Hammerhead Cove 8

The Shadows over Hammerhead Cove

Published: 04 May 2017

It took Takeru all of five seconds to weigh up his limited options. He could either knock loudly on the door again and call out once more to those who whispered behind it, he could wait until whoever… or whatever was banging on the door across the room broke through or he could lift his phone and, using the frail light to find the open third door, slip away.

With the phone raised high, it’s dim light barely illuminating a few inches in front of him, Takeru turned right and edged forward cautiously, feeling his way toward where he had heard the door creak open.

Each nervous step forward was slow and deliberate, each breath taken as a foot touched the floor. With little in the way of furniture in the room, he avoided a collision with the cabriole sofa’s and found his way to the door.

With his hand grasping at the door handle he became aware of a cool whisp of air circling around his legs – he hesitated. Seriously, thought Takeru. What the fuck am I doing? He steadied himself and reasoned: Too many horror movies as a kid, too much time playing The Lurking Terror recently… You’ve just been creeped out by sexy pervo Toby in that meadow and a couple of bad dreams… There’s nothing to be afraid of… There’s nothing to be afraid of… I’m in a school! A fucking creepy school! But it’s still just a school… There’s nothing to be afraid of… Faulty old wiring and some kids playing pranks… Yeah… That’s all it is… There’s nothing to be afraid of… There’s nothing to be afraid of… Someone’s idea of a shitty joke… Too many horror movies. Too much Lurking Terror… Shitty joke… Nothing to be afraid of… It was as his heart rate began to slow to normal that across the room another sudden thump on the opposite door and the sound of the splintering of wood filled his ears. He dismissed his attempts at abandoning fear and in a blind state of panic, his feet skittering on the floor, hurled himself through – slamming the door closed behind him.

All was silent and all was dark.

Reaching outward with both hands he assuaged his very sudden fear that he had just shut himself in a closet. While ahead of him his fingers reached only toward empty space, at his sides he could feel moist plastered walls.

“Yeah!” Takeru whispered to himself. “This is… this is much better.”

Feeling along the wall to his left, his hand glanced a small cold metal box. He turned to it and shining the light from his phone at shoulder height discovered an old looking box switch with a wooden lever handle. Pulling on the stiff handle until it dropped into place – there was a loud click that bounced around the walls as it disappeared into the pitch black distance. What was only a second later, but to Takeru seemed like forever, light flooded the darkness.

Strung on the ceiling above Takeru’s head, one by one, bare light bulbs, flickering with a tinny clink, popped to life and Takeru sighed with relief.

Before him stretched a corridor – a tunnel. No higher than the door – the low ceiling was barely six foot from the ground. He squinted at the unfinished floor – realising that with a slope so slight it seemed to descend.

“Hello?” Takeru called down the tunnel. “Anybody there?” His voice came back to him. Cool Echo! he thought.

Hesitating – he looked from the door to the tunnel ahead of him.

There are choices people make and there are choices people think they make. To go to Hammerhead Cove in search of Toby was a choice that Takeru had made of his own volition and against the guidance of his friend. To ask for directions to the school from the girl in the shop was also a choice that Takeru had made without any external interference. To stand and stare at the fountain in the courtyard of the school, to take Ms Myerscough up on her offer to wait in the visitors room, to select that peculiar pamphlet to read… all choices that Takeru made of his own free will when other options were available to him. Here, Takeru was faced with a choice. To wait behind the door, listen to what was happening in the visitor’s room and wait out the time it took for Toby to arrive or to follow the seemingly endless line of bare bulbs and make his way to wherever the tunnel would lead.

It was with his ear pressed against the wood that he listened to the door on the other side crack open with an explosion of splinters that Takeru made the choice that wasn’t one – and to follow the row of lights down the tunnel at speed.

With each uncertain step forward Takeru felt the tunnel slope downward. The walls dripped and the unpleasant odour of damp curled up into his nose, he wondered if it had been used at all in the last thirty years, what the intention was behind its placement leading off of the Visitor’s room and where it led to.

As he listened to the soft padding of his feet on the poured concrete floor and the soft buzz of the bulbs only a few inches above his head he was put in mind of the tunnels that ran beneath Fort Howard on the western tip of the Island. The guide book and brass plaques had mentioned that some of those tunnels had led to what were once store rooms and others to what may have been armouries while others led to seeming dead-ends and others still were dug so deep that they connected only to more tunnels and a rocky Labyrinth of seemingly endless subterranean passages that had not been fully mapped. The British armed forces of the sixteenth century had dug deep beneath the cliffs before abandoning that Fort. But, he thought, those were hundreds of years old. This seems much more recent.

