The Madness Of It All
written by: Courtney Glover
Where the salt water’s midnight aura consumes everything in its icy grasp of fate.
36,037 feet below, deep in the Pacific Ocean, far below any human’s perception.
Where nothing, it’s thought, lives yet an abundance of darklings lie, balefully, in wait.
But they are mere servants, these malignant creatures of the deep, a malefic reception.
I wish we had listened to our guts and abandoned it all. The company, and its greed, be darned!
We began drilling in the ocean’s floor, farther down than ever before. It was all a feat in futility.
We assumed we were alone, but we couldn’t, it seemed, have been more wrong.
The company we worked for gave vague excuses. Simply put, plausible deniability.
We knew of sea life that flourished near volcanic heat vents, in the darkness they belonged.
But these oceanic creatures, unlike the darklings, were a natural phenomenon, nothing more.
The earthquakes were becoming more regular, though no seismic activity was detected.
We knew in the darkest parts of our hearts that we had awakened something ancient.
The company assured us, simply delusions due to the deep depths. An idea we rejected.
The company expected us to believe their obvious lies and stay complacent.
The company’s psychs called it psychological trauma due to extended periods of sensory deprivation.
You know that feeling you get, in the pit of your stomach, when something is really wrong?
When the hairs on the back of your neck stand up, when you shiver for no reason at all?
That was us, all 152. Then it struck. Destroying the buildings. Our lives would not be prolonged.
Outside we heard the darklings, a quiet parade of death. And civilization would fall.
Every building, flooded with oceanic water. The escape pods destroyed. We drowned, all 152.
And as we slowly died, the horrific truth of the dire situation was realized in that moment.
We had indeed awakened an ancient horde of monsters along with their deity of old.
The city of R’lyeh surrounded us in every direction. The ocean would have atonement.
The madness, the earthquakes, even our own deaths, orchestrated by It, as foretold.
A hybrid creature, humanoid with tentacles and wings. And death followed closely behind him.
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