Water and People
This project was written for my Winter Term in Oberlin.
It includes all of my notes and reflections.
The central theme of this project is water, and its various effects on people. I plan to write a series of short stories of people or a person in an environment tied to water. Each short story would be around 2,000-5,000 words, and I'd like to complete about 3-4 of them. My goal is to have as much variety as possible, and display how much of a powerful effect water has on the psyche of people.
I want to be a writer, be it creative or copywriting. I'd like to follow creative writing whether or not I can turn it into a career, and may go into advertising/copywriting just to be safe.
I also deeply enjoy the settings that are inherently tied to water, in whatever way possible. It's core to human survival and has a proven effect on our psychology. (Ignoring this however, I just really like water and the stuff that lives in it and the way it looks)
Prologue for Livyatan
This first project is called Livyatan, and already is something that goes against my goals. Specifically the one of working on my pieces outside of the allotted time of one week I gave myself, but I feel that I’d like to finish and share it, or I wouldn’t be satisfied. During my Intro to Fiction class, I misunderstood an assignment and wrote an extra piece that I didn’t have to. So I didn’t submit it. I didn’t work on it further, either until now. Livyatan was inspired by the fear of the deep people seem to have, and the theory that alien life might exist on distant ocean planets or moons. It’s a very dramatic piece in terms of setting, which is something foreign to me, but I enjoyed writing it a lot. Going into it again, after getting some feedback from people outside of Oberlin, friends of mine, I wanted to define each character more, and make them less two dimensional and stiff, which is something I have a lot of trouble with. I find it difficult to make my characters express thoughts or feelings that I normally would not.
Otherwise, I was satisfied with the setting and the general plot and its implications for the characters.
Livyatan
A huge beast rumbled effortlessly through the crushing abyss. Glowing eyes spanned its length, each twisting about with a mind of their own, straining to see into the darkness. Powerful rows of fins flanking each side stirred silt and detritus into the water, leaving billowing clouds behind for miles, eclipsing its light. Seen from above, however, even that blazing titan and its trail seemed insignificant in the ghostly pale hadal plains, and water which swallowed all light. Humanity’s last vestige, The Livyatan, culmination of over a millenia of research into nuclear submarines. Over two hundred years ago, it was dropped from the upper atmosphere of an alien terrestrial planet, into the Mare Crisium. A name borrowed from their old moon.
In the crushing darkness of the machinery, with the methodical thrumming of the engine reverberating through his body like a heartbeat, Anthony climbed about with a small light. He worked below-decks, if you could really call it that. Sometimes it meant working inside the hull above the rest of the inhabitants. Waste pipes, boilers, wiring, and rusty air filling his lungs. It was a dangerous job, but that was his domain. His sanctuary. At the end of his work, Anthony returned to a small room with a bed, desk, chair, and nothing more. There was a tiny porthole to see out of, but he always kept it firmly closed. Taped down the latch. People often complained about feeling cramped in those rooms, but anyone who worked in the hull never seemed to mind.
Sitting in the dim mess hall, Anthony stared at the dark greens and the compressed disc of meat-protein on his plate. Gingerly, he pierced it with his fork and began to eat.
“Hey, hey, my favorite ratchet head! How’s it going?” Someone slapped him on the shoulder, and he recoiled. Anthony turned, annoyed. Richard grinned down at him, holding his own plate. A roundish man, who wore a stained lab coat loosely over a standard uniform. A split seam had begun to fray and eat away at the coat. The overall impression Richard gave was similar to the pipes Anthony toiled away at, crumbling away with time.
“...You feeling alright?” Anthony frowned.
“Alright? Never better! Maybe… I'm just a bit tired. Been patching up leaks in the hull?” The older man spoke breathlessly, moving to sit next to Anthony on the bench. Anthony didn’t tell him that any leak probably wouldn’t be able to be patched up. They wouldn’t be able to do anything about one before it killed them all. He shivered, keeping his eyes glued to his food. Away from the windows on the walls.
“Maybe. What about you? How has… observation been going?” Anthony struggled to ask the question.
Richard laughed, until he was wheezing, noiselessly. His grizzled beard trembled. “You want to get us all killed!? No. No, it’s still all just a bunch of fucking bacteria.” That wasn’t a proper answer. Richard stabbed at the food on his plate.
Anthony felt nausea stirring in his gut, and uneasiness in his heart. No matter how sterile and clean the process was for their food, it turned his stomach. The texture was always just too… slimy, too lumpy. Richard didn’t seem to mind as he cleaned his plate. Anthony turned.
“See you around.”
“Okay.”
The next time Anthony saw him, Richard was in their sector’s apartment commons, rambling about the creatures he’d seen out there in the black water. His dark eyes blazed with madness.
