there as much as he's now a part of me, his imprint flowing through my veins, living in every cell beneath my red, marked skin.

My skin. It's littered with red, circular welts. Each is perfectly symmetric, red with the promise of bruising to come, and swollen with sensitivity. A simple brush of my fingers on my forearm sends an electric pulse up and inward. Respondent beats echo like sonar, each infliction humming with the same micropulses beneath my skin. Ache burrows deep inside me, a collection of the frenetic beats, and a clenching sensation grips them for future...

He's tapped into my nervous system. It's hypnotic, and obscene the way my body craves another hit of contact. A low moan threatens to tear up my raw throat and the same frustration from our introduction resurfaces, capped with a heady impatience.

"Eileen?" the sideways tilt of Daniel's head would be comical, if there wasn't a giant squidman out there laughing at my new personal torment. "Where are you going?"

I'll show him.

Laugh it up, Octo-orgasm.

"To buy an octopus dildo." I whisper. "The biggest one I can find."

***

I never should have touched her.

Tapping into the corners of her mind, she showed me everything I dream of, and more than I fear. A vessel of pure beauty contained within a fragile shell, she is an unblemished pearl hidden inside the ugliest oyster bed.

Her weak, beautiful submission, in body and mind, ensnares me like no other. The waves pull me to her, beckoning me with a silent siren's call. I could drain her soul, intertwine her frailty with my immortality, and still never drink enough. Every touch of her soft, pliant skin awakens my senses to life. Tasting her endless empathy illuminates part of me I thought had faded into nonexistence - hope.

Compared to me, she is a mere radar blip. Her finite insignificance serves no purpose past a fleeting temptation. My mild distraction will destroy her.

Her admirable sacrifices will spare her, but the rest will never stop. We shall no longer remain in passive existence against the virus of humanity. Retribution is all they deserve, and retribution they will receive.

Swift, cruel, and unforgiving.

They force us to taste their toxins. In return, they will drown in their own blood.

<<<<<FINIS>>>>>

Find more from still_just_me on Wattpad.

Kay is a contemporary romance author with a love of slow burn drama that ends in dumpster fires, followed by happily-ever-after endings. Every story (well, maybe not this one) offers a personal injection of sarcastic, self-deprecating humor, plotline twists and cliffhangers, and flawed, realistic characters and relationship dynamics.