Ryan Lockwood - Below

“Megan! Megan!”

Daryl shouted, “John, where the hell is Megan?” He stopped reeling and looked anxiously at John.

“Jesus Christ! She was somehow caught in her line….” John was rooted in place, unable to move as he realized his niece was right then being dragged under by the thing at the end of her line. He couldn’t think. In the water under the boat, out of nowhere appeared a brief glow, then another momentary flash of light. Then he heard a splash.

“Megan!” Daryl had dropped his rod into the water. He crashed against John, shoving his brother to the side. For a second, maybe two, he looked down into the water for his daughter. He yelled her name again, then took a quick step up onto the gunwale and dove into the dark water.

From above them, the large females in the shoal felt the vibration pass through their soft bodies as a substantial object hit the surface of the water.

After starting to feed on her living sister, the dominant one-eyed female had become hooked to the glowing green prey in her sister’s arms and had released her meal before her brethren could overtake her in a similar fashion. She struggled to free herself from the unexpected upward pull of the object. With a sudden burst of power, she fought against it, then immediately stopped moving upward, the glowing thing becoming immobile in her grasp. Furiously she crushed it in her beak, spilling only a bitter fluid, then released the inedible object and swam back toward her wounded sister.

Many more in the shoal had already descended upon the dying female and had managed to tear away much of her flesh. The one-eyed female turned to pursue another group that had detached from the shoal and was headed rapidly to the surface, following another glowing object.

As she neared the surface, something large that had entered the water was dragged down past her, obscured by a writhing huddle of her brethren. Prey. But her attention quickly was diverted by another large, heavy object that created a sharp vibration as it entered the water a moment later.

She moved upward toward the source of the vibration. She immediately sensed that the object was prey, familiar prey, something she had fed on before. Her instincts told her that this creature and the other that had just been swarmed by the mass of her kin were food.

She turned her body slightly to fix her single eye on the prey and assess its defenses. Through the darting members of the shoal, she sensed that the large creature swimming down toward her in the darkening water was nearly her size and weight, but moved clumsily, slowly in the water. It must be dead or dying, and was therefore likely incapable of defending itself. As she closed to within a body length of the prey, she saw its two eyes fixed on her own.

Suddenly the prey moved faster than it had before, thrusting its head toward the surface and thrashing its lower half, its two legs propelling its thick body toward the surface.

The large female felt her nerves tingle as her senses heightened and her muscular body tightened, her flesh changing from a mottled pink to crimson red in the dark water. She twisted her body to direct her weaponry toward the fleeing prey and darted upward, lashing out with two longer tentacles to ensnare it.

But she was not the first to attack. Another large female—the badly scarred sister she recognized by the missing fin tip—rushed ahead of her and caught the slow creature as its head broke the surface of the water.

They rapidly towed the quarry back under, then pulled it tightly into them, engulfing it in their many powerful arms. The two sisters gripped its body tightly, dragging and pulling with powerful bursts of water from their siphons. They moved away from the surface, toward the deep. The prey was thrashing violently, jabbing and striking at them, but they sensed no injury or pain.

Together they pulled the creature farther down. Others from the shoal approached and latched on to its thrashing body; several gripped its leg, another its torso next to the one-eyed female, yet another affixing itself to its face. Drawing the prey tightly against her as she held her position on her own patch of flesh, the large female dug her sharp beak into the creature’s side through its loose outer skin. Underneath the sheath of fibrous, inedible fabric her beak met with warm, bloody flesh, rich with fat, and she bit further into its belly.

With a few powerful spasms, the prey finally gave up its fight and yielded to the shoal. The hungry mob, gathered tightly into an enormous ball around the dying animal, drifted slowly down into the blackness as it fed.

Sturman pressed his thighs against the handrail to maintain balance in the slow Pacific swells, then groaned with satisfaction as he sent an arc of piss off the bow of his boat. As the stream entered the water, the ocean magically lit up around it in a swirling, turquoise glow.

“Let there be light.” Sturman let out a loud, drunken belch. “Hey, Pop, check this out.”

Steve Black walked over, beer in hand. “Fuck me! Glowing shrimp! Why don’t you go swimming with ’em, Sturman?”

He shoved Sturman in the back, nearly pushing him over the rail. Sturman managed to keep his balance and turned to face Steve, unsmiling, his face flushed. Steve laughed and slapped him on the back.

Sturman’s expression slowly melted into a grin. “Watch it, old man.”

“Just fuckin’ with you, son.”

Sturman’s old drinking buddy was one of the few people he couldn’t stay mad at. “Try that again and I’m gonna turn around and water down your feet, asshole.”

“Go ahead. It’s your boat.”

“By the way, they’re plankton, you dumbass pirate.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“They’re not shrimp. They’re plankton… little crustaceans that light up when you piss ’em off.” He had once spent a lot of free time learning about marine biology. There was a time when he thought he would get a degree and study the ocean. But that was long ago.

“I’ll be damned. You’re smarter than you look.”

“I’ve never lit ’em up with my piss before.”

“Where the hell you learn this stuff, son?”

“You should try reading sometime. If you know how.”

Sturman finished and watched the glowing plume quickly vanish from the water. “Where you goin’, guys?” Sturman considered for a moment. “You know what, boys? I think I’ll take a swim.”

“You’re crazy, son. That water’s fuckin’ cold.”

“Suit yourself.”

Sturman zipped up his fly, tossed his straw cowboy hat at Steve, then executed a less-than-perfect dive over the rail, directly into the water where he had just urinated. Bud probably wouldn’t follow him in. The dog had gotten bored with the men after they started getting drunk, and was now sleeping in the stern of the boat.

As Sturman entered the cool water, he opened his eyes and saw that the tiny bubble trail he had just created was aglow. He watched the glowing tracers follow his hands as he waved them through the water. He flapped a hand up and down in front of his eyes, striving to see one of the miniature creatures in the ghostly underwater light, but realized in a sober part of his mind that even with a dive mask on he wouldn’t be able to see the individual critters—they were too small.

After half a minute, when Sturman felt his lungs burning for air, he kicked for the surface. Floating on the dark ocean next to his boat, he looked toward the bright, artificial lights from shore. How utterly different the harsh white and yellow lights of shore looked in comparison to the soft, supernatural bioluminescence he had just witnessed.

They were only a mile or so off the coast of Capistrano Bay. The moon was nearly full, the winds were light, and the sea was mostly calm. He savored the moment, knowing it was fleeting. It wasn’t often he was happy to be alive. Now, though, he was drunk. He usually felt better when he was drunk, because it made him forget, and the water was his favorite place.