“I swear to fucking god, it was bigger than half this damn ship.” He growled, waving his arms over his head in a wide arc. A few others were gathered around, settled on threadbare, maroon armchairs. Some disinterestedly looked at displays on their tablets, while a few side eyed him with morbid fascination. A woman stood nearby, also watching Richard, her arms crossed. Her face was entirely without expression, and that told Anthony enough. She was more worried than anyone else.
“Hey, Marcie.”
She turned and gave a shushing gesture, though she smiled thinly. “Marcille,” she corrected, and, waving a hand towards Richard. “He’s gotten worse.”
“I can tell. Is this the fourth time this week?”
Richard noticed his arrival. “Hey! You! Tell them, you’ve seen it too, right? Come on!” He stared past Anthony with glassy, unrecognizing eyes.
“Richard, I don't look outside. You know how I feel about it.” Anthony bit his lip. “Hey it’s m—” Richard silenced him with profanity, his eyes focusing only to daggers at Anthony, then down at his feet.
“Shit. The bastards in Central aren’t telling us anything either. I bet it shows up on their fucking sonar. Look out there, you damn cowards. It’s suffocating in here, knowing people aren’t doing shit while they’re all out there, just waiting to—"
“Hey.” Marcille cut him off and stepped forward. “Richard, are you feeling alright? Do you want to talk to me about it?” Her tone was calm, confident. She placed a hand on his arm and another on his back. Anthony watched carefully, as Richard’s hands tightened on the arms of his chair. A vessel pulsed on his neck perpendicular to his wrinkles. It stood out like a scar.
“I—What can you do about the fucking shadows out there? I bet you damn shrinks are in on it!”
“They won’t come closer right? As long as the lights are on.”
Richard, covering his face, spoke in a whisper. “...So you believe me?”
“I’d like proof first, but you should calm down.”
“Okay. If I show you, will you believe me?”
Anthony kept frowning. Richard’s episodes were growing more frequent. Everyone was worried, but they could do nothing about it. Central’s resources weren’t enough to treat mental health with drugs. It wasn’t uncommon for people to become depressed under that fathomless, crushing, deep but—Anthony took a shaky breath—but Richard’s symptoms were like schizophrenia, hallucinations and episodes of delusion.
THOOM. A deep reverb echoed through the walls, through the floors. The lights flickered. Went dark. Someone screamed; shrill, prolonged. It didn’t sound human.
“Richard!”
Anthony was frozen, stuck staring at where he’d just seen a light flicker out. A chill stabbed its way down his spine. “You’ve got to be fucking with me.” His throat began to constrict. Something crashed in the darkness.
“HEY! Someone grab him!” Marcille barked. The ground wasn’t shaking anymore. In the pitch black, Anthony moved to where he knew his equipment was hanging. Feeling the suit’s pockets he found what he was looking for. A small lamp. He flicked it on. Richard lay collapsed on the floor, face down. Eerily pale. Marcille was crouching next to him and had a hand on his back. The others in the room had sat up, and were now looking at his light. People were murmuring.
“What the fuck was that?”
“Christ. Jeeesus Christ...”
“It can’t have been a thermocline…that was too sudden. Richard, you alright?”
Their voices blended together while Anthony gathered his shaken thoughts. He knew that since no alarm had gone off, the hull wasn’t breached. If that system had failed too, well. Not much he’d be able to do about it. The walls began to cast an even, orange-reddish glow. Emergency lights. Made it feel like they were in the stomach of some animal. Anthony put his own lamp on the floor, and pulled on the uniform, picking the lamp up again to slot it into an attachment on his shoulder. His helmet had another light, which he yanked off and left with Marcille, who was inspecting Richard’s head.
“Well, he’s not bleeding.” She sucked in a breath through her teeth.
Anthony scoffed. “I’ll go to the station. Be back with news.”
“Be careful.”
With the light on his shoulder, he moved his way into the hall. More lights were collected around where he knew the communication center was. The stations were scattered all around the ship at regular intervals, and contained the most immediate relevant information. Anthony moved towards it. People gathered around a display with multiple screens, reading information and lines of text which came at a regular pace. A primary notice board with Central’s logo, translucent in the background read:
EMERGENCY SYSTEMS SIPHONED POWER AT OUTER BATTERIES TO SHIELDS.
LARGE SUBMARINE ERUPTION TOWARDS STARBOARD BOW.
SYSTEMS WILL BE FULLY OPERATIONAL IN APPROXIMATELY TWO MINUTES.
REMAIN CALM.
“About where we are...” Anthony frowned.
In fact, almost all of those present showed consternation in some way, shaking their heads, sighing. Murmurs of distrust. It was always like this. They never had the full picture. Even if it wasn’t impossible, it was strange. The ship was well equipped to detect geological activity. The old sown seeds of doubt pushed their heads through the soil of Anthony’s mind.
Eventually, the lights flickered back on, and the gentle hum of the electronics returned. Anthony went back to the commons, and found out that Richard had suffered a stroke.