After walking for ten minutes and while beginning to wonder if the tunnel had an end, something caught his eye on the wall to his left. A child like drawing of three small figures being led by a larger fourth. The crude and distasteful ‘artwork’ seemed to have been done with the point of fine tipped black felt pen. A few steps further down and more drawings appeared on the wall – growing from stick figures to monstrous faces baring their teeth – cocks spurting dotted black lines in the air and lewd sexual acts where figures twice the size of the smaller ones bore comically oversized erections. These fearsome figures, all with thin low mohawks atop their head, fucked with wild abandon; huge circle breasted women, men with their stick legs in the air, dogs and sheep and cows and goats – if they could draw it, or at least an approximation of a beast that Takeru could readily identify, then they drew it being impaled on the impossibly large penis of these hulking creatures that their mind had created.

Takeru was torn between being amused, aroused and disturbed by the infantile artwork. His mind began to swim with visions of a German sex dungeon and loud impossibly annoying Euro Dance Music… some dark corner of the internet that he’d strolled into one night had opened his eyes to many things he found could dissuade his normally stoic erection.

He had walked for nearly three hundred metres more through the narrow, damp, graffiti strewn tunnel when he came to the door at its end. Built of heavy oak panels with a thin covered metal slat at eye height, it appeared to have been reclaimed from some other older part of the building.

Takeru’s thoughts and feelings were mixed – little good had come from the doors in this place. Whether it be the doors opened by Ms Myerscough, the ones that locked, the ones that became victim to violence or ones that led down dark damp tunnels – so far no door in this school had led him anywhere that he had felt safe.

With a shaking hand he reached for the handle and pulled. The door gave easily with a gentle creak and poking his head through with a certain understandable trepidation Takeru was more than a little surprised by what he saw.

Tiled in white and green from floor to ceiling, four benches in the middle, coat hooks and cubby holes on his left and a row of eight shower heads on his right, the room could have been any schools shower block. The cubby holes each had a crisp white towel and on the walls beneath the chrome shower heads eight bars of soap were strung from the wall on hooks at waist height on thin green chords. Of the things that Takeru thought that he might see beyond the door at the end of the tunnel, this was not one of them. On the wall across from him was another door, painted green and with a key sitting in the Yale lock at chest height, writen in carved cursive above a wooden sign read ‘Shower before leaving’. His heart skipped at the thought that this door led outside.

He skipped across the room, turned the key and pulled at the heavy door, in his excitement at making it outside, stepping through without looking.

The room he had entered was dark and as the door closed shut behind him, became only darker still. Four gas lamps hanging from the rocky walls cast long strange shadows…

“Takeru?”

The boy turned his head at the sound of his name and smiled with some relief when he saw Toby sitting on the floor, his back against the wall. As he stood, Takeru threw himself forward and embraced his friend. If he had ever felt a moment of more relief than this in his past, Takeru could not tell you.

“Takeru, what are you doing here?”

“Oh man, you have no idea how good it is to see you! There was this banging and the lights went out and people were whispering and I think they were playing a joke but then…”

Toby was shaking in Takeru’s arms: “Why are you here? I told you. I told you not to come!”

As Takeru released Toby from his grip he stepped back and looked around the room that he found himself in. The walls were cave like, exposed black rock was buttressed with slabs of granite stone. Half of the room was water where tiled steps led downward to what appeared to be a natural spring bath. At the far end – two rusted grates in the wall, left and right, seemed to carry the water elsewhere.

“Dude! You weren’t at the meadow! For like two days! I was worried something had happened to you.”

“How did you get here? How did you find me?”

“I biked it! Man, your town is all kinds of creepy. A girl in a shop gave me directions to the school, she was nice, and then your school nurse, Bitchy McBitchface, locked me in the visitor’s room with this weird fuckin’ booklet, but then like I said the lights went out and something was banging on one of the doors, like really banging, I mean whatever it was was prepared to break down that thing and then another door opened and it led to a tunnel and there were these really whack kid’s drawings on the walls and…”

Toby sighed deeply: “You schould not have come.”

“But…”

“I told you Takeru. I told you and you promisched me.”

