Sweet Dreams

Whale Tale

An island that was on the top of the tourist chain faced an unexpected dilemma.

Before the appearance of dew on Sunday morn', thousands of tourists that had taken a cruise around the bay had vanished— perished without a trace was how it seemed like. No one lived to tell the tale, and the ship was lost in the current. Cases would follow on a day-to-day basis, following the same phenomenon. Collected evidence would disappear, and the CCTV framework would break down, recording nothing but glitches; however, no observer nor proof remained. No one knew why, and no one could stop it.

The island could only mourn as citizens and tourists alike fled and left it barren. No one remembered the beautiful island and soon dubbed it 'uninhabitable'.

Only one man, the mayor, remained on the island and continued to send multiple distress calls to authorities. His words remained unheard until a group of 'recently licensed' individuals stepped foot on the island. They wore uniforms and despite all claims, seemed to be amateurs without experience.

At this point, the mayor was desperate and welcomed any sliver of hope.

A week had gone by without a single lead appearing...

..that is, until three of the investigators disappeared the same way all the others had, unnoticed and lost without any leads.

The team became distressed and convened in a meeting. A loyal friend of the three ignored quarantine orders and walked to the shore, unwilling to believe that the closest people in her life could leave without any warning.

It was a starless night, and she stared lifelessly to the horizon until the luster of a spot in the sand caught her eye. She bent over to pick the object up. It was a bracelet. It was one of the victims.

It was wet. She wondered why it was wet. There was not a drop of water on that part of the shore. The waves were gentle that night and barely touched the shoreline— so why was the bracelet wet?

She pondered over this and remembered moments about the shore that didn't quite match.

A sudden rush of water exploded at the reef. Water exploded on what seemed to be the blowhole of a whale. This could shock her, but what came next was a nightmare.

Blood erupted like magma and corpses flew upward as if they were thrown by a trampoline. She recognized three as her subordinates. When the eruptions died down, she sprinted to the blowhole and dived straight into the hole, fearing that the worst was yet to come.

Her fears were true.

Inside were a multitude of corpses and every piece of lost evidence. Razor-sharp teeth encircled the interior of the creature, and not a single one was not drenched in blood. They pierced through the human bodies and were a scanty yellow. Heaps of corpses took the appearance of mountains and could take multiple tractors to move out. The gore of blood encapsulated her vision and strangled her rationality. Her breathing became labored as she recognized more and more bodies from the ghost reports of previous investigators.

In fear of danger, she moved with caution and avoided contact with objects. She made a mad grab for her subordinates and hastily dragged them out of what she had presumed was a whale. She had checked their pulses and was relieved that they were not dead as she had thought, but simply unconscious.

Horror again consumed her as she realized the whale was bigger than the island itself and was not a whale at all. It had the appearance of a ship but had the characteristics of a whale. It was an entirely different being, and being inside of it—she was sure—was a one-way ticket to death.

Adrenaline rushed her body at a speed she never thought she could reach before. She moved with haste and managed to carry all of her subordinates to the blowhole. As she pulled her subordinates out of the blowhole, a sudden eruption alerted them, and she shook them all to consciousness, worried that they would not make it if they could not spare one more second in its company.

She didn't need to encourage them. As soon as they saw the blood-hungry beast tailing after them, they quickly stood up, alert in their system. They rushed to shore with the whale close behind. Through hurried breaths, they reached the shore, barely escaping the creature by a strand of their hair.

There, her subordinates told her that gas had caused them to be unconscious and that a drop of water seemed to magnify until a dorsal fin emerged, and the creature appeared. The creature could arrive anywhere with a drop of water. It could hop on the water as if it were on land and had no problem breathing on land, even going as far as being able to camouflage with the pipes on the island. It took two days for the creature to fully digest its victims, and it excreted a liquid that put all of its victims to sleep, explaining how all of the bodies were unconscious.

After all was clear, the group rushed back to the main office to quickly tell everyone to evacuate.