“Apparently because his blood pressure was too high, and he hit his head.” Marcille relayed. She was a psychologist, not a neurologist. Someone had already been by to take him away after affirming the injury with her.
“He might die, might go catatonic.” She spoke coldly. Anthony knew it wasn’t her fault. The situation was out of her control, and this was all she could muster. Regardless he clenched his fists, and didn’t say anything as he collapsed into a chair. Though usually still, even during the most precarious jobs, his hands started to tremble. Then his shoulders. A weary sob welled up in his chest. Marcille knew that for now, the most she could do was stay silent.
When Anthony had first moved to his apartment, alone, Richard had taken him under his wing. Close bonds between neighbors were common in those confined habitations. Richard showed Anthony around the labs he worked in; the bubbling tanks of oxygen, silt and microbes, and the plant nurseries lit up by lamps. So when Anthony chose his career, he thought of the labs in their district. At the time they had filed a maintenance order which was beyond delayed. During breaks the scientists around him swore at Central, and cursed bureaucracy over watery coffee. He chose to be an engineer, and Richard had laughed and gave his thanks. Several years ago Anthony had disclosed his troubles in love, and Richard had given him the advice and courage to go talk to Marcille, the psychologist from his generation who Anthony had thought was pretty, but too intimidating to approach. With conversation he came to learn that she simply had difficulty socializing outside of work. Richard supported them both and Marcille came to respect him as well. However, one of the first things Marcille voiced in private to Anthony was: “I think Richard’s psyche is strained.”
The primary task for scientists onboard was managing the systems that harvested and processed the organic matter on which the entire ship depended. It was trusted to only the most senior of the staff. That had been Richard’s job for years. The secondary task was observation. Humanity’s curiosity couldn’t be stemmed by anything. Scientists dedicated hours of research to the perpetual midnight zone which surrounded their vessel, even in spare time. There was an unspoken possibility that every individual aboard that submarine considered. A primal fear, that fascinated and bewitched. What if something far beyond their comprehension, some creature of the abyss, lurked in those waters?
Richard certainly came to believe so. No one could tell if he had actually seen something, or if it had been a hallucination caused by exhaustion. Regardless, it broke him. He began to have psychotic episodes and was quickly demoted, rank by rank, by the scientific board of Central. All the while he rambled about something he had seen. He was just a watchman now, his only task to stare out into the water that had driven him to insanity. His descriptions varied wildly. A gargantuan, toothy, maw, with endless rows of concentric needle-like teeth. A writhing mass of tentacular fury, repulsed by the light of the Livyatan. A swarm of leech-like monsters that attacked the ship undetected, scraping away at its shields. Rather than traumatically frightened by his task to peer into the darkness, Richard grew deeply, uncannily obsessed. Maybe in some crevice of his subconscious, he wanted to confirm to himself that his delusions and madness weren’t so, that something really did lurk out there. Maybe he wanted to defeat that crushing and looming fear by facing it head-on. A mixture of desperation, fright, and anger. At those who had silenced and disgraced him, at the people he’d thought would believe him. He spiraled further into madness and paranoia. Marcille was helpless to stop it. She was almost always by him when she was off duty. Anthony too. At times, in his bouts of madness, Richard would forget who they were. It broke Anthony’s heart, Marcille could tell. Yet they held out hope, even now as they awaited news of his condition.
Eventually, they learned what had become of him. In a miracle recovery, the stubborn old man had come to. Disoriented. His hospital room had a single porthole from which to look out of. Everything else was padded and bound, the mattress to the wall, the corners rounded, and the door sealed from the inside, equally padded. That didn’t stop him. Richard had bashed his head into the window until he’d suffered a secondary hemorrhagic stroke and died. Until the end, he had stared out defiantly into the dark waters, which offered no answers to the madman.
In his quarters, Anthony sat at his desk. Marcille had told him to write down how he felt, to at least try to summarize his grief and anger, to let it out. At how they lived. At the people who had furthered Richard’s madness. At Richard. At himself. Gripping his pencil until it creaked, Anthony scratched out a dark, indescribable mess of lines on his journal until the paper tore and the point of the pencil snapped. He was breathing raggedly, hunched over the notebook. Pressing his head onto the wall, he felt an uncomfortable lump. The mass of tape wrapped thickly over the porthole’s latch. An idea formed in his brain. His hand, almost against his will, began to peel back the layers of electrical tape. Bit by bit. The looser it became, the quicker the tape came off and the quicker his breath. Eventually the latch was clear. With trembling hands he flipped it, and the cover swung away with a small thud. The porthole, less than a foot in diameter, glowed with an eerie, pale light.
