by Faryn Black
She could already feel the weightless, subtle pull
of her hair floating around her. Unbrushed tangles of seaweed
knotting along her scalp as calliope music blubbered
in waves –shifting,
refracting,
redacting explanations.
Bare feet had slippyslid
over algae-covered rocks, seabed muck
squishing between toes
as she answered the inexorable
invitation. Spectral jellyfish hovered, swaying
to marine melodies as the beleaguered ceiling of light
surrendered its last distant prism.
Sharks and eels skulking in the deep overhead. She is long past
knowing what form the fins and scales take, brushing past her legs. Cold
on cold is all she knows.
And the sound.
The sound.
Further still.
Oblivious to time, unmoved by any current, the ancient beast opens
an opaque eye; her own silhouette a reflected mote in a great black iris.
The shimmyshift of phosphorescence
refuses to illuminate. The unfathomable,
fathoms down. An encompassing perspective
too far back to swim to –she could only point
to negatives. It was not Cthulhu,
nor giant squid. For her, it was not danger.
This cryptid was no stranger.
Ascending in descent: joining the abyssal pantheon
beside her unknowable bridegroom. Damselfish and maids
build her tiara of shells and coral; mandatory attendants
to the lichen-laced forsaken treasure. Welcoming
her reign as thalassic goddess, choirs of aquatic angels
sing her home.
In 1997, an unidentified noise – loud enough to be heard by devices over 5,000 kilometers apart – was recorded underwater off the coast of South America. Though seemingly biological in nature, any organism large enough to produce a noise of such volume would have to be many times larger than any creature ever known to have lived on Earth. Dubbed “The Bloop” by scientists, the noise was recorded several times over that summer and never heard again.