Choose Your Own: Ahoy! Sea Serpent?!?

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“Ahab’s ghost!” You blink against the glaring light of those luminous orbs, pulse spiking. Each eye is the size of a cannon ball. Two horns sprout up behind the creature’s gilled jaw, glistening with dripping water. It yawns at you, revealing three rows of flesh-tearing incisors and a flat, slitted tongue.

You gasp and reach behind you for something, anything to defend yourself, not daring to look away from the creature. Its head rises as you back away. Its long neck shimmers in the sunlight like diamonds as it leans over the rail toward you.

Your hand fastens over a flimsy life vest. You grunt.

The beast’s head tilts curiously, giving you the impression you are staring into the eyes of an aquatic Labrador—except it’s bound to strike the instant your back is turned. You feel blindly along the deck with your other hand until it clasps over an air tank—prepped for diving. Smiling innocently, you inch the tank closer.

The creature blinks at you—blinks with snake-like eyes, membranes sweeping across from the sides.

Getting a grip on the neck of the tank you tense to swing.

The thing snorts, spraying you with a fine mist of dripping goo. You freeze, disgusted.

The creature lunges.

Its teeth cut into your shirt, narrowly missing the flesh. It whips its head back and flings you into the air, your hand still clasped over the diving tank.

For a second you glimpse the sun and clouds, then the water’s surface rushes up to meet you. At the last second you hold the tank out in front of you to break the swell. Salty liquid bursts around you.

Before you have a chance to fight for the surface something loops around your ankle. Salt stings your eyes as you force them open.

A snaky tongue—almost purple in this light—tightens on your ankle. You have only an instant to think before the mythical beast tugs you down. You shove the scuba regulator into your mouth, hoping you can equalize with the changing pressure in time to keep your lungs from bursting.

But instead of dying you see a light ahead, or below, an ethereal purple glow. Maybe you are dying. Maybe this is the equivalent of that tunnel of light everyone talks about, except under water.

As you near you can see it’s a dome of sorts…a gigantic bubble. It could cover the whole of Manhattan.

There are things moving under the bubble, living things—people or vehicles, you can’t tell.

The leathery tongue unleashes your ankle and the creature’s gleaming eyes meet yours. It nods toward the bubble.


Do you go with the creature

Or turn and swim away as fast as you can—without bursting your lungs?