The silt plains outside reflected the spotlights which shone with hundreds of thousands of lumens into the black oceans of Mare Crisium. They were pale, flat, interrupted only by the occasional stone which jutted above the miles of biological snow. Anthony’s breath began to fog the cold glass as he came closer and closer to the window. He observed only the plains at first. Looking for anything to ground his vision on. It just went on and on and on… fading into obscurity in a dark, hopeless horizon. He forced himself to keep looking, to keep raising his gaze. The endless darkness seemed to pull him towards it. It was all he could see. His forehead pressed painfully into the metal rim of the porthole. The darkness continued onwards and upwards, stretching up and beyond. He pressed against it. Was that a tendril he saw? Drifting lazily in the water, hanging just outside of his vision, as his eyes rolled painfully back into his head. Just out of the range of the infuriatingly small, cold porthole. If he could just lean out, look further up… His cheekbone pressed against the cold, unforgiving glass, and the frame scraped against his face. The pain shattered something fragile within him. He became overwhelmingly aware of how small his room was, and he screamed, slamming his fist into the wall. He kept screaming, his voice cracking and his throat raw, every fiber in his body turned to his now singular goal of tearing the porthole out of the wall. To enter the water to get out of that fucking prison. His fingers raked helplessly at the smooth joining between the glass and the metal, until his nails found a miniscule crack between the two, and he poured renewed effort into prying that crack open, only managing to bloody his fingertips. His throat began to close in response to the panic. He couldn’t breathe. Desperately he tried to suck in air, but the breaths were shallow, so shallow they didn’t reach his lungs. Like trying to inhale some viscous liquid. He gagged, and thought briefly of the slimy disc of protein he’d eaten for lunch. Every day. For his entire life. That fucking meat, this fucking air, it was all the same—it all came from those cursed waters. They permeated every cell in his body. He was the Ocean. What did it matter, inside or out? Imagery of the bubbling tanks of oxygen and bacteria Richard had shown him as a child flashed through his head. Anthony felt like his chest was being crushed by some invisible force and he began to choke. His bloody fingertips slowly registered the pain they were in, pulsing and aching, and he curled his hands to his chest, falling back onto his cot.
“ANTHONY!” His door slammed open. Marcille rushed in, out of breath, and saw the porthole. She slammed it shut. The latch clicked quietly into place. Anthony coughed, spitting up saliva, and gasped, breathing. She must have heard. He sobbed.
“Hey…” She kneeled, clutching his head, tilting it back to open his airways, until his tongue no longer pressed it down. “Breathe… breathe… breathe…” She said each word, slowly. Deliberately. The room opened up again, widening, as he took in fresh air.
“Never do that again…” Her voice cracked. She trailed off. That’s right. Anthony mused through the haze in his mind. There was something we had down here. Anthony felt exhaustion wash over him, and a sinking sense of realization.
Poor Richard… He could hardly lift his arms now, barely speak at all, but he forced himself to murmur one word, before falling asleep.
“Sorry…”
Final Reflection for Livyatan
I enjoyed visiting this piece again. Anthony is probably my most intense character I’ve written, in terms of emotional depth. I hope I was able to capture the feeling of claustrophobia a person might have from living underneath a black ocean for all their lives appropriately. At the same time I wonder if parts were too dramatic, and became unbelievable for readers. Richard I hope was also able to be fleshed out, although I’m concerned I didn’t showcase the disparity in how he normally interacted compared to when he was in a manic episode. I also don’t know if the summary and exposition were the best way to relay what happened to him, and I think there was a better way to do it. Marcille was probably the least developed of the three, but I wanted her relationship with Anthony to highlight how important it is for people to have each other. How being isolated or shunned has a strong negative effect on people.
In terms of the setting, this time I also poured a lot of effort into worldbuilding. My thought process for worldbuilding is that, in order for it to be believable to the reader, it has to be believable for the writer. Even if the reader doesn’t get to see half of what the writer pens, it’s crucial for the story for it to be written down. The next page is a collection of my notes on the Livyatan itself.
(sidenotes for Livyatan)
Submarine
Name: The Livyatan
Taken from the prehistoric carnivorous whale, in turn inspired by the Biblical Leviathan
(People trapped inside the “stomach” of a gigantic ocean-faring creature)
Oval shaped, tapered towards the end, has four “fins” that propel it through the water, positioned like on a plesiosaur
Each moves independently for manueverability’s purpose
Actually it basically just looks like a plesiosaur without its neck
Has propellers under each fin, but they go unused unless it’s an emergency, as they require a lot of energy in bursts
They haven’t been used at all yet, thankfully, but undergo consistent maintenance regardless
Also has shields, typical sci-fi stuff (I dont know what pseudo-science bullshit those shields are grounded in) (i’ll figure it out if i have to)
(PLAY NOVA DRIFT) (It’s really good)
The center of the submarine contains a breeder reactor that recycles Thorium.
Every inhabitant and system onboard would die and corrode away before their fuel source is depleted.
There are five power stations/batteries throughout the ship, close to each propeller and one near the center top. Each can individually control where power is directed in their sector. They function in parallel so a failure in one does not affect the whole ship.