In the poor light of the cave, Takeru couldn’t decipher whether Toby was angry at him or so deeply disappointed, “I was worried about you Toby.” He reached out a hand and stroked the tips of his fingers along Toby’s forearm. “We’d had fun right? At least I thought we had and I thought that… I mean I know we went about things ass over tit and that’s probably more my fault that yours and that I shouldn’t have been letting the little head do all the thinking but it was good right?” Looking at the older boy’s face, dread returned to the pit of Takeru’s stomach. “What’s wrong Toby? What did they do to you?”

“It isch punischment. For missching bed check. I have been down here schinche I returned.”

Takeru looked around at the damp walls, the tiled floor and the steps leading to the Olympic swimming pool sized piscina of murky water: “They kept you down here? Like a prisoner?”

“Yesch.” Toby followed Takeru’s eyes to the water’s still surface. “I really wisch that you had not come for me.”

“Why? Don’t you wanna see me? I know we’ve only known each other for a couple of days but…”

“No!” Toby’s eyes were wet and wide. “Do not think that! Of course I wanted to see you.”

“Then did I do something wrong? Did I say something? I thought.. I mean the kiss? The kiss, I know that that should have come first and I’m real sorry that it didn’t but…”

In one quick, and bold movement on Toby’s part, the taller boy lunged forward and threw his arms around Takeru – pulling him in close to his body. As Takeru wrapped his arms around the boy’s waist he felt Toby rest his cheek to the top of his head.

“Yesch. It has only been a few daysch. But I have liked you for longer than that. The only thing that you have done wrong isch to come and find me.”

With his face in Toby’s chest Takeru let slip a soft sigh and tightened his grip around him. A thought crossed his mind that hadn’t before – that just holding on to Toby like this – feeling the strength in those arms as they enveloped his body and the softness of his cheek against his head – feeling his own heartbeat match the tempo of his friend’s… For the first time Takeru felt something that might just have been better than jerking off.

“Let’s go…” Takeru lifted his head and looked up into Toby’s eyes. “We can just leave. You don’t have to stay here Toby. What they’re doing… it’s… it’s child abuse. Come with me back to Halpin Hope. We’ll figure something out. We’ll find somewhere for you to stay. You can’t stay here.”

“We cannot leave here Takeru.”

Takeru pulled himself away from Toby’s warmth and looked up into his brown eyes: “Why not? Why should you stay where people treat you like this?”

“No…” Toby looked toward the door. “The door only opensch from the other side. We cannot leave.”

Takeru followed Toby’s gaze and stared at the door. A key hole but no handle. The boys were trapped.

“FUCK!” Takeru ran to the door and began running his fingers along the edge of the frame. “There has to be a way out. This is a mineral spring bath right? There has to be a way out.” Takeru threw his shoulder into the door but the heavy wood refused to even creak under his weight.

“Takeru…”

“Come on Toby! Help me, between the two of us maybe we could…” He threw himself at the door again, this time only causing a sharp pain to shoot through his shoulder.

“Takeru…”

Once more he launched his shoulder into the door but it gave no sign of having any intention of giving way. “JESUS FUCK! WHAT THE FUCKING FUCK!” Takeru bounced on his toes and punched at the door, grazing his knuckles on the hard wooden surface. “This place man! Fuck this fucking place! This fucking place is fucked!”

Toby couldn’t help but smile at the profanities spilling from Takeru’s lips.

Takeru stopped and drew a sharp breath through his mouth. Hands flat and extended he closed his eyes and calmed himself. OK, the thought, nothing to stress about. There’ll be a way out. Just relax and breath and think.

Gathering composure he opened his eyes and calmly looked around the cave – he ran his hands along the sides of the walls as if feeling for a secret passageway, he kicked at the loose raised blocks of stone lining the coping at the edge of the piscina and felt them give, he stared at the craggy arched ceiling and poked his fingers into the granite buttresses that seemed to be preventing the whole room from caving in on them: “There has to be something. I mean, what if that creepy old crow Ms Myerscough came down here for a little dip and a flick of the bean and left her key in her garter in the next room or something? How would she get out?”

As Toby smiled wide, for the first time since being forced down into the cave as captive, he thought that maybe being a creepy pervert stalker and spying on Takeru in that meadow was the best thing that he had ever done.

“What are those?”

