The Boathouse

I woke up to a strange gurgling sound. Waves crashed into the boathouse and moved it from side to side. I assumed the noise was just normal sounds the water makes all the time. I decided to ignore it and go back to sleep. But I couldn’t. Now that I was awake, I realized how badly I had to use the bathroom.

As the waves rocked the boat back and forth, I carefully made my way down the tiny spiral staircase. It was easy to lose your balance when the boat was moving so relentlessly. There must be a storm coming, I reasoned.

I descended the staircase to the lowest level of the boathouse. There were two sublevels. The top sublevel was where I liked to sleep. It was somehow more peaceful. I wasn’t really sure why. I just preferred it. My sister, however, preferred the lowest sublevel.

The toilet was located on the lowest level, right next to my sister’s bedroom. It was in a tiny room all on its own. On the opposite side of my sister’s room was a walk-in shower. The space in there was so narrow, I could barely move to scrub myself clean. 

As soon as I opened the bathroom door, I heard my sister stirring. Now that I was staring at the toilet, I realized I didn’t just have to pee. I sat on the toilet and closed the door. I did it in that order because of the lack of room. As I sat down, a big wave crashed hard against the boat. Through the vent on the wooden louver door, I saw my sister walk out of her room. She had to hold on to the wall just so she wouldn’t fall over.

“It must be storming!” I called out from the miniature bathroom.

“Are you using the toilet?” she asked. She had a hard time calling it a bathroom. Which made sense, since the bathroom was literally divided into two rooms. Three if you counted the sink.

“Yes,” I answered.

Through the louver door, I could see my sister looking out one of the tiny circular windows. The look on her face worried me. She went out of my view as she looked out a different window.

“Oh, my god!” I heard her say. There was dread in her voice.

I flushed the toilet and left the room. I went to the kitchen sink to wash my hands.

“Is something wrong?” I asked, trying not to seem worried. But I was. I never heard her sound so scared.

She didn’t say anything at first. She was too shaken up by whatever she’d seen out the window. She had her hand over her mouth, and her eyes were welling up with tears.

“I don’t know how this happened,” she said. I could tell by the shakiness in her voice that she was trying not to cry.

We were from San Francisco, originally, but were staying in our uncle’s boathouse in Oregon while we got back on our feet. We used to run a business together. But since the pandemic, we’d lost everything. No one was interested in buying our homemade lotions or sunscreens. People were afraid of anything homemade.

So, we were out of business and stuck living in our uncle’s boathouse. He rarely used it anymore. For the last couple of years, he just left it docked in the marina. Luckily, the pandemic hadn’t hit him as hard as it hit us. Otherwise, he would have sold his boathouse, and we would have been out of luck.

“What is it?” I asked.

“I can’t see the dock,” she said. Her face was grey with fear. Sadly, it was a color I was going to get used to seeing on her.

I couldn’t quite gather the information I was hearing. It made me nervous knowing there was something bad going on, and I was going to be the last to know about it. But I wasn’t freaking out. Why would I? I had no idea just how dire our situation was.

“How did the boat leave the dock?” my sister questioned. “Did someone untie us?”

“Wait! What?!” I said, shaking. Now, I was panicking.

I was losing feeling in my legs, and my chest felt queasy. I looked out the window by the sink. Usually, there were other boats docked outside this window. Now, there was nothing but water.

“Where are we?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” she admitted.

“How will we find our way back to the dock?” I was starting to really freak out at this point. My fingers were digging into the hair on my scalp. I’m sure I looked like someone on the brink of a breakdown. And, to be honest, I probably was. I wasn’t proud of how quickly I was losing it. Luckily, my sister brought me back to my senses.

“It’s okay,” she insisted. “The compass will tell us where we are. We just have to head east to get back to land.”

I forced a weak smile and curled up on the tiny kitchen bench. I was hugging myself for dear life and, even though I don’t believe in God, I was praying. Not to God, really. Just to life in general. Maybe nature? I wasn’t really sure what or who I was praying to. But I’d grown up in a religious household; so, as soon as I thought I was going to die, I started praying.

