literature

Comm. - Into the Abyss.

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Mysterious graphs pulsed across black screens as people in white coats labored away. Everything was white or steel, except for the graph paper that occasionally held a note or two. For the most part, things were quiet; the only noise was the occasional sneeze, or the sound of bubbles coming from one of the screens as a clumsy fish thudded against a camera. The relative lack of light on the camera's screen was enough to indicate that the scientists were looking for something very deep.

So deep, in fact, that one could even call it the Underworld.

Sarah, an unremarkable young lady with shoulder-length brown hair and equally chocolate eyes, found herself fixated upon one of the screens. Deep-sea vents hissed with sulfur. Aside from the occasional scuttling, blanched crustacean, the only life visible was a colony of tube-shaped, pulsing worms. Out of a whitish tube came a set of red "lips" like some horrid parody of a makeup commercial, allowing the worms to get their food. "Food" happened to be the very smoke itself; within those red plumes were bacteria that made food out of the water and sulfides around the creatures.

A wall of worms, huh, Sarah thought. She recalled a passage in the Bible about souls being turned into worms, then joining the massive structure of Hell itself. Alas, the passage was questionable - perhaps a later edition had added it in. Like corals, she supposed, souls built on top of souls, however wormy or not they were. It was certainly an interesting idea to toy with - a biological sense of Hell, perhaps.

She scanned this particular room of Kerberos Labs briefly. A meter or two down, Frank monitored a certain crack in the Earth's crust that supposedly occasionally leaked screams; Sarah had yet to hear any. Just outside the door, she could see Susan walking by, leading a man in casual clothing to her personal interview room; ever since she had entered the facility, Susan's obsession had been near-death experiences. Emily's petri dishes of archaeobacteria sat idly in their incubator with minimal resources. Everybody was there to prove one thing: that Hell was real.

An outsider's first question would be, "why?" Although Sarah was forbidden to talk about her work, she had asked that very thing when she had first applied as an intern, no less than three years ago. She could guess that the only reason it was a common question was because nobody bothered to think through the answer themselves.

"If we prove Hell exists," Raphael, her boss, had started, "it means that Heaven exists. It also means that God exists, and if God exists, then the Bible may as well be taken as fact." The lab was very well supported by certain fundamentalist groups, who, Raphael assured her, had little idea what the lab did. The Christian groups could squabble over who was right about the small details after proving God's existence.

Of course, Sarah had more reason than that to study Hell. For whatever reason, she felt that she belonged in Hell. She had not done anything particularly bad, and for this reason, she kept the thought to herself. It was one thing if a murderer thought he should be in Hell, and another for an innocent person to want more than a day trip there.

The monotony of hissing sulfur was suddenly broken. Sarah heard a thud against the camera. It had probably just been another fish - maybe one of those frilled sharks. Sarah liked those rare things whenever she had the chance to see them.

This, however, was no shark.

Sarah had trouble making out exactly what it was, at first, or was perhaps otherwise in denial. What she saw - or, at least, thought she saw - was a strange, long, blue creature. Although it looked much like an eel or slender fish at first glance, the front half of it looked almost like one of those bug-eyed, big-headed aliens. Occasionally, a long, slender arm would reach out, reveal digits paddled with webbing, and steer the creature another way. Streams of light stretched out of its bulbous head, somewhere between glowing jellyfish tentacles and hair. Whenever a fish swam by, it would open its mouth, stretching its entire jaw into a translucent tube.

Even without the scales, and with other features that suited the deep-sea abyss, Sarah could not help but think she had seen a real, live mermaid.

"Guys! I think I found something!" she suddenly called. With a smile as wide as a grapefruit, she pointed excitedly at the screen. "There's a real mermaid down there!"

Everybody rushed over to see what, exactly, Sarah had found. They stared at the screen for a moment. Frank, a chubby fellow with a receding line of black hair, turned to her with a quizzical look.

"Whatever you saw, Sarah, it's gone," he told her. Sarah looked at the screen. It was back to the worm channel. All worms, all the time. She couldn't believe that creature had vanished so suddenly. After seeing nothing but more hydrothermal lipstick tubes of worms, the people in the crowd returned to their respective posts.

Maybe it was just me, Sarah thought. She shrugged, then went back to staring into the darkness.