By the time Toby had turned to see what had caught his friends attention, Takeru had already removed his sneakers and submerged himself to the waist as he descended the steps into the water.

Dread hit Toby hard. With his eyes widened and arms outstretched he called: “Takeru! No. Schtay out of the water!”

“It’s fine. Not as warm as I thought it would be but…”

The sound of substantial ancient gears turning and heavy chains clinking and clanking reverberated through the cave – bearing the weight of what was to come.

“Get out of the water!” Toby called, struggling to make himself heard above the rattle and hum of rusted metal.

“The grates! They have to lead somewhere!” The boy kept going, beyond the last step until he felt the drop where his feet no longer touched the bottom. Looking down into the murky brine as he trod water, Takeru wondered how far down it was to the piscina’s floor.

“TAKERU! GET OUT OF THE WATER!”

As the left grate clicked into place above the water’s surface a long heavy shadow swam, unnoticed in the inky black obfuscous, into the cave.

“Look, the grate opened, maybe we can…”

The moment that Toby sprung forward into the water, hitting its surface – pointed feet first, with a graceful dive was the moment that Takeru felt something wide and heavy clasp around his left ankle and pull him down into the depths.

Much of what followed was a blur to the sixteen-year-old boy from Halpin Hope. While trying desperately to catch breath he only succeeded in pulling in lung fulls of the brown salt water. He thrashed and kicked but the grip around his ankle grew tighter – something sharp and wide dug into the soft muscle on his right calf, clamping down hard and tearing at his flesh – and while he tried to scream in pain all he could do was fill his lungs further with more and more of the briny surf. While his ears rang and popped, it was only the panicked gargle of his own despairing gasps for breath that he could hear, along with some deeper rhythmic pulse that wrapped itself around him. It was too dark beneath the surface of the piscina for him to see anything but a faint glimmer of what looked like scales and the glistening of two large bulbous eyes…

His vision only began to return to normal when he felt himself being pulled upward and with a great splash he broke the surface – lifted above the water – dangled upside down with his ankle still in a vice like grip. While gasping for air he could hear the shouting of Toby behind him but with only water and his short stabbing breath in his ears he could not translate those despairing sounds into words.

It was only when his body was slapped hard to the tiled floor on his belly that, winded and urgently trying to pull air into his lungs, he turned his head.

Through squinted watery eyes Takeru struggled to see what was standing behind him – all he could make out was the immense height and lean muscular shape of something gray and ambiguously humanoid. Takeru coughed and tried to scream but he felt a wide heavy hand plant itself between his shoulder blades, the substantial weight forcing his body flat to the ground. The claw-like nails that tipped the fingers of its left hand scratched at his hoodie – ripping the fabric through to his t-shirt, while the right began tearing at the boy’s shorts. Behind the beast Takeru could only make out blurry indistinct shapes as Toby kicked and punched and screamed at its back.

Turning its attention away from Takeru for only, what felt like to the boy, the briefest moment – it threw out one giant muscular arm and with a strong hand it gripped Toby by his throat before lifting his feet from the tiled floor. Takeru could hear his friend struggle as Toby kicked at the creature’s chest – his bare feet slapping it’s pale sinewy chest while his fingers were clasped around its thick wrist, twisting and digging. Toby could feel it crushing his throat and as he gurgled his mouth filled with saliva and more than anything he wanted to vomit with the pain. It pulled the boy toward it and inches from it’s mouth it howled – ten, twenty, forty voices in unison screaming rank hot breath on Toby’s face. He could smell Takeru’s blood on it’s tongue as it spat into his eyes. It lowered the boy a bare moment before one handedly lifting him again and throwing him twenty feet back into the water with a splash.

Takeru took the moment to roll onto his back and finally he saw it. At nine foot tall it stood – some twisted mockery of a man: where a wicked practical joker of a God had merged the evolution of shark and Sasquatch. Naked, it’s grey skin glistened wet – along its broad fibrous shoulders and the backs of its arms silver scales seemed to shimmer in the gas lamps faint orange light. The narrow tip of its head began with what looked like a fin, in place of hair, before widening out to swollen yellow eyes, fleshy rounded cheeks and a thick jaw with a small round dimpled lump of a chin. Its fat wide downturned lips took up much of the lower part of the Things face and between those lips Takeru could see, what looked to him, like three rows of sharp pointed teeth.

