Transcript
A (0:00)
Hey. Welcome back to Scary Stories and Rain. This podcast was designed to help you sleep or relax. And keep in mind that if you want to get rid of all of the ads for an uninterrupted experience, you can subscribe to this podcast for $2.99 a month. And this is the last two weeks to be automatically entered to win a Nintendo Switch 2 bundle. Sign up as a subscriber today, get rid of all the ads and be entered to win a Nintendo Switch 2. With that said, I really hope you enjoy this episode and thank you so much for being here.
B (0:33)
Mom and dad, the school supplies you buy me this year will mostly end up in my mouth. Maybe shop low prices for school at Amazon so I don't eat up all your money, just something to chew on.
A (0:44)
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B (1:18)
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A (1:53)
Spending a week at the bottom of the OCE is pretty much as crazy as it sounds. You get into a tin can with a couple other people and they lower you into the ocean. You sink to the sea floor and live in the airspace at the top of the can for a week. There's not a lot of space when you're breathing fresh air down there, so the only reason to go is if you live to scuba. That's all there is to do down there. Normally you get an hour of dive time for each tank of oxygen you're carrying, so every hour you have to go back up to the surface from the bottom of the ocean, which takes time. When you're living down there, it's different. Your dive time becomes limited only by your endurance. We set up fast refill stations and use high powered hoses to refill our tanks with oxygen. That way you can stay in the water as long as you want. Hours fly by while you're down there, and you can never get bored. It's a whole different planet on the sea floor. And who wouldn't want to spend all day staring at aliens? Fish of countless varieties swim past in all the colors of the rainbow. Sea turtles and octopus, dolphins and manta rays, sharks and whales. You'll see it all. Not to mention the unparalleled beauty of the coral reefs themselves and all the plethora of life forms that dwell symbiotically within it. The only thing I didn't like was nighttime. At the bottom of the ocean, you would look out from the habitat into utter blackness, darker than anything you've ever seen. And how can you not imagine what's out there? We had seen sharks, giant octopus and barracudas swimming nearby. There's also everything else your imagination can come up with. Everything you've seen on movies and TV that isn't even real. Amphibious humanoids who look like swamp Thing, who creep up silently from the kelp and grab your arm with their hands dotted with suckers like the tentacles of an octopus. Giant kraken and massive dinosaur sharks left over from the Jurassic period and all other manners of nightmares could be out in that darkness. If you spent a week down there, you would begin to realize, too, just how ignorant we are of the world that exists in tandem with ours. You try to avoid these thoughts when you're out of the Habitat at night. You have to leave the Habitat to go to the bathroom, so there's no avoiding it if you need to go number two. One night I was awoken by a rumbling in my stomach around 3am it was dark inside the tin can we called home, silent except for the sound of water splashing up against the inside of the hab. My stomach lurched again, this time more urgently. I realized I would need to go outside. I put my mask on, but didn't take my regulator or oxygen, since the little hut we used as a toilet wasn't far away, maybe 20ft. I could easily hold my breath for that long. The light from the hut gleamed ahead of me as I dove down into the darkness. My mind was still foggy with sleep. The dim bulb of the outhouse was the only other light in this universe. So I went to it with urgency for more than one reason. When I got there, I popped up into the little air bubble inside and pulled down my trunks. I had made it just in time. Pretty soon fish were coming by for their morning meal and I swatted at them with my hand, trying to pinch it off before they could burrow their little faces further into my ass crack. Fish just loved to eat anything. As if that wasn't nightmare enough, there was that blackness all around, except for the light of the outhouse and the one from the habitat. The darkness stretched out forever and was infinite in its mystery. I wondered how far away the nearest great white shark was and if they would be attracted to the scent of all the smaller fish. I shook my head and tried to think of anything else. It was completely silent except for my breathing and the sound of water splashing gently against the inside of the hut. I finally pulled up my trunks, slapping a fish with my hand as I did so, and waited for a minute for the air to clear, so to speak. No sense rushing the dive back into the blackness, I thought, especially considering what I had just polluted it with. After a minute, I took a breath and popped back into the water from the air bubble. I swam towards the light of the habitat. When I was not even halfway there, both lights flickered and went out. I was immediately disoriented. My foggy mind had just been asleep a few minutes ago, and I wished I had taken longer to wake up before venturing out alone. I hadn't even woken anyone else up to tell them I was going. The after image of the glow from the habitat still danced in my vision, so I followed it, my heart beating fast and heavy in my chest. I felt terrified and hoped I was heading in the right direction. I followed my instincts and training and tried to ignore the part