My sister went outside and around to the back of the boathouse where a ladder led up to the steering wheel. When I heard the engine turn on, I could feel the numbness leaving my legs. We were going to be okay. My sister would get us back to the docks.

I uncurled from my fetal position and joined my sister at the wheel.

“It’s okay,” she told me. “We’re going home.”

Just then, it felt like something rammed into our boat. Was it another boat? Whatever it was, it felt big!

Both of us fell to the floor. It sounded like my sister hit into something. I worried she might have hit her head.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“I’m okay,” she insisted, holding the side of her ribs as she stood up. She must have hit her side into the railing, or, as my uncle called it, the bulwark.

We both climbed down the ladder to look at what we hit into.

“I see something!” my sister shouted excitedly. “There’s a whale.”

“Do you think we hit it?” I asked, as I walked to the back of the boat where she was leaning over the side railing.

“Wow!” I exclaimed. “It’s huge! Do you think we hurt it?”

“I don’t think so,” she said.

It was an amazing sight to behold. We stared at it for a long time. We couldn’t take our eyes off it. The moonlight glowing on the whale’s back created a magical scene. The stars glittered above us in the night sky. I knew I would never forget this moment for as long as I lived.

“I bet you didn’t imagine you’d be in the open ocean in the middle of the night looking at a gigantic whale,” my sister mused.

I looked at her and smiled contently. She was good at making dire situations seem okay.

Just then, an odd noise cut through the incessant sound of water hitting against our boat.

“Is that a normal sound for a whale to make?” I asked, even though I thought I already knew the answer.

It was a screeching, high-pitched sound, sort of like if a whistle was in pain. More disturbing still was the grinding sound that accompanied it. The sound was becoming louder by the second. And it just kept rising until it sounded like someone, or something, screaming.

I covered my ears, but the noise shot straight through my hands. My eardrums were ringing. And then I did something I hadn’t done in a long time. I screamed. It was a high-pitched scream. The way I used to scream when I was young, before I was told that I screamed like a girl. At that moment, I didn’t care what I sounded like. I was scared. And, the truth was, I wanted my parents. Either one would do. But neither were here. It was only me and my sister.

She grabbed me and hugged me tight. I think she felt the same way I did. And I was grateful for the comfort. I needed to feel protected. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t helping my sister feel any safer, and I was in no way making the situation better. But I had a history of getting panic attacks in stressful situations. So, I had to concentrate on my breathing in order to get a hold of my anxiety.

We lightened our embrace so that we could look over the side of the boat again. The whale didn’t appear to have moved since we last saw it. The sight of the whale made me feel protected somehow. As though I was in the presence of a giant sentinel of the sea.

Just as I was beginning to relax, the whale’s entire body began to tremble.

“What’s happening to it? Why’s it doing that?” I asked, even though I knew my sister wouldn’t have any answers.

The glow from the moonlight must have been playing trick’s with my eyes. At first, I thought the reflections were jumping out at us. But they were simply dancing from the whale’s convulsions.

“I hope it’s not because our boat hit it,” my sister said despairingly.

The whale’s body suddenly lifted out of the water, so that almost its entire body could be seen. What was happening to this whale? Could we have caused this?

The skin on the whale’s back appeared to stretch as bright, meaty pink and blood red was revealed from beneath. The whale’s body was coming apart for no apparent reason. But why? What was causing this to happen?

Sharp, searing appendages burst through the whale’s body in at least six different places.

What could do that to a whale of such an enormous size?

As we watched the whale die a painful, torturous death, an enormous large-bodied creature rose up from beneath it. It must have been four times the size of the whale. The creature had been part way under our boat. As it rose, our boat tilted and lifted up with it.

“Hold on to something!” my sister shouted.

I held onto the railing at the edge of the boat for dear life. Just as I thought the boat would turn over, it slid off of the large creature and went back into an upright position, landing safely back onto the water.

Once I realised we were okay, I focused my attention on the appendaged creature. Its body was lifted ten feet above the surface. The appendages that had just been stabbing and ripping the whale apart, were now below the creature and being used as legs. This creature had to be larger than any known to humankind. It walked on nine legs through the open ocean like it was nothing. The water must have been at least 400 feet deep, meaning its legs were at least that long.