As Takeru screamed it turned and fixed him with it’s tumid black and yellow eyes before baring back down on the boy. Takeru tried to kick and panicked on realising that he could not move his right leg. He threw as long a glance as he could spare at it but all he could see was his torn skin and sinew covered in his own blood.

Arching his arms behind him he began to drag himself backward across the tiles but the beast stretched out a hand and expending as little effort as if Takeru were made of paper, it fixed its long strong fingers around his ankle again and pulled him back towards it.

Takeru shouted and punched and when he felt the creature ripping at his cotton shorts again he suddenly noticed that between it’s legs was fifteen fat inches of pulsing hard blue tipped cock. He screamed again and tried to pull himself away from the monster but it afforded him no mind as in a flurry of movement from its blade like nails it shredded Takeru’s shorts and underwear and ripped at their remnants – leaving the boy naked below the waist.

As the beast, its lips slobbering with saliva and Takeru’s blood, roughly pulled the boy’s ankles apart Takeru felt his hip joints crack and he howled in pain. It lowered itself to kneeling between his legs and pushed the fat blue head of its immense gray cock between the bare cheeks of the boy’s buttocks. Thrashing with his fists, a right hook landed on the beast’s jaw – but as solid as stone, it was Takeru who felt pain at the blow. It released his ankle long enough to throw a meaty fist to the side of the boy’s head, fracturing his cheekbone and forcing Takeru to bite down hard on his tongue. Copper filled his mouth as the head of the Creature thrust forward, it’s face inches from his own, the tip of its erection about to break the ring of the boy’s clenched anus. The cave filled with Takeru’s frenzied wail of pain.

Toby, coughing and spluttering, pulled himself from the water. Gripping the loose stones from the coping he slipped and fell back but with a keen reflex his flailing left hand grabbed at a stable rock. He placed a foot against the jagged wall of the piscina, in the process scoring the inner arch of his right foot across a sharp stone, and lifted himself to the tiled floor panting for breath.

His hand immediately reached for his neck, tender and painful from the creature’s unyielding grip. He couldn’t quite believe the strength of it – that with one hand it could lift and throw him as it had. It was only as he dragged himself to his feet and shook his head that he saw what was happening across from him. In wide-eyed horror he witnessed the beast looming above Takeru, its blisteringly painful looking erection about to break past Takeru’s buttocks with a single thrust forward. The anger and disgust at the sight flamed in Toby’s gut to a burning white rage and amassing every last ounce of strength he had left, he propelled himself forward toward the beast.

Through eyes filled with tears and terror Takeru couldn’t see it but Toby had stood and launched himself into the right-hand ribs of the creature. The boy thrust his shoulder into its right side and, while screaming something so deep and guttural that it barely sounded human, Toby knocked it away from between Takeru’s legs.

While the Thing lay winded, Toby climbed the length of its long muscular body and reached for one of the large loose stones of that lined the piscina. Gripping it tightly with both hands he yanked a wide flat stone free from the coping with an exhausted grunt, and channeling his every ounce of rage into his arms and shoulders, he raised it high above his head and brought it crashing down onto the creature’s face. Beneath him the monster howled in pain, it’s bloody lips torn and ripped by it’s own razor sharp teeth. Before he was afraid of it; the shape and size and demonic appearance… Now that fear was replaced by something else, not for the wounds he had endured or the humiliation of being found wanting in his first attempt to help Takeru, but solely for its assault on his only friend.

Toby lifted the stone again and brought it down a second time with a wet crack – its jaw was dislocated and hung low on it’s thick neck. Limply reacting more out of the nerve of instinct than strength the wounded beast cried out with an ear piercing screech. It waved its arms as it tried to push Toby from its torso. He hated this creature more than he had hated anything else in his life. He hated it more than he would allow himself to hate those who treated him with disdain through his years of schooling. He hated it more than he hated the woman who had locked him down in that cave to be fodder for this beasts sexual appetite – punishment simply for missing bed check. It had hurt Takeru, the only person that Toby felt he could call ‘friend’, the only person who he felt could be more than that.

A third lift and a third crack of the stone. Pain and anguish written somewhere in the monsters protuberant yellow eyes – it’s irises then little more than thin black slits – it’s face mashed like it were made of plasticine. Anything,thought Toby. I would do anything to stop you or anyone else from hurting him again!

