The Mermaid Disease

0/Drowning

Crying while scuba diving is generally inadvisable, but Eric Glass had a good reason to let water into his mask via his tear ducts. He completely believed that he was about to die. He would never see his family again.

Oh God. His family. Everyone was supposed to gather in a week for his fiftieth birthday. Now, instead of a celebration, they would have a funeral. His funeral. And it was completely his fault. Eric would never be able to see his wife or children ever again.

He should have known better than to agree to go cave diving despite being slightly out of practice. When his buddy became too sick to go, he should have stayed home instead of going solo. When he bumped his elbow and dropped his camera, he should have let it sink, no matter how expensive it might have been. When he saw that the camera was just within reach if he did a little wiggling into a narrow part of the cave, he definitely should have given up. But he didn't.

Eric Glass was an idiot, and because of that he was going to die alone, wedged into an uncomfortably tight spot in a dark cave. To top it off, he was running low on air. He should have been heading back up to the surface by then.

At least he had his camera. Maybe someone would eventually find his body and the pictures he took in his final moments. Not that they'd be any good; his vision was blurry with tears. In fact, his vision was becoming so bad that it looked like the shadows were dancing before his eyes.

No ... Wait a second ... Surely he must be imagining things now, or else he was seeing the tail of a damn huge fish moving through the shadows. He didn't see too many fish down here, and when he did they were often small. Definitely nothing that large.

The man blinked rapidly, trying to get the tears out of his eyes. If he was going to die in this cave, he might as well get a decent picture of this monster. Maybe he would posthumously be given credit for discovering a new species in the caves.

Eric raised his camera, pointed it towards the shadows where he thought the fish was, and clicked the button. With a flash, the cave lit up. What he saw nearly caused him to spit out his mouthpiece in shock. As it was, he dropped the camera that had, partially, gotten him into this mess.

The creature that was crawling in the darkness towards him does not exist. He must have died already and was trapped in some kind of hell. Yep. That's it.

Eric Glass passed out when the thing tried talking to him.

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It took Eric a minute to realize that he was alive. Truth be told, it was the pounding headache that made him realize that he was amongst the living. Nothing like a little pain to make one self-aware.

He was lying on the cold, wet floor of a cavern. Light seemed to be coming in through somewhere above. The sound of water dripping was irritating. Maybe it had something to do with the pool of water on his left.

A few things confused him. He had no idea how he had gotten to this new location considering his predicament when he was last conscious. Also, he had not the faintest idea where his equipment might have gone. A missing camera was easy enough to explain, but two gas tanks was a bit more difficult, especially since they had been strapped on to him so well.

The confused man sat up and pulled off the hood of his diving suit. He ran a hand through his hair and asked himself, "How?"

"How?" repeated a masculine voice not belonging to Eric. "You need to be more specific than that."

Surprised, Eric looked around, trying to find the speaker. "Who are you?" Eric asked when he realized that he wasn't going to find whomever spoke. It was just too dark and there were too many shadows in this stupid place.