"The Beast of Trash Island" is a horror/suspense novella by Steve Metcalf. Here, we reach the final chapter (minus the epilogue of the piece) of the story. Will the final survivor survive? We think you already know the answer to that question ...
Chapter Nine, Final Image
JAMES PAUSED TO STARE AT THE FROTHING OCEAN that seemed to slowly stop boiling around him. The various pieces of trash and the collection of micro plastics were glinting in the morning light. The Aqua Tom was silent.
And empty.
The last remaining Stanford researcher wiped at the dirt and sweat that had collected on his face. He paused in his silent reverie as something caught his eye. Turning and squinting into the light, he saw his rescue.
A ship.
A big ship on the horizon. It was still miles away, but James stood up and started waving his arms. He jumped up and down and shouted at the ship if, simply, out of an exuberant reaction.
“Hey,” he called. “Hey. Over here.”
He stopped jumping and waving, and sat back down on a comfy leather chair on the flying bridge—the topmost deck of the yacht. James took a deep breath, started laughing, and then started crying. He felt the gentle warmth of the morning sun across his face. He looked down at his hands folded in his lap, and then looked around the main deck of the ship. The sphere. The bullet holes. The scattered clothing, shoes and jewelry. The only talking he heard was the lapping of the waves against the hull of the Aqua Tom. The only laughing he heard was the sound of the bilge pumps nearing the end of their tasks.
The ship (was it battleship-gray?) was getting closer by the minute, but it was still a lifetime away.
“I should put together the data,” he said to no one but himself. He stood up and turned fully toward the onrushing ship. He smiled a final time.
Slowly, almost lovingly, the spatula tentacle crawled up over the port gunwale and embraced James. With visions of Ai dying before his eyes, James began sobbing. Holding him in place, the tentacle lifted him off his feet and gently pulled him overboard.
**
The beast was enormous. And silent.
James had about one minute of air in his lungs, and it seemed to pass in slow motion. Illuminated by the rising sun and its own bioluminescent skin, the sea beast that had destroyed all life on the Aqua Tom floated before him.
It might have started up the evolutionary ladder as an octopus or giant squid, but, over the millennia, it became an amalgamation of both—and several other things. The black scales of its huge body melded into the inky darkness of the ocean depths. The rising sun could only penetrate so far beneath Trash Island.
Suspended motionless ten feet below the surface of the Pacific Ocean, James could see that the creature was huge. It was easily 200 feet tall, half of that wide, with 8 tentacles. Two of the tentacles might have been four hundred feet long and two had the diamond-shaped flippers attached to the ends—one was holding James suspended, weightless and underwater. The other four tentacles were fluttering about the creature’s body as if to keep it stabilized, suspended beneath Trash Island.
The single, giant yellow eye was hideous in its clarity. The flat tentacle held James mere feet from the eye and he could see the pupil dilating and effacing as if to focus on him. After ten seconds that felt like ten minutes, the great creature opened his gaping maw that was filled with row after row of teeth—and roared. It was a sound that should not be possible under the water. James was filled with wonder.
And then there was nothing.
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