On the Dock

October 6, 1929
“Jack Marshall”

I recall it being the last hour of my shift. I’ll tell you now, I was sick of all the customers coming in at the last minute asking for fish. You would think the sign saying ‘closed’ on the dock would suggest something, but clearly not. It was pissing it down, and an intense storm was coming from the sea over to our work. I was surprised I didn’t see any fish being found in the air flying around like birds. Luckily, there was not much left to do now: put all the fresh cod in the box in which they needed to go into a decrepit storage room, that was honestly a shit hole, as well as make sure the shop was closed and locked to prevent those damn thieves getting in again. There had been a fair amount of them raiding small shops along the shore and taking whatever they could get their hands on. For some reason, they would just steal wood planks from the actual bridges on the dock. Who the fuck does that?

Upon leaving the shop and putting on my winter coat (the ones that made me look like I lived in an Igloo: fur ends on the hood, thick enough to be chest armour if I got attacked and an absurd amount of pockets even for me), I looked down the dock bridge to see a man running onto the main road and making a run for it into an alleyway. Knowing that the place I work is in a strange part of town, this didn’t immediately come off as odd, just something you may see once in a while on a late shift. But this felt weird. It wasn’t a madman pelting around the docking or some kids pulling a ‘prank’ that just ended up being destruction of property. This was actual fear. Prey trying his best to get away from a predator. Maybe he pissed off the wrong guy? Evading police? Owed money? It wasn’t my business, and I didn’t plan on being a hero by chasing whoever was following the guy. That’s what I thought until I noticed what followed him: a guy in a diving suit, the metal clunky ones with the grids over the mask.

“What…”

Surely it couldn’t be a diving suit out in public, doing what seems to be chasing that guy. My eyes were stuck on the man in the diver suit, following down the alleyway. Even from a distance, the diver’s footsteps were loud and clunky, dragging himself like a husk. Honestly, I wasn’t sure whether to follow or allow this bizarre event to happen and go along with my evening. But the man was in danger, and I didn’t like this. After a few seconds, I decided to follow, taking the same path as to where the men were moments ago. I decided to pop my head around the corner and see what was going on. The anxiousness was building in my system, waiting to burst out. I can’t begin to describe what I saw, what happened that night… or what was in the diving suit.

A gut-wrenching scream came from the man who ran for his life. “NO! PLEASE, NO!” being bellowed as the diver’s arms turned into what looked like tentacles, using the suckers to latch onto the man’s face. The street light above made it easy to see the blood from his cheek being absorbed into the tentacle and flowing into the diver.

This couldn’t be real. Everything told me to run, hell, to do something, anything. My body froze in motion and continued to witness this thing’s act of violence. With its act of survival. What stuck from all of this was the diver. It looked up into the sky and screeched to the dark night above. The voice sounded like overlaps of multiple people’s voices screaming at once. This poor soul now joining the many voices. “NO! PLEASE, NO,” yelled out of the diver’s helmet.

I couldn’t watch any more. Fight or flight finally kicked in, and I darted off down the streets, running with no sense of direction. To this day, I see the diver’s mask everywhere. I hear the screech, the man’s desperation in his screaming and the storm that lingered over the docks that evening.