Center top power station is where “Central” is. The people who make the big decisions, etc etc
They manage resources, people, direct the sub’s course, and manage the information network
Not inherently evil but in the circumstances they’re in (alien planet’s ocean, nuclear submarine, slow, limited resources, etc etc) they’ve had to make very difficult decisions.
Of course they also have a lot of privileges so it’s still easy to hate them (whoopee)
Not really focused on here
The reactor is ringed by farms, and laboratories.
Furthest from the reactor are the living quarters, recreational areas, mess halls, etc etc
Plants are grown en-masse with nutrients extracted from the biological muck the sub travels over. Sub’s always traveling for this reason. It can’t deplete the resources in one place too quickly. It also has to stay near the bottom because the ocean near the surface is much much rougher, no purpose to surfacing. Easier to simply hug the bottom where the resources they need are.
“Meat” is produced from these same nutrients. The bacteria are technically alien but not dissimilar to life forms on earth.
When broken down they have similar chemical ratios, and are entirely chemosynthetic, living off of the geothermal reactions and chemicals. (So far as we know)
(Don’t think about the logistics of alien life too much (pleading))
Mare Crisium
A crater on Earth’s moon, translates to “Sea of Crises”
Craters are named this way because people used to think the dark patches they look like from the earth were oceans or seas(This is a real fact)
The people who named the sea on the exo planet had a sense of sick humor probably(This is fake and i made it up)
The exoplanet that humanity dumped themselves on in the Livyatan is largely an ocean planet, but it’s the only one with life for humanity to harvest for the ship
The ship was built with the planet in mind, and dropped from a great distance through the atmosphere.
The tiny amounts of land on the exo planet are entirely uninhabitable
Don’t know what to call the exo planet if at all
Probably just a string of numbers following a word
Prologue for Squid Ink
I want to write about the ocean in a more positive light, as there have been studies based on the positive impact being around water has on a human’s mental state. We need water to survive more than almost anything else, save breathable air.
Before I get into inspirations however I want to make note of something, which is what I learnt in my Intro to Fiction class, from Zadie Smith’s That Crafty Feeling—that I could consider myself a micromanager in my writing. Zadie Smith describes it as someone who doesn’t plan out their story in broad strokes ahead of time, mapping out the structure, but rather agonizes over the first page, making change after change until something in those first paragraphs click, and they can start, seeing where their writing takes them, rather than plotting a course. I’m very much like that, so most of my prologues will not include major details or how I’d like my story to go or end, but what feelings inspired me to write the story, strong images for me and what I want the reader to take from the story as a whole. There’ll be no plot points or characters described here.
I want to write something that inspires nostalgia, and happiness. A healing of sorts, from the ocean. Like a hometown by the sea, or a beach vacation, something of the sort.
Squid Ink
I passed my tongue over my cracked lips, holding myself in my arms. Staring dazedly at a pale sea lit by a platinum sun through thin clouds. Frigid air whistled under my coat—but I wasn’t trembling just because of how cold it was. They’d warned me about this, the doctors. They’d told me to exercise regularly, take a long walk once a day, eat a proper diet, the works. It’d been two weeks. This was the first time I’d been further than a block away from my shitty apartment. I caught the scent of something dead in the wind. It might’ve been hidden in the thick swathes of reeds on the dunes. I tried to focus on the horizon. What the hell was I doing all the way out here?
“Your name?”
“Liz.”
“Occupation, position?”
I frowned. Didn’t they have better questions to ask? “...painter. Unemployed.”
“You’re looking much better…” He penned something down and looked back at me, sitting on the bed. He made eye contact with me over his spectacles; I looked down. “If you get dizzy again at any time, if you collapse or start experiencing symptoms, call emergency services immediately. Stabbing pains in your head especially. Make sure you’re with somebody at all times or people know where you are. Got it? Come back in next week for another checkup.”
I nodded and collected my bag, waving a vague goodbye while I stood up. On my way out, I passed by the front desk without pausing.
Stepping onto the sidewalk, I saw that the streets outside were slick with grime and rain, the clouds above still dark and heavy. Instinctually, I hugged the buildings, watching the road and the cars rumble by. The bricks were damp, and cold, the air thick with a musty humidity that smelled like mildew, but somehow, I could smell the edge of frost on it. It hadn’t snowed all winter, so I walked two blocks down to a subway which went up to midtown. There was no point in telling anyone where I was.
“You were fortunate to have survived. We weren’t sure you’d make it.” The subway’s deafened screeching across the rails were too similar to squealing brakes. I’d heard of stories like that before. Never thought I’d get to be one. People talked about brushes with death giving them a new lease on life, how they never took anything for granted anymore, how the world offered so much opportunity to everyone, and we just had to look. I wasn’t that strong.
