The crow let out an undignified screech as it was pulled to its death by the thousands of tiny, writhing tendrils. They latched onto its long, gawky legs, and then its feathered body, mindless of the desperate flapping of its large wings. It sank deeper and deeper until finally, the mass closed over its dark animal eyes and it was gone.
It was quiet. Then, as if some metaphysical button had been pushed in the universe, the mass began to ripple, contorting into strange eldritch shapes as it started to grow and take form, the black and crimson drawing together to form -
He opened his eyes. Crap, he thought groggily to himself, I knew I shouldn't have tried the fried hedgehog. He always got the weird dreams after the weird meals. But it had been the local specialty, and he felt an obligation to at least try it.
It wasn't as bad as the rotten shark meat, at least. He didn't think he had eaten anything that tasted worse than the rotten shark meat, and he had eaten a lot of weird shit.
The gentle rocking of the ship could be soothing if he didn't think about how he was lying in a vessel surrounded by miles and miles of water. He had always feared water, especially after that particular incident that had left him drifting for days in the middle of the ocean.
But that had been why he had chosen to go on the cruise in the first place. Face your fears, they said.
He didn't have a lot of things he feared. Heights? Quite the opposite. Darkness? Please. Monsters? He wasn't even going to dignify that with a response. No, what he feared was the chilling embrace of water, the feeling of being taken apart at the molecular level. The heat and light of an explosion, burning and tearing at every part of his body. He had his reasons.
He staggered over to the small wooden desk in the corner of his cramped room. The ship was large, but when divided into a few hundred rooms, it didn't allow for much individual space. He wiped at his face tiredly.
He hadn't had much of a plan when he embarked on his trip around the world, nothing other than to experience humanity in its full. And so he had done things both exciting and dull - he went to a library, visited the White House, surveyed the world from atop the Great Wall, and had spent a few miserable weeks in the middle of the Amazon Rainforest. He had ventured into the Congo, had visited slums and the dark holes of human society in which evil festered, and explored the museums that detailed the incredible atrocities committed by the human race.
Arriving in the worst places on the planet, he had held several expectations. But by the time he left, he found that they had been thoroughly shaken.
It wasn't that humanity was inherently good. The fiasco in Manhattan was proof enough of that, a man-made would-be apocalypse that resulted from the actions of corrupt scientists with no regard whatsoever for the value of human life. Neither was humanity evil. He had met too many with genuine goodwill and hope to be able to say that with a straight face.
What he had discovered, in his months abroad, was this: humanity was different. Seven billion people on the planet, capable of the utmost evil and good, sometimes at the same time. Though few, there were members of Blackwatch who thought they were genuinely doing the right thing. Scientists who had, despite much evidence to the contrary, considered their research to be aiding the overall advancement of humankind. If there was someone capable of passing judgment on humanity... well, he was probably the last person who could qualify for the job.
He had left Manhattan to understand humanity. Now, he was returning with the knowledge that he had failed. But perhaps in failure, he did succeed; humanity wasn't understandable, not like the ingrained instincts of a virus, or the methodical placement of data in a table.
If it was, it wouldn't be humanity.
He sighed, staring tiredly at the half-written letter on his tiny, plastic desk, the upper half covered in messy chicken scratch, not unlike a doctor's scrawl. A day from port, and he still hadn't gathered the nerves to finish writing, let alone send it. Perhaps, he was still unable to face his fears. Perhaps it was not the power of a nuclear explosion that haunted his mind, or the vast emptiness of the seas that covered the majority of the planet, or the slow eroding effect that water had on all things, including himself - perhaps, he was most afraid of telling the truth.
Maybe that was why he had left Manhattan. He didn't want to see that inevitable disgust, the growing horror, the look of betrayal...
But he had returned. He was here. He would be in Manhattan in days, and when he finally got there, he would tell her everything. If she hated him, so be it. She deserved to know the truth.
He stared at the paper for a few more minutes before crumpling it into a ball and, with impeccable accuracy, threw it in the waste bin across the room. He could just tell her face to face, he reasoned. He wasn't trying to put it out of mind, hoping to forget the skeletons in his closet before the inevitable. Of course he wasn't.