Hello all. Just wanted to pop in. Get some comments and critique.

As a note. I did not end this how i wanted to. Lack of time and general fatigue forced me to cut it short and bring about a rather abrupt ending. I havent had a chance to go back and fix it up.

Regardless i do hope that you enjoy it. I enjoyed writing it.


Leviathan

It had come upon them so suddenly. Well no. That was a lie his mind offered to him in an effort to justify his marked indifference of the winds of certainty. Indeed, it was visible since the first drippings of the sun had poured out across the calm fidgeting of the sea. Its ominous inevitable hands grasping the shelf of water as it slowly pulled its bulk with an effort over the horizon like an ancient sinister leviathan rising up from behind its watery mask to devastate one more frail sea vessel before contentedly returning to its unearthly slumber. It slowly stretched its way across the perfect circumference of the horizon as the day progressed sending shocked whispers through the nervous crew and spreading an insidious blanket of muffled unease through the cabins. The presence was painfully tangible and with it came such an overbearance of inevitability that drew any strength of will from the men who stayed below the deck as if barred from movement and far away from any open door that might bring them within its malicious reach. The day darkened as the men were given their lunch rations and they ate silently careful even to avoid the harsh note of a spoon against a bowl or a cup against a table out of deathly fear perhaps that such a dreadful noise might overwhelm and snap their strained reason and send them into the unending depths of madness as they had seen happen in less able men unable to wrestle the tenacious solitude of the monochrome sea or perhaps that resounding clink may betray the location of their small sea vessel made only of wood to the stalking force that even then settled over them with its unfathomed maw gaping around the whole of its quivering prey.

It began slowly and with a steady building fortitude as one would expect and the men went about their tasks in the chilling cascade that all knew was merely a dimwitted precursor sent only to waterlog the spirit and redden the eyes. Some of the crew scaled the damp rigging and bound the canvas sails, others hurried to seal off all exposed doors and windows and hatches, while the final majority, their blood diluted with nervous energy, wandered unceasingly across the small deck of the ship as if cursed by the eternal god to never spend a moment in stationary repose but to walk hurriedly from immediately forgotten point to yet unknown point with a purpose of nopurpose and without a word to their fellow damned. Their duties done, the men withdrew slowly back behind their wooden wall and spoke tensely in blatantly unacknowledged anticipation. And so in short order the ship began to rock. Violently. As the wind-aroused and swollen waves hurled themselves against the wooden hulk in metered succession rattling the aged and tempered oak with escalating fervor.

It was at this commensory point, as the first of the waves had conjured the strength and audacity to reach up onto the deck of the sea vessel like some amorphous tentacle sent forth with predatory intent and curiosity from a sulking aquatic behemoth to test the mettle and potential of some strange creature and perhaps find that this new prey suits its liking and so envelope it in its crushing muscle and drag it downward into its toothed jaws, that he noticed by chance from an earnest glance through a small cracked pane of glass the possessed thrashings of the rear boom that had apparently not been tied fast to the hull in the frenetic preparations and now bullied by the malignant wind swung freely to all sides and threatened to cripple the sea vessel. Indeed, he begrudgingly admitted to himself, he had been trained too well by the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune to feign passive ignorance while beneath to beat his heart in silent earnest prayer and so rebuttoning his heavy raincoat with scarred but steady fingers and drawing it tightly to his body passed through the wooden portal and into the gluttonous tempest.

And now, heaved abruptly from his feet against the port side railing, his lungs searching vainly for the breath taken from within them, he could do nothing but watch and grind his teeth as before his eyes mountains permeated by the deepest green, highlighted from the turbulent sky which they aspired to only by cackling spears of light, built themselves to unnatural proportions only to expel their borrowed potency in an avalanche of unhindered cold down upon the desperately leaping ship. He gripped his arm futily in an effort to keep the salt from entering the wound so recently inflicted upon him by a length rigging, having been snapped by the crazed flailings of the boom whipped in a lethal arc and opened his flesh from the elbow to the first knuckle. Indeed, he had fortune to thank that his neck had not been cut cleanly in half by the errant cord yet the laceration burned and bled with the sea water to such an extent that he found his mind being rapidly forced from his corporeal body by the ravishing torrents and flung out between the posts of the railing and into the calm stifling depths of the slouching beast's determined maw so well masked beneath its ravenous exterior and there it found a relieving spot on which to settle.