I walked up to a grungy concrete apartment, nestled into a street packed with lively folk and neon lights. There were people I recognized. The old italian man who sat outside his shop and smoked, waved an evening greeting. The squat flower shop lady next door glanced up at me, then back to her phone. A new lease on life. No one knew or cared that I’d been given one. Why should I? The taxi that’d nearly crushed my head was just one of thousands, the drunk driver veering into the intersection, one of hundreds arrested every week. The sour odor of beer hung in the air, accompanied by burning cigarettes and meat, blended with the overbearing voices shouting into the night sky. Songs, curses, sobbing. Not a star in sight in the dark and grainy gray-yellow sky. Climbing the narrow, steep stairs, I leaned on the guardrail.
Everything in the fridge had gone bad. I was lucky to have finished a commission so soon before being hospitalized. I had enough funds for a week. I just had to find more work, before the savings ran out. Coughing heavily into my fist, I curled up in my clothes on the mattress in the corner. I thought to myself: welcome home.
The pot hissed as the water trapped beneath on the electric stove boiled away. The oily spice of instant ramen cut through the haze in my head.
“...out tomorrow!” I fumbled the phone in my hand as I stirred with the other.
“Huh? Sorry?”
Martin spoke again. “I said you’re coming out with me tomorrow. I know you got hurt, but your recovery means using your muscles to build them up again. Otherwise they’re going to stay weak, I heard what the doctor said.”
I knew he was speaking, but the words bounced off my brain like rubber bullets. “...gah. Alright.”
A barely audible sigh. “Alright, I’ll be over at 11. Wear something warm.”
He hung up. I turned my attention back to breakfast. I’d paint something today. I was sure of it. I glanced at my phone on the counter. The 27th. It’d been a week. The blank canvas blurred in my vision. I might’ve even been drooling. I wasn’t sure but wiped my mouth just to check. The vapid sunshine yellow and baby blue walls I’d picked out when I first dressed the small studio apartment bore down on me like freight trains. They’d run me over, turn me to paste if I didn’t move. But I was tired. Everything in my body told me to go lie down again, that the only satisfaction I could give myself was to sleep. I raised my hands to my face. It’d been a week. The first day back I’d realized I had an intense, almost violent mental aversion to the paint I regularly used. I’d squeezed out a drop of crimson. It looked ugly, brownish gray. The prussian blue, faded to dull color of a blueberry. Green turned to brown and yellow to cream. My head ached trying to grasp the colors, but they were out of reach. Even black, the basis of my paintings which hung around me now, deep space, dark woods. It seemed lighter, grayish, sapped of meaning. It wasn’t my brain. I wasn’t going colorblind, black was the absence of a reflected part of the spectrum, if anything, I should’ve always at least had black with me. It was something else.
I’d started to hyperventilate, the feeling of dust coating my lungs. Flinging open the window, I’d thrown up into the alley. The minuscule patch of gray sky above didn’t offer any sense of a wider space at all. It was just a flat, featureless cork on that claustrophobic alley.
I hadn’t touched the paints since then. I went through the cheap, dried food I had, and scrolled through my phone and social media. I found myself laughing one moment and feeling a thousand weights on my shoulders the next. Day in, day out.
I heard a knock on my door. I sat up on the mattress, still dressed in the clothes I’d worn yesterday. Stumbling over, I undid the latch to see who it was. Martin. I’d forgotten. He stood alert at the door, cloaked in a large jacket, long pants and boots. A beanie covered his black hair.
“Are you not ready?” He frowned.
I couldn’t care less. “No.”
“I’ll wait then. Wear something warm. I have food in the car, we’ll be out until… probably ten or eleven.”
Meaningless. I nodded my affirmation, and let go of the door which slowly closed in his face. Sweat pants, two shirts and a hoodie. I decided that was enough. For shoes, a pair of sneakers, which I jammed my feet into, crushing the heels. I trudged down the stairs.
Martin was waiting in his busted up old land cruiser. Upon seeing me he lifted something from the passenger seat to the back.
“Did you lock up?”
“...Yeah.” I lied.
Amidst the roaring morning streets of the city and the fatigue pressing down on me I couldn’t be bothered to walk up the stairs again. If someone wanted to ransack my apartment and take my supplies, so be it. I clambered into the passenger seat.
“We’re going somewhere special.” Martin talked with none of the enthusiasm someone should normally say that with. “You told me yesterday that you couldn’t find any inspiration anymore, and that all the colors seemed gone.”
“I did?”
“Yeah it sounded like you were half asleep. Anyway, I’m not telling you where or why because I need you to experience it without you building up your negative biases as usual.”
What a way to treat a recently recovered victim of a traffic accident. That was Martin for you.
Hours later, after an intense wave of nausea, I stumbled out of the car, and for the first time in weeks, took in scenery that wasn’t the city. I stood on the edge of the road which met the beach. I ran my tongue over my cracked lips, in the cold wind. My weary legs trembled, I recoiled at the smell of something rotting upwind. What the hell was I doing all the way out here?
