AUTHOR: Mnemosyne
Disclaimer: Not mine! If they WERE mine, I wouldn't freak them out like this.
SUMMARY: Claire's always been afraid of the ocean. Now she has reason.
RATING: PG-13, for creep factor
CHARACTERS: Claire-POV, Charlie
TIMELINE: Takes place in a hazy time after "Confidence Man," then goes wildly off-canon from there.
NOTES:
I swear to you all, I will write more fluff to make up for all the dark stuff I've been posting lately. LOL! I just can't resist the dark bunnies when they hop into my head. This story is actually based on my own very real fear of deep water, be it the ocean, a lake, a pond, etc (but not pools, because they're nice and self-contained). Personally, the thought of a cruise is absolutely terrifying to me, for precisely the reasons Claire specifies in this story. Want to know what I'm talking about? By all means, I invite you to my nightmare. -bowing-
PS -- I don't know why I keep doing this to Charlie and Claire. I fic because I love, that's my only explanation. Enjoy!
Claire liked the beach, but not the ocean. It was a difficult situation to be in, having been born and raised in Australia, where everyone was pre-natally injected with a dolphin gene. Friends and family could never understand the genesis of her fear, and truth be told, she could never adequately explain it, except to say it all came down to whales.
Whales? her friends would say.
Yes, whales.
The Great Blue Whale was the largest creature the world had ever known; larger than the dinosaurs. On land, a thing that big would stand out. Yet in the ocean… Utterly unbeknownst to you, a Great Blue Whale might be swimming deep beneath the waves under your cruise ship. The ocean was MASSIVE. The ocean was HUGE. The ocean could swallow the largest creature in history and still have room for more. What could it do to someone as small and pink and utterly helpless as a Claire?
And what else might it be hiding?
No one understood, so after a while she stopped trying to explain. She spent her days at the beach paddling on the shore but rarely went out past her knees. The shore was safe and fun and warm; there was something about warmth that meant safety. When she did venture into the water, she NEVER went deeper than her waist; further than that and she'd start to wonder what things might be eyeing her legs for breakfast.
Here on the island it would have been easy to let the pessimism in. The ocean was MASSIVE. The ocean was HUGE. The ocean had already swallowed Joanna, the diver. No one was going to find them. They were trapped her forever.
It would have been easy to let all that in.
Except that Charlie made her believe.
She knew he only did it to humor her. When he said they'd be rescued soon, she'd allowed herself to believe the lie, to the point that she didn't want to let it go and follow him up to the caves. She'd gone eventually, of course, because there's only so long a person can lie to themselves. And the ocean had begun to look hungry again.
She came down to the beach whenever she got the chance, and today was no exception. Charlie never let her go alone, and always made up some excuse to come with her. Today he had come equipped with a spear to go fishing, and was currently flailing around in the water up shore, equidistant between herself and the beach camp. Claire sat at the crest of a tall dune, one hand idly rubbing her pregnant belly as she watched him scramble in the surf, stabbing at slippery fish beneath the waves. The sea breeze was freshening, tossing her hair behind her and bringing her his grumbled complaints as clear as a bell.
"Pretty fishy. Here, pretty fishy, fishy. You know what would make you prettier, fishy? A nice slice of lemon and a Ritz Carlton. Hi-YAH!"
Stab. Splash. Flail. Curse.
Claire laughed out loud. "Charlie!" she called out. "Stab down, not out! DOWN!" But the sea breeze carried her voice behind her. He continued on, and she went unheeded.
Claire chuckled, shaking her head, and turned her attention back out to sea. She hated to admit she was looking for a ship, but to say otherwise would be a lie. Everyone who came to the beach was looking for a ship; the sight of the empty horizon was just too painful.
Someone was swimming. They were just coming into view around a bend in the shoreline in the opposite direction from Charlie. Claire felt her breath hitch for a moment, remembering Joanna and creatures of the deep, but she forced herself to breathe normally again. Everyone was aware of the dangerous riptides surrounding the island, and the swimmer was staying very close to shore. They were safe enough. Nevertheless, she kept her eyes riveted to the faceless individual, ready to call for help if necessary, though the sea breeze would make it difficult to be heard and she was nowhere near mobile enough to run.
A minute later, she noticed the shadow.
