ON A BLACK MOON SEA ~A Halloween Anthology~

Moon Baby

Critical Incident Debrief Log

Arctic Station // November 13th, 2001

Interviewer: Dr --------, Company Therapist.

Interviewee: Mr --------, Incident survivor

Incident Codename: Moon Baby

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Survivor (S): We used to call him Baby.

Therapist (T): Who?

S: Michaels. The one who found the creature. We used to call him Baby. On account of him being so short. And also because he was a pussy. He had little weak girly hands. He could barely turn the handles on the drill pressure release. I didn't hate him. But he was asking for what he got. Being so weak and small and working out on the rigs. He was asking for it. Peterson hated him the most. He'd put his kit up on the overhead pipes. Or his lunch or his torch. Sometimes he put Baby up there so he couldn't climb down. He'd sit there with his little girly legs dangling in the air. That was Peterson in a good mood. When he'd drunk too much, things got worse for Baby. And Peterson always drank too much. Baby was too chicken shit to do anything about it. That's what made the rest of us hate him. He was just too weak for the ocean. He should have been back in a nice suit and tie in a little office cubicle like you mate. Sorry, no offence.

T: None taken.

S: Baby was just different to the rest of us. He was smaller and weaker, and he didn't talk the same. When he was on downtime he didn't drink. He just sat reading in his bunk or watching the water out on deck. I mean, we're surrounded by a million litres of the stuff, he's spending all day pumping it out of the core chamber. And then when he gets a moment to himself, he sits and stares at it. Maybe he wasn't all there. That's what they started to say. Especially after that octopus squid creature suckered its way on deck.

T: Tell me about the creature.

S: I reckon if Peterson found it we would have been having fried squid for dinner. Lucky for the octopus it was Baby who found it. It had crawled onto the elevator. If Baby did his morning check even a minute late, the slimy thing would have slipped down into the wellbore and that would have been the end of it. But Baby was always on time. And when he saw it, he got so excited. Baby was like a puppy. It didn't matter how much you kicked him he kept coming back for more, wagging his tail, hoping you'd pat him, tell him he was a good boy. It was like he forgot what we thought of him or where he was. He called us over like he'd just found Christmas morning in the chute. Peterson went for the thing but Baby grabbed it up. That took everyone by surprise. Peterson was no chicken shit, but there was no way any of us was going to touch it. Peterson was gonna kick it, not hug the slimy fucker. It didn't look like anything I'd ever seen. From one angle you thought it was just an octopus, but then it had these bent up wings on it's back, and when it looked up at you I swear to god I thought for a minute.... Well, no octopus has a face like that.

T: What kind of face?

S: I must have already been getting blurry doc, it doesn't make sense.

T: Tell me what you saw.

S: The face was human, a boy's face. And Baby treated it like it was human from that moment. That monster was his new best friend.

T: Why didn't you tell us about the creature?

S: We just assumed it was part of the project. Part of whatever we're supposed to be drilling for. I guess you're still not going to tell me what that was...

T: You signed the non-disclosure agreement that outlined--

S: Yeah yeah I bloody know. It's all corporate jargon. But that's the whole point, isn't it? None of us knew. But we knew it wasn't oil. I've drilled for oil before and this was different. It was the wrong depth. Anyway, we figured Baby's pet freak was some sort of side effect you know. A radioactive mistake. Maybe you never told us because we were digging up uranium or I don't know. You don't get a weird fucking half octopus, half dragon half baby unless you're doing something to the water. Whatever it was I don't think we wanted to know. The money was too good. I was already drinking to forget. I didn't want to add something else to the list. And even though Baby was a little bitch and we all hated him, didn't mean we were gonna grass on him. We weren't snitches.