“You still gonna throw up?” Martin leaned out the driver’s seat window, glancing back.
“...pass me a ginger ale.” I held out my hand towards him as I leaned on the car, Martin placed the can in my palm.
“When you’re feeling alright, get back in. We have to get going.” I took a cautious sip of the carbonated drink and tried to force my churning stomach to settle down.
“Y-yeah...”
“We’re still a little ways away.” He still didn’t tell me where we were going, but the fishing rods taking up headspace in the passenger seat had been enough of a hint. It wasn’t just the car sickness that was making me nauseous. The little buggy pulled away from the seawall as Martin flicked through the radio channels, seemingly sampling the static.
“You got that stuff in the trunk yeah? Tacklebox and the reels.” Martin gestured towards it as he pulled the rods from the back, hand over hand. Having slept in the car I was surprisingly invigorated.
“I got it. Can you just tell me—”
“You said you needed inspiration right?”
A flash of frustration lit up my mind with clarity for the first time in weeks. I felt angry. “No, you really aren’t—”
Martin frowned. “I know you. You weren’t talking about your art.” He didn’t offer any more information, as he thumbed through the box, selecting a rubbery ovaloid with an array of hooks in a circle, and palmed a couple weights. “This’ll do.” He tugged out a similar looking chunk of plastic and metal and handed it to me. “Tie that jig on.”
Begrudgingly, I did. Inspiration. I spat, so to speak. Why did I tell him that? An explanation to excuse why I’d completely ghosted everyone I knew? As if a lack of inspiration would make me do that, make me basically starve myself in the shithole I called my studio. Fuck. I’d pricked myself on a hook, as my self loathing distracted me. I resisted the urge to try and crush the circle of metal needles in my hand. That wouldn’t have ended well. Martin had taken me fishing once or twice before in the river by the city, but this far out, this late? If he wasn’t such a stickler, I would’ve been scared.
Martin looked out into the darkening harbor, and hefted a tripod from the car. His eyes reflected the last glittering rays of light bouncing off the surface of the waters.
“Over there, that should be good.”
“Fine.”
We moved to a dock that stuck out into the bay by a rock jetty. Martin kicked the tripod into a standing position, securing a white light to it. Dark stains were speckled across the dock. Curtains of light danced just above the shadowy green depths, accentuated by the single lamp. I imagined that any one of those shifting dark shapes was some creature which’d gladly drag me under should I fall in. I immersed myself in that grim fantasy.
Martin didn’t seem to get the same impression. “Should be… about there. Cast in the direction of that light to our left. That’s where the seagrass beds end.”
“...”
“Hey did you hear me?”
“Oh. Yeah, the seagrass beds.”
“...good enough.”
With a smooth whir he cast gently into the water, finger naturally resting on the line. I copied his motion, hesitantly reeling in and letting the line out. Afraid I'd actually catch something, I slowly let the line pass through my fingers and let it drop, slack. The time passed with the creaking of the dock in the tide, as the sky turned from deep blue to black. I began to make out other lights blinking in the bay.
“Hey, are those…?”
“Yeah. Other anglers. Probably got the best spots..”
“...sorry.”
He frowned. “That’s nothing to do with you, they live around these parts…oh. Here’s something.”
The rod in his hands gently arched, and he began to slowly tug backwards as the line traced circles in the water. A dark shape began to distinguish itself from the shadows. With a final tug it broke the surface of the water, and was flung onto the dock with a wet impact. A spearhead with tentacles, twisting and writhing on the concrete. For a second I gaped in awe.
Sure, I’d had calamari, but I had never seen a live squid in person. Martin stooped down and extracted the hooks. He turned it over in his hand.
“Look closely.” He gripped it around the head and held it out to me. Its tentacles flared in the air, spreading all directions like some alien flower. My breath caught in my throat. I dropped my fishing rod, which slipped and bounced against the dock.
“Stop that.”
“No, I’m serious. Pay attention.”
Its eyes were pitch black, ringed by iridescent strips and flaps of flesh, which contracted and pulsed. It didn’t seem to focus on anything, there was no pupil to tell where it was looking. It was creepy. Colored dots on its body pulsed in drops of color, brown, yellow, blue, green, pink. For a moment I lost myself in their colors. I remembered sitting in that cramped studio, the white light, the hues on my palette starting to fade, day after day. I’d rubbed my eyes every morning, praying that whatever was hanging over my eyes would have been gone. It had just spread wherever I went, the concrete docks, the gray reeds, the pale sea and the platinum sun. The squid squirmed, and a jet black stain splashed across the dock. Without thinking I held out my hands. Martin gently placed it down, and the ink filled the creases in my palm.
“You’re not going to…”
“Thing’s too small for eating.”
He picked up my discarded rod, looked bemusedly at the slack line, and deftly reeled it in.
