Chapter 1: Warning
Have you ever heard of the word 'thalassophobia'?
Well... I wouldn't have even known what it was hadn't my doctor mentioned it to me as much as any hospitals I have been admitted to.
You see, thalassophobia is a fancy name for the fear of the ocean or other large bodies of water because of its vastness or because of the creatures that lives underneath it... and I believe this fear is one of the most justified in this world.
It is human nature to fear the unknown after all... to fear things the human mind wasn't able to explore or have yet to discover. Is it not why we fear the dark when we were children? Is it not why we ask our parents to check every nook and cranny of our bedrooms before we fall asleep?
Because we know, deep in our bones, even when we were still so young, that we are at our most vulnerable when we are asleep.
But now, I have come to realize... that it wasn't the dark that we were really afraid of, and it wasn't really the ocean that I have feared. It's the idea of the unknown; of what lurks past the things that we've known, what the human mind cannot comprehend.
I'm terrified of what lies beneath the sea.
And it all started in the summer of 1992... when I was forced to come face to face with the fact that even after all these many centuries, humanity has yet to know of everything about the place we have considered our world, our home's oceans... especially about things where light itself could never hope to reach.
It told me once that it came from the distant void of space where stars lived and die but now, it found itself slumbering within the depths of earth's ocean, a being once worshipped by elder gods now better left forgotten. Teetering on the verge of waking but not quite, not yet... something that has fallen but never dies continues to wait till the oceans run dry so it may rise once more, till the sun extinguishes itself and all life ceases to exist in this world.
It dreams of horrible, hopeful dreams.
For this is the way of things beyond life on earth that should have died but failed to stay dead. For as long they still retain their will to exist, to live and still have bodies–however scattered, buried or broken–they would still remain in this world.
...Until even death may die.
And it made me wonder is all, in times I least expect it even after all these years... if everything that we know of is enough–could be enough–when those that has sunk will rise again. Will life as we know it be one the many things that we have to lose, what we have to give up? Will humanity itself be what shall sink in turn?
...I don't want to know.
I don't even want to think of it anymore.
Because there are times that whenever I tried to think too much about what sleeps far beneath the heart of the sea, there was a part of me that wants to start screaming and never wants to stop, a part of me that despairs and grieves over the inevitability of the end.
I could only pray that when what lies beneath the sea finally wakes, my son, my future grandchildren and great-grandchildren would be no more just as I surely will be.
No one lives long enough.
No one is safe upon its will.
And to those that knows of its tale, its name...
...please, I'm begging you, don't ...
...don't let it take you.
* * * * *
What Lies Beneath the Sea is a work of fiction.
Names, characters, business, places, events, locales and any of the mentioned occurrences in the story are either the product of the author's imagination or it was all used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblances to actual persons, living or dead, or any actual events that can be found within the story are most likely based on actual incidents though.
That or it didn't really happen.
...or did they?