We ran into some problems over the past few days. Our piping got stuck on something. It took about two days to sort out. Meanwhile, we were stuck. I had already done the necessary work on the enormous corpse. I would have written, but couldn’t think of what could be said. Nothing of interest happened.
Until two days ago. The corpse moved. No one else believes me; me and one of the chemists were the only two people up. He was half-asleep. I was too busy being disturbed by it to sleep.
Then it twitched. Just a mass of flesh. Twitching. It made air bubbles around it. It might have been an eye that twitched.
They all said I just needed more sleep though. I hope they’re right. We’ve moved on now, though the towering mass of the corpse is still visible behind us, through the murky water. We’ve reached the edge of the abyss now, and I feel like I’m going to be sick. That thing behind us, if it really is alive, could kill us all in an instant. But it was probably just decomposing. That corpse. That’s why it twitched. The decomposing bacteria must just be hiding, which is why we didn’t find any in the water.
I don’t even convince myself. We haven’t seen any other lifeforms approach the corpse. I have a bad feeling about this. But it’s too late to turn back.
The abyss is even darker than the rest of the water. We’re parked only a dozen or so meters from the edge, where the ocean floor drops off suddenly in a sheer cliff extending God only knows how far down. We can’t see the other side of it from here. We can’t see anything down there. Last night the oceanographer went out and collected water samples, descending a little bit into the abyss, and found that the water is thicker. It seems to be laced with some sort of actual black, viscous fluid, like oil, but thicker. We’re reluctant to advance further until we figure out what it is. The chemists are working on it now. Until then, all we can do is wait.
Z. M. Wilmot 