My sister hurried back up the ladder and started the engine. As our boat sped away from the gigantic creature, some sort of large vessel broke the surface. More creatures, just like the one we’d encountered, seemed to pop up out of nowhere. I wondered if they came from the vessel.

“There’s more of them!” I yelled up to my sister.

She yelled out a few curses and tried to speed up, but instead the boat slowed down and the engine died. More vulgar words came from my sister as she hurried back down the ladder.

“What happened? Why did we stop?” I asked.

“Maybe I was going too fast,” she replied and cursed herself. “I’m going below to check the engine.”

She opened a trap door on the deck and climbed down into the small dark room where the engine was. Smoke billowed out of the opening. I could barely see my sister when she came back up for air.

There was commotion in the water just ahead of us. At least thirty dolphins passed our boat. They were heading toward the creatures. Shortly after, multiple pods of whales could be seen heading in the same direction.

“Something’s going on!” I yelled. “There are a ton of dolphins and whales swimming past us.”

My sister stood next to me to get a better look.

About fifty feet away, two dolphins were lifted up out of the water and into the air by two separate appendages. The dolphins were covered in their own blood. The appendages released the lifeless dolphins back into the water. The creature, who the appendages belonged to, then began writhing and turning. It appeared to be struggling.

“The other dolphins are attacking them!” my sister yelled excitedly.

She was right. Half a dozen dolphins surrounded the creature and were attacking it any way they could, by biting and nudging their heads into it. Soon enough, a large group of whales also made it over to the creature, and they too were ramming their bodies into it with as much force as they could.

And it wasn’t just the creature closest to us that was getting attacked. All of the massive, appendaged creatures seemed to be fighting off large amounts of sea life. Even sharks were rushing toward it in swarms. So many different species had banded together to fight off this new threat that was sure to destroy most of sea life, as well as life on land, if it wasn’t stopped. Species that would have normally stayed clear of each other, were now fighting side by side.

All of the commotion was making our boat rock back and forth. A large wave of water splashed onto the deck and swept me off my feet. I fell on my side, and the water carried me to the edge of the boat. I grabbed onto the railing as tight as I could. But as I attempted to stand up, another wave hit me and pushed me overboard.

I fell into the water with a heavy thud that pierced my left ear. I opened my eyes while I was still under water. It was a mistake. The salt burned my eyes so bad, I thought I was going to go blind if I kept them open any longer. But what I saw under the water kept me from closing them.

One of the massive creatures was just below me. It was so close that one of its appendages brushed against my legs. Several of its appendages whipped around in the water, striking at whales, dolphins, sharks, and even rays and jellyfish.

One shark came dangerously close. But it wasn’t interested in me. It was too busy fighting the creature. The shark bit at the appendage that was closest to me and shook its head viciously. Then it swam away, leaving the appendage a shredded mess.

I swam to the surface and then to the boat. My sister yelled, “Swim to the back.”

I didn’t listen. Instead, I attempted to jump up toward the railing, hoping I could get onto the boat immediately. I was too afraid to stay in the water, and I was beginning to panic. I tried to jump up to the edge of the boat multiple times. But I only succeeded in making myself go back under the water and closer to the creatures.

My sister yelled at me again, this time with anger and fear consuming her. “Swim to the back. NOW!”

Finally, I did as she said and swam around the boat to the swim platform at the rear. My strokes were weak and shaky, and my body jolted from overwhelming fear several times as I made my way. Just as I began lifting myself onto the boat, I could feel something brushing my legs, writhing beneath me.

As soon as I made it onto the boat, my sister hugged me so hard, she must have thought she’d lost me forever.

“Let’s get out of here,” she said and ran back up the ladder that led to the steering wheel.

I noticed there was no longer smoke coming from the engine room below. She must have fixed the problem. Or maybe it just needed a while to cool down.

As our boat sped away, I saw one of the appendaged creatures falling down as though it was dying. The largest creatures of the sea may have been small in comparison to these massive invaders, but they had an advantage in numbers.

As we drove away, I felt hopeful. We were going to take the planet back. The species of the sea wouldn’t be the only ones fighting. As soon as we reached land, we would alert the authorities. We would fight together.