Perhaps, she thought, she had just imagined it. As she looked back into the streams of steam and invertebrates, she squinted, hoping to see those familiar blue lights in the shadows. She began checking the temperature and water numbers; yes, they were all normal. Occasionally, her gaze would wander to the other scientists. She began wondering how the archaea were doing.

"Life always finds a way," Emily had once said. "We used to think that nothing could live without sunlight, remember? Your worms are actually pretty special, Sarah."

Yeah, worms that live in an area without sunlight, Sarah thought. In Christian terms, they're the furthest things removed from the light of God, aren't they? She shook her head clear of the thought; someone would correct her, but it still struck her as a damned zone beneath the sea.

She inspected the worms for the eight millionth time. Like earthworms, they were eyeless, segmented things; to be honest, Sarah thought, the earthworm's seaborne relatives were all far more interesting. Like cnidarians - corals and anemones, in particular - the tube worms were just a "head" and a long body attached to a rock.

Sarah wondered how complex they really were. Compared to jellyfish and coral, those worms were probably pretty sophisticated. Despite looking fairly simple, earthworms had a sophisticated nervous system with a primitive "brain." Did those lipstick-ish things? If so, what did they feel?

Perhaps more importantly, if something that complex could live without sunlight, was there a limit to what could? Wouldn't anything that lived down here be strange enough to be called a "demon?" Sarah's mind flashed back to the mermaid she had seen.

A sudden gush of bubbles appeared on her screen. Had Sarah not known better, she would have thought that the slender, black limb beneath the cloud was an illusion. Shreds of tube worm danced in the toxic bubbles as something long, slim, and looking somewhere between a fish and a two-legged lizard. Sarah could not see its eyes, but a long, narrow snout flattened almost like a duck's bill, armed with a cage of long, pointy teeth, were clear enough even in those few seconds.  A square-shaped tail sped the carnivorous thing out of there.

I've never seen anything like that, either, Sarah noted. She scrawled down the time and a vague description ("long sirenoid"), then went back to gazing. This had not been the same creature she had seen before, but reminded her of the two-legged "siren" salamanders in any case. Amusing coincidence.

Don't...

Sarah suddenly jolted up from her notebook. A voice - a very monotone, genderless, faint voice - had surfaced in her mind.  She looked around the lab like a dog flickering its head after cars. Nobody looked back at her. It must have been her imagination.

Blue lights flickered in the darkness of the screen. They quickly faded away. Things were back to the worm channel, again.

Don't...t-t-t-teeeeelllllll...

Sarah felt a shiver run down her spine. The monotone voice had a distinct, dolphinlike stammer, accompanied by a far longer "song," that made it sound even less real than before. Still, Sarah knew in her now-fluttering heart that it was real.

"Don't tell?" Sarah asked back. She noticed some of her labmates looking at her strangely. How were they to know about the voice in her head? She thought the same thing into the depths, and hoped it would work.

Don't tell surface things, the voice said again. Surface bad. Surface hurt slimefolk.

"Slimefolk?" Sarah repeated. A cloud of blue lights approached the camera. Her pencil took vague notes; even though she knew, vaguely, what it was, she noted the glowing blue "hair" the supposed slimefolk had as "glowing blue lights."

Yes. No have scales. Have slimy friends on body like blanket. Taste bad to other things, make slimefolk hard to grip. Sarah could now see the supposed "slimefolk" that had been talking to her,  and understood what he...she...it? must have meant: no, there were no scales on that strangely humanoid, long body. She began to wonder how the slimefolk had evolved; were they like anemone symbiotes? Maybe that hair could sting, too.

You're interesting, Sarah projected. The slimefolk tapped the camera with a finger. She did not know how, or if, it could see her back, but she got a very good look at its bottomless pits of eyes. Mind answering a few questions?

No tell surface things?

No tell surface things.

Ask question.

Sarah thought up one immediately: Is Cthulhu a real thing?

Cthulhu?

Big, tentacled dragon-squid man, Sarah responded.

Yes, dragon real. Dragon eat slimefolk, octopus, squid, shark. Dragon eat all except fuzzy worms on hot spot. Dragon has plates like lobster, lots of fins. Pointy teeth like skraal.

That last word didn't translate, Sarah observed. She tried to transcribe it as best she could. She could only guess that the "dragon" was a massive version of the two-limbed salamander she had seen earlier. If she had to guess, that bill was used for sensing electricity - not a bad adaptation to the pitch darkness at all. With fins like something out of the Silurian Period, it could be pretty fast, too.

