Hungry Darkness: A Deep Sea Thriller Read Online Free

space where Sebastian had been looked rough. Nick thought of a greenish rock, but it was obvious by the way it moved in the yellowish light that whatever was there was not solid, and he had seen it move like a living thing. Then the green color flashed a bit of red, like a wave of color passing through it. Nick had seen the same thing many times, and that suddenly made the bumpy surface painfully obvious to him: he was looking at part of an octopus, but the size was just…wrong.
    “What the fuck, man?”
    Dave’s shaky, nasal voice came through loud and clear, the fear in it forcing it up a few notches and injecting it with too many decibels.
    “That thing just ate Sebastian! Nick! Nick, we need to get outta here!”
    Dave dropped his camera and started frantically moving toward Nick. He was past the point of panicking. His screams had been replaced by fast breathing, the kind that consumes too much oxygen.
    Nick looked at the approaching man as his body, now bypassing his brain and almost acting on its own, began moving backwards. In his light which was following the visible chunk of greenish beast as it submerged further and moved toward a pair of fallen rock formations, Nick could see Dave advancing, desperately trying to put distance between himself and the monstrous octopus.
    “Nick? Nick, come in. What’s all the commotion about? Over.”
    Gary’s voice seemed alien to both men, like something coming from another planet a few light years away. Dave started screaming again.
    “Help! We need to get the fuck outta he…!”
    Nick didn’t see the tentacle dart out, but he did see Dave’s eyes become even wider as the octopus wrapped one of his arms somewhere on his lower body and pulled him down and out of his light with unbelievable speed.
    The sound of Gary screaming was not enough to mute out the pounding of Nick’s heart in his own ears. He had to escape, to hide somewhere until this beast was gone, but fear had paralyzed him, his brain telling him to move away while also trying to make sense of the situation and trying to digest what he had just seen.
    The pressure was brutal and immediate. Something was crushing Nick’s left leg right below his knee. While he was busy watching and trying to get his thoughts in order, the huge octopus had grabbed him. That it had covered the distance between the place where he saw Dave disappear and where he was so quickly seemed impossible. Everything that was happening seemed impossible, something out of a child’s nightmare after seeing a bad creature feature.
    Nick felt his flesh crunch under the pressure, meat, muscle, and bone giving in as if they were all made of plasticine. The pain reached his brain a fraction of a second later. That’s when the scream that had been building in his chest finally erupted, reaching the surface as a loud electronic squeal not unlike a microphone’s feedback.
    Nick felt an irresistible force pull him through the water as if he weighted nothing. He moved his arms in an attempt to counteract the movement, a last second attempt at escaping, but his movements had the same effect a mosquito has on the speed of a truck barreling down the highway. He ran out of air, and the lack of it killed his scream. He gulped oxygen as he felt a second arm wrap itself around his waist, shattering his pelvis and silencing his second scream before it was it was out of his mouth.
    The last thing Nick Ayres saw on the dive that was supposed to change his life was the yellowish light of his headlamp reflecting against the black curve of a massive, gaping beak.

 
    Chapter Five
     
    Emilio looked down at the moon shining over the water and inhaled deeply. Being out here, with the breeze caressing his face and the moon above him looking like a piece of magical low-hanging fruit, was almost enough to make him forget about the trouble at home.
    Sarita, Emilio’s daughter, was almost three years old before she began to babble her first words. Their other three