My attention was still with the cephalopod. It’d curled a tentacle around my pinky finger, and I felt pricks running down its length. It must’ve been suffocating, unable to move. Crushed by the weight of the world. A pulse of shocking red ran down its body. But it was still alive, still fighting. After what must’ve felt like an eternity for me and it, I dropped it into the water. It landed with a small plunk and disappeared, fading away. Black ink billowed in the waves, and dripped from my fingertips, the most vivid pigment I felt like I’d ever seen.
Final Reflection for Squid Ink
This was one I didn’t get to flesh out entirely. But as I stated, even if I was unsatisfied or unhappy with the final state, after a week I had to move on and just keep writing. I think one of my biggest flaws currently is not being able to just write, and instead, doing the equivalent of kicking dirt around. For a micromanaging writer, I think that’s the most important step to move past.
For the story itself, I started with the idea of the ocean as an inspiration or sense of belonging. I wanted to write about someone’s hometown by the sea, or a person healed by the ocean. The first thing I wrote was the opening paragraph about the sea, and someone standing next to a car with someone else inside it. The person inside the car was the first character I named. It went from Maria to Martin, as the gender doesn’t matter. Though I picked Liz as a name for the protagonist, I don’t think gender matters there either. There’s no relationship between Liz and Martin that matters besides the concern the former has for the latter.
I think I laid out the plot very poorly in the final draft for this one. In case that is the case the sequence of events goes as such. Liz is involved in a near fatal traffic accident, as a pedestrian. At the Hospital she’s bedridden for a few days, there’s concerns about her head injury, possible hemorrhaging, etc etc up to your imagination. She’s released from the hospital in a depressed state of sorts. This is the weakest part of my story by far I think. There’s no tangible reason given for her to be so distressed. Her living situation hasn’t changed, she’s still able to make a living. The possible methods I’ve thought of now are, 1: describing in more detail how badly the accident disrupted her life. 2: that compounding upon her ability to paint which might’ve been the only joy she had, as she lives a relatively sedentary life. Back to the plot. Returning to her studio apartment she cuts off most communication, and on trying to paint, feels that everything is desaturated and the world doesn’t quite look the way it used to. Imagine waking up and noticing that every color is slightly wrong. An acquaintance notices her distress, and knowing she rarely ever leaves and probably has to be dragged away from her home to do so, takes her to see what he finds the most inspiring. The natural world, the ocean and the colorful creatures living within it.
Truthfully, I’m really not happy with this one. I’ll return to it at a later date. It’s taking all my willpower to not waste another few hours on it now.
Prologue for Lakeside (as a side-note, I’m filling in the titles after I finish the piece, I can’t write titles really before I start something)
I didn’t realize I wouldn’t really have four weeks, so I’m just doing three stories. This is my final one. (Maybe, I might just cram in another)
This was actually the first idea I wanted to write, but Livyatan struck me first. The setting of the Livyatan was actually something I wanted to explore more, and planned to expand upon. However I was concerned that the tone would be too similar if I created a story in the same setting. At this point after struggling so much to create something new with Squid Ink I kinda don’t care, and feel like I made a mistake in being too ambitious. A short story a week is absurd and I’m stupid for trying it but I’m DOING IT ANYWAY. Forgive me. I thought that, if I didn’t vary the setting, I could at least vary the tone. I thought about how interesting it would be if, alongside the original Livyatan, a story took place on the same submarine that was lighthearted in its tone. Also something cooler, a more adventurous story than one about depression or going insane.
I also want to make sure I still establish the setting in a unique way so the story can stand on its own without leaning too heavily on the first. I feel like trying to make a more uplifting story for the Livyatan will be interesting and right now that’s primarily what my focus will be.
Lakeside (UNFINISHED)
Leaves fluttered down from the blue sky, settling gently upon the aquamarine and jade surface of a bubbling lake. The ripples are quickly devoured by the turbulent surface, and the leaf, by the burning water. To the man standing before it, it looked like a foul pool of chemicals, those that usually stained the rocks and terrain around them in rainbow strata. But he stood on a forested path that had turned into the shore of a pit of acid, yet was still lush with green grass, the dirt, dark and fertile. Strange. Very strange. This lake shouldn’t even have been here. Could it have come up from the caverns below the earth? He knocked a clod of dirt into it with the butt of his rifle, which bubbled furiously and sank into the whitish green water. A second later, the hairs rose on the back of his neck. His strong instincts told him to turn and flee. He stumbled backwards on the soil, as a dark shape rippled to the surface in a cloud of steam, hissing furiously as it met the fresh air, the water burning the ground as it sloshed at his feet. He screamed as a swell washed over his left leg, and continued to scramble away with his arms.
The thing disappeared as soon as it surfaced, but he heard a deep, guttural rumbling, like an animal’s throat call as it vanished into the water. The hunter heaved, his breathing raspy, turned, and limped away as fast his good leg would carry him.
