Morning all and happy Monday. I hope your weekend was fabulous. Mine was pretty good. Loads of fall chores to be done, but I felt very productive. A little sore, but productive. As so we start the week with the Monday prompts. Timers set for fifteen and lets see where this takes us.
Not where I thought this would go, but it could be an interesting story. No idea what the story would be, but it could be a set up to noodle around with for a while.
Monday, October 5th: It turned slowly.
It turned slowly. While encouraging, the water was rising fast. He pushed harder, all his strength focused on the task. If he didn’t get the hatch open before the water level rose too high, he would be dead. He pushed and slowly, slowly it turned. Flakes of rust fell into the water below.
He couldn’t spare it a thought. Finally, he heard the sound he was waiting for. The click of the latch slipping and the slight hiss letting him know the seals released. He felt the hatch open slightly. Then it stopped. He pushed against the hatch and the rusty hinges gave way with a protesting screech.
He tumbled through it into the narrow corridor beyond. He closed the hatch and even twisted the latch again, hearing the click and the hiss to let him know it was locked.
He didn’t know what other breaches the hull had, but he did know that even one wasn;t good. He blinked, and oriented himself with the markings on the ceiling of the corridor. He turned and followed the signs towards the upper decks.
It felt as though he was winding though narrow metal corridors forever, but eventually he reached the surface. He opened the hatch and stepped out onto the top deck. There was no one around. Any people who had been around were long gone. He tried not to think about that, instead looking for one of the emergency kits. He spotted the row of small lockers containing the safety gear. Many of them were empty and a few looked like they had been smashed, their contents damaged beyond use.
He found one that was usable and opened it. He picked up the emergency kit and made his way to the lift rafts. Like the kits he found several smashed and many missing. He kept searching until he found one that was usable. He put his gear into it and launched himself away from the doomed submarine. Already the top deck was listing. He managed to get into the water and turned the outboard motor on. He knew that he needed to get away from the sinking vessel or it could pull him under with it.
He pushed the motor to it’s fastest speed, his only goal was to get far enough away that he didn’t go down with the ship. It was only after he thought he had enough distance that he looked around. He saw the dark outline of land in the distance. The evening was too far advanced and the sun in the wrong angle for him to get too mush of an impression of it. But it was land. He heard the gurgle and gasp of the submarine as it sank below the surface and didn’t look back, aiming his life raft towards the sight of land.
As he moved he wondered if he would encounter the others. ‘There have to be others,’ he thought. He hadn’t seen anyone but there was no reason for him to be on a submarine by himself.
He couldn’t think of a reason for him to be on a submarine at all and had no idea how he managed to get on one. As he stared towards the land, he wondered how he ended up there. ‘And how did I know how to read the markings?’
James was not a seafaring man. He didn’t fish, he didn’t even go in lakes let alone the sea. He didn’t even watch aquatic based documentaries. His only connection to water was his once-a-week swimming lesson at the local gym. He had been taking it for two weeks thinking that at thirty-five it was time to check learn to swim off his bucket list. He had no recollection of even getting on a submarine.
“Or of going near the ocean.”
