Elvis Presley Underwater

When I say flushed… that's what I mean.

The sand disappeared from underneath my feet and I gasped as I fell, inhaling a mouthful of sand and salt water that I immediately had to spit out. More water filled my mouth. For a moment, I was twisting as if stuck in a cyclone. Then, a wicked current grabbed me and began rocketing me down. My ears popped once, twice, three, four, five, and six times. All in the space of two minutes.

I had thought the beach was dark… this was something else. There is absolutely no light after a certain amount of water because of the particles in it. Eventually, light just can't travel very far down. I headed down, past the sunlight zone, through the twilight zone, and into the midnight zone. Somehow, I innately knew how deep I was as I went. I passed three-thousand feet, then six thousand.

It got stupid cold. I was shivering like crazy. It was a good thing I was moving so fast in the water because I probably would have frozen to death if I'd had to keep in that part of the journey for too long. Shooting off to Hawaii seemed more and more tempting, but I kept my hands to myself and stayed in the current. It kind of felt like a very long slide at a waterpark. I would angle my body to twist around the sharp curves.

Occasionally, I saw little lights from creatures that lived down this deep. But I didn't have any desire to meet them.

I passed the depth that Grover had said the Titanic sat at and continued down into the deepest trench on earth. It just kept going and going and… actually, there was some light at the bottom of the ocean.

Down below me was what looked like a gazebo. Or a hut with four entrances. I could see light shining on the ocean floor in big arcs out of those entrances. It looked Barbie-house small from far away, but as I rocketed towards it, I saw that it was about the size of my apartment back in New York.

I was zoomed in one of the four entrances and was deposited there.

The light was coming from a single large incandescent lightbulb surrounded by my height in glass all the way around it. That gave me an idea of the water pressure I was dealing with here. A single lightbulb doesn't give off that much light, but when it's all you have… a little goes a long way.

The four posts supporting the building were abnormally thick. I think about twenty feet but I really can't measure distance well once it's not my height or a football field. They were built from black stone. We seemed to be on flat ground that was, well, rock solid. A thin layer of silt and that's it. It was worn smooth.

I had this gut feeling that north was out one of the entrances facing a wall of rock ascending up and out of view. Out the west, I saw a similar face of rock. It was jagged and uneven, with crevices and fissures running in all directions. There wasn't a house or an old abandoned palace anywhere. To the east, the rock wall faded and I saw the beginnings of more deep ocean. And out the south… nothing. It was like the drop off in Finding Nemo, where the kid fish tease each other about going out to touch the boat. I could see the edge and then… nothing. Presumably a long way down.

It was still cold – my hands and feet were going gray. It felt cold enough to snow. Also, I was still breathing water, which was beyond weird, and I was kind of concerned for Annabeth or Grover, whoever came down next. Now that I wasn't Cream of Wheat on the bottom of the ocean floor, I was worried about their trip down to the depths. How were they going to breathe? And not be crushed?

The currents were slow moving. I could feel them, but they were easy to ignore. I began to walk around, feeling a little like I was on the moon instead of underwater. If I jumped, I floated for a bit before coming back down to the ocean floor.

I did this a few times, enjoying the feeling, and then noticed hoof prints in the silt around me. Grover, presumably. But, once I noticed that, I noticed a bunch of other prints. Mostly tennis shoes. All different sorts and varieties. Some were starting to be swept away. I wondered if Grover had made them all with different pairs of fake shoes, or if other people besides him were visiting Percy and Annabeth. Underneath all of the entrances, the silt was thinner.

I examined one footprint that was perfectly frozen in time, not having been disturbed at all, and then a snipe eel darted through the east entrance on its way to the west and disappeared. It didn't go for a bite of me, but it did spook me. Crazy how anything can live at twenty thousand feet down.

