The Whale that Swallowed the Sea

Prologue

It is a vast, mystical place. It is the sky on land, the world's mirror.

It contains unknowns and memories that are lost. It contains hopes and dreams anew.

I once remember its soft tranquility, its suffocating rage.

It is gone now.

All of it.

I want it back.

I will get it back.

Even if it takes everything that I have, everything that I am, and everything I would have become.

"They have to know...someone has to know what they have done..." A man whispered frantically to himself as he rifled through the drawers on his desk like a madman until he had secured a blank piece of paper. It was dark in the office, but it mattered little as he began to write frantically in the little sliver of moonlight brave enough to shine its white light down through the obscured window upon his wrinkled piece of paper. He dared not turn on the light to make a more legible and flattering note – no – presentation and legibility did not matter, not at a time like this, not with what he had just recently discovered.

"They have to know...they have to know..." He whispered to himself again as he finished the frantic scrawl. Then, gripping the paper in his bawled up hand, he made to stand up, but it was then that he felt something cold press lightly against his temple, causing his heart to turn to ice.

The figure holding the flintlock pistol was shrouded in the shadows of the pitch black office, but determining his killer's face was of little concern or necessity, because the man already knew who was to blame for this disaster for which he desperately tried to get word out of. His only regret was that he had not been able to.

In the man's last few moments of life, he pictured his family in his mind; and his mind desperately tried to hold onto these images as the trigger was pulled, and the bullet tore through his struggling brain. His wife...and his daughter...two voices he had wished he could have heard one last time...

The shadowy assassin, his deed now done, moved over the body of the man he had killed. His cold, glinting eyes scanned down to the piece of paper still clutched tightly in his fist. He then wrenched it free, taking out a lighter and setting the paper aflame. He watched patiently until the paper was completely incinerated; the carefully engulfing flames casting an orangey glow upon the assassin's stoic and calculated face. He tossed the ashes into the fireplace that was only really used for vanity, and then proceeded to finish his job.

He took the gun and put it into the man's hand, making it appear as if he had shot himself from a depressed state of mind; a simple suicide due to his stressful line of work. When he was done, the assassin left as silently as he had come, leaving behind the man, the husband and the father, lying bleeding out over his desk; his words not having the chance to have reached anyone's ears.