With the fourth crack of the rock to the creature’s skull, a broken wet pop and a weak gurgle of blood in its throat slipped its lips before it went silent. It’s struggling arms falling with a heavy splat to the wet tiles. The only sound in the cave, then, was the soft sobs of the two boys as in anguish Toby looked down at the creatures mangled and broken face. Blood had pooled on the tiles beside its head, red and thick and smelling vaguely of fish viscera.

Breathing heavily Toby fell from the creature’s body to the floor and rolled onto his back, he coughed and touched his raw neck.

“Ta… Takeru?” It was a croak that barely passed his lips. He rolled to his front and lifted his head to see Takeru sobbing and shaking on the floor. “Takeru?”

On his forearms, Toby pulled his body along the tiled floor toward his friend and lifted himself to sit beside him: “What… What did it do to you?” a bare rasp that the boy from Halpin Hope couldn’t make out over the sound of his own sobs of anguish. “Did it… Did it…”

Shaking with tears, the boy shook his head, ‘No’.

It was then that Toby noticed the wound on his friend’s leg. Raw and bloody, the skin torn from the flesh – the exposed red muscle tissue where the creature had bitten and ripped a chunk of brawn from the boy’s calf. So much blood, he thought as he hurriedly gathered up the remains of Takeru’s wet shorts and tore them into strips before wringing them tightly to dispense with the excess water.

His fingers, already stained with the creatures blood, glanced the edges of Takeru’s wound. As the boy whimpered under his touch, Toby lifted Takeru’s leg and wrapped the tatters of cloth tight around the torn flesh.

He stood – removed the shorts that Takeru had given him a few days prior and kneeling back down placed them over the boy’s feet – lifting Takeru’s legs and hips to cover him. Toby squinted in discomfort as Takeru howled when the cloth glanced the bloody mess on his calf.

“We need to get you out of here.” Toby looked around and spotted the open grate that the creature had emerged though. It is not ideal but it is our only option. “Can you schtand?” he asked, knowing immediately after asking that Takeru couldn’t..

Takeru whimpered as he tried to sit up.

“I need you to help me help you schtand Takeru.” said Toby as he hooked his hands under the boy’s arms. Takeru groaned but understood. Placing as much weight as he could bear on his legs he let Toby lift him and threw his arms around the boy’s shoulders.

“Hold on asch tight asch you can.” He lifted Takeru on his back and planting his feet wide and steady he surprised himself that he could still summon the strength to support Takeru’s weight without too much strain.

“W-w-where are w-we g-going?” stuttered Takeru gripping his own hands around Toby’s shoulders.

“For a schwim.”

Toby followed the steps down into the piscina – taking each one with a hesitant but solid foot, careful not to make too sudden a movement for fear of losing his friend in the water. If it were not for his size and the considerable resource of strength that he drew from, when he thought of his friend, Toby would not have been able to swim with Takeru on his back and both boys would have remained in the tiled cave with the body of the creature until that door had eventually opened, another had swam through the grate or they had died of thirst and starvation.

The water, while still, pushed lightly against them as Toby swam for the grate. Once through, and without the light of the gas lamps that the cave had given them, the boys were in total darkness.

Toby could feel that the walls around them were curved, a man made tunnel that seemed impossibly long the further that the boy swam – and the further that he swam, the more strain Toby felt in his thighs and biceps – his muscles tightening with every stroke and kick. He would refuse to admit it but the weight of the shivering boy on his back was pulling him under and the longer he swam the more he worried that he wouldn’t be able to keep the two of them afloat.

He paused and gripped at a narrow shelf built into the side by his right. As he breathed deeply he could smell a change in the air. The stagnant scent of the cave and the piscina giving way to something lighter, something fresher…

“I think that we are near the end.” whispered Toby in the darkness.

When the boy on his back didn’t respond Toby butted his head backwards and shook his shoulders: “Takeru? Takeru?”

“Yeah… Yeah… I’m h-h-here.” His voice was becoming a whisper.

From back in the cave the boy’s heard a woman’s scream but neither would risk turning their heads.

“I think M-M-Ms M-Myerscough found her f-friend.”

“We schould keep moving forward. Are you schtill holding on to me?”

“I-I-I-I’m never letting g-go.”

Toby pushed off from the shelf and continued swimming blindly forward. It was only five minutes later that as Toby’s strength was about to give out that he saw it: A literal light at the end of the tunnel.

To be continued…

Let me know what you think of my story:Ellio