The King of Terror

1

  As I aforementioned, the year was 1999. I was staying in the Greek Islands, or the island of Lemnos to be more precise.
I originally travelled to Greece in August for a vacation, and ended up staying an additional month because I was really gathering such a ton of inspiration for paintings.
I am, or rather was, a landscape artist, or at least one in training. Having graduated from highschool, my parents allowed me some holiday allowance to go to Greece. But during my time there, I actually ended up selling quite a few pieces. I guess this encouraged me to stay another month.
Heck, I was even considering taking up permanent residence there, hoping to get a proper job there.

It was still very early in the September month, and I was staying at the Plaza Beach Resort hotel in Lemnos. I usually just spent my time staring over the balcony at the beautiful shore of the Aegean Sea, watching how the sun glinted and danced across the deep blue waves as a felt the warm salty sea-breeze wash over me and thinking I was in my own little paradise.
I tried to take my mind back to the ancient days of legend, and how those ancient Greeks saw this land and imagined such weird monsters and godly beings roaming the earth and sea.
I truly aimed to capture the same mythical fascination in my canvases, as I sat on the balcony and imagined immense sea creatures of old poking their heads out of the ocean, with writhing serpentine heads and a belt made of living dog's heads.
I imagined great whirlpools and Poseidon himself rising from the depths, trident in hand.
It was as if my over-imaginative mind was preparing me for what was soon to come.

I should have those first warnings from the news.
But in hindsight, I suppose no one would really expect anything so out of the ordinary to happen at that particular moment in time, especially when it would impact them.

After I would have finished a part of my painting, I'd take a break to get a snack and turn on the TV, just to play in the background, when a certain newscast caught my eye on the morning of September 7th, 1999.

Apparently, there had been a few sightings of an alleged sea monster off of the cost of Athens. Few reports from fishermen and one tourist claimed to see a giant scaly creature bobbing in and out of the waves in the Aegean Sea.
I was a little intrigued, but I ultimately called it as being just a whale or possibly even wreckage of an old ship, as sometimes loose sunken debris could be brought up by the undercurrents.

After a while I did lose interest in the news after a story about some celebrity or some sort came up on the screen, and my mind switched off from looking at the screen anymore. But when I was getting my food ready, I noticed that the news story had stopped altogether, replaced by a high-pitched drone and static.

I came back into the living room to see nothing but tones and bars on the screen.

Was there some kind of interference?
Then all at once, the TV turned off all together.
I heard a few tenants below me complaining and shouting.
I guessed their TVs went out as well.
I would have simply regarded all of this as a power cut, but then why the tones and bars?
Doesn't that imply that something happened to the broadcast rather than the TV or the power?
I tried calling for repairs to my TV, but the phone was out as well.
Apparently there was no signal.
But I had perfect signal an hour ago when I phoned my parents.

I ran down the stairs, and saw that a few people were in the hallway. Some were chatting amongst themselves, holding their phones in their hands, and others were making their way downstairs to the desk, presumably to complain. A lot of the visitors were Greek themselves, and I wasn't incredibly fluent in the language, but I got the general jist of some of their conversations.
Their phones and TVs weren't working either.
I also remember hearing one woman mention about her laptop losing connection too.
After that, we all gathered up in a group and headed down to the receptionist, who he and another man who translated in English for the few of us that there wasn't anything to worry about, but the loss of internet or phone signal wasn't to do with the building, and was probably something happening elsewhere.
They never really specified what they thought could have been the culprit, other than it was an external source outside the hotel.
I get the feeling they really didn't know either.

After that, we all begrudgingly headed back upstairs, with nothing to do but to wait for the signals and connections to be restored.
After about an hour or so, I had finished my food and completed my canvas, but still received no signal on my phone. After a few more minutes of turning the TV on and off again in the vain hopes that it'll come on by itself, I headed downstairs where many of the other guests had gone. The restaurant and the pool outdoors were packed.
It made me laugh a little at how many people decided to spend their beach resort vacation in front of a screen. Me among them.
I went out to stretch my legs, and looked to head down to the seafront, looking over the lane that headed down to the beach.

I was about to walk down that lane when I heard the sounds of police sirens.