Voices in the Deep

AUTHOR'S NOTE: This story takes a while to set up, so don't expect to get your kicks right away. I tried to write a story as if Lovecraft wrote erotica. Don't know if I succeeded, but I had fun writing it. Let me know what you think!

It remains a mystery to me and to any who have experienced my story and to any who have heard the story exactly where I went wrong. The blurring of the line occurred at the beginning, and so much of what followed might have been entirely illusory. I remain a prisoner in a cell without bars in a place of which I cannot describe, but not because of a lack of trying.

I don't even know how long I have been here, but if I count from the moment of the Great Sinking, and if pressed to answer in a court of the kind of law that is realistically enforced, I must say it has been on the order of 500 years or more. This may just be a day where I came from, which may be where you now reside yourself.

If you are reading this, then you are passing over the Deep, into which I and my comrades plummeted. You may mistake my voice for an illusion, but I assure you I am not just a voice in your head. I am real, and I've come to warn you.

I leave it to you to figure out where I went wrong, because so much of my actions were not my own doing, and it grows more difficult to know when my spirit gave out. Rest assured, you must turn around and go back. The waters may look calm as any other sea, but this is not just any ocean. It is not passable.

It will swallow you up whole, and will not let you go. And in the end, sweet death will not be an option.

*

The vessel my friends and I were traveling in was of a design I could not acutely describe anymore. If my memory could be trusted, I might be able to tell you how best to avoid that unholy void which appeared most suddenly in our path. But unfortunately, I remember only the void.

That was the beginning for me, and anything which came before it eludes me. I've tried digging down within me to discover the Truth from whence I came, but always I am pulled, in dreams and in memory, into the vortex that brought us all down here. And thinking about it only stirs the demons further, and no one wants that.

You could say we saw the sun set for the last time. The light began to bend at the far end of the horizon, away from that great star. It seemed to spray our field of view with death like an aerosol can. I think most of us knew at once that we drifted into a darkness from which there would be no possible return.

As sure as that darkness pulls on the vision as I tell it to you now, if you have seen it, it is too late for you. I pray it is not too late for you now.

The sea before us turned charcoal in color, and the light was choked out. The glimmer of twilight smacked the waves less and less as we approached until at last, like a picture slowly curling into ash above the heat of a flameless fire, we saw only the void. It lay in our path like liquid licorice.

The whirlpool pulled us ever nearer to its core, and we could see lights within flickering like a thunderstorm down inside the ocean. Whenever those lights flickered, it revealed in ever more imminent terror, the vast scope of that horrifying vortex that tugged us closer as effortlessly as a boy tugs his wagon.

A sound arose which I shudder to describe to you now. This sound I won't describe, not because I can't, but because it is all I hear when I fail to give in to its call. I wish so much to believe there is existence beyond the torment of this demonic chorus, but I fail now in every attempt to imagine this to be true.

The sound had been mixed and somewhat softened by that of the curling ocean waters, and before our ship was even sucked into the core of that hole in the ocean, I would have gladly chosen to end the maddening cacophony with my death.

There are indeed many who were fortunate enough to have thought of this in time. They saved their existence the insufferable torment of which I endeavor to alarm you now.

We did not feel our ship sink, but merely saw the horizon rise higher and higher before us. The horrible song of the deep sharpened like tuning in to a radio frequency. The song was indeed like a radio station broadcasting songs from some lost oceanic highway, one that seems to have always existed, and was forgotten for very good reason.

The voice of a thousand daemons rang in all our ears, and the power of the voices paralyzed the lot of us who chose not to take our own lives. The beings kept our arms at our sides, for fear we might do so.

We stood rapt with fear and agonizing paranoia. At random moments, those lights flickered on, and we saw the barrier between that curtain of tar and ourselves. We also saw the silhouettes, as crystal clear as a child's stencil, of creatures that we felt were anxious to meet us and dominate us. They circled us like lions circling a lamb.

None of us gained the use of our limbs until we felt the ship reach the bottom with a thud. Nearing the edge of the ship, we failed to see the edge of the water. The lights had stopped, but the music kept going.

