Swallowed Whole

When I was 10 I thought I was going to be swallowed whole by God.

I was terrified of the ocean. Fortunately, my family and I lived in one of the last surface factions on Earth. Most the rest of society claimed the bottom of the ocean as their home, great big domes of glass and recycled air shielding them from the harsh sun up here. Not so conveniently, the ocean was still very much what we land dwellers relied on for everything. The air up here had turned sour and stale, and the soil was sucked dry by overuse. Everything left is dust and heat, the water harboring the only remaining sustainable life. So, we are through and through; a fishing community. I was around the age most kids started going out on fishing rigs and charter boats with their parents. I found ways to disappear on tranquil days though, when the sky was empty and the ocean was melted sea glass. Days, that would have been a perfect opportunity for a first expedition on the water. I’d been doing this for a year when both my moms sat me down and swore that if I didn’t join them on the rig I’d surely die when the day came that I had to face the ocean on my own.

The next day I found myself swaying in the middle of the open ocean. My green wellies that had never seen more action than a puddle were soaked through with salt water. Even my hair felt sticky with seawater. I thumbed at the heart shaped locket my parents had given me for my last birthday, water slipping between my fingers and it’s cool metal surface, hoping it wouldn’t rust. For the first couple hours of the journey mom showed me ropes, pulleys, nets, hooks, and chum buckets. I watched, a little sick to my stomach. My other mom was captaining the boat, steering us deeper and deeper out into the sky.

Not ten minutes after I had started to make peace with the rocking beneath me, something rammed into the tiller of the boat. Everything shuddered as I tripped over my feet, a splintering crack setting my ears on fire.

“Egan!” My mom shouted my name, yelling at me to get away from the edge of the boat. I scrambled up, grasping a hold of the boat to steady myself, the water leaden wood squishing beneath my hands. I glanced down at the sea below me. A cold rock worked its way up my throat, my skin tingling like I was sick. I honestly did want to get away from the edge of the boat.

But there was something huge and dark and shimmering, lurking a mere couple feet away. Smiling at me through the dark water. I couldn’t turn from it. If I looked away for even a second I was sure it would surge from beneath the surface and it would be the last thing I ever saw. I can hear screams of confusion and panicked instructions being shouted, all of it a muffled background to the silence that leaked from every pore of that thing in the water. The kind of silence that sits heavy over abandoned places, houses in shambles and graveyards overgrown. I was reminded of the devil. I couldn’t make out any of the creature's details as it slowly drifted nearer, the water concealing its features as it sank deeper beneath the surface. I watched it slink beneath the boat, my heart a war drum in my chest. I took a step back, released from it’s stare.

I turned to run to my parents, both of them on their knees desperately trying to repair a fissure in the ship’s side, when another crack resounded through the air. The breach that they had been trying to patch split open like a gaping maw and water pounded through, the boat flooding at an impossible speed. The ship moaned a loud creak and tilted to the right. The wooden boards beneath my feet were slick with fish slime and thin patches of green scum and I crashed to my back, sliding down the floor and straight towards the silky oblivion rushing into the boat. I dropped into the water, the words I wanted to call out to my moms swallowed up by sobs. There was so much darkness below me. Gasping and lungs stuttering I scrabbled for the side of the boat, nails catching on shedding wood slivers. But the boat was sinking faster than I was. It’s massive form becoming more and more shadow by the second.

Panic and water clogged my ears as my moms tried to calm me, shouting to focus on staying afloat. They swam closer. They reached me and all the relief I felt sunk with the boat as I glimpsed another shadow pacing closer to us. The creature from before was circling, though I could see it’s teeth more clearly now. Tall ribbons of ivory fitted together like pieces of a puzzle. I had been right to be afraid of the ocean I thought. Something about it commanded silence. Like staring into the face of a Tyrannosaurus Rex, like if you stayed still and silent enough it wouldn’t be able to see you.

I closed my eyes, focusing on the weightlessness around me. When suddenly, there was no longer weightlessness beneath me. A shadow ghosted my feet and for a split second I thought it was the boat rising from the depths to save us. But the thing beneath me was too big to be the boat. It was a mouth. Perhaps this would be a swifter death than being ripped into. But just when I expected to disappear into the deep pink mouth it shifted just a whisper and we were instead swept onto its head as it inhaled the toothed shadow before us. I grasped at the rough blue skin, finding a handhold on a cluster of encrusted barnacles. To my left my mom grabbed my waist and to my right my other gripped my hand, “hold tight.”

Instead of the terror that the water fills me with, fear and awe roar through me and sets my heart ablaze. The dying sun glazes the water red and colors the blue whale beneath us purple. And if that thing was the devil then this is surely God.

19 years later and that whale is still the closest I’ve ever come to anything holy. It takes me a while to enter the water again. Because once I did, I knew I’d never leave. I was going to spend the rest of my life chasing that cold fire that the whale had started in my chest.

Now, the boat I’m on grumbles deeply, the churn of its motor a throaty ache in the quiet sea. The hull of the ship is slicing through a thin film of algae and drowning insects on the ocean's surface, carving a path straight to our destination for our crew. Everest is sitting next to me, my leg bouncing as he regales me with stories of the things he's seen beneath the glass bottom of the boat. He’s been in the cage countless times, witnessed things he promises I’ve never seen the likes of. I know it’s not his decision that I’m being promoted now. His body is weakening with every journey into the deep. I’m young, my body is sturdy, and should hold up for many cataloging trips.

This summer, our crew is to catalog the Mariana trench and the surrounding seafloor. Everest is resentful of this, though he tries not to show it. I’ve been on many trips in the cage, but none of them have held this level of importance. This will be the first journey to Challenger Deep with the intent of cataloging the life down there and determining whether or not it is suitable enough for a faction to be built nearby. We are nearing the trench now and I stand to gather my gear. Everest wishes me luck and curls his hand into a fist, offering it to me, his skin thinning to a paper now and his veins glowing. I bump his hand with mine, a gesture that I taught him and that he has now made his own.

Once I’m suited up and have stepped into the cage, I peer through the thick glass and into the water below me. It doesn’t glare back at me like it used to. Now all I see is stagnant ink, and all I feel is a jittering excitement behind my eyes. The control panel to my left lights up as power surges through it, Karmine smiles down at me from the ship and twists the heavy wheel in their hands. The sound of technology I don’t completely understand whirs all around me and my descent begins. The journey should take around 3 hours total, and I am to spend another 2 at the bottom of the trench. The quiet darkness of the ocean never fails to disturb me in the most exquisite way. I sit as still as I can in the center of the cage, and stare out into the expanse surrounding me. Down here, I think, might be darker than space. I’m sure it’s emptier. My craft is the only light around for miles and whenever I descend I can’t help but feel like a blinking beacon.

I've only been sinking for an hour when a large shadow moves in the void before me. I am wary at first. Movement is quite often a deceit of the mind after too long spent with open eyes in the ocean. I wait. After a moment I’m certain the shadow is real. It’s form is too familiar.

I stumble to my feet as fast as I can and press my hands to the glass. The war drum in my chest has returned for a second time. I fumble with the control panel to my left and the flood lights surrounding me switch off with a thud.

Glowing krill light up all around me. The whale drifts closer. It opens its mouth as it nears me, a million glowing krill disappearing into its dark mouth like stars fading into the morning.

God is all about echoes. One voice calls out and a thousand resound.

The whale sings and a million krill scream in defiance.

That fire in my heart has never been louder.