I’ve decided I’m going to try to update on Tuesdays with writing shorts, either using the writing prompt questions that WordPress has available or using the Storymatic cards to prompt a short story. I’m not entirely following the official Storymatic rules – because let’s face it, it’s fun to break the rules. I’m pulling only a couple of cards because I don’t intend to get carried away – all of these stories or posts will be no longer than the average flash fiction. As such, I am pulling one character card and one story card each and running with those.

Today’s prompt includes the following cards: a world record holder, and no place to hide.

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              Alice loved the water. She had taken to it like a fish since infancy, had specifically sought out a high school with a good swim team, but eventually found her own niche passion within competitive apnea. She had spent years training herself in freediving, both in pools and in the ocean, with one idea lodged firmly in her head: to break the Guiness World Record for holding one’s breath. As a woman, she had to pass the female record of 18 minutes and 32.59 seconds, but she desperately wanted to prove herself even against the men’s record.

              When she finally made the attempt, she fell short of the men’s record, but did still manage 21 minutes and 22.1 seconds under the water. She remembered the euphoric feeling of knowing that she would now be the goal – that anyone and everyone within her field of competition and interest would know her name, would know that she was the one to surpass. This was a triumph.

              That had been a year and a half ago. She still trained, though not with the same single-minded determination that had driven her before she had achieved her dream. Mostly she trained in case someone managed to break her record, and she relished in the idea of the challenge, but none had managed it so far. Like any other day, she decided to swim in the ocean, and had taken her boat out far from the shore.

              As she prepared for her dive, she scanned the horizon. The sea was calm, and it was a beautiful day, the sort of conditions that always made her feel at peace and in touch with her world. But today seemed somehow different. A strange unsettling began somewhere in the pit of her stomach and raised goosebumps across her flesh. But she had already come out this far and was certain that being in the water would make everything seem right again. Ignoring the feeling, she carefully placed her goggles over her eyes and slipped under the waves.

              She swam down, intending to go as deep as she was able, but the feeling persisted. Something was wrong here. She turned in the water, looking through the depths – the way the distance disappeared in greenish blue usually calmed her, but today it looked somehow darker, murkier. Foreign? Perhaps this was a bad idea after all. She decided to float upward to return to her boat.

              Strangely, her slow descent never seemed to bring her closer to the surface. She frowned, staring at what she felt was up, but it was hard to make out where the water might meet the sky. She quelled her panic and continued, but several moments later, much longer than the time she had taken swimming down, she still hadn’t broken the surface of the water.

              Movement caught her eye. She turned to look, could see a dark shape lurking just beyond comprehension. More movement, from the other side. Four glowing dots seemed to grow out of the gloom, approaching until she realized they were the eyes of some strange massive fish. The ocean was full of mysterious and terrifying things, but she had never seen anything quite like it before. More alarming, it seemed to be stalking her, waiting just out of reach for something to happen.

              She kept her eyes on it as she continued upward. There was nowhere to reasonably hide, and she didn’t want to thrash or panic like a prey animal – instead, she forced herself to keep her movements steady. Besides, despite her world record, or maybe entirely because of it, she knew she did not have much more time before she couldn’t hold her breath anymore. She nearly boggled at the sight of the second creature as it rose from the depths, this one with a white skeletal looking face full of sharp exposed teeth, a dull blue glow emitting from the depths of the eye sockets. What were these things? Where were they coming from?

              They followed her on her slow and completely exposed journey up.

              Her lungs ached and white flashes of light painfully pulsed behind her eyes, almost obscuring the sight of the third creature from the depths – a long flowing inky shadow of tendrils and arms lined with glowing lights of a color that she couldn’t place or even begin to understand, a color she could only describe as oceanic death. It was larger than the other two, both of which pulled back at its approach.

              Panic welling and building to a crescendo, she struggled hard, pulling her arms against the water and kicking, feeling her body rise quickly, but despite that, the surface still never came. She realized she was reaching her limit – had maybe even surpassed her own record. She was out of breath, and out of strength, and out of consciousness. The world darkened as the inky black of the creature surrounded her, and the last cohesive thought that crossed her mind was that she could just barely make out the glistening of pearly teeth…