The undertow. That’s exactly what it did. It towed me under.
It towed me under, right before it tossed me against a reef wall and the ocean floor, dashing my legs against the rocks below. Mussels and jagged edges cut me; seaweed lashed at my face. I had heard of people drowning in the ocean, but I had always thought I was too quick, too smart for that. Of course, I had never taken plane crashes into account.
As I tumbled through the waves, bubbles escaping from my mouth and my long hair clouding around me, my foot caught on something. Looking back on it, I was probably only stuck between two rocks, but my air-deprived brain automatically assumed that some sort of sea monster had gotten ahold of me. I screamed, releasing the last of my air, and thrashed around. Something hit my face - hard. I could feel my nose cracking, my skin being pulled away. Pain ripped through me.
And that’s when I lost my consciousness, thank God for that.
I don’t know how much time passed by after that; maybe a day, maybe a month. All I know is that when I woke up, I was flat on my back staring at a wooden ceiling. I thought that maybe I was in heaven after my little bout with the imaginary monster, because all the pain had gone. Then I realized that something was very, very wrong.
I couldn’t move. My arms and legs seemed to be strapped down, but I couldn’t look up to see them because the back of my head was stuck fast too.
I laid in this fashion for a couple minutes, before I thought a voice. It still puzzles me, how to describe it. I seems like I didn’t hear a voice through my ears, nor hear a voice in my head as mad people do. Whoever was speaking to me was manipulating my thoughts, bending the threads of the fabric of my mind so as to spell out words. It felt like the words were of my own creation, but in some way, they belonged to someone else.
Oh, the bean is awake!
I felt weak, from my injuries and hunger and from the strange sensation that came with the thought-speaking. I managed a groan.
Hmm. Seems tired. Maybe she is the one I have been looking for… Bean, would you like to be released?
I was a bit terrified of what I might see, but my curiosity, the very same curiosity that led me to explore the depths of the ocean, overtook me. I croaked out a “Yeaah.”
My bonds broke loose. I was surprised to see that when I gathered the strength to lift up my head, there were no ropes, strings, or any type of fabric that could have held me down. Miraculously, my shirt and a bit of my cargo pants remained intact, so at least I wasn’t completely naked. I seemed to be in some sort of shack overlooking the ocean, but I noticed that through all the windows I could see water. I got up, my strength returning, and leaned over the windowsill.
I gasped. The little house was about three meters above the sea, held up only by flimsy metal poles. I shrank back inside and curled up on the floor.
Then I noticed something I hadn’t before: there was a little trapdoor in the floor of the shack. Before, it had been closed so I didn’t notice it, but now it hung open into blackness. Not wishing to explore any further, I laid back down on the ground.
I screamed before I could even register what I was seeing. Above me, attached to the ceiling by its eight legs, was the largest spider I had ever seen. It was easily half the size of me. Terrifying me even further, it dropped down from the wooden planks - on top of me. I calmed down a little when I realized what it actually was: an octopus. But nevertheless, it was jet black, huge, eight-legged and had just landed on me. I started screaming again.
Argh! Stop yelling, bean! You are hurting my audio ventricles!
My throat closed up, and my voice shut off. I gingerly sat up, flinching at the slimy texture of the octopus sliding off of my stomach onto the wooden floor.
Now, bean, who are you?
I wondered if this was some kind of dream or hallucination. Maybe my real body was drifting into Davy Jones’ locker. Fish were probably going to have a feast, but I guessed that as long as I was here in the sea-shack, I might as well talk to the octopus.
“Ahh, ehh…” I stumbled on my words. “Amelia?”
Yes, then. Amelia. My name seemed to placate her. It might as well have been a him, but in my mind the words were a woman’s voice.
I had my own questions as well. They all poured out at once:
“No! Wait! Where am I? How did I get in here? Did I drown? Why don’t I hurt? Who are you? How couldn’t I move earlier? What is this place? Shouldn’t you be underwater somewhere?”
Shhhhh, Amelia. Quiet, and I will tell you my story.
I lay back down, suddenly exhausted.
I was born as we all were, from a grain of sand in the beach of life. But from the beginning I knew that I was different. The water was too wet for me, the seaweed too slimy. I got restless. I swam up to the surface often. I slept with driftwood and among garbage.