More importantly, this was a breakthrough. If something like a dragon could be real, who was to say that someone could not have created "Satan" out of it? Did it have multiple, thorny heads? It might have even had a spaded tail, adding more to the image of a demonic serpent king of darkness. It also coincided with reports of the dragon king having a palace beneath the waves in the East, but naturally, her focus was on the more hellish aspects.

The slimefolk was still there. Sarah had more questions.  

Have humans ever seen you?

Most humans would have looked down. The slimefolk did not, but its glowing mane slowly strobed black and neon blue. Surface-folk eat dead slimefolk sometimes. Catch in net. Surface dangerous.

Sarah could understand that. Occasionally, fishing boats did something called ocean trawling. Trawling had led to several accidental discoveries, and several accidental culinary inventions. Sarah could guess that only a handful of people knew that orange roughy was an abyssal fish - and highly endangered because of such practices. Sarah added "mermaid" to the list.

But slimefolk hold no ill, the slimefolk continued. Slimefolk know way to get to surface is not dangerous. Slimefolk use surface-body as slime-body.

That got Sarah's attention.

What?

Slimefolk save surface-folk life by taking out surface-soul and adding slimefolk soul, the slimefolk explained. Slimefolk swim better in surface-folk bodies than surface-folk. When surface body die, slimefolk take it back to sea, and slimefolk soul join life current.

Sarah had heard numerous stories of mermaids going up to the surface. She had always wondered how they did it. Now she knew, and it was much more interesting than cutting the fish tail into legs. In a heartbeat, the slimefolk had also confirmed the existence of the soul. Rumor had it that mermaids were soulless, but apparently that myth had just been busted.

Sarah was getting more and more interested in what her new conversation partner had to say. She knew that eventually, the others would wonder about her awestruck grin, but for now, she did not care. She was talking to a mermaid about Hell, and she did not give a skraal's tail about how crazy that sounded.

How about God? Sarah asked. The slimefolk pointed to the billowing pillar of volcanic smoke that Sarah usually eyed.

Slimefolk have two god, it responded. Dragon one, hot spot other. Hot spot give life, dragon take it away.

It was a very simple way of seeing God, Sarah thought. Things that gave life and took it away were the very basis for deities, weren't they? The Christian God was supposedly both.

That left one more question for Sarah to ask. If these slimefolk could transfer souls, could they demonstrate for her?

You want soul out? the slimefolk asked. Its hair flickered in a pattern that Sarah could not quite follow. Why surface-folk want soul out? Surface-folk like soul.

I dunno, Sarah thought. I've just always thought I belonged in the underworld. Like, I was destined to be there or something.

Why?

Beats me. I've just always felt that my soul is destined to wind up in Hell, being eternally roasted.

You odd surface-folk, the slimefolk commented.

You think so, too, huh?

Yes. Is very weird for surface-folk to look down here. Why you look, anyways?

Sarah's answer came so naturally she forgot to think about her thoughts: For science! See, there's been a lot of controversy about whether God, Heaven, and Hell are real or not. My lab specializes in proving if Hell is real, and - 

There was a period of silence. It gave Sarah ample time to realize that, yes, she had telepathed something quite wrong indeed.

…You said you no tell.

I won't! Sarah hastily thought. It's just for my own curiosity!

Sarah suddenly wished there was a mental equivalent to wishing she had kept her mouth shut. No sooner had she telepathed the idea when she felt an odd cinching in her…mind? She felt it all over her body, perhaps indeed touching her astral body. Nothing hurt, and yet, like phantom pain, she slowly lost feeling in her limbs. She felt her soul being pulled out of her body, and could only watch from above as her physical body went limp.

While Sarah watched as everyone in the lab rushed to her side, she found herself dragged, slowly, by the slimefolk. She could only see the blackness of the water around her and feel the heat emanating from the smoking underwater tower. Her sense of smell caught only salt and sulfur.

There was no good way to look at herself - she had gone blind, it seemed - but her sense of touch was quite active. It felt like she was being stuffed into a tube far too small for her body, but there was no way for her to see it. Soon, a twisting followed, and Sarah quickly realized how her garbage bags must have felt as she spiraled into darkness. She could feel the heat, and the water, as her writhing soul welded itself to a geothermal vent.