of my brain that told me I might not be going the right way. I felt something large brush against my hand and recoiled in shock. What the hell was that? I wondered. I was suddenly picturing a giant hammerhead right in front of me instead of the habitat. My panic intensified. My vision was starting to go a bit red around the edges, and I wondered how much time I had wasted. It was a good thing. I could hold my breath for a long time. I tried to swim in the direction of the habitat, but I suddenly wasn't sure which way it was anymore. The thing that had brushed against my hand had felt large, and it had scared me more than a bit. Kicking with my flippers, I began swimming in a direction I thought was right. My hand brushed up against it again. Whatever it was this time it was on the other side of me. I tried to ignore my fear and kept kicking my legs. My vision was beginning to flood with redness, and I was really starting to feel true dread and fear bloom inside me as I had never felt before. Every part of me was screaming for air. I tried to calm my mind and remember my training. My hand grabbed onto something and in my confused and oxygen deprived state, I mistook it for a power line running to the outhouse. I began to pull myself along the misshapen tube. It seemed to squirm and writhe in my grip, but I continued along nonetheless, hoping it would lead me back to the Habitat. As I got closer, I felt more of the weird, organically shaped tubes. They felt lumpy and had spikes and divots here and there. I realized with disgust that they were definitely not oxygen or electrical lines. They seemed to stick to my hands when I grabbed onto them. Not wanting to let go, I had to pry my hand off the last time and decided to stop touching them altogether. Just as I was about to lose all hope, my left hand brushed up against the hard, metallic edge of the Habitat. I realized with a wave of horrified relief, I had almost swam right past past it and out into the open water. I felt the shape of it and managed to correct my path. I popped my head up into the Habitat and gasped for air. Panting and coughing up water from my lungs, I climbed out of the water and managed to find the ladder leading up to my bunk. I almost died out there just now. I yelled, and was surprised when no one woke up to ask if I was okay. I felt new fear well up inside me, thinking of all the tangled organisms that had been all over the outside of the Habitat. What the hell were those things? And why wasn't anyone talking or waking up inside the hab? I rummaged through my things and pulled out my flashlight, wishing I had brought it with me earlier. How stupid. If I had died, I would have deserved it. I turned the light on and screamed. There was no rational explanation for what I saw inside the Habitat. The other two members of my crew were surrounded by what appeared to be misshapen tentacles. But no, that's not quite right. Not tentacles. These were different. The long, tubular shapes that came up out of the water reminded me of a recent article about a siphonophore that had been discovered off the coast of Australia. It was now recorded as the longest creature ever seen by man. It was really a collection of zoids that came together and cloned itself thousands upon thousands of times to create an infinitely long, silly string that could stretch for Hundreds of meters, the crew had called it, akin to an underwater galaxy, and pictures of the siphonophores looked otherworldly. It went on forever, a twisting, spiraling organism that faded off into the distant ocean with no end in sight. This was like that, only much worse. This siphonophore appeared to have mutated, and it had picked up some new abilities never seen before in all my research. The thing had absorbed other marine life somehow. I saw barracuda with sharp teeth, small sharks and eels, their eyes wide and terrified, opening and closing their mouths. They were covered with a thin membrane and appeared to have been attached to the thing against their will. They were now prisoners of it, being dragged along by the massive, ropey sea creature. My crew had the tentacle things all around them, choking them at their necks and wrapped around their bodies and arms. The white flesh of the thing was spreading across them quickly, wrapping them up in its slimy sheath. My crewmate Mike tried to scream, but his voice was muffled as I saw a vine of siphonophore crawl down his throat, planting little roots as it went. I was terrified. Hyperventilating, I ducked back into the furthest corner of my bunk and watched in horror as the thing consumed my crewmates rapidly and attached itself to them. I watched as it pulled them under and dragged them down into the ocean, their eyes still wide and afraid. Would it filter the ocean water through its gills so they could live down there? I wondered. Would it provide oxygen to the new members of the colony, or would it just consume them for fuel and move on? No one would have believed me if I told them what happened. So I said it was a diving accident. I told them I tried to save Mike and Beth and there wasn't anything I could do. The search party had turned up nothing, as I had expected. When I got back to the surface, I told my family I would never step foot in the sea again. They think it's because I'm remorseful. They think I just feel bad about Mike and Beth, but that's not it. I feel bad about them, sure, but what I really think about is what's down there under the surface. I saw how fast that thing consumed them. I think about the transatlantic garbage patch and how that was the big problem for a while. I think we may have a new problem now.