Before long, when I was fully grown, I decided I would become human. I collected necklaces, human bones, wigs, anything that could make me feel more a part of the surface. I learned English. I inhabited this old lighthouse. But nothing ever satisfied me. I thought that maybe if I could be mostly human, I could pass. But this body has not lent me enough flexibility to be what I have always wanted to become.
And eventually a crazy idea came to me. Maybe, just maybe, an actual human could teach me the ways of their kind. And that is when I found you, close to death and mangled beyond recognition. If it wasn’t for your soft hands and long hair, I wouldn’t have known you were a human. I did the best that I could with sharpened bones and gristle of seals to patch you up, but I’m not sure you’ll be happy…
At this point she produced a mirror out of a back corner and held it up to me. I was reluctant to look at myself, considering she had used the term “patch you up.”
When I finally faced the mirror, I was shocked. I was expecting to see some gruesome, Frankenstein-esque monster staring back at me, but instead I found myself looking actually pretty normal. There were a few stitches around my eyes and mouth, and my nose was a tiny bit crooked, but mostly my facial structure was the same. Also, nothing hurt at all, so that was a plus.
“Oh, my…” I murmured.
Do you like it? I’m only an octopus; please don’t blame me if you don’t. she said.
“No, no! It’s perfect!” I cried. I figured that if an octopus could talk to me through my mind and was my only companion in the middle of the sea, I probably shouldn’t hurt her feelings. “You’re a great surgeon.”
A surgeon, eh? I like that. You may call me Surge.
“Surge.” The word tasted nice and slippery on my tongue.
And so began a long, amiable journey of companionship. There was nowhere else to turn, no one else to talk to, so Surge and I became close. I learned to eat fish without a fire. We feasted on squid and seaweed. We spoke of the sea, of men and women and beasts. Time went past. I taught her about religion, and she taught me about thought-speaking. For days we would communicate without a sound, just sending each other brain-signals. You could often find us lying out on the porch of the shack in the nude, for my clothes had disintegrated and Surge never wore any. Usually I would be flat on my back, and Surge would curl up and rest happily in the space between my neck and collarbone. We passed many happy months in that fashion. My skin turned dark and my hair grew light. I counted the days with pebbles, and we celebrated my 31st birthday. And then things went horribly wrong.
One night I awoke to complete blackness. I got up to look for Surge, but found she wasn’t anywhere near me. Maybe she had fallen out the window? I leaned out to check. My eyes adjusted to the dark. No Surge; only the same stilts and water I was used to. I began to grow wary… Maybe she was in the basement? On the roof? I lay down and hoped for the best.
In the darkness, I had forgotten how I had met her, and what came next was the most terrifying case of déjà vu I had ever experienced.
Surge, mind-yelling at the top of her lungs, dropped down from the ceiling and attacked me with a vengeance. I screamed.
“SURGE! Don’t scare me like th-”
Surge, the only friend I had in the world, held me down with seven arms and forced something glowing down my throat with the last. I immediately lost consciousness.
What seemed like an eternity later, I awoke. Something was… different. It felt like my eyes were glued to different sides of my head. All my hair was gone. I couldn’t feel my nose. My eyes focused and I saw…
Me.
I, Amelia, was leaning over me. It was a feeling that scared me half to death, looking at myself. What had happened? If that was me, then who was I?
And then, suddenly, it occurred to me what might have happened. Surge’s monologue when I first met her. The reason she had rescued me in the first place. I turned my eyes down, looked at my body.
I was Surge.
Slimy black skin covered me. I had tentacles. We had spent so much time together so she could gain my trust just enough to use me. It was all a lie. She had betrayed me, in the strangest, most magical and ugly way possible. I thought-spoke to her/Amelia/me.
No! Surge! Why? Why would you do this?
She talked back, out loud, in my own voice. “Who’s Surge? I’m Amelia now. Goodbye, octopus. Good luck finding another human bean!” With that, she/me/it dove out the window.
No, wait! Surge! Amelia! I can’t swim! I mean, you can’t swim! Amelia! Even though she had betrayed me, I didn’t want my best friend to drown.
But it was too late. I heard a splash. Crawling over to the window, I looked out in horror as the body of Amelia Earhart struggled and was drowned in the undertow.
