She dreams of a sea broiling with blood and rancid foam.
Hemp ropes tighten like rough snakes around her limbs, around her throat, strangling her— slicing into her neck like a silvery blade cuts through ribbon, the briny salve of the salted ocean stinging as she is dragged down, down, down…… until she finally drowns, throttled by the lines lashed to the body of the Great. White. Whale.
Bridget cannot blink as the whale resurfaces from the dive that has killed her, an airy spume of compressed water cascading around them and spilling into her open eyes in thick, dewy droplets, pooling at the corners of her eyelids like a useless pantomime of liquid sorrow. The wretched behemoth tears through the hull of the condemned ship Pequod, rigging and barnacle-encrusted wood splitting as the sailors howl and moan, bodies and broken steering oars spilling into the dark waves.
Barrels of precious spermaceti go flying in every which direction, split apart by the beast’s mighty thrashing and the gnashing of his teeth, and the tow lines linked to the whaling boats catch on his giant pectoral fins— smashing against each other in a hail of splintered planks. The lances that pierce his thick and slippery hide glint a bright and terrible silver in the stark light of day. They bristle like metallic trees lining the ridge of a snowy mountain, sprinkled with the purest snow she’s ever seen...
A wash of red spills across the great white slope as the whale is struck in the lungs, his blowhole gushing enough blood to turn the whole sea crimson. Cloudy fluids and gouts of sanguine freshness spurt into the air as the massive beast chokes and struggles to draw breath. The harpoons pricking at his blubbery body cause his movements to gradually slow, the skin once paler than snow now marred with ragged tears in the flesh, until finally, finally, the whale begins to sink.
As they sink, she catches the faintest glimpses of dark shapes slipping through the water. Sharks, she recognizes with a kind of slow-dawning horror, devouring the men above.
The dead and drowned are torn apart like cotton dolls, limbs jerking about as their flesh is shredded by hungry mouths. Helpless to fight against it, Bridget merely stares upward as the faint glint of sunlight shining upon the tumultuous ocean waves high up above fades, the sight of a dozen or more inert, lifelessly drifting men and the circling parade of sharks disappearing from her view.
Down the whale sinks, down, until the darkness moves past the dark of midnight into something absolutely lightless, more void-like, their entwined bodies seeping deeper and deeper into the insatiable maw of the sea. The cords that wrap around Bridget’s limbs hold her fast to the whale, which she can glimpse even in the dark— its hide seems almost luminous, like the moon, plucked from the sky, pitching further and further into a stygian abyss.
The pressure builds. The cold is immense, almost too much to bear. Heavy water presses against her small body, strapped to this titan of the sea, this awful behemoth, and all that she can feel is the icy chill, threatening to strip her right down to the bone. How long have they been trapped in this terrible descent? When will her corpse be released, free to be devoured by the hungering, ravenous mouths of the deep’s host of strange sea life? Or will she be tied to this whale forever, caught in his terrible sway, unable to resist this demented chase even in death?
Wait.
Abruptly, Bridget recalls herself, her deadened eyes fluttering in the dark. Limbs that had once been still, utterly immobilized in death, twitch and struggle against the bindings secured around them, fighting to escape the tremendous pull dragging her down to the bottom of the sea.
Yes, yes… that’s right. She is no sailor. In spite of being bound to this creature within a dream, she has no quarrel with it. And she is certainly not some vicious, crazy old sea captain!
The lines detach and fall away at the peak of her mind’s awakening. Bridget’s body lurches upward slightly from the force of it, bobbing like an unstopped cork in the water. She looks down almost reflexively, watching as the white whale dives ever deeper, his massive form vanishing below the line of darkness where the abyssal drop of the midnight zone meets the bottom of the ocean— the trenches, the seabed. Then, she turns her face upward, unblinking against the salt and rime of the deep sea.
All around her is darkness, the vast expanse of the open ocean feeling bitterly cold against her bare arms. It’s what she imagines deep space would feel like, if one could only survive it… and yet the water passes through her lungs easily, cool and sweeter than honey.
As she waits in that darkest of darks, simply drifting, the faintest outline of fins appear in the dark, unfurling gently from her arms and legs. They shine a soft, feathery green, so airy and light that it almost seems like a translucent peacock’s fans fluttering in the blackness.
“Hm!” Bridget warbles in consternation, a stream of bubbles flying out from her mouth. She wraps her arms around herself, peering around in confusion, even if her eyes are next to useless in such depths.
What a strange dream this is, she thinks. And so vivid! Like something cast from memory…
An unsettling thought, that is. The young woman shudders, her grip tightening around her arms, fingertips digging ugly white welts into the skin.
Suddenly, she feels something... else... aside from the icy cold of the open ocean, that is. A most surprising heat, rising in searing waves from the bottom of the seafloor, layered with an intense sense of foreboding. Bridget startles, glancing down— and nearly screams at the sight that meets her eyes.
Fire. The bottom of the ocean is lit aflame!
Mind reeling in terror, Bridget’s face turns upward once more, fins swirling around her as she desperately strains to swim up toward the surface. But no matter how hard she struggles and beats against the ocean’s current, the flames seem to only rise higher and higher. Lapping at her heels in tongues of blistering heat, they chase after her as though they have a mind of their own, burning with a strange darkness reminiscent of the deepest bowels of Hades.