I moved toward the cabin where most of the men were gathering when I felt an oily film on my skin. I only felt it, I discovered, when I moved. Something had filled the air around us, and it was palpable, like some very thick, non-toxic gas.

All at once, while taking in the odd sensation, one of the thousand voices became louder than the others. I became aware of the direction from which it came, and as I turned to look, the voice became deafening in my ears. It was soon accompanied by a ghastly knocking sound, like a hundred knuckles popping. It rose an octave to sound like a tank rolling over rocks. Soon, and quite briefly, I felt the vibration of a very large object lumbering past me, which I could not see.

The sole light in the cabin was threatening to go out, but it bore enough light to illuminate some part of the ship's deck. The creature passed above me very quickly, and I saw only a large, snake-like belly appear before the dim light.

Like all of the men -- men who have wrestled bears and speared sharks -- the sight shook me to my core. No other voices arose like this one for several minutes, but every direction I looked seemed to me to be the direction in which I would see the next creature. And every time, I expected it to be my last.

I staggered into the cabin, where I saw all the other men milling about. Their faces were white as ghosts, and no one looked one another in the eyes.

This was the last moment we all shared together.

*

I did not leave the cabin until my fast diminishing memory betrayed, for only a moment, the image of my wife.

She was on the ship, but not with me. The Deep had begun to penetrate my mind, and the mere image of my wife was one I had begun to doubt. The memory of her seemed to appear in my mind out of nowhere, and I wondered if it was the Deep playing tricks on me.

I had a full set of memories involving the woman known as my wife, and it all became crystal clear when I saw her standing at the stern of the ship looking out into the Void. I went out to meet her to see that she was looking down at the floor, which was now dimly lit by an unknown source.

When I put my hand on my wife's back, she turned to smile at me. It was only in that moment that I knew she was real. She made everything real. She was my talisman. She was my anchor to reality. I knew, as I looked into her eyes, where we were. I remembered everything.

But as I gained some sanity, she turned to look back at the glowing orb. I realized she wasn't smiling because of me.

Then she got up onto the ledge like she was going to jump off. I warned her that it was at least fifty feet, but without paying heed, she jumped.

*

The men were still reeling from the horror when I re-entered the cabin. I noticed some of them were missing, but paid it no mind. I found some rope, and no one stopped me. One woman, the cook's daughter, just looked up at me with abject desperation in her eyes. She did not know anything in that moment, and I had to fight myself for a reason to argue with her. She seemed to say to me, "It's no use. We are nothing here. Not anymore."

Her sadness almost paralyzed me once again, and were I not holding the very rope of my intention, I might have forgotten my purpose.

I reached the stern of the ship and looked down. There was still only darkness, and some part of me began to ridicule the whole mission.

It may be hard for you to imagine how I can forget about a wife I touched only moments before, but those moments might as well have lasted thousands of years. As I stepped up to the rear of the boat, it was like stepping into a whole new reality. Every step, in fact, was like this.

At a certain point, I learned to trust nothing. But even as I heard that voice cackling deep within, mocking my pursuit of a woman that the voice is sure I've made up, I dropped the rope into the deep.

Hard as it was to shake the sadness of a pursuit that even I was beginning to believe was meaningless, I had to believe in something. And even if I was going crazy, I chose to attempt to regain my sanity by searching for my love.

I climbed down until I reached the floor. When I looked up, I saw nothing. The light from the cabin had either gone out, or was so dim that it cast no light beyond the ship. I felt only the rope, the ground beneath me, and nothing else.

But the ground felt uncomfortably rubbery. I clung to the rope ever more tightly, as the reality of the situation dawned on me. I could see literally nothing.

The music had not quieted, but I realized that I had been doing my best to tune it out. Now, looking straight on into the void, it was impossible to do so.

A voice that had not been singing suddenly rang in my ears, and seemed to be coming from beneath me. The ground beneath me moved so suddenly that it knocked me over. The next thing I knew, I was sitting up and seeing the ship become smaller and smaller behind me as some creature swam deeper into the ocean.