The feeling soon transferred itself into flesh. Strange, white rings surrounded Sarah's attached soul. They squished it further; she could only presume this was what it felt like to go down someone's esophagus. As more coils wrapped around her, she began to wonder how, and why, a soul could feel anything at all.

With her body twisting in spirals of white, she found that thought slipping away. She tried to chase it, even as her body got longer and longer, but it felt like awkward juggling. She would chase one thought, only to drop another. All the while, she was pushed on an elevator. Those thoughts would rest at the bottom of the ocean forever.

W-what? Why're you doing this? HOW are you doing this?! Sarah demanded. She could feel her head, if it were still at all physical, throbbing with the pressure surrounding her. It made telepathy difficult.

The questions were answered in reverse order: Slimefolk transfer souls a lot. Surface-lady wanted to see lightless realm, and threatened to tell. Granted wish.

Sarah wanted to hold her head as she neared the top of the tube. She did not think it was possible, a thought which slipped away almost immediately, but her soul developed a headache as the dark void outside her white haven got closer and closer. It pounded and pounded like a drum marching steadily towards her, accompanied by the vacuum outside. When she finally saw the darkness above her tube, she wished she could stop the sudden pressure. There was nothing that could stop her soul from exploding into a crimson firework. On the camera, it looked like another long, lipstick-headed worm had just been born from the earth beneath the sea.

The people on the other side could not see Sarah. There was only another worm, lounging in the crevasse of Hell. For the rest of eternity, she would stay there, living off of things that would kill any other creature. All the while, she was blind, and could only feel the jets of black steam caressing her new body.

Meanwhile, within the sterile walls of the lab, Sarah stood up. Or, at least, Sarah's body did. Several other arms helped her to her feet, unaware of what had just transpired. She held her head for a bit.

"Sarah! Are you all right?" a man in a white coat asked. She smiled weakly and nodded.

"I just got…sucked into the abyss, shall we say?" Sarah responded. "Something flicked by the screen, and I hoped it would appear again. I guess I forgot to eat." Nobody noticed that Sarah jumped at noises that should have been familiar, or occasionally seemed disoriented in the halls; the slimefolk that now inhabited her body did an amazing job imitating Sarah's obsession with the thermal vents, taking notes and occasionally erasing some of Sarah's old findings when nothing was going on. 

Things resumed what could be called "normal" for a lab that devoted itself to searching for Hell. A month or so later, however, someone noticed the brief, sketchy, ambiguous notes that dotted one of Sarah's folders. His name was Ed, and his specialty concerned Dante's Inferno. The two had never met outside of the occasional "hello" in the hallway.  

"'Skraal?'" he asked. "What's that?"

Sarah hastily hid the notebook beneath an arm. "Erm, I dunno. Just something I thought up while nothing was going on!" Ed raised a brow while looking at Sarah's screen. As usual, her screen showed nothing but worms soaking up the infernal heat in the deep sea abyss.

Ed remembered the day that Sarah collapsed. It had been an odd day at work, to say the least. He had not jotted any particular observations about Sarah down, but went to check the film for the past month or so, just in case.

It turned out that Ed found something very odd indeed. Usually, Sarah tracked every minute spent with the worms. One day, though, almost half of her recording had vanished. Ed replayed the film several times; with how the video had been edited, it was impossible to tell exactly what had happened, there. For about two hours, he replayed the footage of seven-foot-long, red and white worms, only to have a chunk be replaced by black.

Come to think of it, he recalled, aren't there giant worms near the cold seeps in the deep sea, too? Surely, this was a matter worth looking deeper into.
I had fun with this. Waaaay too much fun with this. It's just another commish from :iconhallvar: feauring the OC Sarah, but...I had fun with it. 

Such neat creatures, so little time! I figured the commissioner would like to see an abyssal mermaid in "Hell," so I made one. The dragon and skraal followed. I drew the skraal already; maybe I should draw the "dragon" and slimefolk, too! 

Sarah belongs to :iconhallvar:, the abyss ecology is mine. Enjoy! 
© 2014 - 2024 TheLastHetaira
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Toy-Soldier-Kelsey's avatar
Poor girl, spending the rest of her life as a sightless worm at the bottom of the ocean.
I love it.