From above, I heard some distant screaming. I looked up as if I would be able to see through the rock face. Obviously, I wasn't successful. The screaming got louder. It must be Annabeth, if Grover did this often. Sure enough, she soon whizzed by me in a little cylinder of air that encased her entire body, clinging to her chair for dear life. As she passed into the south entrance, a massive stone wall dropped from each of the four entrance openings with a slam. We began to sink into the ground. As the ground beneath us lowered, air filled the chamber created by shutting all four black stone entrance doors.

We were lowered down into a hallway that reminded me of the doorway to Zeus's place on Olympus but made of gray basalt rock instead of white marble. It was pointed at the top, but tall and straight on the sides. A glass wall curved to the shape of the platform we were descending on, letting us look down the hall. Annabeth's bubble of air disappeared from around her and she choked on the water, then swam upwards for air.

We continued being let down, lower than the level of the hallway. But as we kept going down, a ladder appeared, leading up to a hole cut in the glass so one could actually enter the hallway. We lost some water to that hole as we passed by it, but the hallway was sloped towards us and the platform kept lowering. The water rushed out, then rushed back in.

Annabeth didn't look to be the strongest swimmer, so I kicked off the ground and grabbed her arm. I'd never actually swam before – if my being surprised by the fact I could breathe underwater didn't give that away – but I was able to help her get to the ladder. She began pulling herself up and once she was safely through the hole, I followed. We left her chair behind.

Her blonde hair was plastered to her face. One strand was stuck to her cheek and underneath her nose like when little kids with long hair pretend they have mustaches. She tried to wring out her orange Camp Half-Blood t-shirt without taking it off. Her shorts were fitted, so they weren't dripping, but she was soaked through. I was… not.

The moment I got up out of the water, I realized I was dry. I wasn't sure how long I had been dry for. I tried to remember if I had noticed whether or not my clothes were dry while I was bouncing along the bottom of the ocean. I could not remember. There wasn't even any water in my shoes.

"You're kidding," Annabeth said, scowling at me. "Seriously?"

"Erm…"

She huffed and stamped her foot and turned away. I fiddled with my shirt. "What size do you wear?" I asked.

"What?"

I took my shirt off and turned my body and head away from her as much as I could while extending the shirt in her general direction. I heard her huff. Then she took it from my hand. I stayed staring at the basalt wall until I felt a wet t-shirt touch my hand.

She and I are apparently pretty close in size. I pulled the t-shirt on, fighting a little with it because it was wet, but by the time I got it on, it was dry too. Annabeth was scowling. My shirt on her was already damp from a combination of her hair, her shorts, and her bra, but there wasn't much I could do about any of that.

"I think I'm hitting my tolerance for learning new things," I said aloud, looking down the hallway. This one was better lit. There were light fixtures spaced evenly on both sides of the walls. "Where do you think this goes?"

"To us, stupid," Annabeth replied, wringing the water out of her hair.

"Does anyone else live down here?" I asked. My voice echoed a bit, which didn't make an affirmative answer seem promising.

"I don't know. Grover didn't say," Annabeth replied. "But he did say there were other Legends besides the two of them."

I paused, trying to figure out how I wanted to phrase the question I had. It's not often I do that, but this subject…

"It seems weird that they'd live here alone together."

Annabeth thought about that. "I don't know why they'd banish us here. Or, me. I can see you being banished down here because you can survive. This seems too dangerous for a daughter of Athena." She shivered. "If a single crack gets large enough, or if an earthquake happens, or anything to disturb these tunnels… Percy would survive. Me…"

Annabeth Cream o' Wheat. I got it.

I waited for her to try and squeeze more water out of her shorts by pressing on her jean legs. It didn't seem effective. She was shivering and her teeth were chattering. I was still cold, but it wasn't so bad now that we were out of the water. I wondered about taking her shirt back off and giving it to her to wrap around her arms… maybe if the tunnel was long.