I realized that the oily sensation was in fact water. Somehow, we were made to stay alive as our ship sank to the ocean floor. We were made to stay alive so that we would be tortured.

*

I was petrified as the creature took me away. The knocking sound was all around me, and got louder as we neared a dim blue light.

The light turned out to be in the shape of a man, and he was with my wife. As soon as I saw my wife, I jumped off of the creature and floated down to the bottom. I landed on some rocks that were below the hill on which I had seen my wife. Climbing to meet her seemed to take forever.

When I got to the top, I could not believe what I saw.

There were several men, all of them bright, sky blue in color, lighting up a small space. They were all bald, tall, extremely fit and naked. They were very well endowed, and they all surrounded my wife.

She was smiling brightly and even giggling, as if putting on a show for all the men. It saddened me to see my sweet wife, naked and performing for all those men. Her soft, milky white skin glowed a pale blue in their light, and her red hair had become muted.

As if impatient, one of them stepped up to meet her, and her eyes moved at once to his very large penis. Two more appeared behind her. One of them pushed her to her knees and the other guided her head to his penis, which she accepted graciously. She sucked it like it was all she ever wanted to do.

The other men started getting closer, gawking and smiling, as he pushed her down to lie on her back. He remained on his knees and hands, and began pounding his dick into her. It un-nerved me to see that my wife responded to such violent thrusts approvingly. I saw how uncomfortable it must have been, but she only seemed to demand he thrust deeper.

The other men were now mostly on their knees groping her all over. Two of the men were standing and had spread her legs wide open, holding them up so that her hips did not touch the ground.

Another man wasted little time gleefully penetrating my wife. He was quick but deliberate, and she was coming in moments. As another man positioned himself, the rest continued groping her breasts and arms, even rubbing her pussy.

The manner in which I discovered what happened next was very strange, and I still don't quite know how to explain it.

The sight of my wife being fucked by these strange daemons grew impossible to believe. Perhaps some part of my pride had become disturbed at seeing greater forces than myself ravage my wife in front of my very eyes.

There they were, touching, groping and penetrating my wife all over. And there she was, enjoying every minute of it.

Perhaps it hurt even more to see her enjoy it so much.

But perhaps it wasn't even my wife.

The second I had this thought, I heard a garbled voice say, in plain English: It is finished. The image is no longer pure. Awaken the others, so that he may choose.

It was the only words I ever remember hearing in our language, and they remain the only words to this day that I have ever heard. They meant nothing to me.

The music started to rise once again, and the light from the men began to flicker. The knocking sound started to rise, and all at once I saw the monstrosity for the first time.

It had a dorsal shell like a pill bug, with hundreds of glowing tentacles. Each tentacle was about twice the length of my wife's gentle body.

The creature had taken her up, holding up her back, head and each leg with a collection of tentacles. It seemed to have a special soft extension on one of them, which it was using to penetrate my wife's pussy. It was doing so with the greatest of ease, never once breaking rhythm, and my wife was at its mercy.

My wife was crying out because the ecstasy was too great. She was clawing at a random tentacle and eventually brought it to her mouth. She gripped it tighter and tighter as the creature failed to let up. She tried to cry out again in ecstasy, but was choked out.

All of this happened very quickly as the revelation became apparent to me of this creature's true nature. The thing then cradled my wife's wiggling body and guided her into its chest. The sounds of her coming became muffled, and then the thing rose up and swam away, taking my wife with it.

That was the last time I ever saw her alive.

*

Some time later, the music died down. I didn't know if I was more scared with or without it. I took to the idea of walking away from the music as far as I could, but could still see absolutely nothing. I was truly blind.

The disturbing thing about being blind in the ocean, though, is the strength given to your other senses. I still did not know how I was breathing, or why I had not frozen to death. But I believed that if I could walk far enough away from the voices and the chorus, that its grip on my breath might loosen and I might finally die.