Heart sinking in dread, Bridget can only thrash and yell as eventually the incredible reach of the flames overtakes her. Hot tongues of hellish red lap at the edges of her limbs, burning her skin and setting the sea to boiling around her body, the heat sealing like thick bands of white-hot iron around her organs—
Hemp ropes tighten like rough snakes around her limbs, around her throat, strangling her— slicing into her neck like a silvery blade cuts through ribbon, the briny salve of the salted ocean stinging as she is dragged down, down, down…… until she finally drowns, throttled by the lines lashed to the body of the Great. White. Whale.
Bridget cannot blink as the whale resurfaces from the dive that has killed her, an airy spume of compressed water cascading around them and spilling into her open eyes in thick, dewy droplets, pooling at the corners of her eyelids like a useless pantomime of liquid sorrow. The wretched behemoth tears through the hull of the condemned ship Pequod, rigging and barnacle-encrusted wood splitting as the sailors howl and moan, bodies and broken steering oars spilling into the dark waves.
Barrels of precious spermaceti go flying in every which direction, split apart by the beast’s mighty thrashing and the gnashing of his teeth, and the tow lines linked to the whaling boats catch on his giant pectoral fins— smashing against each other in a hail of splintered planks. The lances that pierce his thick and slippery hide glint a bright and terrible silver in the stark light of day. They bristle like metallic trees lining the ridge of a snowy mountain, sprinkled with the purest snow she’s ever seen...
A wash of red spills across the great white slope as the whale is struck in the lungs, his blowhole gushing enough blood to turn the whole sea crimson. Cloudy fluids and gouts of sanguine freshness spurt into the air as the massive beast chokes and struggles to draw breath. The harpoons pricking at his blubbery body cause his movements to gradually slow, the skin once paler than snow now marred with ragged tears in the flesh, until finally, finally, the whale begins to sink.
As they sink, she catches the faintest glimpses of dark shapes slipping through the water. Sharks, she recognizes with a kind of slow-dawning horror, devouring the men above.
The dead and drowned are torn apart like cotton dolls, limbs jerking about as their flesh is shredded by hungry mouths. Helpless to fight against it, Bridget merely stares upward as the faint glint of sunlight shining upon the tumultuous ocean waves high up above fades, the sight of a dozen or more inert, lifelessly drifting men and the circling parade of sharks disappearing from her view.
Down the whale sinks, down, until the darkness moves past the dark of midnight into something absolutely lightless, more void-like, their entwined bodies seeping deeper and deeper into the insatiable maw of the sea. The cords that wrap around Bridget’s limbs hold her fast to the whale, which she can glimpse even in the dark— its hide seems almost luminous, like the moon, plucked from the sky, pitching further and further into a stygian abyss.
The pressure builds. The cold is immense, almost too much to bear. Heavy water presses against her small body, strapped to this titan of the sea, this awful behemoth, and all that she can feel is the icy chill, threatening to strip her right down to the bone. How long have they been trapped in this terrible descent? When will her corpse be released, free to be devoured by the hungering, ravenous mouths of the deep’s host of strange sea life? Or will she be tied to this whale forever, caught in his terrible sway, unable to resist this demented chase even in death?
Wait.
Abruptly, Bridget recalls herself, her deadened eyes fluttering in the dark. Limbs that had once been still, utterly immobilized in death, twitch and struggle against the bindings secured around them, fighting to escape the tremendous pull dragging her down to the bottom of the sea.
Yes, yes… that’s right. She is no sailor. In spite of being bound to this creature within a dream, she has no quarrel with it. And she is certainly not some vicious, crazy old sea captain!
The lines detach and fall away at the peak of her mind’s awakening. Bridget’s body lurches upward slightly from the force of it, bobbing like an unstopped cork in the water. She looks down almost reflexively, watching as the white whale dives ever deeper, his massive form vanishing below the line of darkness where the abyssal drop of the midnight zone meets the bottom of the ocean— the trenches, the seabed. Then, she turns her face upward, unblinking against the salt and rime of the deep sea.
All around her is darkness, the vast expanse of the open ocean feeling bitterly cold against her bare arms. It’s what she imagines deep space would feel like, if one could only survive it… and yet the water passes through her lungs easily, cool and sweeter than honey.
As she waits in that darkest of darks, simply drifting, the faintest outline of fins appear in the dark, unfurling gently from her arms and legs. They shine a soft, feathery green, so airy and light that it almost seems like a translucent peacock’s fans fluttering in the blackness.
“Hm!” Bridget warbles in consternation, a stream of bubbles flying out from her mouth. She wraps her arms around herself, peering around in confusion, even if her eyes are next to useless in such depths.
What a strange dream this is, she thinks. And so vivid! Like something cast from memory…
An unsettling thought, that is. The young woman shudders, her grip tightening around her arms, fingertips digging ugly white welts into the skin.
Suddenly, she feels something... else... aside from the icy cold of the open ocean, that is. A most surprising heat, rising in searing waves from the bottom of the seafloor, layered with an intense sense of foreboding. Bridget startles, glancing down— and nearly screams at the sight that meets her eyes.
Fire. The bottom of the ocean is lit aflame!
Mind reeling in terror, Bridget’s face turns upward once more, fins swirling around her as she desperately strains to swim up toward the surface. But no matter how hard she struggles and beats against the ocean’s current, the flames seem to only rise higher and higher. Lapping at her heels in tongues of blistering heat, they chase after her as though they have a mind of their own, burning with a strange darkness reminiscent of the deepest bowels of Hades.
Heart sinking in dread, Bridget can only thrash and yell as eventually the incredible reach of the flames overtakes her. Hot tongues of hellish red lap at the edges of her limbs, burning her skin and setting the sea to boiling around her body, the heat sealing like thick bands of white-hot iron around her organs—