We started walking away from the glass wall. I didn't see the stone pedestal rise up again. But Grover had said Eudora might need to rest in between him or Annabeth. He'd probably sent her down to ensure she wouldn't be facing any monsters alone if they caught her scent up there. Hopefully he'd be down soon.

The hallway went straight for maybe forty feet and then veered to the right. There was a vent in the right-hand side of the wall blowing warm air. Annabeth sighed when we passed it and hovered in front of it, rubbing her hands. Then we kept trudging forward.

Everything was basalt. No variation. No color change. Just rough and tough rock. It's a good thing it was one long tunnel with no turns, because I could have gotten lost in there.

"I would go crazy living down here," Annabeth whispered.

"I hope not," I replied. "Because - news flash - you do live down here and I don't want to deal with a crazy thirty-year-old you."

But I got what she meant. Everything was plain and cold and hard. If I had to live here… I'd be bored in twelve minutes. And dead from boredom in double that time. I wondered if Percy was allowed out of the house… banishment wise. Maybe he could swim around for fun.

"I don't understand how anyone would deserve this," I muttered.

"That's just because you don't understand the Gods, Drool-boy," Annabeth replied. "My mother turned Arachne into a spider because she said she was better at weaving than her, the Goddess of Weaving. Hera, Zeus's wife, tormented Zeus's lovers and demigod children, even though they sometimes didn't have a say in what he did. Apollo subjected Marsyas to a gruesome punishment for challenging him to a musical contest. The Gods have always… reacted strongly when they felt threatened by someone." Her sneakers were making squishing sounds on the floor. "If we really did trick Zeus into giving up his throne… I'm surprised we're still alive. Let alone all the stuff about Hera."

The tunnel veered to the left. We rounded the corner and saw the first bit of wall variation we'd seen thus far. More black stone, like the gazebo entrance above us. And a door that seemed a bit too nice for something twenty thousand feet below the sea. It was a simple polished wooden door with a shiny gold-colored handle. The kind you push down. There was a mat laid in front of the door. It had an image of a hermit crab clicking its pincers. The mat read, "Don't Be Shellfish, Wipe Your Feet."

Beside the mat, I kid you not, was a package. It had a curved arrow on it and a label that read "Amazon Prime". I picked it up. "Dr. Annabeth Chase," I read off the box.

"Doctor?" Annabeth looked pleased.

I squinted at the address. "34.39336 Degrees North, 141.88053 Degrees East, Negative 6,000 meters above sea level."

"They really can deliver anywhere," Annabeth said, impressed.

I shrugged. I'd never heard of Amazon. They must not be around yet in 2006. Or at least not very big.

Annabeth knocked on the door. There was no doorbell to ring. We waited, Annabeth squishing in her shoes, and then she tried again. Still, nothing. I thought I could hear something rhythmic behind the door.

We waited for a minute and then I looked at Annabeth with a frown. She shrugged. I reached for the handle and tested it. It wasn't locked.

"Think we can just go in?" she asked.

"We live here," I replied. "Plus, it's probably warmer in there than it is out here. We can stand in the entrance hall and shout if that makes you feel better."

Annabeth thought about this, then leaned down and removed her sopping wet shoes and socks. We hadn't walked far, but I could see some blisters forming already. I thought about removing my shoes, but didn't want to stink up the hallway. They weren't wet, so I left them on.

I turned down the handle and let Annabeth in ahead of me. Like I'd predicted, the air that floated out was warm. It smelled like vanilla or something. I knew I was in for a surprise when she gasped, but I couldn't immediately see what the deal was about because she blocked the doorway. I cleared my throat, and when she didn't move, edged her to the side.

I don't know what I expected the abandoned palace at the bottom of the Mariana Trench to look like. I guess I pictured iron bars holding up the ceiling, more basalt, maybe some thick, thick glass and a tiny window, more basalt.

I wasn't expecting the sparkly chandelier. And I wasn't expecting Elvis Presley.

1/11's chapter will be called "Blue Pasta fixes all."