I walked for what seemed like years. I grew to believe, as was so easy in those conditions, that all that I could see was all that has ever existed. I unknowingly came to welcome any new experience as a legitimate one.

Eventually, though, I heard the knocking all around and above me, and I suddenly remembered all that had gone before. Something was in the void with me that I could not see, and I had not come to expect them all to have the same face.

This time the music, which was always at least a little faint, had risen once again. But this time, only the harmony. The knocking stopped, and for a while I heard only a sweet melody, which only got more angelic with time.

Even though every part of my being knew not to trust the sound of this music, it nevertheless beckoned me. It drew me near, and my guard dropped the nearer I got to it.

A new thought occurred to me: I might be reaching my salvation. Someone may be delivering me.

After all, the knocking stopped. And this music is beautiful -- not like the horrifying singing I heard before. I believed there was no way this could be of the same origin as those grotesque creatures. There were indeed angels in the Deep, as well as demons.

My heart was aflutter to meet these angels. As I neared their music, a dim light appeared beyond what looked like a greenish mist. I walked through the mist toward the light.

Then I saw the first of the angels. It was a woman with very long blond hair and milky skin, like my wife's. She was floating naked and cross-legged with her eyes closed and her hands palm up in her lap. As I neared her, I discovered another. She was about twenty feet above her, and seemed to be laying down on her side, sleeping.

Another appeared to my left, her knees up to her chest with her arms folded across them, and also sleeping. Another, asleep in the fetal position. Another, also high above, asleep on her belly.

I finally stopped at one that was floating about three feet above the ground. She was also sitting cross-legged, but with her hands behind her, as if supporting her. Her head hung backwards looking up. Her hair was very long -- hip-length -- and seemed to glide in the water. And her hair was red, like my wife's. Her skin also bore an uncanny resemblance to the soft, ivory look of my beloved.

In fact, every curve and feature of her naked body resembled that of my beautiful wife. It was enough to make me want to see her face. When I touched her face for the first time, a strange shock of pleasure shot down my spine.

I turned her head to find that it was not my wife after all. Her face was even softer, gentler than my wife's, and her skin felt like silk. Her lips were light pink, and every feature of her face was perfectly feminine.

As I held her head in my arms, I wondered if she was here to save me, or if I was here to save her. I looked down to notice that I, too, was naked. And whoever this angel was, my desire for her grew stronger the more I gazed upon her.

Yet still, it did not seem right to do so while she slept. I shook her head to wake her, but it did nothing. She might as well have been a rag doll in my hands.

I tried pinching her in the side, but it did nothing. I tried speaking, and even slapped her face. I tried shaking her whole body and tugging at her arm, but none did the trick until I accidentally brushed her left breast. She seemed to stir when I touched it.

I thought I was mistaken, so I held her breast in my hand again. Her lips pursed, as if she'd seen something while dreaming. It was certain: she had reacted to it.

But I reacted to it too.

My loins throbbed as I kept my hand on this beautiful angel's breast. Yet I could not pull away.

I slid my fingers to her nipple and played with it, and felt my penis harden even further. She didn't move much, but I started to see more life in her eye movements and in the rest of her face.

Instinct started to kick into high gear as I started to touch her with both hands. I groped her face, neck and chest and felt her starting to come alive. I noticed her breathing more and more, and her head started to move from side to side. After a while, it didn't have much more of an effect than that.

Then I decided to follow my instinct once more, and I slid my hand down between her legs. I went against my better judgment, which was the only part of me that was aware of how sacred this part of an angel must be. If she was indeed an angel, than I was surely touching her in a place I would most likely not get to touch her if she were awake.

Or maybe she would.

It certainly seemed like she wanted me to touch her there, awake or not. Strange as it might have been, being at the bottom of the ocean, she felt very wet in my fingers. I felt very ashamed to be doing this, but I could not help it.

And I could not help thinking that she wanted it too.

She began to moan, and her breathing deepened. Her hips started to move into my hand, as if she wanted me to hasten what I was doing. And every time I heard her moan, I felt a throbbing in my loins.