It drifted into her consciousness slowly. It was wide and dark and smudgy at the edges, and seemed to be drifting slowly towards the shore from the deep water further out to sea. If she hadn't been at a slight elevation, she wouldn't have seen it at all. At first she passed it off as a cloud shadow reflecting on the surface of the ocean, pushed along in the upper atmosphere by the growing easterly breeze.
Until it changed direction, and began to move against the wind.
Claire's eyes widened. For a second she was frozen with terror, eyes riveted to the billowing shape in the water. Yes, it was beneath the surface, she was certain of that now. A quick glance up to the heavens confirmed it. There wasn't a cloud for miles, except for the ones piling up on the distant horizon in preparation for an approaching storm. There was nothing to cast that shadow on the waves.
But there was something to cast it BENEATH them
Claire's mouth worked in terror, but no sound came out. In a sickly clinical study, her eyes scanned the amorphous edges of the thing. It had no fixed shape, but seemed to drift through the water like a cloud of ink dispersed beneath the waves. It left no trail, but moved as a mass, like an amoeba with no surface tension.
It was heading for the swimmer.
Oh God…, she thought desperately. Oh holy holy…
"No," she managed to whisper, her fingers turning to claws as they dug into the mutable sand. "No… Please… PLEASE…!"
The shadow was closing in -- there was less than twenty feet of clear water between it and the feet of the nameless swimmer. Claire wanted to scream a warning at the top of her lungs, but her voice wouldn't budge above a whisper. She wanted to stand and wave her arms and point and holler and bellow until she was hoarse, but her body wouldn't move. She was frozen solid with fear, her heart beating like a tribal drum in her chest, blood racing in her ears. The wind pulled at her hair and she realized she was icy, icy cold.
When the thing closed around the swimmer, for a moment, she thought things were fine. The swimmer didn't notice the black cloud beneath him, and the cloud didn't seem to notice the swimmer above. Just for a moment,
Just for a moment.
Then the swimmer disappeared.
Glup
That was all. One second he was there, the next there was nothing. Just a minimal splash and empty water. Black, hazy water, unfazed by the waves.
Then, spreading like a blossom, a billow of crimson.
She screamed. It was tortured and fractured, little more than a whisper, torn from her throat by rusty fingers. Flipping awkwardly onto her hands and knees, she began to drag herself frantically up the dune away from the water, eyes wild and heart pounding. She had no thought but survival -- to get as far away from that THING as possible. She would crawl through the jungle and bloody her knees if it meant she could curl up in the caves and be safe; far, far away from that fog in the sea.
Her hands scrabbled for purchase in the sand as small, desperate noises seeped past her lips. Tears were pouring down her face unnoticed. Oh God, oh God… She'd been right all along. The ocean was MASSIVE. The ocean was HUGE. The ocean hid whales and sandbars and WORSE.
And the ocean was hungry. The ocean was ALWAYS hungry.
Oh God…
"Charlie…!" she croaked. Flipping onto her side, her panicked eyes swept the shore until she found him. He was still amiably spearing for fish, unaware of her plight. Further up the beach, the camp was hidden from view by the flapping tarps of Sawyer's tent.
And the black cloud was moving. Thirty feet and closing.
"No…!" Claire croaked, feeling a surge of adrenaline pour through her veins. "Charlie!"
Ignoring her belly she dove for the slope of the dune, letting the loose sand carry her down the shallow incline until she slid to a stop at the bottom. "Charlie!" she cried again, but her voice was lost on the breeze. "CHARLIE!"
Struggling to her feet, she stared at the water. Even here at the base of the dune she had enough height to just make out the shape of the thing as it floated through the water towards Charlie.
Fifteen feet and closing.
"NOOO!" she screamed. "NOOOOO!"
She began to run towards him, ignoring the fear that screamed in her ear to bolt the other way. "CHARLIE!" she howled, holding her belly as she lumbered in his direction. "Oh GOD, CHARLIE! HEAR ME!"
She was on level ground now. She couldn't see the thing, but she knew it was there. It couldn't be more than ten feet from him by now. If he'd just get out of the water! If she could just get him ON SHORE!
"CHARLIE! GET OUT OF THE WATER!" she bellowed, forcing her lungs to decibels she'd never achieved before. "CHARLIE! MOVE!"
Charlie looked up.
She didn't stop to think. It was less than five feet now, she knew it. There was no TIME.
"CHARLIE!" she screamed, half-sobbing with desperation, falling to her knees and pointing to the ocean. "CHARLIE! BEHIND YOU!"
His eyes widened.
He turned around.
The End